Pre-production process

Requirements for production

Types of moving image production (media forms)

The type of media production that we produced was a short film, lasting only 90 seconds. We did our short film production in 90 seconds because we were submitting our film to the DepicT! Competition and we had to comply with the rules (displayed on the left). We distributed out finished product on the internet using YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s0DHJjP1es

The other types of moving image products, how they are distributed and why are:


Music videos (internet e.g YouTube and TV eg. music channels) This is done because YouTube is
free to use, it’s a great way to expose your song and video because it’s used by so many people all around the world and because you can earn money depending on how many people watch your video and if ads want to be displayed on your page of the video to get noticed.

Documentary (TV, DVD and internet e.g. YouTube) YouTube is common for such programmes like Vice due the easy access and easy distribution. However for programmes that are documentary, David Attenborough’s (Planet Earth), which is made by the BBC the only videos that can be released by YouTube, would be trailers and other approved short clips. The BBC makes and funds these documentary series therefore they own the rights and will only show it on their channels, through TV and BBC iPlayer. Documentary’s also can on to DVD and Blue Ray, and in some cases can be turned into adaptation in a form of a book and to be an accomplice to the series.

Web episodes, short video. (internet e.g YouTube, blogs or webpages). This is done because
YouTube, blogs and webpages our free to promote/show your production and an easy access for people around the world to enjoy for free. Anyone can upload a video onto the internet and watch it however no one would certainly pay to watch a 5 minuet web episode every week or two.

Animations, is moving drawn images. (DVD, Bluray, Cinema, Private screening, TV) TV would be used for such animation like cartoons (e.g. Naruto and Avatar the Last Air bender) such long series that are popular to kids. These may also go onto DVD and Bluray and other animations such as anime (series or film) like Studio Ghibli. All of the above can also be found on legitimate official websites when releasing new material (for example Attack on Titan, an anime series 2014) was released on a
TV channel and was uploaded on many anime websites. This is done because it’s a great was for people to watch around the world for free and it also wants people to buy merchandise from the animations because it was free to watch therefore they can afford it if they want. Most animations are accomplice with a book such as manga, being the original source of the franchise which has been turned into a visual moving adaptation, if either of these (book or moving picture) get popular, then the other is likely to as well.

Feature film (DVD, BluRay, Cinema, Private screening) Feature film is a film over 1 hour long and is mostly fiction. Cinema and private screening allows people to watch the film for a fee, (fee is not affordable for all) however either way it can make people want to buy the film on DVD or Bluray. This is done by either paying to see the film and enjoyed it so much wanted to buy it or buy wanting to see it in cinema and cant so just waits till it comes out on DVD or Blue Ray and get it then.

Requirements for any production

Actors: of course you’re going to need actors in your production whenever see them or just hear them

(animation and documentaries, voice actors). The amount you money you need on actors depends. The more actors you need, the more it will cost however the less you need, the cheaper it will be. Also the not know/ not best actors (Heather Donahue, Blair Witch Project) will cost you less however if you higher well known and good actors (eg. Jonny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean) the more expensive it will be. The better the actors the more chance you film will want to be watched because of them wanting to see that actor/actress again.

Props: If you need them in your production, you’re going to have to buy them. You need to make your production as realistic as possible.

Marketing and distribution: If you want your project to be well
know and popular, you need to put money towards marketing, the more you market you project the more it’s going to cost because it’s very expensive! Marketing examples would be adverts in TV, , posters on billboards, busses and bus stops,

Location and getting there: Buses/ cars will be needed to transport equipment and crew to anywhere their filming, this needs to be done safely and quickly.

Requirements for our DepicT! Project

We had many thing things to obtain for our Depict project, first was the cast and crew. Because we were already put into groups of 3, we planned our ideas together. However once we had established our characters and plot we needed the cast and crew to film and perform it. As we were in a group of 3 and need 4 actors we needed to someone else in our group, there are students 1 and 2 who are in most of the shots, a teacher at the begging and end of the video and student 3 who was only in the video for 2 shots. We decided that whoever was going to be student 3 would have to be the director. As we were all the same age we all took on the student characters and we asked to use our teacher to play our teacher in the video, who thankfully said yes. We also had to make sure that all actors would wear the same clothes when being filmed to avoid continuity errors and that they looked like their rules.

