The Pre-Production Process

Over the last few weeks, my two colleagues and I devised, filmed, and edited a 90 second short film titled 'Ode to Boots and Cats'. It was made in order to be a legitimate entry into the 'DepicT!' short film competition on the web. Whilst it may not be entered into the competition, it is still uploaded to our College's YouTube channel, which would make it distributed on the web. Web distribution is a relatively new form of media, only really picking up speed within the last ten years. The concept of net neutrality and various other factors make websites such as YouTube free ground; anyone can upload any sort of video (within reason), and the barrier of entry is nigh-on nonexistent. Every single video on YouTube is free to view to anyone (they tried adding paid subscription-based channels but it didn't go down too well at all) and all revenue for content creators is gained through advertising. Some would say this platform isn't suitable for a fully-fledged feature length release, and especially for $100m+ budget productions, it wouldn't be. But, for smaller budgets, it has worked out before.

Of course, this is not the only type of moving image production that exists. There are at least a few different types, all for different audiences and circumstances. These include but are not limited to:
Feature length film - This is your usual 90 minute+ film you go to the cinema to see; it can be either fact or fiction (although the vast majority are fiction), and can cover pretty much any topic under the sun.

TV show - With the exception of one-off 'specials', TV shows are usually in an episodic format, spanning anything from 4 episodes to multiple seasons with 30+ episodes a piece.


Music video - A video to accompany a song released as a single by a recording artist, part of its campaign to get more people interested, and a deep-rooted part of the music industry as a whole.

TV advert - Existing alongside the TV show in a symbiotic relationship, these exist to help sell a product. The advertisers pay the TV channel to show their adverts, and they then get exposure. This is how a lot of TV channels make their money.

All these types of production can be distributed in many ways, but a lot of them are inter-compatible. A TV show is, of course, shown on TV. But it can also be shown on the web, or on on-demand services such as Netflix, LoveFilm, or Tesco's Blinkbox. Music videos are normally on TV, but are increasing in quantity on websites such as YouTube. Feature-lengths are normally released in theaters, but, afterwards, are released domestically on Blu-Rays or DVDs. However, direct-to-DVD releases are also common. There is also film festivals such as NFFTY (National Film Festival for Talented Youth), Sundance, and Cannes. These festivals accept both short and feature-length films, and are a great way for budding film-makers to get their names out there.

Films and other moving image productions can end up costing a lot of money. Not all can be successfully funded out of everyone's pockets, so where does the finance come from? Well, there are a few places. Most common of big productions is a straight-up studio investment, where the film-makers will pitch their idea to the studio, maybe they'll have a script with them, and the studio will choose to either fund production (known as 'greenlighting' in the industry) or to 'regretfully' decline. If that's a little too scary, in Britain we have what we call the BFI, or British Film Institute. As well as being a building in London, the people there can use the Lottery fund to give money to various projects, much in the vein of studio investment. In reality, there is no sure-fire way of getting your film made unless the money comes from your own pocket. Which people do, if they're extremely wealthy or the film is extremely low budget. Recently Peter Jackson made a recreation of a lost scene from 1933's King Kong out of his own pocket, and many people such as Robert Rodriguez started out making small films with low or no budget.

Robert Rodriguez at some form of premiere

Even I made an awful little no-budget number two or so years ago.
Recently, a new form of funding has arisen, and it is known as crowd-funding. With sites like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, people can submit their creative projects (anything from a keychain to a feature-length epic) and people browsing the site can choose to 'back' the project, and pledge a certain amount of money (again, anything from a pound to £10,000) to the project. If the project is successfully funded before the end of the campaign, the money goes to the project and it's up to the creators from there. If it isn't fully funded, the money is refunded to the backers. Crowd-funding is a popular option because, if the project is funded successfully, they have full creative freedom over their project without a studio making choices for them.

So, after the finance is obtained, what is it spent on? In short, absolutely everything. Every person on the team will probably want to be paid - when this spans out to outsourcing from multiple VFX firms etc. then the money can already accumulate. Unless you're making a small thing with your friends in your spare time, then people are paid for this as a full time job.

