The Pre-Production Process
We were set a task to create a 90 second short film for Depict. A short film competition that sets a challenge for filmmakers everywhere to create a 90 second short film and have the chance to win £2500. Our short film was a drama but we also threw in some hidden puns for fun. After we had finished our projects we then went on the distribute it via YouTube or upload it to the Depict competition website. We went through the pre-production process and covered all things that we needed in order to progress onto the filming stage, which then lead to editing such as getting sound and then we had to export the project and went on to distribution online.
Different types of Media Platforms
There are many different Moving image media product platforms, such as Feature length films typically coming from Hollywood, Animated films or TV shows, Webisodes, One-Off shows, Trailers, Idents etc. With all of the many moving image media platforms comes all of the other distribution methods. These include DVDs, Cinemas/TV's, Downloads and Online viewings. Though many media platforms will not need as many distribution process as others, For example, Hollywood movies would go through Cinema release, TV showings, Eventually go to illegal downloading and then finally DVD releases. Whereas TV trailers would just be distributed through TV and social media adverts. The most famous and profitable method of distribution are Hollywood movies and Cinema releases as they tend to have a larger distribution process which make more money such as Ticket Sales, DVD sales and sales of digital copies. Different media platforms involving filming would have a much more lengthy pre-production process as more planning will be needed, more risk assessments due to more cast and crew such as Actors and more financing.
Sources of Finance
In order for a film project to take off it must have funding and a budget that would account for pretty much most things in a film project such as paying the talent, Paying for equipment, Accommodation etc. There are different sources that exist when it comes to funding a film such as Investments and Kick-starters which can be a very good way to get money to start the project of an independent film. Zach Braff used the Kick-starter website in order to fund his film and maintain all the rights to his project in order to make the film in the way he visioned it would be. People who invest in the movie can be either from the public or even the actors starring in the film itself. An example of the actors investing in the film is when the cast of This Is The End took payment cuts to help fund the movie. There is Self-Finance which is just simply funding your film from your own money, another use for an independent film and Merchandising such as toys and posters being sold to the public advertising your film project and/or film company. There are many independent films that went on to become very successful such as 'Clerks', 'Reservoir Dogs', 'Slumdog Millionaire' and 'Good Will Hunting', all which launched the careers of today's most famous Directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Christopher Nolan with 'The Following'.Some more examples are Bank Loans or just selling rights to other companies for the money. A famous film producer who has funded many successful movies is Megan Ellison, who opened her film company 'Annapurna Pictures'. All of these methods of funding go for TV shows and pretty much all platforms of moving image media productions but clearly a movie would have to have much more money than a TV show. Although TV shows do still require a large quantity of money. For example some big TV shows require about $6 million per episode to make. Although a budget is necessary for a moving media production, it doesn't mean a great movie can't be made with a low budget. For example, Insidious had a budget of £800,000 dollars and made almost $100m at the box office worldwide and was very well received by audiences. Along with Tarantino's Django Unchained which had a big budget of $100m and made 4 times its budget at the box office and was one of Tarantino's most commercially successful movie.
Requirements
A film or TV project requires a lot of things in order for the project to move forward. The money from the budget would mainly account for the equipment or locations that will be used in the making of the production. All things that makes a production possible. The most obvious use for the budget would be paying for all of the components that will be used for the actual shooting of the project such as the camera equipment like the mics, cameras and lighting, renting the locations that you will be shooting in which would also account for accommodation, travel costs etc. The cast and crew would also have to be payed for the jobs that they are doing and the talent would get paid a substantial amount of money. Some extra payments would be for props, costumes and make-up etc. These are most of the payments that would be essential to use for filming, but there are some more payments to be made that would be needed for editing and distribution such as the rights for the music, if it was to be used for filming, which would require paying the owner of the song, or whoever owns the rights.
For our Depict short film we did not require a large amount of equipment in order to shoot and edit our film, and since our film was a low-budget to a no budget short film we did not spend any money of the equipment we used for shooting such as the cameras, tripods, shoulder rigs, SD cards, lighting etc. Only one or two things were payed for by a member of our crew and that was our main prop, the spinning top. As with the location in which we were shooting, we wanted to shoot in a location that we would have regular access to and not have to travel far in order to get there which would save time on filming. Along with the equipment, we did not have to pay in order to shoot in the location we requested, as well as not having to pay for the Sound FX or the music as we either got them from a royalty free website or made the sound FX with the mics we had. Costumes were not payed for as we didn't use any special costume as the talent was wearing there own casual clothing.
