depict assignment
Film-the pre-production process
Types of production- the type of
production we did was a short 90 second depict film to enter the competition. We
looked at the depict website for examples of past short films made by people
and other students. We distributed are depict film on to the colleges YouTube
channel, it will also be distributed to the depict website
Other types of moving image media product are animation,
adverts, news broadcasts, tv programmes, highlights, music videos, feature
films (90 minutes). An example of a different moving image media product is the
feature film spiderman no way home.
The different types of
distribution for these types of moving image media are the use of social media,
this could be posting trailers on YouTube, uploading to adverts to snapchat,
Instagram and Facebook. Social media platforms used will depend a lot on the
target audience for that product. There also television adverts that can be
used but again target audience will need to be considered because a large
amount of people now especially teenagers watch their entertainment on
streaming services now like Netflix or Disney +. Posters/billboards is a good
way to distribute the word about a moving media product around to people,
however this method is more likely for big high budget forms of moving media,
like the film spider man no way home. For this film it is likely that you will
have seen the film advertised on the sides of buses and big electronic
billboards in cities, this is due to the film having a high budget as the film
was made by the franchise Disney, who are a massive franchise that make several
different forms of moving image media ranging from animated films to live
action films.
Finance and sources of funding
There are several sources of funding
for moving image media products, an example of this is sponsorship. This means
that a company will pay the film makers to effectively associate their piece of
moving image media with their brand/product, a direct example of this is go compare
sponsoring the television show dancing on ice. Adverts are another source of
funding that are usually used on television programmes that are shown on
channels like Dave or comedy central. Crowd funding is another way to fund
moving image media products, this method however is more commonly on used for
low budget movies or new filmmakers, as you will not see a franchise like
Disney trying to crowdfund for a new spiderman movie.
There are lots of things that moving image media producers must
keep in mind when it comes to the budgeting as there are many costs that are
involved with making a piece of media, examples of this for a big feature film
like spider man no way home are, set, props, editing software, filming
locations/ studios, insurance and wages. Wages for a film like this are going
to be substantial because yes, the stars in the movie/the actors are going to
have very high wages but there are many other people that are required that are
also going to have expensive wages, like makeup artists and camera crews and
even editors. They may also have location scouts to find appropriate filming
locations. For my groups short depict film we obviously did not have to get
anything near this scale of detail. For our project we needed to obtain a
filming location, props and costumes and we needed to get an extra actor that
was not apart of our initial group. The location that we ended up filming at
was only a 5-minute walk away from the college that our group attends, meaning
that we had no travel costs, whilst we understand that we would have had to
spend money on props for the piece we were lucky enough to have all the
resources we needed around us, we needed a manakin head, a prop knife and just
general costumes for the entire group but again no one had to buy anything that
we didn’t already have.
Personnel
Now comparing the makeups of a typical team of a low budget
short film a television programme and a Hollywood feature film. For a low
budget film, the key thing is that the teams will be considerably smaller due
to the lower budget, this may lead to looking for staff with crossover skills
so they can cover more than one role so that less professionals have to be
hired and paid a wage. For example, finding camera operators that are also
trained in using editing software, this may however mean that it will take
longer for a low budget film to produce a media product because they will have
to wait for staff members to finish a certain task before they can move onto
another, unlike a Hollywood film that would have different departments of staff
all work simultaneously to produce the product. low budget films will likely
have less recognisable actors that re trying to be discovered as they can’t
afford to pay Hollywood actor prices, it’s the same with all staff, they are
not likely to have a director who has directed big Hollywood films or even hair
and makeup artists. With a television programme they have different things to
consider to both high and low budget films, they key thing is they need to make
sure that they have people in the team that will stay with the show for as long
as they are needed, meaning if a programme is going to run for 5-6 seasons they
are going to want to make sure that the actors they hire are going to be able
to commit to that amount of time and make them sign a contact agreeing to film
a certain amount of episodes. While this is not so vital with other staff
roles, it would still be preferred to keep certain personnel the same to keep
the programme consistent to what the viewers like. these roles would be,
editors, director and the writer as these are the roles along with the actors
that really keep the essence of the show. A television programme will likely
have a smaller team a Hollywood feature film would have but likely bigger than
a low budget short film.