A RED Scarlet

This isn't even the most expensive thing. Equipment has to come from somewhere, and most people don't own a £10,000 RED Epic to film on. So, it stands to reason that a lot of people would hire equipment for a film. This reduces cost, but if shooting goes over schedule then the cost can once again accumulate. A camera isn't the only piece of equipment that needs hiring either. A tripod or some other mount is pretty critical, unless the found-footage look is being aimed for. Lights, set, microphones and other audio equipment, mounts for that audio equipment... It all stacks up.
So you're paying the people on set, you've hired the equipment that will be used on set, but the people on set are going to go hungry. Telling everyone to bring a packed lunch from home would be appropriate on smaller scale productions, but it isn't exactly reliable on larger sets. So, it's probably a good idea to get a catering team involved.

A few examples of ILM's work in the industry

If it is indeed a large production, then chances are there will be VFX involved. This is the case with most Hollywood blockbusters at the moment, and very few have their effects done in house. Outsourcing post-production VFX is big business at the moment, and at the forefront of it as Lucasfilm's Industrial Light and Magic, who have been in the business since A New Hope (Lucas, 1977). However, it's not uncommon to have multiple firms doing various parts of the film. Other things can be outsourced, too, such as props and costumes etc.
Facilities, of course, also cost money. As well as production, filmmakers need somewhere to put their computers (that they must also pay for) that post production will take place on, and there's the render farms, and the electrical bill on top of that.
Sometimes locations require a fee to film on, and then there's getting the actors/equipment/crew/everything to these locations, and this too can cost a lot of money. There's also accommodation for where the personnel are going to stay overnight in etc.

Pixar's render farm at their main office complex in Emeryville

This all mostly applies to big-budget Hollywood films, but what about Ode to Boots and Cats? Well, we didn't have a huge budget. In fact, we didn't spend any money at all. But that's just because the College had equipment for us to borrow, and our wonderful cast worked for free (because we were filming for an hour). If we were starting from scratch, our requirements would have still accumulated quite the cost.
We would have needed to rent out the camera and tripod for an hour for filming, paid everyone for an hour's work, bought a capable computer and Premiere license (that's the pricier part), rented a dictaphone for the ADR, gained permission for filming (Which we did) and obtained props (like the sunglasses). As it stands, with no-budget film-making people rarely start completely from scratch, and the whole show survives completely on the power of favours. That is to say, asking people nicely for things.

The differences between a big-budget production and a no-budget one go further than just finance. The amount of personnel and job distribution are also much different. See, in a larger-scale production there are loads of specialized people doing their own very specific jobs, such as the infamous key grip (who just carries equipment around on set). When you're in a small group, all the jobs are shared between, like, 3 people. In our case, I was simultaneously the cameraman and director (and key grip), Tom was acting, writing, and co-directing, we all edited, the list goes on; whereas in a larger scale you'll have hundreds upon hundreds working off set (known to the trade as 'contributors'), such as the army of VFX artists, the composer, the orchestra, the producer, consultants, legal teams, editors, marketers, distributors, make-up artists, costume designers... the list goes on. An example of such out-of-the-spotlight contributors would be the elusive Foley Artist, who arguably has a role in pretty much every major film that has more than 10 people working on it. More specifically, a more well-known sound designer in general is a man called Ben Burtt, who worked on Star Wars (R2D2's iconic bleeping and blooping), WALL-E (he provided most of the robots' synthesised voices and sound effects), and the voice for ET.

Time is always a factor. Always.

With Ode to Boots and Cats, we and other groups working alongside us had quite the lenient schedule. We had quite a few setbacks involving cast and crew members, and as such we were a little behind everyone else. But we still managed to finish editing around the same time as everyone else and before the deadline, so I can only assume we used our time well. Of course, consequences of not meeting deadlines in class are marginally kinder than those in the professional industry. If you miss deadlines in the industry, there are delays. If there are delays, money is lost. If money is lost, your job probably is as well. It's also worth noting the more social effects of missing deadlines in the industry; filmmakers and other contributors can miss out on jobs where contractors have decided that they're too unreliable for a specific job.



