The nightmare of San Francisco

I have just got back from a very interesting shoot in San Francisco. It was a LIVE broadcast for GOD TV of 2 nights of an evangelistic crusade from a location in front of City Hall in the middle of town – with Carlos Annadcondia – and boy did we have some challenges.

The organisers of the event were a great bunch of pastors from the city – primarily Hispanic Churches who clearly had never done anything on this scale before.

The BIGGEST problem was they decided to “save money” and NOT employ a Production Manager for the event – BIG mistake. This is an issue I have run into a few times with ministries as often they think it is an unnecessary and un justifiable expense – it NEVER is!!

The argument goes along the lines of “well we can do all the coordination between all the companies ourselves” and as this is a cost that doesn’t “get them” something tangible they often choose to overlook it and save the money. BUT here is the crazy thing – a good production manager can SAVE you money – by dealing with all the suppliers, they can negotiate the best rates, ensure the right equipment is ordered, ensure there’s no doubling up of resources, eliminate the unexpected, schedule the event to avoid issues such as overtime etc. PLUS ensure the smooth running of the event and make sure you look like the good guy – they take all the heat for you – it is a CRITICAL role.

OK, so rant over – BUT please don’t ever think this is a saving that’s worth making.

So, here are some of the challenges we ran into on this event – which a good production manager would have ensured were not issues.

1. Permits – thankfully one of the Pastors in a local church we had worked with before (Sean Scheper – a great guy) pulled this out of the bag for us so we could park our trucks. We have been assured this would be taken care of ahead of time but it was still touch and go – but thankfully it happened.
2. Event times – we had been told all the way down the line by the local pastors that the 2nd day would start at 3pm – so we made sure all our crew were there for 2pm – even though we knew it would mean an hours overtime BUT then no one turned up – they had decided a few days prior NOT to start at 3pm but hadn’t told anyone – again the lack of the central point of contact of a production manager cost us REAL money.
3. Overnight security – we had requested overnight security for the trucks and equipment and were told this was taken care of – however after the first day as we came to leave and there was NO security we were worried – basically it had slipped through the cracks and no one had done it – thankfully the people who had done the event security were still around and agreed (at a cost of $450 from our production lady’s own pocket) to stay till the morning and the pastors agreed to have someone there to take over at 7am – again a Production Manager would have been across this.
4. Lighting – our biggest nightmare………….. So, we get into San Fran and ponder over heading out to San Jose to check out the set up before the rig goes in the following day (they were doing the same event there the 2 days prior) – we nearly didn’t as we were assured everything was fine BUT sense prevailed and we went (3 hour round trip) GOOD JOB. When we got there we realised that the lighting set up we had been promised was a myth – and all they had was some moving lights. Any of you who know TV knows that is totally wrong for filming a “speaking” style event – this really was not good and they had no way of getting any more – at that stage we were VERY close to having no event. Thankfully I was working with a fantastic guy called John Haslam of Skystorm Productions – we do a lot with him and he was able to make a few phone calls (this was 9pm on Thursday and we were live at 6pm Friday) and pull together a crew and lighting sufficient for what we needed – HURRAH!! But again ALL this could have been avoided IF they had a production manager as he/she would have instantly realised that the guy doing the sound and stage was CLUELESS when it came to lighting and they would have got someone in who knew what he was doing.
5. Finally as an example of how crazy this was and where a production manager would have helped, the local pastors had asked for video projectors and screens and the guy doing the PA and stage was actually going to supply them until we vetoed it. WHY did we veto it – OK, its an outside event in daylight (except the last hour) and the wind gets up to 30 mph in San Francisco – they would have blown away and even if they hadn’t you would never have seen them – the ONLY solution outside is a full blown Video wall (but that is a lot of money) – but a Production Manager would have kaiboshed those ages before.

Thankfully despite all this the event went really well from our end – we had an awesome crew (including a Jib operator called Jimmy), a great A1, good camera crew, great video shader etc. I couldn’t have asked for better – and John Haslam was awesome as always – without him we’d have been in BIG trouble.

But the thing is all of it could have been avoided. These kind of events are not easy to pull off successfully even when you know what you’re doing – and these guys didn’t – so lesson no 1 ALWAYS employ a Production Manager – or you will regret it.

There was little doubt on this one we also faced a spiritual battle – a few things happened such as our rental car being broken into and John’s Mac Laptop being stolen (though us parking it in the ghetto and leaving the computer in it didn’t help – how DUMB), the rental car getting a ticket when we were told it was OK to park where we had, some guy in the crowd trying to kill himself, ALL the Cogent fibre network in Washington DC (where we were passing through) dying on the first night – taking us off air for over 30 mins etc.

But you know you’ll have spiritual battles what you want to do is NOT have other problems that you can avoid with simple planning and the right people.

Anyway, I still love doing events like this and seeing 1000’s respond to the Gospel – what an awesome privilege to be in the business of changing lives for eternity – I love it!!!!

It would be great to hear your thoughts, maybe you have a similar nightmare story of an event where the organisers didn’t pay for a production manager and it all went wrong – or maybe you are an event organiser sceptical of the need – whatever I’d love to hear from you.