It was a hectic week last week, but it feels like I achieved very little. I brought in an “agent” up in Essex who’s been doing some location scouting and managed to get some shots of our truck, so the truck sequences are shaping up quite nicely.

Angela did some more work on wardrobe, and I tidied up the script, finally getting a locked version out to the actors on Friday so they can start learning their lines. However, I’ve come to realise something about actors that hadn’t occurred to me before. They don’t just learn all their lines in one go. They actually need to know when each scene is being shot so they can focus on learning the relevant bits. Bleeding obvious really. Because of that, setting some shooting dates has become the top priority.

This is proving trickier than I expected. First, I need to compile the availability for actors, crew and locations. I’d already started pulling this together into a spreadsheet, but with 18 actors, at least five crew and around six extras, figuring out which scenes can shoot on which dates is a somewhat daunting task. Then I remembered we’ve got scenes involving Zoom calls or video sequences, and somehow these need to be sorted before the main filming. There are loads of dependencies and, to be honest, it’s a bit daunting.

So, in 2025, what do we do when something feels daunting? We hand it over to AI, of course. With ChatGPT’s help, I’ve written some code that should be able to work out the first available date when the necessary actors, crew and location are all free for specific scenes. It’s also becoming clear that most of the complicated video stuff is all happening on one shoot day, so I’m going to start with the easier bits.

I’m still collecting availability info and there’s plenty of other stuff to think about – like props – but I’m hoping that this week we can lock in some shoot dates, which should help focus everyone’s attention.