ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

12 years, 5 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Without knowing the duration of the shoot, location, facilities, shooting hours, etc it's impossible to say.

If it's your typical 2-day all-day short, then do a deal with a local cafe and send a runner out for bacon/egg sarnies for breakfast and either pizza or kebab and chips for lunch, dinnertime have a wodge of instant noodles etc available. Get a few kettles or an urn (under £80 for an urn, they are VERY useful) so you can freeflow tea and coffee. Make it someone's responsibility to maintain the craft station with biccies, gummy snakes and teabags. Pizza can only be fallen back on twice a week, or people will revolt, so find some variety. Don't forget vegetarians. With 25 ppl you can expect some weird dietary requirements so will never please all the people all the time and you'll realise why caterers earn their money.

If you can sign up for a Makro or Booker card, do so - you'll need rakes of paper cups (nobody washes mugs on set no matter how much you plead) and plates etc. You can also get catering cans of beans etc.

Top tip - get a couple of microwaves for morning readybrek/porridge and heating up stuff - first job to give your spark is to take the 'ping' out of the microwaves, so you can use them whilst rolling. Also, get some 'coolboxes' which also serve to keep things hot so you can have readymeals or baked potatoes microwaving during the morning shoot then keep them hot whilst you nuke the toppings. Remember to plan for water management - unless you're in some mug's house (film crews are only welcomed once...) you're going to need toilet facilities, lots of water in bowsers, grey water collection and disposal, food waste and other production waste disposal. Also think how you're going to seat 25ppl for meals, it all adds up.

If you can afford decent catering (OK, I know you can't on this, but this info might be useful for someone down the line) when we do big gigs feeding maybe 100 covers x 3 services x 7 days x 2 months, allow ~£30-40/head/day for the catering company which covers ingredients, core crew (they require 2+ locals/runners to help out), and kitchen hire. This'll get you a choice of decent food every day, fresh and healthy, and keep everyone on site instead of mooching off. We've tried cutting corners but you just can't skimp on keeping a crew fed and loyal. Rather, if you're all together as a family for 12+ hrs/day for over a fortnight you can't afford not to feed people well.