War Stories: Managing a Photo Shoot on Location

Through the camera, the shot looked like nothing—shooting straight into empty space looks impressive and scary in person, but boring on film. It’s the classic problem with vistas—everything looks tiny and far away on the print.

“We need a short conference,” I said to the client.

One of the key parts of project management on a location shoot is looking ahead for trouble. As soon as the crew is working on a shot, your job is to look ahead to the next shot. Do you have the samples? The props? Will the sun be wrong by the time you get out of the current shot?