Understand the requirements of pre-production of a digital media product

1. UNIT 4: PRE-PRODUCTION PORTFOLIO
ASSIGNMENT1:PRE-PRODUCTION REQUIREMENTS
1.) THE REQUIREMENTS OF A MOVING IMAGE PRODUCTION
FINANCING
Financing is one of the most important aspect to considerate when you’re a moviemaker,
this because a movie project requires there are costs to cover for prints, advertising,
marketing, promotion, costumes, loaning locations or material.
In terms of Hollywood movie, a low budget filmis ranging from $200,000 to $1 million, high
budget films usually around $50-$75 million, and blockbusters are usually produced for
$150 million.
It’s basically impossible to make a movie without financing, every time as a filmmaker you
have a limited budget, you always need to consider how you’re going to pay cast and crew,
how will you hire facilities or equipment and how you will transport all this between
locations and in this budget you also need to keep in mind the cost for clearances you may
need.
TIMESCALES
The effective management of time is essential during the pre-production working session.
If you are supposed to finish in a certain deadline or the equipment is available only for a
certain arc of time, you should accurately think about some schedules for a production and
postproduction timetable.
This also because cast and crew will often have other commitments, or they may be
available only in certain times.
Try to stick as much as you can to your planned timing, this because not always the crew
can help you coming by again even after the precise schedule you should have done and
shown them.
When you hire equipment or locations, you do it for a certain time frame and if you go over
the preestablished schedule, this will also cost more and should go over your initial budget.
– For Example, X-men: Dark Phoenix was delayed for nearly 3 months, and for the fans of
the franchise it seemed that something was actually going wrong with the production of the
movie, in fact at the box office went really bad, and it also received very bad critics and
reviews.
FACILITIES
The consideration of what materials and equipment will be required to produce a film it’s a
key element of pre-production.
Not everyone can have the material at home so facilities like cameras or lenses need to be
purchased or hires, or specialist pieces of equipment may be required only for certain
scenes or certain days of shooting.
If the characters of your movie aren’t wearing ordinary or casual clothes, you also require
props, costumes or set design at given times.
The biggest post-production equipment usually isn’t free so you also have to think if in your
budget you can afford to use certain editing software, access to foley tracks/OST, use of
specialist effects software etc.
LOCATIONS

2. A successful movie has always an actual location scouting, this for the good of the color
scheme and for the consistency of the script, if the plot takes place in a school you can’t
shoot in a prison.
The pre-production requires all location to be thoroughly researched and considered prior
to shooting.
Consider any limitation of the site, try to have the ideal distance as show in your storyboard,
access only if you’re permitted to, if it requires a hiring cost during certain time try to cover
it and check if there wouldn’t be any weather issues.
You also must consider all the health and safety concerns, you can’t risk getting injured
yourself or get injured any of the staff, crew or cast member.
All these precautions must be taken.
PERSONNEL
Any movie must clearly identify the personnel required, you will certainly need help working
to ensure accuracy shooting, and the advice of experts or specialists will help you.
Cast and crew are important during the production so make sure that you have the right
people to work with, producing a movie it’s a team work so be careful about giving to a
match people’s skills with jobs allocated.
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
This would include all the things required for production and postproduction:
Scripts and storyboards are essential, these are essential for manage your timescale
because you will know which scenes you can shoot all together and which camera angle and
movement you will have to do during shooting.
Be sure to have all the Original filmed, library or sound material, this will make you sure that
you can start editing during the postproduction session.
Props and costumes, will help your movie to have the credibility it needs, the props and
costumes make your movie look as real as possible
CODES OF PRACTICE AND REGULATIONS
All relevant clearances for copyrighted materials or for use of the image of people in camera
must be obtained and documented.
You must obtain all the permission by who’s is working with you or who’s is working for you.
It all must by officially documented and signed as anyone can’t complain about work, they
have signed for.
The health and safety risk assessments must be maintained and stored.
2.) THE FORMAT FOR PRE-PRODUCTION PROCESS
THE PROPOSAL
The proposal is the basic idea written down to pitch the concept to prospective investors.
The writing of a proposal it’s the general summary of the premise of your film.
This provides abrief synopsis of what the plotline it’s going to be, some key information about
how the character are going to be and act and it also sums up the structure of the narrative.
This really helps you to being able to present your idea to a possiblecompany which you want
to finance the movie, with a proposal you can talk through all the main points of your movie,
and you can also make you consider who your target audience it’s going to be.
SCRIPTING: MASTER SCENE SCRIPT
Only after you have done the proposal, you can think about writing a script.