Now the cast/crew was done we had to get all the props ready, which only consisted of a bottle of spray, allowing us to film in the class room and that nothing be moved while we were doing so and to obtain a wipe board and pen.

Fiancé and sources of funding

These are the different types of funding that exists for film, television and other moving image
productions:

Private capital: someone’s private money that is spent on the production for example Megan Ellison is a financer that giver her personal money to help fund films such as Walking Madison and American Hustle.

Grants/ ambursery/ funds: is where you are given money because you are filming/ working for that course/ project for example at college when filming for college projects we are given (if needed) a £5 budget per production.

Film studios: (eg Pinewood studios with ‘The Riot Club) invest with films so that they get the money back with a secure tax and there film studio is then known.

Banks: banks will give out loans, of course there’s the interest that you have to pay back and the bank needing to know if the money will be paid back, which can be difficult as you cannot know how popular your film will be to the public exactly.

Crowd/ pubic funding: the funding of a project/ venture done by donations from a large number of people (mostly done via the internet).

Product placement: this is done by companies paying the film production for having their product in there production, for them it can increase sales and get them noticed (for example, in the Amazing Spiderman 2 everything electronic that was in the film was Sony, because the company that owns the Spiderman 2 is Sony). The BBC doesn’t do this however due to endorsement.

Marketing deals: when publishing your production you may have a marketing deal meaning if you publish this work they will market it a certain right, this could be to increase sales or for partnerships.

Competitions: may have a budget find per entry to get good entries for their competition, besides whoever wins they may get some if not all money back by donations etc.

Personnel

Crew, the makeup of a typical team for a moving image production in:

A low budget short: the crew will probably have to double up on roles and responsibilities for example a director might also have to be the producer in order to save money by not hiring more people.

A television program: there will have to be lots of sourcing and sets, a lot of actors not necessarily famous or well known. Also there will need to be a few story writers to keep the story line intriguing.

Hollywood feature film: Everyone will have their own assigned roles and expensive, big talents because they can afford it.

For our DepicT project the roles we were assigned where:

Me: actor, story writer, editor.
Reece: actor, story writer, editor.
Robert: actor, story writer, director, editor, producer, camera crew.

Cast/ other contributors:

People in front of the camera: improve the script and story line, provide improvisation and emotions.

People other than the production crew: righting the script, casting agents, producers, documents- like historians, distributions.

Time

When you don’t meet deadlines in the professional media industry:

Your reputation could be destroyed like Micheal Crimino with Heavens Gate. He kept pushing back the days so it cost more and more to keep on the staff, equipment, location, actors etc. Now no industry or company will trust him due to the dept he make with that film.You will not be trusted again with loans, actors wouldn’t work for you and no one will invest in product placement, marketing deals etc.

Actors will be held back when they could have other schedules due, what should they do stay or go to their other project?

The cost of keeping everything going after the date is very expensive and may not be in the budget.

Did we meet the deadlines?

Yes: We finished the filming and editing on time however it was very rushed and sadly in the process got continuity errors.

No: for our post production used 1 lesson on filming for extra post production work, this is why we rushed at the end but we needed all the legal work sorted out before we filmed.

Equipment/ Facilities:

You can obtain equipment in a professional media facility house like in Norwich, the Norwich University of the Arts. You get a rates card for the house which gives you a list of rates and costs.

In our DepicT project:

The dolly we used for filming was loaned from the audio visual library in the college; all we needed
was our student card. However the camera, tripod and microphone were Roberts.

Locations:

For our DepicT film we filmed in our college, and to secure the locations in the college legally we

had to get location recces and location releases.

Location recces: is a pre-film visit to a location to see its suitability for filming. Things like lighting, sound and availability are judged and all of this is written down. In the written report it will also contain health and safety.