Personnel:'Talent' and 'Crew'
The makeup of a typical media team for a moving image media production would differ, depending on the film or TV shows budget. For example, the typical makeup team for a low-budget short would be around 3-4 cast and crew members, but for a Hollywood feature film would vary between 600- 3,000 depending on the movie. For example, James Cameron's movie 'Avatar' had a team of 2,948 people. The team for a television programme would be in between the makeup team of a Low-Budget short film and a Hollywood feature film, but would still be closer the the higher budget films by having a team of 200-300 or more cast and crew members.
In our short film crew, we shared the work evenly between us by having each member taking on a certain role in pre-production. One member of our crew took care of the location releases, location recces, risk assessments etc. All members took the role of writing and drawing out the storyboards and shot lists as it was the most collaborative aspect of our pre-production. Another member took care of gathering the equipment we needed in order to film. This included everything from the cameras, SD cards, Rigs, Tripods, mics etc. As a team we all made sure that each member had an equally important role and without this collaboration our film would have been a serious struggle. I did most of the shooting in the film as I had had experience in that area before, along with editing which was also shared evenly between the crew. I believe that has had experience in being in front of the camera before so that was our decision for our talent and the actor did a great job as did our member who filled out all of the risk assessments and releases. Overall our team had a lot of fun making the film which is just a result of teamwork and contributing ideas towards it.
There are various people who would contribute to the production of a media text along with the crew. These could involve people in front of the camera and maybe people who would work behind the scenes. Contributors working in front of the camera would be the actors, extras etc. The amount of people who would be contributing behind the scenes is huge and varies between the Director of the film who brings the film to life and the Production Assistants, all who have a valuable role towards the making of the film. There are still some behind the scene contributors other than the crew such as special guests who would have contributions towards the film. For example, if a film was based on a book about a true story and using the witness of the story, such as Aron Ralston on the set of 127 hours about a man who gets trapped in a canyon for 127 hours and has to amputate his arm in order to get out. The film was based on Aron's book with the same title of the film. He was on the set of the film to help the Directors, Writers and Actors bring the story to life, something Danny Boyle did very well.
Time
We were given 3 weeks to plan, shoot and edit our short film projects which added up to about 18 lessons of Media in which we would use for our 3 stages. We managed to use the time frame well as we were ready for the next task at the end of each week as we were able to spread our shooting schedule evenly over the week of filming we had and we actually finished the pre-production process early and we met all of the deadline Deadlines are extremely important when it comes to making a moving image production.If deadlines are not met than it can result in losing jobs such as not having a script written in time and having the film company move on to something else, having the film project cancelled after numerous delays. An example of a film that was pulled due to not meeting deadlines is 'Motor City' due to not getting a bond for the film after not meeting Warner Bros' deadlines, and the star was going to sue the producing company due to allegedly violating the terms of his deal.
Our team met the deadlines that were set for us in class, except for needing 5 minutes at the start of the next lesson to export and distribute our media project. We had a week or two to plan and fill out our pre-production sheets which were essential to our filming, as we were mainly on the planning of our project. We then had a week and a half to shoot our project and import the footage onto the computer ready for editing in the next week. We then spent the last week editing our production and distributing it via YouTube.
Equipment/Facilities
A film just cannot be made without the equipment. The equipment is the backbone of a movie production. Without the equipment there is no film. In order to obtain the equipment needed in a moving image media production, you can go to certain websites such as 'Film Tools' and 'Aimimage', both do equipment sales and equipment hire. They both sell all things from 4K cameras to Monitors and camera grips and are 'the go to place' for equipment. The equipment you can purchase from Aimimage can go up to £15,000 for the top quality professional cameras and Filmtools can reach prices of up to £629.99 , so Filmtools offers more affordable but lower quality equipment.
There are also some facility houses near us in which we can visit to hire out equipment for our own films. An example is Filmscapemedia in London in which you can rent equipment from cameras to studio rental, but do to being a small local company they do not supply a large amount of equipment for rental but do have some professional equipment. There is also a website in which you can visit in order to search for more local film rental companies based in Norwich.
