Production: Meal Plan for February

As we are only paying our cast travel expenses it was really important to me as the producer to keep them as dedicated as possible to our project.  What better way to do that than through the prospect of good food! 

I decided it would be more beneficial and cheaper to make big 'hot pot' meals that will fill up the cast and crew nicely, and give them time to sit and eat together and bond.  Good set food is also integral to keeping the moral high and both cast and crew motivated to continue. As the days are quite long and the cast and crew arrive early in the morning, I thought it would be a nice gesture to offer them breakfast on arrival to set them up for the day.

Our budget for our food costs was £50; this covered the majority of the costs however in total for all filming days (including the two days in March) it came to roughly £70.  So although we blew our budget by £20, we were able to compensate this through our props budget with which we had a lot left over. 

I completed some research into what sort of food we could make and how quick and cheap it would be. I looked on a website called DIYLighthouse Helping Make Cheap Meals, and got inspiration from this to decide what to make. Please see below for what I came up with: 

With every meal I calculated roughly how long it would take to cook and had to factor this into the schedule to make sure that everyone ate on time and that the noises coming from the kitchen when making the lunches wouldn't interfere with the filming.  I wouldn't be cooking these meals alone, I got our production assistant to begin cooking while I ran through the production notes with Director Becca.  Once this was complete and we had discussed the next stage I would go and help George with the lunches and make sure the cast were taken care of and knew what was happening next. 

Overall these lunches went down well with both cast and crew and in some ways made the shoot a success as everyone was pleased and well fed.