Returning to the topic of equipment briefly, it's probably worth knowing where it would be sensible to rent such equipment from. After a bit of researching, the closest place I could find that rented out the kind of equipment we were after was Alias Hire in Manchester. They offer cameras, mounts, lenses, lights, pretty much everything one would require for a conventional filmed piece. Of course, all this wasn't available to us for Ode to Boots and Cats. For that we had 1 camcorder, 1 tripod, 1 dictaphone, a Mac, and a license for Premiere Pro. All of that equipment belongs to the College, and was loaned out to us free of charge to film our piece.

This location would probably be rather popular

One of the trickiest parts of pre-production is securing locations. Aside from all the finnicky paperwork etc., I myself have found that the location really ties to getting your vision onto something tangible, something that the people I worked with for Mint know full well. This is where location recces come in helpful. This is where a location scout - typically a team of 2 or 3 people on larger productions (in our case we all went) - will go out and look at various suitable locations to film. They will then take some pictures, and I mean a good amount of pictures - It's pretty crucial for the director to see exactly what's going on in each location. Accompanying the pictures are a form with contact details, available hours, parking availability, power options, and any other observations. We actually did some proper recces, they're a little further down the page.
Another thing that needs to be secured is permissions. This is where a location release comes in. During a private scenario, the filmmakers will get in touch with whoever owns the location, explain that they're making a film and wish to use the location for an hour/day/week, perhaps pay a bit of money, and then they're legally able to film. If it's a public spot, it's still a good idea to get in touch with local authorities (especially if your short involves guns or other weapons), but it isn't necessary to have any tangible documents for that.
As for our locations, they were public but we didn't have any weapons, so we just sent a quick email to the local police to clear everything up. We chose the ones we did because we needed somewhere with a decent amount of open space (because, in my opinion at least, it makes the awkward silence jokes that much more effective), that was relatively unoccupied, and had that sort of inner-city look. The one we initially chose worked okay, but on the day of filming we saw that someone was waiting at the stop (something we did take into account, but couldn't really do anything about). So, last minute, we did a quick scan of the area and found one that worked out much better for the image in the end.
There were a few risks involved with filming at this location, namely the fact that it was by a main road, and there were frequent cars. I had to cross the road a few times with all the equipment to get the various shot distances, amongst other issues. Of course, this was all accounted for by our wonderful Angelo, who did the risk assessment in our group while I was finishing off chasing up people about talent releases. What he did was think about all sorts of things that could go wrong on set, and then construct contingency plans around those things going wrong. This way we had everything accounted for, and would know how to prevent most disasters, and what to do should one occur.

That stock footage I mentioned

The term 'materials' includes more than your satin and your hessian when talking about the professional media industry. It means anything from sound-bytes to typical stock footage such as the infamous helicopter cityscape shots used in a lot of films. Usually in larger productions it's sensible to get some of the more minute details from third-party sources, but one has to tread carefully. If the material is not 'creative commons' or royalty-free, then licenses must be paid. I, myself, tend to be somewhat of a purist, and unless I can't actually make the materials I need (more often than not this ends up being music) I will make them myself.
More often than not it is cheaper to have most materials made in-house, but there is the occasion where outsourcing would be cheaper (such as renting props, or paying a music license).

When paying for licenses and using that in your own work, there are a lot of legal things to consider. Copyright is (this may just be from my personal experience here) a massive headache, and there are lots of ins and outs to look at, especially with film.
Copyright is, at its core, the unwritten rule that stops people from copying and prospering from other's work. And this is useful. However, with huge collaborative efforts like film, the whole effort can't be boiled down to a single person, and as such the copyright is split into multiple parts.

Adding a little specificity, in regards to Boots and Cats, copyright didn't really affect us in the slightest. We didn't use a single piece of material, be it footage, audio, or anything on set that either holds copyright to someone else or we didn't make outright.
Except for one thing.
There's a little, often overlooked part of copyright law called Performer's Rights. This basically means that each performer in the piece holds the right to their own performance, and that the filmmakers would have to obtain consent from the performers before their image is used or distributed. Now, Ode to Boots and Cats suffered a bit of a delay as far as its public release was concerned in that we lacked tangible evidence of our performers' consent by the time the videos were uploaded. Namely, we still had to chase our extras up about their talent releases. I'm sure they were all just fine about having their image on YouTube, but lawsuits unfortunately need more than verbal confirmation, and we needed those pieces of paper before we could upload the video to YouTube. Of course, since this was somewhat of a casual production, and there was no theater release or overseas box office, we didn't really need those pieces of paper, and I'm not a criminal for uploading a video of a 14-year-old version of myself being battered with a small stringed instrument. What we participated in was more of an exercise in pre-production, and those kinds of headaches surely reflected what happens in larger releases.

