DepicT! Pre-Production - Pre-production process paperwork

Introduction:

For this assignment we produced a 90 second short film that we have distributed over social media, including YouTube, so that we could enter into the DepicT! competition. Depict is a competition that has been running every year since 1998, challenging amateur film makers to produce "90 second ultra-short masterpieces".




Other Types Of  Products:

As well as short films, there is a large variety of other types of moving image media texts, for example:

- Feature films (80 minutes or more)
- Tv shows/programmes
- Film Trailers
- Animations (Such as Pixar/most Disney Films)
- Music Videos (Fan made of tv shows and Official)
- Anime

- Gifs

Example Of GIF's: 1

Example Of GIF's: 2

Theses are some of the most commonly used formats or moving image media text consumption used by large audiences around the world for entertainment. However, these audiences will get theses formats in different ways. Companys, both established and amateur, use a variety of different ways to distrebute and advertise their product, such as:

- Social Media (Inform consumers where to find the film/show or sometimes a trailer, or review)
- Public screens (Show trailers)
- Cinema Legal Downloads (cinema theaters downloading the movie directly from the production company)

Revolutionizing Media:

The way we are able to access media has developed a lot since 2004, at the invention of the "Web 2.0". Web 2.0 has allowed us to access media and edit media ourselves, rather than having to rely on large company's to give us information. A good example of web 2.0 websites are Wikipedia and YouTube, allowing you to create your own content, or in Wikipedia's case, allowing you to update information if you know it is wrong or outdated. With the introduction of this new technology, many problems for the media industry has er-risen, such as a rise in pirating movies or illegally downloading music or soundtracks from music.

Financing: 

Producing a film is often extremely expensive - on average about $100 million - which means it is very hard for new directors to get funding for there films. There are a variety of different ways to get funding for your film. For example

Kick starter
indigogo 
The National Lottery

Sometimes directors manage to get the attention of rich, independent producers to fund your project, such as Megan Ellison.

Megan ellison, patron of Annapurna Pictures (founded in 2011) has funded/produced many films, such as american hustle and sausage party.

Robert Rodriguez took a alternative approach to funding his project. He decided that he would only use an old camera he had at home to shoot with, and his family as actors. However he still wasnt able to get enough money to fund his film. As a solution to this problem he decided to sell his body to science. He managed to raise $7000 for his first feature film "El Mariachi".

Included in the cost of creating the film is the cost of buying, or renting the equipment you will need. On average, a set will need between a single camera for a low budget film, and up to 10 or more different camera set ups. During production of "notorious" by Alfred Hitchcock, there were 13 camera set-ups at any given time. This would have cost a large amount of money, as on average a single DSLR camera costs anywhere between £300, and £10,000. that's without the added costs of the sound equipment, the costs of the different camera lens's, some actually cost more than the camera they are using, as well as lights to help with indoor set lighting. overall the cost for the equipment can reach as much as 2,000,000 (for a AAA film).

Requirements Of Producing A Film:

There are many different requirements that are needed to produce any kind of media. For example, for a feature film, you will need:
- Camera (Digital SLR) [To hire a Canon 1200D Dslr Camera it would cost £22 a day from
HireaCar.com]
- SD Card
- Boom Mic + Dead Cat 
- Editing Software
- Props
- Costumes
- Cast/Talent
- Crew (Cinematographer,editor,sound engineer, Etc.)
- Tripod
- Facility
- Location Releases (If private land)
- Location hire (If needed)
- Pay for "Royalties" (If you use a copyrighted film in your film)
- Insurances (To protect your crew from having to pay thousands of pounds in accidental         property damage)


For our film, Hooks and Blades, we were required to use:
- A Digital SLR camera (Canon EOS 700D) ~ Hired from the collage
- 64gb class 10 SD card
- Adobe Premiere Pro ~ Provided by the collage
- Adobe After Effects ~ Provided by the collage
- Props ~ Provided by the actors
- Costumes ~ Provided by the actors
- Talent Releases
- Tripod ~ Hired from the collage
- Road Mic ~ Hired from the collage

Personnel: 

For different productions, you will need different personnel. For example, when you are creating a short film which is going to be released on YouTube, you would only need a small crew (The director, Camera Man, Editor) and a small cast. Sometimes the entire crew of a film can just be one person doing everything. For instance when I did my GCSE Media Production, I had to do the cinematography and the editing myself, using a simple road mic for my diegetic audio. For a short film, the cast could vary from 2-3, to a maximum of 20-30. For example, "Above the Fold" had a cast of 19 peolple, though my own only consisted of 7.



For a Television Programme, you would need a larger team of maybe 100 or so people, each specializing in a different area, some with the equipment, some in other areas, such as Fight scene choreographer and catering.



A feature film is different again, needing thousands of crew members to make it all run smoothly, and create the props, outfits and prosthetic's for the actors. Not only this, but you have to pay Music artists to use their tracks in your film or to hire them to record a new sound track for you. You would also need to have an art team to create posters and merchandise to help promote your film.

Finally, for a news programme there is one specific role that is needed that is only used in live shows. This role is a Visual Mixer.

When we were filming our short film, we all shared the jobs that needed to be done. Luke did most of the story boarding, while me and Faye worked on the main idea and the script. I worked up the risk assessment. Luke and I went out to do a location Recce. The props and Costumes Luke and Faye already had so we didn't need to waste time trying to find a outfit for them.

Other Contributors:

There are also many other people who will contribute to the film, that may or may not be credited as the crew. For example, if the movie is crowdfunded off of kick-starter, if there are a lot of names, the producers may decide to simply right "Special Thanks To - Kick-Starter Members" rather than waste time and money on writing each individuals name into the credits.