We had the perfect amount and easy access to filming equipment for our short film project. We only needed very minimal equipment , which was A camera, Shoulder Rig, SD cards, A 50mm Lens and a microphone for sound editing. In order to obtain the equipment,we had to rent out the equipment from an AV studio using our student cards. This allowed our film project to run smoothly without lack of equipment.
Locations
In order to decide on a shooting locations, we first decided that we only needed a casual filming location in which we would have regular access to in order to film and to secure this location we had to fill out the location recce and location release sheets. The location recce sheets were filled out when we were scouting out our locations and the location release sheets were filled out to secure our place in filming in our chosen location.
We chose our specific location for our depict videos as we wanted to have a very casual location for our character as we felt that the location wasn't very important for the narrative, as long as it was relatively public, and so that the audience didn't focus on the location and only on the characters.We chose this location as it was our Media classroom and we would be in there regularly and have access to it. The issues that we faced were that other students would be coming in and out of the room while they were also in production, depending on where they were filming, and that would get in the way of our filming and we couldn't stop others from filming. We overcame these problems by filming as much as we could while we had an empty room, or getting the ECU shots of the spinning top so we wouldn't get anyone else in the shot if they needed to use the room we were in. The logistical issues we faced where that the AV room that would supply our equipment for us would sometimes but very rarely be closed which would cut off our supply of equipment or prevent us from returning the equipment we were using at that time. We overcame this by leaving the equipment in our media room if we were able to film within the next hour, otherwise we would have to send for someone to open the AV room in order for us to rent or return the equipment.
Materials
In addition to equipment, crew and cast, there are more things needed to make a moving image media production and not all are for the films visuals or even tangible. Such as;
There are definitely financial considerations when it comes to using certain materials in a media production. For example, if you were to use a certain song in your media productions, unless you were to own the song, you would have to pay for the rights to use it in your project. Although a lot of Directors get a composer to compose the score for their film, but still have to pay the composer, but mainly a use would be to download songs from royalty free websites, something we had to do for our Depict short films. Finance would come in when it comes to paying the entire cast, crew and purchasing equipment
Legal Issues
The legal issues that need to be considered when making a media production are mainly the issues towards copyright laws. For example, if you were to use a certain song throughout your film without having paid the rights to the owner, than the owner can sue you for using their music in your film without their permission. Not only is it songs that you can't use in your production before paying rights or being paid. If you use a product in order to sell your movie or even games, you have to be sponsored by the company that owns the product in order to 'Advertise' their products in your project.
Copyright protects your work and stops others from using it without your permission. We had no issues with copyright laws when it came to shooting our film as we made sure to use royalty free music and sound effects and we didn't have any products being advertised in our film. The copyright laws didn't have a big effect on our Depict production.
Clearance- The official authorization for something to proceed
Public Liability Insurance-Public liability insurance is the most common type of insurance taken out by small businesses, but with a range of cover options available.
Completion guarantee/insurance-A completion guarantee is a form of insurance offered by a completion guarantor company (in return for a percentage fee based on the budget) that is often used in independently financed films to guarantee that the producer will complete and deliver the film (based on an agreed script, cast and budget)
Regulation
A regulatory body means to have control or legal power over a company of media such as the BBFC and films and the BBC.
OFCOM is a government approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom that manages the representation and interest of citizens.
-BBFC stands for British Board of Film Classification and they function as a film certification regulator. They are a designated body and have legal power to rate, reject or cut film work.
Trade Unions and Trade Association
A trade union is an organisation of work who have come together to achieve common goals and through its leadership, bargains with its employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with employers. They are important as they help in economic development in many ways such as, by helping the recruitment and selection of workers, by inculcating discipline among the wor
kforce, by enabling settlement of industrial disputes in a rational manner etc.
PACT stands for Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television and they help to shape regulatory environments in order for an independent production to grow both domestically and international and have a strong record of success.
Requirements
A film or TV project requires a lot of things in order for the project to move forward. The money from the budget would mainly account for the equipment or locations that will be used in the making of the production. All things that makes a production possible. The most obvious use for the budget would be paying for all of the components that will be used for the actual shooting of the project such as the camera equipment like the mics, cameras and lighting, renting the locations that you will be shooting in which would also account for accommodation, travel costs etc. The cast and crew would also have to be payed for the jobs that they are doing and the talent would get paid a substantial amount of money. Some extra payments would be for props, costumes and make-up etc. These are most of the payments that would be essential to use for filming, but there are some more payments to be made that would be needed for editing and distribution such as the rights for the music, if it was to be used for filming, which would require paying the owner of the song, or whoever owns the rights.
