Requirements for a Moving Image Production

The Pre-Production Process.

In this blog post I will be talking about the different requirements for making a moving image production. We produced a 90 second short for a web based competition called DepicT! Our 90 second short is called 'Barking up the wrong tree' and was distributed on YouTube. We were given a week and a half to shoot, a week and a half for pre-production and a week and a half to edit. But due to absences throughout the class, the overall time was slightly extended. Making a feature length moving image production will take a lot more time, effort and personnel in order to complete. Other types of moving image productions include: TV programs, animations, Gifs, and TV adverts. Other types of distribution methods involve physical distribution, for example, selling physical copies of DVDs in stores. And digital distribution such as websites which allow you to watch movies that are either in cinema or not even out yet for free. Others include: Cinema, YouTube and non illegal websites like Netflix or Amazon Prime. YouTube will have advertisement companies pay YouTubers to have an advert of a film put in front of their video, if the YouTuber accepts, they will get paid to have that advert put in front of their video, if this happens, people will have to watch that advert first and then will hopefully want to go and watch the film. Cinemas have the movies displayed there first so if they have a successful viewing rate, they will then be put onto DVD and will be released.  

Sources of funding and finance:

Kickstarter is a source of funding that is known as Crowd Funding, which a lot of people use to fund a project they are wanting to film. In order for this to work someone has to raise a certain amount of money withing a certain time limit and if they succeed, they will then be able to create their desired project. A few films that have been funded by Kickstarter are: Wish I was here, and Star Trek: Axanar. There are other websites like Indiegogo are also used for the same purpose however on Indiegogo if you do not reach the required amount of money when the time limit is up, unlike Kickstarter where you will lose all the money you gained and are left with nothing, Indiegogo lets you keep the money that you have obtained and with that money, you will have to make something with it. Another source of funding for moving image productions would be investors, for example, Megan Ellison and Robert Rodriguez. Megan Ellison is an American film producer who is best known for producing Zero Dark Thirty, Her and American Hustle. Ellison has also provided funding for a fair few movies such as Waking Madison, Main Street and one of the most popular, True Grit which was released at the end of 2010. Robert Rodriguez is an American filmmaker and screenwriter who produced the 1992 film El Mariachi. In order to fund his movie he sold his body to science to gain enough money to produce it. Another source of funding for a moving image production would be lottery funding. Lottery funding is when the lottery donates to different film charities in order to produce their desired movie, you can also go onto the lottery funding website and set up your own funding project.

Requirements for any moving image production:

Some of the requirements needed to make a moving image production includes:

• Equipment - Cameras, lighting, props and editing software
• Locations - Different sets (In public, or round someone's house)
• Cast - Actors, talents
• Crew - Director, Producer, Editors, screenwriter, scriptwriter and a lot more
• Transport getting to and from certain locations
• Permissions to use certain locations 
• Insurance - If any equipment gets broken then you will need to pay for replacements. 

These are most of the requirements needed to make a moving image production. In our 90 second short we only needed a few of these requirements, such as, equipment, permissions and of course, a cast.

Personnel:

When making a moving image production there is a lot of personnel involved, for example, you first of all need talents, which are the actors for your movie. And you will also need a crew, or production team which usually consists of:

• Director - Is someone who controls everything that happens in a film. 
• Producer- The producer is the person who hires the director, raises money for the film and oversees production and post production. 
• Screenwriter - Someone who comes up with the story for your moving image production. 
• Scriptwriter - Someone who creates the script for the media production. 
• Editors - Edit the production after it has been shot. 
• Post-production crew- anyone who is involved with editing. 

The makeup of a typical team for a low budget short would include: A director, a producer, the cast and crew a screenwriter and a scriptwriter. For a television programme the team is usually the same as the low budget short but also has a location manager, make-up artist set designer and costume designer and specialist editors. And finally for a Hollywood feature film you will also be needed camera crews, an art department, special effects team and also stunt teams and stunt doubles.
For our 90 second shorts we were only in groups of three so there was a fair bit of work involved for just three people so we tried our best to split the work evenly so we were able to reach the deadline and complete all of the work on time.

