December 8, 2016
Amir Shehata
We started filming on March 2014, but after around five filming days the Sam actor decided to move on due to creative differences. This obviously put a complete halt to our schedule.
I had scheduled all six episodes together and out of sequence. For those unfamiliar with film production, it is rarely the case that the script is shot in order. Scenes are scheduled to maximize time efficiency. In the case of a zero budget productions, such as this one, there are other factors to consider such as the cast and crew schedule. On budgeted productions cast and crew are dedicated to the production, however on a production like Turning Point, cast and crew usually have their day jobs, or other paid gigs happening in conjunction with filming. This makes scheduling shooting days quiet challenging. I had previous experiences with that, so when I was writing the scripts, I made it a point to ensure that my scenes don't contain many actors at the same time. Other scheduling consideration are things like location availability, equipment availability, weather, etc. You typically want to shoot all scenes in any one location at the same time, so you don't have to come back to that location again.
When the main actor decided to leave Turning Point, I had to reevaluate my entire approach to the project. I mentioned before that my highest priority is getting the project done. I do not accept starting something that I can not finish.
I had written six episodes, and I had a gut feeling that filming them all together and out of sequence would entail a very high risk of not getting any single episode completely done. I was considering now that shooting all six episodes out of sequence will severely limit my ability to adapt to my changing environment, such as an actor deciding to quit. Think about it, if I had filmed a set of sequences from multiple episodes with one actor, and then they decide to quit the show, then I’m stuck having to re-film his or her scenes, which could potentially be a ton of work. I have to find a replacement actor, which means another round of casting, then I have to reschedule all the character's scenes, which means I have to get access to locations once more. A BIG headache. Not to mention the moral impact that this chaos would have on everyone else involved. Not a very good one, let me tell ya.
To add to the problems, the schedule I created was packed. At one point, before the main actor quit, I was just about ready to give up. The work load was way too much. And I was facing stress and demands from the main actor to speed up production, which I could not do due to my day job. I wasn’t about to quit the job that pays the bills. This stress led me to a mental place, where I was looking for any excuse to stop working on the project.
That reason came in the form of the main actor sending me a formal letter stating a bunch of demands I could not meet, thus leading me to decide that we could not continue collaborating on this project. I ended my collaboration with him in the most professional way possible. But I was left kinda high and dry with no main actor. My, oh, my what a wonderful world, eh?
I spent many nights soul searching. Is this really what I want to spend my time on? Do I really want to handle the stress of production, along with the stress of my day job, my family, and everything else I had going on in my life? I had to really answer the question, why am I doing this? As I mentioned in my previous post, there had to be a reason bigger than myself that motivated me to continue on this project. And I totally believe that had to be true, because in the midst of all this upheaval, I felt this push to move on. Keep my head down and carry on.
After a long time of thinking and weighing my options I got this interesting idea, why not change the main character to a female lead. I wanted to create a strong female character. Having three daughters, I think we need more female role models for young girls to look up to, both in real life and in the fictional world.
I approached the second lead on the show and suggested the idea to her, and she was all for it. Over the next while I worked on rewriting the scripts to work with a female lead. The name changed from Samuel to Samantha, and a bunch of scenes changed; took maybe a month to make the changes. At one point we had a debate whether the second lead should change to a male character, but finally I decided to keep the two female leads. In the initial scripts there was a romantic story-line between the male and female leads, which we changed to a friendship which evolves between the, now, two female characters.
All this time I was operating under the assumption that we’ll be filming all six episodes. So I was making changes to all of them.
That assumption, however, proved to be false.