Pre-Production Techniques for Creative Media
Industries
Pre-production is a vital part of every production.
80% of media production is the planning stage. This includes production
paperwork, storyboards, finance and much more. This is the key stage of any production as filming will go smoothly only if pre production is all complete. The other 20% is the making, filming and editing of the production. This is a more efficient way of creating a production as
money is time and therefore if there were to be no planning then the production wouldn't be organised. This is for all types of media industry production including film, advert and television.
Type of Production
There are many different types of production. Such as
film, television and radio. All of these different types of productions have
similar approaches to them when it comes to pre-production. For instance film
production will pay to have crew and cast to work on the set of production for how ever many days it takes to film. Television production is very similar to film, the only major difference is the amount of people. Film has a huge amount of crew to fund, whether its for acting or producing. There are hundreds of people who take part in film whereas, with a television series there may only be a few people on set daily. The bigger, most high quality and popular films or TV programmes will have more people working on. This is to get the job done quicker and to have more experience from a variety of different people with different talents. On the other hand there is audio production. This consists of fewer people working and only little equipment including a microphone and mixing board. I recently created an advert and when filming this I had two people helping directing and filming then I asked my sister to be the actor for my advertisement. This was fairly simple to film and managed with the three crew members that I had. For this there was no finance as I used equipment from college.
Finance
Finance varies with media production as it depends on how many crew members are needed for the job and also how much the production is costing that is in the making. For instance, high quality films that star the biggest actors out there at the moment would cost millions considering how popular the actors in the production are. However when you compare this to a TV series, this may only cost a few thousand as there will be a fewer amount of both actors and producers. Productions raise there funds in a variety of ways including being sponsored by big product companies to promote. From my recently made advert the money I would of had to get from an advertising company to fund and promote at my advertisement as there was little crew and a very small budget.
Time
Time is vital in all productions especially larger productions. Some production members may have to rent out equipment and you only get a certain about of days to keep it. Therefore if something goes wrong one day, this means one day wasted with not getting any further in the production and also raises costs. In these types of productions, money is time. If anything were to go wrong then it is most likely because the pre production has not been completed properly. In my production I recorded the dates, time and crew members of who will be with me on the couple of days I had filming. This is important as it gives the crew time and reassurance of when they are needed and it is important for me to of planned so I knew where we were going on which day at a certain time.
Personnel
The bigger the production the more crew needed, the smaller the production the fewer crew are needed. Larger productions such as popular film, tend to have more experienced and knowledgable crew members. This means the costings will be higher than a small TV series production as they would only need crew with the basic skills who wouldn't get paid as much. With my production, my crew consisted of 3 production members and 1 actor all with little experience. My pre production paperwork shows this and shows a consent given from the actor for starring in my advert. This makes it clear that she was happy to be part of the production.
Facilities
Facilities again vary on how large the production is. With film production there are many cameras, microphones, tripods and other equipment needed. Equipment is where a lot of money is spent in big productions such as film. Smaller productions may only need a few cameras, tripods and microphones on set at a time. This makes the production cheaper as there is less equipment to pay for. For my production I used a Canon 600D, a tripod and a microphone to record sound. This is all clearly stated in my paperwork of what equipment I took to what locations. It also states how I got the equipment to the locations.
Materials
The materials used for productions are similar to what I listed before including a variety of different cameras, tripods and microphones. These are the important and most obvious materials of production needed. Other materials could be things such as props, costumes and stage builds. These materials are all used by the actors and are set up by the production crew so everything is all ready for the actors. The more money spent on the production the more high quality and more materials are used. For my production, I used 5 glass bottles which I stuck my logo on that I created on Photoshop. Also I used the obvious materials which were the camera, tripod and microphone. The paperwork shows all of this and as my production was only small and for educational purposes, no money was spent.
Contributors
Contributors are a big part of production. With larger production there will be many contributors such as actors, producers and also companies that sponsor the production. This gives the production more recognition and raises funding costs. For my production, I had 3 contributors with me. This was beneficial as they were all able to help with the filming part of the production and also be in the advertisement.