The Pre-Production Process - Requirements for a Moving Image Production

The Pre-Production Process - Adam Thorn




Type of a moving image production

The platform that we decided to upload our short film to the multi billion social media site "YouTube", this was because it’s really easy to get a great version of your video on YouTube for our blogs also we uploaded it to YouTube because our college has a YouTube channel that has gotten our past short films on it also, releasing short films to the internet is a brilliant way to get your film distributed, this is because the internet has a large audience as lots of great short films tend to viral with millions of views. When we distributed our short film our goal was not to get as many views as possible but it was to receive a good grade which I think was a good thing because it really motivated us to but a much effort into the quality of the short film and not worry too much about how many people watched it. Low budget films also must release and distribute their films on a low-budget also this is called independent distribution, the best ways to do this is to try get your films to get show in front of audiences but at a low-cost for example a film festival, social media pages that have a large following or you can try to get people talking about your film which can be a great way to get you film to become relevant if don’t correctly.

Other types of moving image products?

TV shows- TV Shows often start as a Pilot which is a low-budget first episode that must show the potential of the show and that it could be a great success and be popular with its target audience, it must then try to get a contract deal with a company/studio that will proceed to produce and fund the project for a long as they believe there is money to be made in the show. A great example of this is the famously popular "Doctor Who" series that started back in the 60's with a £2000 budget for each episode and in 2011 is was named BBC world wide’s biggest selling TV show internationally. The traditional way of distributing TV shows is through TV channels but as of recent times a few TV shows have edged more towards the online sensation for example the BBC switched its BBC Three channel to completely online earlier this year, the reason for this is because BBC Three's target audience is 16-24-year-old and this is the first generation that is recorded as almost being completely technology obsessed and each year younger people are watching more and more online as opposed to TV.

Broadcasts Is similar to a TV Show but tends to avoid the Story line part and focus more on comedy, entertainment, education or anything like these one for example a talk show or sports. These broadcasts are played on TV channels and are paid for by the host channel and ads during the break between shows. Broadcasts can make as much money if not more than high budget films for example the hit ITV show "The X-Factor" is set to make over £100m from advertising for is sixth series. Broadcasts also distribute mostly through TV channels as they are still very profitable and still receive a large audience. When a broadcast advertises itself you usually try to give off a small feel of what the broadcast is like then it most importantly shows what channel and what time it is being shown on.

Films-People have been making films for over 100 years and new films are being released every day, a film can be revolved around anything and can start or finish in any way the director/writer wants in to. A huge factor that goes into making any kind of film is its budget as this affects almost everything that the film can do. If a film has a low-budget it becomes very limited to what it can do, this is why when someone makes a great low-budget film they receive a lot of praise and often continue in a great career in film making. Then there's the opposite which is of course high budget film making which usually has a few hundred million dollars to work with and they almost have an endless possibility with what they can accomplish but when a high budget film flops is becomes a lot more painful. Films are most commonly distributed as, screening in movie theaters, selling DVDs, DVD rental, Subscription TV or Free-to-Air TV which makes its money from advertisements. There are a lot of ways to distribute films some are to maximize profit and other are to maximize the viewers experience. Most large budget movies will first distribute their films first are released in theaters then a few months later than become available to purchase online, TV and DVD’s, these types of big budget are firstly judged on their total ticket sales in theaters from all over the world this is called total box office revenue. However, low-budget films that can get shown in movie theaters, DVDs or TV usually put their work online on specified sites or social media, and although the online sites are not even close to being as profitable as the DVDs or theaters however if they are put in the right places at the right time and with a bit of luck they can get an incredibly large amount of attention and could result in a kick-start to a lifelong career in movies. Films are purchased and watched all over the world but most movies are only recorded in one language, this can be resolved by either dubbing or subtitling the film making them enjoyable of everyone, this is known as international distribution.

Music Videos- Music Videos started coming out in the 70's and are still a popular craze 40 years later, and are what got MTV's name and brand out to the world. Music Videos are similar to short films but usually include few or no speech just the song that the music video goes to. The average music video budget in around £200,000-£500,000. These music videos are sometimes played on TV channels such as 4Music, MTV and a few others as well as Vevo channels that almost every famous musician has and on YouTube.