In our depict group we were only a group of 3 which consisted
of myself, Holly and Sarah. The first thing we had to designate when we had
finalised the story and the characters was who was going to fill what role.
Holly and I took on the roles of actors and we decided it would be a good idea
for Sarah to be the videographer as she felt the most comfortable using a
camera as she studies photography at college and has her own camera. I was
happy to be filmed and so was holly so it made the most sense to take up these
roles. The dilemma that we then had is that we had 3 characters in our depict
as our group initially had 4 people in it. So we had to get an actor in to play
the 3rd role. Luckily Lucie who was in another group in our class
was available on the day we were filming and was willing to help us and be our
3rd actor. When the filming process had been finished, we had to
edit the piece. As we were such a small group, we all shared the jobs in this
process and didn’t really need to designate specific jobs. We all took turns at
editing however Sarah was the most comfortable using the editing software as
she had edited photos before, so she took a lead role and helped both holly and
I whilst we were editing.
As I may have roughly mentioned
already there are staff members that are vital to the production of a media
text outside of the production team itself that are maybe not thought about
enough. The writers are a big one, because although they may have some role in
the execution of the film/show it is probably minimal as that is the job of the
director and his production team. But also, there are the makeup artists and
costume designers that sometimes have to spend several hours on one actor just
to get them looking like their character, an example of this is the character
Vecna from the Netflix original stranger things. Set designers are another key
part of a production as well. For our depict we did not need any of these
things, these are usually staff members that come with bigger film and
television sets, however are still likely to be seen in lower budget films.
Time
In the professional media industry, it is extremely important
to hit the deadlines you have set as a whole organisation. If certain staff
members do not meet their deadlines, then it is highly likely that they will be
sacked from their position unless there are very special circumstances.
Production company’s usually have extremely tight deadlines that they must
follow so it is vital that individuals hit deadlines, depending on their
contracts they could find themselves in legal troubles as well and it will ruin
their reputation and make it very difficult for them to find work in moving
image media going forward. Now if production does not hit the deadlines and they
find themselves lagging behind then it’s extremely likely that they will face
legal repercussions from their higher ups and could be sued for massive amounts
of money. This it is so important for production teams to make sure that they
have a team of trusted employees with good reputations, or the entire piece of
media may be in jeopardy.
For our depict project on a whole we did well at hitting the
deadlines that were set in class however in the editing phase we were slightly
over the deadline due to audio issues. Are audio had not picked up when we
filmed the depict, meaning that we had to record the audio separately and place
it over the film, this proved to be very challenging as the speed of the
recorded audio often did not match the speed of the mouth movement that had
been filmed so this process took longer than we would have liked, and therefore
we were over the time.
Equipment/facilities
A website I have found for a professional moving image
production house in Bedfordshire, the things that this facility house has on
offer are full Production Rehearsal, Facilities, Recording Studio, Photography,
Audio System Hire, Workshop Space, Catering, Audio Recording. I couldn’t find
any prices on their website however they offer several postproduction services.
Another media facility house I have found is the gravity house in London. some
of the services that they have listed are, cutting rooms, 10gb connectivity,
vfx production space and screening space. At the university in Norwich there is
a media resources outlet which can give you access to a whole range of tv and
film equipment.
For our depict project we were able to take advantage out of
the equipment that the college has to offer therefore meaning that we did not
have to spend any money on filming equipment. The college offers you a camera,
tripod and other pieces of equipment to hold the camera depending on what you
need. In our case we only needed the camera and a basic tripod to support it as
well as the light that can attach to thee top of the camera so we were able to
light up the house that we were shooting in. to obtain this equipment we had to
go to the area in college where the equipment is stored called skills and book
the equipment out under one of our names, making you responsible for the equipment
while it is in your possession.