Location releases: is a binding contract between the owner(s) of the private property and the photographer having permission to film on the property. Once the owner(s) has signed the release, they forgo the right to sue for the specific types of claims, like abuse on their land.

Once we had filled out both location recces and location releases we gave these to the care takers of the college who thankfully signed to the allocated days and hours we can film in certain parts of the college, this was all done in media lessons and some lunch times.

We picked to film in the college due to the story line and picked our college due to convenience as we planned the route while doing the story line in our college. How we picked the route/ specific locations was due to what we needed in the story line/ chase scenes, for example we wanted a lift scene so therefor we used the lift. We picked a class room for the begging and end of the story line and decided it was best and easiest to use our media classroom, as we already knew the interior therefore it was easier to draw the story boards and our media teacher would be more than happier to sign the paper work needed.

The most logistic issues that we faced was ‘can we film here?’ and ‘will we disturb anyone?’ We overcame the ‘can we film here?’ by doing a risk assessment, once we did so we looked how to make them points safer and by doing so it was suitable for viewing. We also didn’t want to disturb any classrooms or student so we filmed while class was taking place but being moderately loud and quick, we didn’t film in between classes as there would have been loads of student in the corridors, and this wouldn’t fit with our story line.

Materials

There are many things that is needed to make a moving image text besides equipment, crew and cast
like:

Props, costumes, copyrights, location releases and recces, makeup, music/ sound bites. To require any of these materials they made need to be brought or borrowed/ lent by experts with sometimes witnesses. In order to do so you may to sign documents and have interviews.

To get music/ sound bites that don’t have copyrights you can use musicians such as Josh Woodman and Kevin MCcloud whose music is copyright free. We gathered our music from their websites.

Legal issues

The legal considerations that are made when using certain materials in a media production would be
the recces and releases, talent forms/contracts and copyrights.

The definition of copyright is: an exclusive legal right given to the maker/owner for a fixed number of years to have permission to print, publish, film, perform, record literary, musical material, artistic, basically any form of using that work.

Copyright affect our DepicT project as we had to look at what we can legally use. Our bottle of spray that we used had a trademark/ logo on it so during the whole time in the video we had to cover the logo so it was not seen.

Clearance: having official permission for something to take place/ proceed. For example to film in the college we had to have clearance from the care takers.

Public Liability Insurance: If the public will be interacting with your company/ project in any way, from being in the video to watching it.

Completion guarantee/ insurance: an agreement that the producer will complete and deliver the (in this case) film to the distributor. This then starts the process of the payment by the distribution guarantees to the producer.

Regulations:

Regulatory body: a government agency or public authority using authority over area of human activity.

OFCOM is a communications regulator in the UK, its function is to regulate any airwaves over which any wireless device operates in the UK.

The Board of Governments regulates the BBC, this is different to OFCOM because the BBC don’t allow such things like product placement whereas programmes that are operated by OFCOM are allowed.

The BBFC are the British Board Film Classification, its function is to determine age ratings.


Trade unions and trade associations:

Trade union: organisation of workers in a trade, group of trade or profession. This is done to protect the rights of the workers in any form trade. They’re important because they protect the rights of workers legally.

PACT is: “Pact is the trade association representing the commercial interests of UK independent television, film, digital, children’s and animation media companies.”(1) Basically PACT represents the UK independent media companies.

BECTU is: “UK's media and entertainment trade union; sectors covered include broadcasting, film, independent production, theater and the arts, leisure and digital media. The union represents staff, contract and freelance workers who are based primarily in the United Kingdom.”(2) Basically anything that wants to be broadcast-ed in the UK media industry has to be verified and accepted by the union representatives to be deemed as appropriate and safe.

Trade association: is an industry trade group organisation (business or sector association) which is funded but businesses that operate in a specific industry.

References:
(1) https://www.pact.co.uk/about-us/
(2) https://www.bectu.org.uk/about
All images- google images, www.google.com