Finance and sources of funding

The reason films need a huge budget is because almost everything that goes into making a film costs are a large amount of money from the actors to specially made props that cost thousands to make, I believe a lot of the budget of major products goes into paying famous actors, high quality cameras and locations for filming in. There is usually hundreds of people working of a film set at a time and almost all of them have a key job and are being paid for their time as well as you will be paying for the time that you are in a particular location for this is why it’s a huge deal if films ever go over schedule because your budget will run out in no time.

A few other ways low-budget filmmakers try to get money together are self-funding a great example of this is the 1994 Film "Clerks" which Director Kevin Smith maxed out 6 of his personal credit cards in-order to generate the funds required to make his film, since 1994 his film has since made 3.2 million in the box office and he has continued making more successful films and "Clerks" also received great critic ratings. Another way people can get a fairly large sum of money together is through crowdfunding using a site like Kickstarter, gofundme or something similar to these, in order to do this your film must have great promise and a huge potential as it rarely happens but it's always a possibility. One over unique way people have funded their film is through a charity like the British Film Institute which is a charitable organization which promotes and preserves filmmaking and television in Britain. The BFI does this by using the National Lottery funds to develop and support British filmmakers.

During our recording of the short film we did not really have any expenses I believe this is due to us filming in locations that we were allowed to film in and our camera was provided for us which included a tripod, our only one purchase for the short film was one prop from the vending machine which was a bottle of water.

Making a big budget film and TV shows is similar to starting a business as they are trying to make as much money as possible, a movie writer takes his film idea to a production company who will fund part of the film and help produce the film and help in other various ways, another way films generate the huge budgets they need to through investors and advertising, investors into the films are looking to help the film to make as much profit as they can for their own gain and companies that pay the producers money for product promotion and general positive advertisement    

Requirements
Most films that have been made take a huge amount of expenditure to create them, of course the amount varies from film to film and whether the film is a large-scale or a small-scale. An example of this is that working on my last short film we had a total of 4 people working on our film and main stream Hollywood films have well over 1000s of people working on threw out the film's production this in conflict is bound to raise the prices of the production. Other requirements big films must go through is the process of first being written or the idea of the film must be created then a director picks up the film idea and goes to the producer who then shapes the film and makes it possible to be created and lastly before filming then must get the budget, there are a few ways that people get a budget for a film the most common for big budget films is through the company that produces the film e.g. Warner Bros, Marvel, Wait Disney, etc. Another way is to get people to invest into your film and you can use their money until after the film has been released then you must repay the investors the amount of want their share value is after the film is making money.

During our short film which we made to enter into the Depict Short Film contest our requirements where a lot different to what big budget films where, all we really had to do get a HD Recording Camera, a tripod and a few other small props. Their where also only 4 people working on our film and we all had a few different tasks we had to do and once will have completed then we simply uploaded our short film to YouTube then our blogs.



Crew for different types of image production

Low budget short films tend to have the smallest casts and the workers tend to get paid a lot less than most other types of image productions, as a result of all of this the low-budget leads to worse actors, worse props, worse location options and worse editing choices. This is why low-budget films tend to have much lower ratings and a lower chance of making a profit, but some low-budget films despite all the odds turn out great with amazing ratings and sky-high profits. One other reason people make low-budget films is to start their career in films as is difficult for a first time movie writer or director to get a lot of money to get their film produced so they have to get their name out there and they will also guarantee getting some great experience for future filmmaking. Short films are mostly distributed online and on various social media’s as there are specified websites for releasing short films, people do this because its costs next to nothing to do and most of the websites have large audiences and some even can make money through advertising.

Another type of image production is television programs these are very different to movies due to the amount of time it takes as most TV shows are much longer as most films are 1-3 hours long and TV shows are usually at least a few series long. If a TV show is successful is can also make a large sum of money. However, when a low-budget TV show is successful it is often then granted a new season and its given a significantly higher budget to make the next season just as successful if not more successful. The amount of crew members varies from to shows as they are all different lengths and concepts, TV shows also tend to have less crew members because the crew has to work longer depending on the amount of season they are filming.

