Producer of Swindle - Leydimila Alves

One of the responsibilities as a producer in Swindle was to create a shooting schedule. And because most of our scenes were during the night, the shooting schedule was created in a way in which we’d start filming as soon as we arrived in our location. We arrived in Surrey in the afternoon and before anything else, we went to buy food. As part of organising and managing the trip, both Swindle and Snipes’s producers wrote a shopping list in which would be enough to feed the whole class including teachers with breakfast, snacks and dinner. As predicted, by our shooting schedule we were only ready to start filming later in the night. However, because we were still settling in, it had taken us a few hours to film our first scene. One of the problems we faced during the first night was a functional crane and a second 7D camera. In addition to that, another obstacle we faced was the location not appropriate for the theme and idea our film was trying to portrait. We were forced to adapt the script into the locations we had available. As a producer, it was my responsibility to make sure the crew were ready and on time to film in each scene in order to keep up with the schedule. Therefore, me and Amy (Snipes’ producer) decided to be responsible of making breakfast each morning so that we’d also wake up everyone else on time. Because of this, our team was always on time and ready to work. Our team cooperate and helped with the cleaning up. Each morning, every crew member was given a call sheet. This included everyone else’s contact number, crew members needed for each scene that day, the location and time. We travelled to the nearest high street that morning, to film the opening sequence. Everything went according to plan, the weather was good and the location wasn’t too busy. During the lunch break, me and Vedant (Director) contacted our local friend ‘Star’ who knew a pub in the village appropriate to film one of ours scenes. He introduced us to the manager of the pub and in that same afternoon, we shot the scene there. These were our only outdoor scene and the weather forecast predicted rain, fortunately, it was a very sunny afternoon and no artificial light was needed. During evening of the second day of shooting, we planned to film our main scene. In this scene, the characters Scarlet and Ted had to break into Ivan Belik’s living room and steal his diamond. As part of our scenario, the director (Vedant) planned to use broken mirrors to reflect lasers across the room; however, it did not go as planned. Because we didn’t know how the cottage would look like, we could not plan the scenario before travelling to our location. Meaning, a lot of time was spent but we did not manage to get the reflections to work. Therefore we decided to add the effects of lasers during the edit. Another problem we faced when filming inside the Hostel was the noise upstairs. Because it was such a tiny cottage, any noise made, was heard downstairs. We resolved this by informing the other team every time they hear our assistant director (Harlan), shouts ‘Action’ and to avoid making noise. In the third day of filming it was raining constantly, and the other group needed one of our main characters Alex (Harlan) in their film; so decided to film our interior scenes first. Later that evening, we planned to film our last scene; Where Ivan Belik would meet Celine once again and his greed for the diamond would kill him when he jumped for it from a tall building. This scene includes gun shots, dialogues, and dramatic turns. . Our abilities in film making were tested because we did not have enough time to think of special effects or action for our dramatic ending to the film. All of our main characters would come together and all the questions answered and everything would now make sense.Unfortunately, in Surrey there was no building that matched our idea. We travelled to ‘The Devil’s Punch Bowl’, and adapted the script to match the location. It was the last night of the trip, and we intended to use it wisely and carefully because this was also the last scene in the script so we focused on making it as best as possible. However, we were only given 45 minutes to film a scene with a lot of action and dialogue. So the director had to quickly adapt the script together with the Cameraman (Jordan) to make sure every character and action was caught on camera. As the producer, I had to make sure everyone and everything we needed for that scene was with us. This was our last night in Surrey and would not get a second chance in this location. Although it was raining, thankfully, everything went well. The fog gave the location an effect of mystery, along with the cliff hanger where all the main characters of Swindle got together for the big ending. All the questions given to the audience was answered. We decided to leave our last morning as spare time in case we needed to re-shoot or if we got ourselves behind schedule. Because the production schedule went smoothly, everything was shot according to schedule and spent the last morning, cleaning and packing all the equipment back into the van.