Clearance means, by word of The Free Dictionary, 'official certification of blamelessness, trustworthiness, or suitability'. This translates to this context as basically any form of permissions given to or by the filmmakers relevant to the production.

Public Liability Insurance is insurance that covers any member of the public that is injured on set, be it through their own means or otherwise. It's really rather helpful because without it, someone walks onto set, trips up, and breaks their arm. They could sue if you didn't have the insurance, and with a film any unnecessary expenditure is extremely bad.
Completion Guarantees (known as Completion Bonds in America) are a form of legal agreement between a funding body and the filmmakers, which dictates that the filmmakers must deliver a finished product at an agreed date, with the agreed parameters met. It's a bit of a grey area as far as insurance is concerned, as there doesn't appear to be any form of protection if the filmmaker goes over schedule.

So after the film is made, finished, completed, it needs to be checked over to see who it would be suitable to show to. Enter regulatory bodies such as the UK's OFCOM. What Ofcom does is license and regulate almost every single form of communication-based media in the country, and check it over for unscrupulous behaviour such as that of the phone hacking scandal a year or two back. I say it regulates almost all communication-based media in the country because there's quite a large section that it doesn't regulate: the BBC. The BBC instead has its own little regulating body - aptly named the BBC Trust - that regulates and governs output from the BBC. It's different from OFCOM in the sense that all it regulates is the BBC, and nothing else. However, this may change in the future, as rising tensions at the BBC may mean the dissolving of the Trust and the handing over of regulation to OFCOM.

Film is a little bit different. With film we have the BBFC - the British Board of Film Classification. This is the board that gives films their age ratings - 12A, 15, 18 etc. They are responsible for those certificates seen at the start of the film when you go to the cinema. Their job is to make sure younger viewers don't see things unsuitable for themselves, such as inherently disturbing material or sexual imagery. They do this by enforcing a number of ratings (those mentioned above) on films, which decide who can watch which film based on their age.

I haven't mentioned the internet as of yet, and this is for a reason. Due to the extremely low barrier of entry for online video production (literally anyone anywhere with an internet connection and a camera can upload a video for free) it is extremely difficult to police and regulate. So, it isn't. To an extent. Various websites have their own restrictions, such as YouTube being picky about nudity or extreme gore, or Vimeo's stand against hateful or discriminatory content. But it is nowhere near as standardized as TV or film.

Finally, there are trade unions/associations. What are they? Well, they exist outside of film too. They are essentially a group of workers in a similar profession to each other, which function off of each other as a platform to stand on against employers when further unscrupulous behaviour is threatened. It's just as important to any industry as competition - if the employers have absolute power then eventually pay would just decrease and decrease, working conditions would ultimately fail and no-one would be having as much fun as they would with a trade union.

PACT is a particular trade union (or association, as they call themselves on their website) for moving image media producers. As well as representing the wider industry when making sure working conditions are suitable, they also serve to promote content and get broadcast deals and distribution agreements etc. BECTU is a similar union in that they protect jobs and improve pay and conditions, but rather than promotion they instead offer such services as training, or special benefits for members.

REFERENCES

Kickstarter T+C - http://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use

RED Cameras - http://www.red.com/store/cameras

Industrial Light and Magic - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Light_&_Magic

Ben Burtt - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0123785/

Performer's Rights - http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-performer.htm

Public Liability Insurance - http://www.gocompare.com/business-insurance/public-liability-insurance/

Completion Guarantee - http://www.creativeskillset.org/film/knowledge/article_5105_1.asp

BBC Trust - http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/

OFCOM - http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/

YouTube T+C - http://www.youtube.com/static?gl=GB&template=terms

Vimeo T+C - http://vimeo.com/terms

Trade Unions - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union