The Pre-Production Process

Type of Moving Image Production (media production)
Of course, there are lots of different types of moving image product, the one that we made was a 90 second short as we hoped to enter into the online competition called DepicT!

We were told that we would be distributing it on YouTube. There are lots of types of moving image, here are few of the main ones;

Television-Factual/Fiction
Film-Factual/Faction
Music Placement

Finance and sources of funding

When you make a moving image production you will need all kinds of things to film and produce it. You will  need to spend money on making your product, and for a low budget film like our 90 second DepicT! entry, you might ask your friends and family to loan you some money, then this is called funding, and funding is prt of the whole financial business.

You could use Crowd Funding to get the money you need for your project, and also you might even grab producers or editors attention, which would be good for our future career in film making. For instance the website kickstarter allows people who have good ideas for films, video games, music and items to help your everyday life, to put there ideas on the website and and ask the public to fund it and if your product is successful the you will be able to distribute in and make a profit.


DepicT! is also a good way of making money, as if you end up winning it you will get a £3000 prize and maybe get producers attention. Again getting you into film making.

Private funding is another good way to get the money you need for you production.If you contact a producer they may be willing to give you the money you need make you product if you have enough faith in it and believe that it will make a profit. And if it does well then they be willing to help you with any others moving images you do.

Requirements

With the money you make you will obviously have to spend it on things you require for your video other wise you won't be able to film.

You'll need props and costumes for your cast to wear and use, the costume will obviously have to be appropriate to the video your making. You'll need all the camera equipment for your shoot so things like the cameras themselves and tripods, and a crane if you wanted a over head shot, you could eithre buy this equipment, or rent it, and if you own it, then use it. You will need to think about things like catering and accomodation because where your shooting might not be in a close enough location for people to make a commute every day. You might need clearance to film in a certain area as it might be owned by someone else or it might be in a public place in which case you will need to let the plice know, especially if your video involves the use of fake weapons. Any copyright in  your video will have to be cleared with the company or person the copyright is owned by. You will need a crew to opperate all you eqiupment as you won't be able to do it all by yourself, you could hire some crew members or ask some oof your friends to help you with it, but if your working with them anyway the all the better. And once you've finished you will need to edit your footage, you could hire an editing studio as the software can be quite expensie especially if you want to use the proffesional software.

We didn't have to worry about much for our video as the only props we needed were some googly eyes for our hands and a couple of pens so we could access what we needed very easily. And all the equipment we needed was provided by the college so we didn't need to buy or rent anything.

Personnel

Low Budget

For a low budget film you don't have that much in way of a crew as you don't need many people to film it because it most likely be very expensive to make. You won't have many actors in it either, you might have one semi-professional actor to give you production a 'boost'. But in the way of other actors you might get some friends or people you know who would be willing to take part in your production.

Television Programme

TV programmes tend to be professionally written and made as they are going to be watched by hundreds of thousands of people so they need to be good. But they're still not as well made as a blockbuster movie. The crew will be made up of about 100-150 people in total as there will be more equipment that needs opperating, but the actors are more likely to be proffessional as people like to see a face they know on TV.

Hollywood Feature Film

These are always made by the top directors who will spend millions on there idea to make it as good as possible as they will need to make the biggest profit possible.The crew will be huge compared to a low budget film as the directors will have the money to spend on it. They will have the top actors in them to make sure people like the film more and to give it a 'familar' face.


Time

We were given 3 college weeks, 2 for planning one for filming. Unfortunatly we had a half term holiday inbetween the 2nd and 3rd week. This caused problems in the form of that we forgot some of our props for our video which ment that on some days we couldn't film anything. Also as we needed Ellie for our production we couldn't film either as we didn't have her for ery lesson and she wasn't always available.

In the film indusrty if you miss a deadline that is most likely going to be bad on your part as you will end up getting a reputation for be late in with work that needs to be done. This will then end up affect the rest of your career working in the film industry. Also if it's not just one person then it could lead to having to delay the film which can costs millions depending on how long you have to delay it for.

We went ovr the deadline by a few days because of the complications I stated above, but this taught us that you can't be late for deadlines as in our case it could lead to us failing the course.


Equipment/facilities

In the media industry the equipment tends to be rented out by the people who need it as it would probably cost to much to buy.

The equipment we needed for our video was all available from the college as all we needed was a camera for recording and a tripod.

 Locations

A location recce is a form for when you scout out a potential filming area, you write down things like where it is, what potential issues or safety hazards there are and whether your goin to have to ask a landlord if you can use their land or if your filming on a busy street then you may need to inform the police about what your filming and why. A location release is a form that you have to get filled in by someone who owns the land that you wish to film on, or by the police if nesaccary.


Myself and somone else from our group when out and looked around the college grounds for a suitable place to film, we didn't go out of college grounds as we didn't feel it was worth doing. The areas we filmed in fit perfectly with our story board, so we wnet and filmed in these places a few days later.

Even though we were still on college grounds we had to fill out a risk assessment incase anyone got injured in the process of making our production, even though we knew it was highly unlikey. Also when we went out scouting the area we looked around to see if there were any risk which we would write down and fill in on the risk assessment.


Materials

For a media production you will need materials to make it as good as possible. Props and costumes are absolutely vital in making a film as other wise it would look bad ie some one in a medieval film dressed in clothes that thye would wear everyday. A soundtrack is in my eyes 50% of a movie, if the music isn't good, or isn't ther at all the film will not do well at all.

When getting hold of things like props and costumes, don't spend to much money on them as you may be able to find things that you can use that are maybe owned by people on set or even by the crew and directors. eg clothes and props.

Legal Issues

When you use ceratin material in your production you will come across legal issues such as copyright, or things that are trademarked. If you comply to copyright then you won't have any problems, but when you don't it is plagerisum and that is illegal, you have to ask the owner of the copyrighted material before you use it and get their permission. There are different types of copyright, there is literary works such as Macbeth where you take a boko or a play and make a film out of it. There are the performers moral rights, so you can't overwork them or pay them less than what you agreed to.

As we didn't have any copyrighted material in our video we didn't have any problems with it but if we did we would have contacted the owner and asked their permission.

Regulation

OFCOM

OFCOM give out licensing to people and companies for radio, TV and the internet. They give advice to people about the media industry and what to do in certain siuations.

BBFC

The British Board of Film Classification, are the company that rate all movies that are released in this country. It is and independant company that isn't owned by the government.It gets it's income from the money you pay for it, they work it out by calculating the running time of films or DVDs that they put an age rating on.



Trade Union

A trade union is a group of people who fight for workers rights to make sure they get fair pay and work in a clean a healthy environment. They discuss with employers abou raising the workers pay if hey believe the re being worked to hard for not enough money or if they are working in an untidy place about iproving the working area.
PACT
Pact are the organisation for independent media producers who wish for their product to be advertised,they will contact a business for you and get them to advertise your media product.
BECTU
The Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union are the UK's trade union so do all that is stated above for the UK.