Locations
Location recces are investigations into a certain location to
determine whether it is a suitable place to film, this involves making sure the
location has everything that is needed for the shoot ensuring that it is a safe
location to be used and that it can legally and logistically be used for
filming. A location release form is a legal document that gives permission to
use a certain area for filming, whether its public land or private property a
location release form shows that you are legally allowed to be filming in that
location and gives the right for the location to be seen in a finished moving
image media production.
For our depict video we only used one location as it was all
we needed, the entire depict was set inside a house and we found a house that
met the needs we had that was close by, the house that we used is owned by
Sarah’s grandmother, so she knew the location well and this made it very easy
to get the location release form. The main reason that we picked this house was
the convenience of it due to it being so close to the college. We didn’t really
have any risks that we had to face when sorting out location for our depict
however we did face a few logistical issues. First of all we had settled on a
location for our depict at a member of our groups house and we had already
sorted out the forms and were read to film there, however not long before we
due to film they dropped out of the college leaving us a person short and
without a filming location. Which meant we had to figure out a location all
over again although it worked out better in the end for where we ended up
filming. It was more difficult to get a date and therefore the only date that
we could get where we could all do was near the end of the filming period this
meant that our group transitioned to the editing stage a lot later then all of
the other groups. But everything fell into place in the end and all the issues
were overcome.
Materials
The various types of materials that you may need for a
production are things like music, also if film makers are making a film that is
based on a true event they need to collect, materials required to make it
follow the real events, like titanic they had to acquire materials to make it
somewhat realistic to the original film. Music is something that can be
difficult to get because of copyright rules a lot of money may have to be paid
to feature a song in moving image media, also it costs a lot of money to have
certain products/brands in films and tv shows, for example films have paid lots
of money to use apple products in their films like the iPhone. A financial
consideration when it comes to materials is travel and transport, it is
important to keep in mind where the actors they are hiring live in regard to
where they are filming, and travel to different filming locations. Also, the
costs of software and other materials not directly associated to production
team.
Legal issues
Some legal considerations for using certain materials are
making sure that they are allowed to use the materials, that they have
purchased the permission to show the materials in their piece. Copyright
protects work and stops other people/businesses from using the product without
permission, a piece of moving image media will automatically become protected
by copyright. Copyright prevents people
from, copying work, distributing it as their own, performing, showing or playing
work that isn’t theirs in public. Luckily, we weren’t really effected by
copyright for our depict the only thing that was influenced by copyright
regulations was the music as we had to make sure that we used copyright free
music. Clearance is getting permission to use work owned by a third party.
Public liability insurance covers the cost of claims that could be made by the
public for any accidents that may happen connected to a business’s activities.
Completion guarantee is also known as completion bond, the insurance protects
the film or moving image media form being made and offers a financial
guarantee.
Regulation
OFCOM is a office of communications that receives complaints
about many forms of media products that are out for the public to read, listen
to, watch. OFCOM makes sure that they give the public the best from their
broadband, mobile services etc. they also work to make sure that people don’t
get scammed by media products. The BBFC stands for the British board of film
classification. It is a independent non-profit organisation whose role is to
classify films and has been doing so since 1912, they have also been
classifying video tapes and discs since the mid-1980s, and have more recently
been overseeing online content. One of the biggest differences between the BBFC
and OFCOM is that the BBFC is a non-governmental organisation as OFCOM is.
Trade unions and trade associations.
Trade unions are groups of employees who work to make
employment better for people. Some of the things that trade unions do are, make
significant changes to a national minimum wage, improving worker safety,
improving living standards and improved parental leave. This work makes them
very important for improving working and living conditions for citizens in the
uk. A trade association is a usually a
group of experts that come together to promote common interests and get
involved in public relation activities such as advertising and education,
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