As well as this, if you buy merchandise (Such as a t-shirt or a poster) you are helping advertise the film without being paid for it.

Time:

As a large production company, if your film does not get completed by the deadline, it would cost you hundreds of thousands, potentially Millions of Dollar's or Pounds. This will obviously decrease any profits you might make, but could also bankrupt your production studio.

In class, we were give 6 lessons to film, and 6 lessons to Edit, with an additional 3/4 lessons to plan to begin with. Though we did not use the lessons we were given on the allocated task, as we finished filming early (or so we thought) we did begin editing early. However we had to film a extra scene outside of lessons to meet the target of 90 seconds.

For example, a film called "Cutthroat Island" was released in 1995. During production there was set back after setback, causing the filming time to take a lot longer than expected. The film stared mainsteam actors, including Liam Neeson, Tom Cruise and Michael Keaton. At one stage things became so dire that the director, Renny Harlin used $1,000,000 of his own money to keep the film/produciton company afloat. 

Equipment / Facilities:

In the industry, you would acquire equipment (such as cameras, sound equipment, lenses) by either out right buying them so you will have them for your next production, or you could hire them from sights such as:
- Hire-A-Camera (Camera Equipment)
- Maniac Films (Audio)

You wont only have to worry about hiring equipment though. You will also have to consider the locations that you are filming, for example you might need to hire a studio to record sound. Or perhaps you need to pay the council or the benefactor of a office or hospital to film a scene. You could also hire another type of studio to create a set, and film a specific scene, for example, in the CW's superhero show "Arrow", they have created a set in a studio for the "Arrow Cave" or "Bunker". They also hire sections of hospitals for other scenes, such as when The Black Canary dies

However, as we filmed on a public beach and was not disrupting other people's day, we did not need to pay to get part of the beach blocked off. We acquired a camera from the collage, along with a tripod and a mic.

Locations:

Location Recce: A location Recce is shorthand for Location Recon, meaning that you go to the location that you have thought about filming in to figure out if it would work. You usually take pictures of key area to show what certain shots from the movie would/will look like.

We decided to film at Gorleston beach because one of the characters was a pirate, so it made logical sense that he would be on a beach. This was initially going to be the only location that we would be shooting in. However, we mis-calculated how long our movie would be with the footage we had. This lead to us filming in a second location, my house. We decided to use my house as it would give us a lot of room to shoot the final scene which would reveal the plot twist which was that it was all a game. However, we had to shoot quite late at night which caused some of the lighting to be a little off.

Logistical Issues: Our only real issue that we had to overcome was the audio for the scene on the beach. Due to the wind, most of the audio that we captured on the day was unusable, meaning that we had to do ADR in editing to dub in the audio. This included the dialoge, the waves on the sea and the seagulls.

Materials:

- Props
- Costumes
- Script
- Graphics (Letter-box, Tittles, Credits)
- Music (Copyright Free/Creative Commons)

Financial Considerations:

When you are creating a moving image product, almost everything cost money, especially if you infringe copyright laws, which means you always need to get written consent from the composer/original Artist if you are using copyrighted music, unless it is under the "Creative Commons" copyright laws, meaning you can use the music as long as you credit the original artist in the credits of your film.


You always have to pay for the insurance's for you cast and crew, such as life insurance, Property insurance and other insurances meaning you don't have to pay for any injuries or damages to property.

The Law:

One of the major problems in the film industry is "Copyright". This is most commonly a issue with music. Even "Happy Birthday" is copyrighted, so if you have used this in your film, you could get sued!

Copyright: "Copyright is the exclusice and assignable legal right given to the originator (Composer,writer,photographer Etc.) for a fixed number of years to print, publish, film or record literary,artistic or musical material" - Google.

Our only issue with copyright was that we had to use music and audio tracks that are not copyrighted. We did this by using the "YouTube Library" and "Freesound.org" websites.

Clearance: Where you are given permission by the creator of the media to  use it in your film.

Public Liability Insurance: "protects you if clients or members of the public suffer personal injury or property damage because of your business."

Completion guarantee/insurance: "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" - Wikipedia.

Regulation:

OFCOM: "The Office of Communications" regulate the TV, radio and video-on-demand applications to stop young children seeing innapropriate material on the tv. They choose what is allowed to be show before the watershed 

The BBC: The BBC is covered by the BBC trust and OFCOM. The BBC Trust is the BBC's personal regulation body which decides which programme to show when.

BBFC: The British Board of Film Classification. Like PEGI, they classify films and video's/DVD's (As PEGI do games).

Ofcom protects TV and radio audiences on topics such as taste, decency, fairness and privacy, so that there is no material that will racilly discriminate/offend, or humiliate  a group or people or a single person.

These regulations could impact a compotition, such as depict, as it may stop amateur film creators from trying to touch on a controvercial subject or topic, for fear of a small minority may see it and take offence.

Trade Unions:

A trade union is a large group of workers who protect their rights or protest what they believe in.

Examples of Unions are:

- Unison Union

- Teachers Union

- BECTU

- Equity

PACT: PACT stands for Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television. They "represent the commercial interests of UK independent television, film, digital, children’s and animation media companies." They were involved in creating/getting the Communications Act passed through government in 2003.

BECTU: BECTU are "the UK's media and entertainment trade union". Their members are from a Large spectrum of media industry's, such as:

- Broadcasting

- Cinema/film 

- Theatre 

- The arts (Music + other performers)

They negotiate pay, conditions and contracts with employers, use contacts to help network their members, helping them with career developing opportunities.