3. The universal accepted formatting for film scripting is known as Master Scene Script,
prospective studios will not even read scripts that are not produced in this format.
Why this? This because it’s designed to offer a straightforward and accessible format for
producers to show to investors.
The description and dialogue are mixed as to allow the reader to follow the story, which is
the most important thing and the technical information is very limited in this format.
This format is split into SCENE HEADINGS, NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION, and DIALOGUE BLOCKS.
A scene heading is known as a SLUGLINE, and is composed by interior vs. exterior, location
and time of day. Which also should be in capital letters. – For Example, Interior, Room 26 of
Sunderland College at 18.06.
The narrative description is the telling of the story as it unfolds on screen. It begins directly
below the scene heading.
The writing should be lean and visual, focusing on action that moves the story forward.
Though concise, it should have enough flair to engage readers. Use capital letters for sound
effects and for character names.
Write Only What Can be Seen and Heard, this because in a screenplay must be recorded. In
fact, the narrative description should never include anything that cannot be seen or heard. –
For Example, you cannot write and describe about a feeling that a character is having. The
only way to convey feelings, thoughts, and memories is via externalizing them in some way.
Which can be though an action, a dialogue or flashback scenes. Voiceover and offscreen are
always used as V.O. and O.S.
Never usescenenumbers, camera movements or angles when writing a specscript. And when
There is a third person form, there is the use of “we”- For Example, “We see Tony Montana
blowing up the door…”
The timing should follow a customary assumption in the industry that 1 page of screenplay
equals 1 minute of time on screen, this is convenient for a purpose of planning.
A movie lasts about 120 minutes, so the average script should be about 120 pages in length.
This convention helps describing that the passages should cover as many pages as the scene
is expected to run in real time. – For Example, if you sense that an action will take a minute
of screen time, it should be written to cover on entire page, not more or not less. The font
used is always courier and the size is always 12. Footers at the bottom right of a page says
“continued” only where a scene moves from a page to another and the next page has “cont.”
on the top left.
The dialogue blocks, also called “speeches”, are composed of three parts: character name,
wryly, and dialogue. The character names are written in upper caseand it shows who is talking
in that moment, the wrylies are written in lower case inside parenthesis and they indicate
how a line should be said, and dialogue is written in normal sentence case.
Wrylies should be used if the subject of the dialogue is not clear, try to keep them to a bare
minimum.
SCRIPTING: SHOOTING SCRIPTS
Shooting scripts are not or selling purposes, because they can be difficult to read, and this
may not give you the positive feedback from prospective investors. The main function of the
shooting script during production to shoot a movie, is to include any helpful information that
the director may need or request.
As they are used to go directly into production, they are written with much more detail then
the spec script, this because they can have elements that can’t be heard or seen, and they
may include scene numbers, editing transition, and camera angles.

4. You can add scene numbers and include techniques that can help you and the crew to shoot
specifying camera movement and editing.
STORYBOARDING
Screenplays and scripts once they’re completed, they’re converted into a storyboard. A
storyboard is the evaluation of a screenplay separating the shots into panels, which clearly
show the camera movement or angle that a determinate scene would have.
The storyboard helps the director to visualize the scene and finalize the technique to use
during the shooting, and if there is a problem, they must find a solution. This also helps to
check the overall time in shooting if it follows the initial timescale of the production.
SHOOTING SCHEDULE
The shooting schedule is a planned breakdown of everything to shoot each shooting day.
This should be organized in a logical and comfortable order, this because if you have to shoot
more than one scene in the same place, it would be faster and more efficient to do it all in a
day or a few days. This helps to cut down on time and hence budget. It also helps you to keep
signed all the locations where you already shot, and the location still to use.
OTHER PAPERWORK
You should have been able to declare that you officially had the permission to use some
material or to use certain location. For this you will need a Location Release Forms, which
will give you the permission to use certain location owned by other people.
Location Scouting Templates, which will give you some extra information about shooting
locations, also about the weather which can be rainy or windy, and can ruin shots or audio
recording, that will affect on your time schedule.
A Risk Assessment will make you collect information about potential physical or material risks
relating to cast, crew and equipment.
The Sound Template can be a table or a chart which will show you where sound may be used
or edited.
To avoid have any rights issues with music, images or video with copyright, you will need
some Copyright Clearances which will help you having an official permission to use it.
3.) THE FUNCTIONS OF PRE-PRODUCTION
If a pre-production is well thought out and effectively planned, this can bring you a lot of
benefits and advantages. A well-planned pre-production encourages revision, collaboration,
improvements and development.
It also allows the idea to be revised and improved- For Example, Scripts can go through more
than one revise and correction, the cast can not be the right one or the crew can leave the
project in the middle of the production.
In fact, during the shooting of Back to the Future, before Michael J. fox, the role of Marty
McFly was played by Eric Stoltz, but when the director felt that there was something wrong
with his performance, he decided to fire and replace him.
4.) THE PURPOSE OF PRE-PRODUCTION
The pre-production phase also has a legal and ethical aspect of responsibilities and
requirements to consider.
For a pre-production to be efficient, it should consider: Health and Safety procedures and
paperwork.

5. You will also need permission for the use of copyrighted material, private owned locations
and contracts for appearing in work.
You also have to consider a public liability for companies who are involved in the production
of your media, so you can’t risk to ruin the reputation of an organization that is working
with you, with public members that may be hurt or injured from your activity.
The Compliance Audit is a review of adherence to guidelines that are regulatory. Auditors
review the security polices, accessing controls and risk management procedures during a
compliance audit.
You also have to consider of a wider guideline. In UK we have the BBFC regulator of films
and video.
They provide age rating to film materials, giving to your movie a target audience and a
distribution platform in mind, and this can influence the thought of seeing or not seeing
your movie of the audience.
YAs a director you have to consider the actor’s permission to being in the movie, you have
to make them signed an as detailed as possible contract, as the actor know in detail what
he’s signing for and he can’t complain about actions he has to do because he signed for.
There are legal issues even for street filming, for this you have to take a permission to film in
any public space with an obtained license.