Shoot Production

While working at Wonderful Machine I was given the opportunity to help our Executive Producer with a few projects. Typically, I would help select photographers and crew for shoots, keeping in mind the needs of the shoot, the budget, etc. Occasionally, I also got to work on set as a production assistant. One of the greatest highlights from this time was finding photographers for a half-million dollar photo shoot for Walmart. One of the other highlights, but also most difficult moments is the story below…

On one particularly tough shoot, our client, an agency in New York had trouble getting several confirmations from their client, a luxury alcohol brand. We were brought on to produce the shoot, hire crew, and find the photographer. Early on we were able to secure a casting director to help us find talent for the shoot, so that was off of our plate, but everything else took forever to approve. Two days before the shoot we were able to lock in a photographer, but the agency still hadn’t heard from the casting director. We tried our best to reach out to her, but couldn’t get in contact. We tried all day, but we never got word from her about how things were going. At this point, the agency is panicking and the client is asking a lot of questions about talent.

The day before the shoot at around 9 AM it became obvious to us that the casting director was ghosting us. Luckily, she had shared a document the week before with a list of head shots for potential talent that the agency liked. Unfortunately, she didn’t include their names or their agencies, so with only a head shot and some demographic information, I was responsible for finding the name and talent agencies for nearly a dozen Latino and African American men in their early 30s and mid 40s. Then I had to forward their information to the agency who would then forward them to the client who would either approve or reject them in the next 8 hours.

My Executive Producer and I ended up calling nearly every talent agency in New York to find these people and it took several hours, but we eventually did it. Once approved, I had to reach out to the agencies, check talent availability (for the very next day), and lock people in. This process took forever, and eventually my EP headed home. I decided to stay and make it happen. I ended up playing phone tag with agents, talent, and the agency until around 8:30 PM. It got so bad that I ended up begging some of the agents for their personal numbers so that I could try to reach them after hours. It was a hard slog, but I eventually got everyone locked in. Then I raced home, packed my bags, and drove straight to New York from Philly to work as a Production Assistant at 6 AM the next day.

I would have loved to include images from that shoot, but sadly, I’m having trouble finding them.