JABBES MVULA - "God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage". Today the Film Zambia crew had a very good experience of that fact. We had a feel that in the process of achieving success, sometimes the situation may become tense and unpleasant. The most important thing is to realize that success is not easy to come by, it can sometimes be rough to attain, especially when everyone is working so hard to a point that they even overstretch themselves.

The crew was today working on schedules that would make it possible for the film to be shot in within three weeks. For those who know what it means to shoot a movie, planning to film a feature in three weeks is an uphill battle, unless you do a very good homework when planning. That is what we were doing today, planning every details of the shooting schedule.

Cyndi put together a crack team to work on different aspects of pre-production planning in order to come up with a schedule that would make it easy for everyone involved, from cast to crew, to know what we would be doing at every particular time. Thanks to a very sophiscated software that she has, it makes you understand the filming process better and even reminds you of the little things that you might have overlooked.

There were about three different groups that were working on different aspects of schedulling. Cyndi herself was coordinating all the groups and ensuring that whatever was being planned, would work on the software that we are using. I, as the Director, was moving from group to group explaining how I will direct the film.

The first group had Jeanette and Pamela. The two had to all the questions to do with locations and the scenes so that they could group them together and see which scenes could be filmed together. Both Jeanette and Pamela are very precise in their work, and they really put me through a process that also made me realize where I had not done proper planning. The ladies were awesome, they really wanted all the details on paper so that everyone involved understands my vision. It was like attending a job interview that is for a manager's position.

The second was a one woman group of Gina. This is the kind of a woman who wants to make sure that she knows the number of hairs on your head if she has to plan a hair make-up for you. What am trying to say is that she wants to make sure that she is so precise with every little detail. Perfect for continuity when filming. She had to make sure that she lists down every prop in every scene and even the changing of clothes from scene to scene. She was amazing.

Then there were the storyboarders, Eric and Jacob. I had expected the storyboarders to just draw the sets in order to give averyone an idea. Eric had his own approach, the guy wanted detail in how am going to direct every shot that he was to draw. I had to think of the camera positions especially in relation to the Actors. The guys did an awesome job (Eric and Jacob). Let me say I started directing the film today, way before even moving on set.

Robby was in another building editing video news packages about the film. M.K was locating items we would bring to Zambia. It was in the process of the groups trying to get information from me, that Cyndi, who sometimes becomes protective of me when she feels am getting stressed, wanted to stop the detailed questions. Almost everyone got stressed at one point, including me. However, everyone continued working until we achieved our goal for the day, and now, everyone knows how we shall shoot the whole movie in about 15 days. The rest of the days have been left for "B" rolls and "B" plans should one or two things not work as per plans.

If you ask me if it was easy to make the movie, my answer is "Sometimes the going got tough".