Time:

For our 90 second short we were given a week and a half to shoot, edit and to do all the pre-production paperwork that was necessary, but because of various absences in class, this time was extended. My group stuck to the time frame well as we finished our filming quite quickly with good quality and succession. This gave us a lot of time to finish any pre-production that was needed and also gave us a lot of time to edit the film to make it the best we possibly could. In the media industry if someone was to miss a deadline for anything at all, they will unfortunately lose their job because in those kind of conditions, it is really crucial that deadlines are met. For our 90 second short we did end up meeting the deadline, in fact we had completed all the editing for our film with one lesson to spare.

Equipment/Facilities:

For our film we need to use a Go Pro camera as our whole film is shot from the point of view of the main character. In order to do this we had to hire a camera from the college using our student cards, we also had to fill out an insurance form meaning if anything were to happen to the camera whilst it was out, the person who had taken it would have to pay for a replacement. A good place to hire cameras from is a website called Hireacamera. The only equipment needed for our 90 second short we the camera itself, masks, and the guns. Some of the prices on Hireacamera vary quite a lot, ranging from prices as low as £35 and as high as £111 to rent for a day. 

Locations:

A location recce is when someone goes out and takes photos of the place that you and your team are going to film at, here is an example of what we had to do for our location recce for our 90 second short: 

This was the location in which we were going to be filming at for our 90 second short. A location release is when you have to get permission to film at a certain location. My group produced a location release as we wanted to film in a forest that was owned by a college near James Paget Hospital, this is what one looks like:

For our 90 second short we originally had the idea to film behind the Nexus engineering college in a forest, in order to do so we had to fill out a location release for permission purposes, we chose to film when it got dark to give our film a really tense feel and we chose this location originally because it is a large area with a suitable environment as we needed to climb trees and luckily there were an abundance of fallen trees. However we ended up using the Rec opposite the college as filming in the dark did not turn out as expected because it was near impossible to see anything when watching the footage back. So we had to film during the day and as we could not arrange another day to go back there as it needed to be out of college hours and because of others not having enough free time after college, we had to stick with the Rec opposite the college. In my opinion it was for the best as we would have not had much light after college anyway which would have given us limited time to shoot while it was still light. As far as logistical issues went we did not have that many, we had to figure out times in which all three of us were able to make it down to the forest and what day to do so would be best. We had also produced a risk assessment that we had to stick to in order for no injuries to take place, as we were going to be jumping out of trees and using air soft guns, the risks were quite high for something quite severe to happen, so we had to take great precautions when shooting and had a thorough risk assessment.

Materials:

In addition to equipment, crew and cast, there are also a lot of other aspects needed for a moving image production such as props, costumes, visual footage, for example; editing, and also a script. There are also a few financial considerations that need to be taken into account for a moving image production as well, for example; we needed music and sound effects throughout our whole film, and in order to do so we had to make sure that all the music and sounds was royalty free, because we were not allowed to use anything that has copyright. You need to have insurance in case any equipment breaks, our group had to fill out an insurance form in order to take any equipment outside of college so if the camera were to break we would have to pay for the damage. 

Legal Issues:

A legal issue that could be considered when using certain materials in a moving image production would be the music and sound effects, most of the time, if they are not royalty free music or sounds, you cannot use them in you media production. If you do use such music and/or sounds then you can get a copyright strike and your production can be taken off YouTube if it is on there or even worse taken to court. Copyright protects your work and will stop anyone else from taking ideas and getting credit for it and also will stop anyone from using your work that you have produced as well. You can get copyright for your work if you make your own sounds and music, film and TV recordings and from different broadcasts. Copyright will stop people from also distributing any of your work online to others, making an adaptation of your work and even stops people from renting and lending copies of the work to others as well. Copyright affected our DepicT! 90 second short because we were not allowed to use any copyright music or sounds, everything had to be royalty free music and sounds, we got the music off YouTube and we got the sounds off a website known as Freesound.org. Clearance is something anyone working in the media industry will need as clearances are permissions to use anything or go to any place to shoot, without these you are extremely limited. Public liability insurance is important as if someone is injured in anyway, it will cover the cost of legal actions and compensation claims made against your business. A completion guarantee/insurance is a form of insurance that is usually used in independently financed films to make sure that the producer will complete and deliver the film on time.