Personnel:'Talent' and 'Crew'
The makeup of a typical media team for a moving image media production would differ, depending on the film or TV shows budget. For example, the typical makeup team for a low-budget short would be around 3-4 cast and crew members, but for a Hollywood feature film would vary between 600- 3,000 depending on the movie. For example, James Cameron's movie 'Avatar' had a team of 2,948 people. The team for a television programme would be in between the makeup team of a Low-Budget short film and a Hollywood feature film, but would still be closer the the higher budget films by having a team of 200-300 or more cast and crew members. 
In our short film crew, we shared the work evenly between us by having each member taking on a certain role in pre-production. One member of our crew took care of the location releases, location recces, risk assessments etc. All members took the role of writing and drawing out the storyboards and shot lists as it was the most collaborative aspect of our pre-production. Another member took care of gathering the equipment we needed in order to film. This included everything from the cameras, SD cards, Rigs, Tripods, mics etc. As a team we all made sure that each member had an equally important role and without this collaboration our film would have been a serious struggle. I did most of the shooting in the film as I had had experience in that area before, along with editing which was also shared evenly between the crew. I believe that has had experience in being in front of the camera before so that was our decision for our talent and the actor did a great job as did our member who filled out all of the risk assessments and releases. Overall our team had a lot of fun making the film which is just a result of teamwork and contributing ideas towards it.
There are various people who would contribute to the production of a media text along with the crew. These could involve people in front of the camera and maybe people who would work behind the scenes. Contributors working in front of the camera would be the actors, extras etc. The amount of people who would be contributing behind the scenes is huge and varies between the Director of the film who brings the film to life and the Production Assistants, all who have a valuable role towards the making of the film. There are still some behind the scene contributors other than the crew such as special guests who would have contributions towards the film. For example, if a film was based on a book about a true story and using the witness of the story, such as Aron Ralston on the set of 127 hours about a man who gets trapped in a canyon for 127 hours and has to amputate his arm in order to get out. The film was based on Aron's book with the same title of the film. He was on the set of the film to help the Directors, Writers and Actors bring the story to life, something Danny Boyle did very well.
Time
We were given 3 weeks to plan, shoot and edit our short film projects which added up to about 18 lessons of Media in which we would use for our 3 stages. We managed to use the time frame well as we were ready for the next task at the end of each week as we were able to spread our shooting schedule evenly over the week of filming we had and we actually finished the pre-production process early and we met all of the deadline Deadlines are extremely important when it comes to making a moving image production.If deadlines are not met than it can result in losing jobs such as not having a script written in time and having the film company move on to something else, having the film project cancelled after numerous delays. An example of a film that was pulled due to not meeting deadlines is 'Motor City' due to not getting a bond for the film after not meeting Warner Bros' deadlines, and the star was going to sue the producing company due to allegedly violating the terms of his deal.Our team met the deadlines that were set for us in class, except for needing 5 minutes at the start of the next lesson to export and distribute our media project. We had a week or two to plan and fill out our pre-production sheets which were essential to our filming, as we were mainly on the planning of our project. We then had a week and a half to shoot our project and import the footage onto the computer ready for editing in the next week. We then spent the last week editing our production and distributing it via YouTube.
Equipment/Facilities
A film just cannot be made without the equipment. The equipment is the backbone of a movie production. Without the equipment there is no film. In order to obtain the equipment needed in a moving image media production, you can go to certain websites such as 'Film Tools' and 'Aimimage', both do equipment sales and equipment hire. They both sell all things from 4K cameras to Monitors and camera grips and are 'the go to place' for equipment. The equipment you can purchase from Aimimage can go up to £15,000 for the top quality professional cameras and Filmtools can reach prices of up to £629.99 , so Filmtools offers more affordable but lower quality equipment.
There are also some facility houses near us in which we can visit to hire out equipment for our own films. An example is Filmscapemedia in London in which you can rent equipment from cameras to studio rental, but do to being a small local company they do not supply a large amount of equipment for rental but do have some professional equipment. There is also a website in which you can visit in order to search for more local film rental companies based in Norwich.
