Report (complete)

Unit 4: Pre-Production Portfolio Learning Aim A Assignment Brief Pre-Production Report 

 

 

Intro: 

 

The Aim of this report is to highlight the importance of Pre-Production when making a product and to demonstrate the benefits with real-world examples. The purpose of pre-production is to prepare a detailed plan that allows the production company to have a well thought out product and helps avoid problems during production. Successful Pre-Production often helps to create a higher quality and more thought-out project, avoid problems and issues during production and ensure that the final product is of a profession standard. I have completed three case studies and I will be using these as examples throughout my report; World War Z, Monsters and One Mile Away. 

 

Finance and Budgeting: 

 

Firstly, we will evaluate both the advantages and disadvantages for each form of funding options: 

pros/cons 

• Crowd Funding: Minimal risk for high reward, Helps avoid giving up equity, community feedback / low success rate, difficulty getting noticed, high fees and strict rules 

• Grants: money does not have to be repaid, granter can encourage business growth and efficiency / only covers a percentage of the cost, grants can be highly competitive  

• Government Funding: can help raise substantial amounts of money, usually less restrictive, can open doors for private funding too / do not supply funds as lump sum (payed in instalments), applications are extremely time-consuming and tedious, most are short term and run out quickly 

• Big Studio model: larger studio team, lots of processing to ensure no money is wasted, studio gets more profits than producers / requires more costs for more services, more coordination so a good networking team is needed. 

• Private investors: you choose your investors, company stays private, more flexible than other type / number of investors is limited, you could suffer a reduced market, meaning the value of your business could drop 

Secondly, we will look at managing budgets, more specifically, budget schedules. What is a budget schedule? A budget schedule is a calendar that keeps track of payment amounts and dates- similar to a bank statement. Budget Schedules are useful as it can be used to estimate profits after production as well as making sure your budget is not wasted on unnecessary things. Here we will look at a successful and unsuccessful budget schedule to figure out how we can maximise the benefits of an effective budget schedule.  

A bad example of film budgeting would be Monty Python’s: ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’-Because of their low budget the character of King Arthur travelled around on an imaginary horse as production could not afford real horses. The movie was supposed to end in a large battle but due to them running out of money they could not film this scene. Instead, the changed the ending completely, ending the film with modern day police shutting down the production so they could investigate the murder of ‘Frank’ who died earlier in the film. The film had small budget to begin with, because of this the cast’s armour had to be made of wool and unfortunately during filming the weather took a turn for the worst, resulting in the armour becoming wet and uncomfortable which cut into production time. Most of the money they had to begin with was largely raised by rock bands, because of this Monty Python missed some of the benefits of other funding methods, such as the flexibility of private investors or the less restrictive nature of government funding. Not to mention that only 10-15% of the original script made it to the final product, this meant that there were many rewrites to the script which would have further wasted what little budget they had to begin with. What I would have done differently: 

• Film as much of the indoor scenes as I could whilst the weather was poor 

• Sourced a more stable and reliable means of finance 

• Tried to refine the script in pre-production and stick as closely to it as possible during production 

• I also would have filmed the larger scenes first as then if things had to be changed it would be the smaller and less noticeable scenes 

An example of good film budgeting would be Gareth Edward’s: ‘Monsters’ (2010). Here’s why; The filming equipment cost approximately $15,000 and the production budget was less than $500,000. The film was able to be made on such a low budget largely due to the production using consumer grade level equipment instead of expensive professional equipment.  The film was shot using digital video cameras rather than the more expensive 35 mm film and was edited on a laptop computer.  Many of the locations in the film were used without permission which was risky but proved to be profitable and most of the extras were already on set. “As the extras were non-actors who were persuaded to be in the film, their actions were improvised.”  

“The film was shot in Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and the United States over three weeks.”  For most of the filming, the crew consisted of seven people transported in one van: Edwards, His cast, sound operator Ian Maclagan, line producer Jim Spencer, Mexican narrative fixer Verity Oswin and a driver. 

Additionally Due to the small cast Edward’s did not have to worry about spending all of the budget on a large, all-star cast, rather he just hired two well-known but not expensive actors for his film and the rest were improvised. 

Here’s a few things I would've done differently however: 

• Tried to get location permissions for as cheaply as possible before considering filming without permission to avoid future legal costs should they arise 

• Tried to keep locations close together, travelling was perhaps one of the costliest aspects of filming, if these locations were closer together then perhaps these costs could have been minimised. 

I think that the best option for a small-scale production such as this would be a combination of both, utilising fundraisers to earn money for production as well as trying to minimise costs where possible without detriment to the final product. 

 

 

Logistics 

 

Logistics is the process of planning and executing the efficient transportation and storage of goods (in this case filming resources) from A to B. The goal of logistics is to make sure the product is produced effectively, efficiently and at as low a cost as possible. Logistics encapsulates the following areas: 

• Cast and Crew 

• Props 

• Costume 

• Catering 

•  Equipment hire/ Transport 

• Clearances  

• Locations  

• Production schedule 

A poor example of Logistical considerations would be ‘Monsters’ as director Gareth Edwards did not actually get any permissions to film in any of the locations that he filmed in. This is a poor management of logistics as it could potentially cost him a lot of money in fines or perhaps, he’d end up in prison in the worst case. Firstly, Edwards did not get filming permissions for most of the locations that he filmed in, if he was caught without permission, he could’ve received a hefty fine which could have been detrimental to his film as that would use up all of his budget. 

A contingency plan is necessary as you always need a plan B. If something goes wrong without a contingency plan then you have no safety net to fall back on, most likely this would result in a complete halt of the production process or cancelling production all together. 

Codes of Practice/Regulations 

Media producers need to consider a wide range of legal factors. These can include things such as cast release forms and risk assessments. These are purely beneficial as not completing these necessary tasks can lead to fines or even jail time, so it is arguably the most crucial factor to consider. 

For example, during the filming of ‘Rust’ which is yet unreleased, Alec Baldwin fired a what was thought to be a blank round (it was, however, live) which killed their cinematographer (Halyna Hutchins) and injuring their director (Joel Souza). Baldwin was charged with 2 accounts of involuntary manslaughter. The risk assessment most likely factored this as a potential risk which was most likely why Baldwin was not charged with a much more serious crime. Despite the tragedy that took place it could’ve been much worse if not for a risk assessment. 

Pre-Production Documentation/ Process 

The conventional pre-production process consists of many stages to ensure that filming goes as smoothly as possible- this includes things like risk assessments and release forms to avoid any legal issues but also things like scripts and storyboards to form the framework of the product itself. The pre-production process is highly crucial as it forms the bare bones of production- without pre-production the production process would not be able to go forward and if it did then the resulting product would be of extremely poor quality- the more preparation the better. 

 

A film without pre-production would be a disaster- there would be no script, storyboard, legal documents etc. Filming would be neigh on impossible- organising cast and crew is a major part of pre-production so without it you would have no actors to film and nobody to do the filming and other major roles.  

 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, making sure everything is in order before you film is massively important, not only does it allow you to create a quality product, but it is also necessary to create the product in the first place. It is clear that without pre-production most major films and tv shows would not meet the standards that they do today and would, most likely, fail.