t’s late afternoon at the Blue Post, a billiards
hall and watering hole in downtown Wilmington, and the floor is
crowded with cowboy-booted extras. Beneath a ceiling strewn with
paper lanterns and colored lights, the dancers box-step and twirl
each other for a scene in the upcoming film “Tammy,” everyone
smiling and trying not to look sweaty. Meanwhile, crew members
with walkie-talkies edge the perimeter, camera operators man their
stations, and line producer/unit production manager Chris Bromley
keeps a close eye on the action.
“What you see on screen is just the end result,” he says. “When
you turn around and look the other way, you see the 200 people
working to make that happen.”
If anyone understands the mechanics of the movie industry,
it’s Bromley. In his 26 years in the business, he’s filled the roles we
don’t see on screen — from location manager to assistant director
— and now, as a unit production manager, he’s responsible for
everything from scouting locations to making sure the film stays
on budget. He’s also one of the first people who comes aboard a
new movie during pre-production. Once a studio has greenlit the
project and hired its director and producers, the producers bring in
Bromley and a location manager to choose the right spots to film.
“Most scripts describe a certain setting,” Bromley explains. “You
have to look at the locations that are scripted, and whether or not
you can place the story in a certain locale. On some films you can
say, this story takes place in New York City, but we’re gonna shoot
it in Wilmington because we only have a few exteriors.”
Once the producers and a production designer have deemed
those places feasible, the team
requests permission from the city to
film. If they receive approval, they
hire more members of the crew:
the costume designer, production
designer, director of photography,
department heads. Working closely
with the director and assistant director, Bromley breaks the script
down into a production schedule — allowing the crew to know
where specific scenes will be shot, on which days, and how long
they should take to complete — and creates a preliminary budget.
These, he says, are anything but set in stone.
“We start with an estimate. It evolves from there, based on how
the filming goes,” he says.
Studio projects like this one
could cost from $100,000 to
$350,000 per day.
Before production can
begin, there is still more
crew to hire: electric and
grip, construction, props,
wardrobe, hair and makeup.
When Bromley says there are
200 people on set, he’s not
exaggerating.
The day-to-day life of a
production manager requires
him to be constantly on set,
the go-to guy for any prob-lem
that might need solving.
He looks over the shooting
schedule and makes any nec-essary
changes. He examines
the storyboards, keeps an eye
on the payroll, takes calls
from agents.
He consults with the
director and assistant director throughout the day — or middle of
the night, if that’s what the shooting schedule calls for. Though
production time can vary based on the size of the project and the
budget, he estimates it at eight to ten weeks, with the cameras roll-ing
28
WBM july 2013
anywhere from 30 to 80 days.
Bromley is a Wilmingtonian.
He moved to town in 1990, and has
lived in Wrightsville Beach for the
last two and a half years. His job has
taken him out of North Carolina,
and out of the United States,
for long stretches with films like “Hidalgo” and “The Bourne
Supremacy,” but his three most recent films, “The Conjuring,”
“Bolden!” and “Tammy” have had him working locally. His next
project could take him anywhere — and could materialize between
one day and six months after he wraps on “Tammy.”
The next afternoon, the crew films a scene in the gravel lot out-side
the Blue Post — which has been transformed from a bar into a
I
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL TACKETT
From left: Christopher V. Bromley line producer/
unit production manager and Rob Cowan producer
“Tammy” and “The Conjuring” on the set of “Tammy.”
The day-to-day life of a production
manager requires him to be constantly
on set, the go-to guy for any
problem that might need solving.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL TACKETT