The most famous type of media production is Hollywood Feature Films these types of image productions tend to have insanely high budgets, huge cast and crews including famous people and large marketing techniques, all of this makes the likelihood of the film making a profit much higher which results in a lot of investors and public attention. These huge scale films then go to the theaters and later become available on TV, online and DVDs.

Our Group
Our group consisted of 4 people, to start with me had to come up with a primes for out short film which we did fairly quickly, we when created a few storyboards and shot lists then we got recording. Firstly, we decided who was going to be in the short film, we decided on 3 people being in the short film and one person recording, this turned out to be very efficient. Once when had recorded all that we needed we got straight into the editing process, during this time we didn't plan anything we just did the tasks that we needed to do when they came up. This was my first time acting in a short film but I know that the other two actors in my group both have a lot of experience of acting in short films. Another role I done was looking for music to play in the background of our short film which I also done for my previous film also.
Casts/Other

In a large-scale production there is almost always lots of people working at one time including lots of people in front of the camera and even more behind the scenes. A good example of someone who is behind the camera but serves an important role is the film's director, the director’s job is to be in charge of how the set is being run, the actor’s performances and run they think the editing should be done. Another example of behind the camera work that is very important to the quality of the film is the special effects department, this department usually includes a special effects supervisor and a special effects assistant, their job is basically to all the stuff that the film creators can't make on set for example huge explosions and fires because it would be very bad if they burnt down a set trying to do an effect it would be very bad. Furthermore, another job that can be vital to a film is it lighting, the lighting department on most sets works using two groups one being the 'Gaffer' this person must design all the lighting plans and the other is the lighting technician who has to set up and control the lights during the sets recording time.
Time

Our first task was coming up with a simplistic story line that we were going to base are short film on. Then we created a few and storyboards and shot list ideas which took two lessons until we were ready to start recording. It only took my group three lessons in order to record our whole short film which was a lot quicker than most of the other groups. Lastly we had to edit and distribute our short film which in total took around 4-5 lessons to fully complete, overall I think my group was very efficient with our time and stayed on the topic that we needed to complete very well.
In most things it's never a good thing if you fail to meet deadlines and the same goes for film sets whether it's a small or large-scale production. In the media industry failing to meet deadlines almost always results in spending way more money than what needed to be spent for example if you were filming in shot in a restaurant that for every time that you film in it you need to rent out the whole restaurant and it should only take less than a day to record all the shots needed for that location but due to some errors it takes a multiply days to record you will lose money from needing to pay the crew for more working time, rent out the restaurant for longer, rent out specialist equipment and lots of other small things that will add up and create a huge dent in your budget. Furthermore, one other way not meeting a deadline would be very bad would be if you have a release date set to release a media production and if you fail to meet that release date and have to push the date back it which looks bad for the production team.
Fortunately, me and my group did a good job of keeping up with our deadlines and even got some of the work done early, I think we achieved this by staying focused and keeping track of what work and been completed and what work needed to be done. Overall we managed the time we had incredibly well and not only completed the tasks on time but we also had time to go over them and be sure that this is how we wanted our short film to look and be like.

Equipment and Facilities
Nearly all types media productions use a huge range of equipment in order to make their ideas into film. Once again the big budget films have tons and tons of equipment and most likely more than they need where as small budget films and to use cheap, budget equipment. A great way that film creators maximize their budget is by renting all of their equipment, this is because films equipment needs vary and is different every time. Some examples of the equipment that is needed for a moving image production, an extremely low tier movie may use something as simple as a phone to record the film, bigger budget films have the chance to utilize high-end equipment like a DSLR camera and record in 4k without much of an issue. Other things you may find on a big budget film could include cranes, large light generators and catering budgets that are as big if not bigger than most low-budget films.

Professional film set usually get their equipment from the studio that they are producing the film with and anything else they need they will likely rent it from a local source or get in specially designed. An example of renting something for a specific shot for a film is a house, for this I did a google search for something like "rent a house to film in" and came across the website 'www.shootfactory.co.uk'. This site had loads of available locations that you can record in ranging from Art Studios, Ballrooms and Beach houses. I was unable to find an exact cost for renting a location but the location varied from small rooms to giant mansions. The last thing I done was looking for the closest location to me that I would be able to film in, to do this a search for location in East Anglia Locations and received and little less than 20 results, the closest one was in Norwich (NR22) in fact there was 5 available locations in Norwich.