Regulation:

OFCOM is the communications regulator in the UK. Its function is to regulate TV, radio, video-on-demand sectors, fixed-line telecoms, mobiles and postal services to protect anyone from scams and sharp practices. OFT, OFCOM and the European commission all regulate the BBC. BBFC is the UK's regulator of film and video providing age rating for movies and videos. They are a designated body so they have the legal rights to rate and even sometimes reject peoples work. Some of the regulations do apply to our DepicT! 90 second short project because in order for our film to be put on YouTube we had to make sure we had royalty free sounds and royalty free music. 

Trade Unions and Trade Associations:

A Trade Unions is an organised association of workers in a trade, group of trades, or a profession, formed to protect their rights and interests. They are important because workers who are part of a trade union tend to have higher wages than someone who is not a member of one. Trade unions also sometimes act as as representatives of workers in case of legal matters, and also the rights of the employees are better protected. PACT is the trade association representing the commercial interests of UK independent television, film, digital, and animation companies. And BECTU is the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematography and Theatre Union. BECTU is a trade union in the UK and it has around 25,000 members who work in film, theatre, entertainment, leisure and broadcasting media. Finally, a trade association is an organisation founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry, such as the media industry. An industry trade association takes part in public relation activities such as advertising, but its main focus is collaborating between different companies. 

DepicT! Textual Analysis

DepicT! 90 Second Short - Textual Analysis:

We were tasked with creating a 90 second short film for the DepicT! film making competition, Our 90 second short is called 'Barking up the wrong tree'.

Camera Use:

This is one of the first shots in our film. In this scene we have the main character lift his arm up to the camera making it look as if he is checking the time. This is important because this lets the audience know that the film is a point of view, or POV, film. Lifting the arm up to the camera is also important for a POV film because it gives the affect as if he is genuinely looking at his watch.



In this shot is one of two worms eye view shots in our 90 second production. The effect of having a worms eye view in the shot is because the main character has been shot and has fallen to the ground, he then looks up to the villain which shows that he is superior, and the main character is inferior.





Here is the second worms eye view that is in our 90 second short. In this scene we have the main character waking up from just being tasered by an unknown stranger. He is lying on the floor because it makes the surroundings look big and it makes the main character look small, and our main character is being hunted, so he is supposed to be inferior.



In this scene there is a slight turn of events, the previous two shots have been worms eye views, symbolizing how the main character is inferior has he is being hunted, but in this scene we see the villain being knocked down to the ground with the gun taken from his hand by the main character. This shows how for a moment the main character has control over the villain and is the superior one.


Shot Distance:
Because our film is a POV film, this means we only have one continuous shot throughout the whole video.
Camera Movement:
The only camera movements we have in our 90 second short is tracking forwards, and a wipe pan, for when the main character hears gun shots to the left of him, which startles him. And obviously the forwards tacking is because he is running most of the time during the film.

Editing:

A lot of our film has been edited as we have gone for a 'found footage' effect. For example here we have a static TV overlay that we have added in during every cut, to show that our footage is broken, which gives all the more creepy atmosphere.

Here we can see the static effect fading into a
scene in which our main character is running through a field, this one of the many fades we used during our 90 second short. Every TV static effect we have will fade in and then fade out again, we do this so there is a smooth transition between each scene.





We added in a turn off effect as well at the very end of our film after the main character dies, this shows that the camera has shut off for the final time.