We had the perfect amount and easy access to filming equipment for our short film project. We only needed very minimal equipment , which was A camera, Shoulder Rig, SD cards, A 50mm Lens and a microphone for sound editing. In order to obtain the equipment,we had to rent out the equipment from an AV studio using our student cards. This allowed our film project to run smoothly without lack of equipment.
Locations
In order to decide on a shooting locations, we first decided that we only needed a casual filming location in which we would have regular access to in order to film and to secure this location we had to fill out the location recce and location release sheets. The location recce sheets were filled out when we were scouting out our locations and the location release sheets were filled out to secure our place in filming in our chosen location.
We chose our specific location for our depict videos as we wanted to have a very casual location for our character as we felt that the location wasn't very important for the narrative, as long as it was relatively public, and so that the audience didn't focus on the location and only on the characters.We chose this location as it was our Media classroom and we would be in there regularly and have access to it. The issues that we faced were that other students would be coming in and out of the room while they were also in production, depending on where they were filming, and that would get in the way of our filming and we couldn't stop others from filming. We overcame these problems by filming as much as we could while we had an empty room, or getting the ECU shots of the spinning top so we wouldn't get anyone else in the shot if they needed to use the room we were in. The logistical issues we faced where that the AV room that would supply our equipment for us would sometimes but very rarely be closed which would cut off our supply of equipment or prevent us from returning the equipment we were using at that time. We overcame this by leaving the equipment in our media room if we were able to film within the next hour, otherwise we would have to send for someone to open the AV room in order for us to rent or return the equipment.
Materials
In addition to equipment, crew and cast, there are more things needed to make a moving image media production and not all are for the films visuals or even tangible. Such as;
- Audio received from post-production using mics
- Copyright free sounds and Sound FX
- Music either composed or received after paying the rights to the owner
- Filming locations or sets
- All effects put in at Post-Production
There are definitely financial considerations when it comes to using certain materials in a media production. For example, if you were to use a certain song in your media productions, unless you were to own the song, you would have to pay for the rights to use it in your project. Although a lot of Directors get a composer to compose the score for their film, but still have to pay the composer, but mainly a use would be to download songs from royalty free websites, something we had to do for our Depict short films. Finance would come in when it comes to paying the entire cast, crew and purchasing equipment
Legal Issues
The legal issues that need to be considered when making a media production are mainly the issues towards copyright laws. For example, if you were to use a certain song throughout your film without having paid the rights to the owner, than the owner can sue you for using their music in your film without their permission. Not only is it songs that you can't use in your production before paying rights or being paid. If you use a product in order to sell your movie or even games, you have to be sponsored by the company that owns the product in order to 'Advertise' their products in your project.
Copyright protects your work and stops others from using it without your permission. We had no issues with copyright laws when it came to shooting our film as we made sure to use royalty free music and sound effects and we didn't have any products being advertised in our film. The copyright laws didn't have a big effect on our Depict production.
Clearance- The official authorization for something to proceed
Public Liability Insurance-Public liability insurance is the most common type of insurance taken out by small businesses, but with a range of cover options available.
Completion guarantee/insurance-A completion guarantee is a form of insurance offered by a completion guarantor company (in return for a percentage fee based on the budget) that is often used in independently financed films to guarantee that the producer will complete and deliver the film (based on an agreed script, cast and budget)
Regulation
A regulatory body means to have control or legal power over a company of media such as the BBFC and films and the BBC.
OFCOM is a government approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom that manages the representation and interest of citizens.
-BBFC stands for British Board of Film Classification and they function as a film certification regulator. They are a designated body and have legal power to rate, reject or cut film work.
Trade Unions and Trade Association
A trade union is an organisation of work who have come together to achieve common goals and through its leadership, bargains with its employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with employers. They are important as they help in economic development in many ways such as, by helping the recruitment and selection of workers, by inculcating discipline among the wor
kforce, by enabling settlement of industrial disputes in a rational manner etc.
PACT stands for Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television and they help to shape regulatory environments in order for an independent production to grow both domestically and international and have a strong record of success.
HI Macaulay,
ReplyDeleteYou have explained in some detail and competently presented requirements and sources of requirements for production for a specific media production.
Josh