In my Depict project I had the vital equipment which included and HD recording camera with mic and a tripod. I got this equipment from the media department that is inside of my college and personal cost me nothing.



Location - During the filming process of my short film I had no issues with almost anything, this was mainly because all of the shots in our film were in public locations and we didn't need any permission to film there, I think this was a good thing because it enabled us to focus purely on our film and it was one less restriction that we otherwise would of had to deal with. The main context off my short film was revolved around a vending machine so since there is only a couple of vending machines in our whole college we didn't have much of a wide array of choice. However, the one we did pick was because it seemed to be the least populated one that we came across. The only other location that we filmed in was the field across from our college, to be more specific we need a tree which we used to introduce a character and the only through process that went into this the tree was that it needed to be large enough for a person to stand behind and not be seen by the camera. One risk we faced during the filming process was the scene where we crossed a road, to prevent the worst from happening we had someone in our group stand where they could see a lot of the road and once the road became clear they would signal to us and we would start the scene. I think our experience was nothing like the professional industry as I am informed that they spend a lot of time and resources trying to get permission to film is specific places and these places are usually pleasant locations which I assume makes it more difficult to get permission, another reason could be that we only filmed in 2-3 location but in a Hollywood production I am sure they film in many more.

Materials - Other than an equipment, cast and crew there is also lots more things that go into making a film these things are referred to as materials, a good example of this the costumes in a film, the quality of these do change often based on the budget of a film but it is always a very important feature to a production, to obtain these items again it likely varies on the budget of the production as high budget production have the choice to get specialized costumes where as small budgets may have to use their own or maybe even create them. Another example could be the films props, the quality of a productions props can leave an impacted mark of the viewer and possible change the decision from liking the production or hating it. Like the costumes big budget productions have the chance to get things specially made for them where as small budget may have to not use they, rent them if they are available or attempt to make their own.

Legal Issues: All types of productions often find themselves coming in contact with small legal issues, one example of this is using a prop gun in a public location or ever acting out a murder, to deal with this someone working on the production must contact the local police or someone with authority.

Are film was fairly affected by copyright but not too much, it didn't affect the premise of our film we had we come up with an original concept but one way it marginally affected us was through the music. We didn't write a script in our film so are plan was to play music in the background and have to movie just be a visual one, I knew that we were going to need to look online for some royalty free music. Most types of royalty free music tend to be a lot worse than copyrighted music but we have no budget so we had no chance of getting real music.
Some common phrases used when talking about copyright are.

Clearance - This is the process of getting permission for the things that are in your production. When requesting for this you must be very specific about what you are claiming to be your own creation. An example of this is if you create a book you can copyright the contents of the book.
Public Liability Insurance- This is an insurance policy that you can also take out for your production, it can protect multiply things but varies from which company you take it from. An example of public liability insurance is that you can it can cover damages to locations and property that you are making media in.

Completion guarantee/insurance- This is another different from of insurance that is offered buy a completion guarantor company and is mostly used for people who are making independent films. It's similar to a small loan and has resulted in a few goods productions

Regulation: One type of regulation is Ofcom, Ofcom is a communication regulator in the UK. It works with TV, radio, postal services and other types of media productions. Their job and aim is for the people in the UK to get the best possible communication services and protect people from scams and other sketchy things that people may do when trying to take advantage of other people without their knowledge. The main difference between the Ofcom and the BBC is that the BBC is actually regulated by outside bodies such as the Office of Fair Trading and the European Commission whereas the Ofcom is an independent regulator and competition authority for the UK.

BBFC- The British Board of Film Classification is an independent, non-governmental organization that has classified cinema films, it was created in 1912. The BBFC works with Cinemas, videos and various types of finances. The BBFC work by taking the decision for the public and act on them.

Trade Unions- The main trade union is the UK is the BECTU. The BECTU is funded by having  membership site that over 25,000 members are apart of. Another type of member ran company is
PACT, this sites offers help and advice to its members. Another type of trade that is a little different is the trade association, the main one in the UK is the ukscreenassociation, this sites works to help individual business and products to meet the goals that they cant achieve on their own, they also use their huge voice to influence the government and raise issues to benefit the public.