As we can see here there is a red outline around the border of the screen, we added this in because the main character has just been shot. The next photo is when the main character is on the floor about to be killed.





We added in blood dripping down his face because we originally were supposed to have the main character look down at his stomach to see blood, we were going to use fake blood but as we weren't able to obtain some in time, we had to use edited blood instead.






We even went to the extent of adding tiny details like the blurs in the corner of the screen when the villain gets hit by the gun, because if the more details like this are added, it looks so much better.

Mise-en-scene:

Props:
In our film we used a few props, which include; 2 masks and an air soft gun. We chose these props because we wanted our film to be as tense as possible throughout the whole 90 seconds. So a creepy clown mask and a gun will definitely cause that tension.

Setting:
We used a forest for our 90 second short because the main character is being chased and hunted and to show that feeling of tension, we thought the best idea to do that, was to use a forest. We initially wanted to film during dusk but we were unable to see anything and the camera did not pick up clear footage, so we had to film during the day.


Lighting:
The lighting that was used during our film was all natural lighting from the sun. As we were outside filming everything there was really no need for any motivated light.





Sound:
All of our film is made of of sound effects added in via the editing software because the Go Pro camera did not pick up any sound, so we either had to add it in or create our own sounds, we even added in the tiny little sounds that may not be noticed when you first watch it, but will still make the whole video come together.

DepicT! Pre-production paper work

DepicT! Pre-Production Paperwork:

This is all of our Pre-Production paperwork that was required of us to complete in order to film our 90 second short for DepicT! 

Location Release

Initial Ideas #1

Initial Ideas #2

Here are the storyboards for our 90 second DepicT! short. As a group of 3 we created the whole concept for our film on these storyboards. I completed boxes 1, 2, 3, 6, 8 and 10.

Location Recce:

Risk Assessment:

DepictT! Progress Diary

12/10/2016

Today we continued with our story boards for our 90 second short. We were also supposed to do a location rec but we are not 100% certain on which forest we will be going to in order to shoot. Although we have come up with the entire story line for our film so in the next lesson, we will be able to complete the storyboards in full detail.

13/10/2016

We continued to finish our story boards for our 90 second short and by the end of the lesson, it had been completed. I then started to work on the risk assessment, and that is one of the main things i am focusing on next lesson.

17/10/2016

Today we finished off our pre-production paper work and we are finally ready to shoot. We will be shooting after the lesson at Nexus forest which is behind the Nexus college, near James Paget. The 90 second short for DepicT! will be filmed during the evening because we need it to be dark.

19/10/2016

Today we finished filming our 90 second short, we changed the idea of filming in the dark because firstly, it did not turn out as well as we thought it would, plus the screen was too dark and you could not see anything. So instead we filmed today in the woodland area or the Reck Forest opposite the college. We managed to film the whole film within the two lessons we had today. Towards the end of the second lesson we uploaded all of our footage onto the Mac and began editing.

02/11/2016

Today we completed most of our editing for our 90 second short. We have added in lots of ambient sound effects and sound effects in general. Our only task left is to add the static effects and glitches which will make our film complete. We did have a problem with the premiere software because of lots of files clogging up space in the computer so we were not able to save or render our film, by the second lesson it was fixed and we were able to continue.

03/11/2016

Today we added in a few of our final sound effects and tried to render our video, because the file is so large we could not render the video in time meaning we will have to render it at the start of next lesson in order to complete and add in the final effects.

04/11/2016

Today we added the static effects to make it look like 'found footage' and added in our final sound effects. All that is left is to render, export and upload to YouTube so we can start our evaluation, in which we need screenshots.

07/11/2016

Today was the day that we added in our final static effects into our 90 second short and uploaded it to YouTube.

Risk assessment for DepicT!

A DepicT! short that i like.

Baconhorn:

I really like this 90 second short called Baconhorn because it has something that most of the other films on DepicT! do not have, which is comedy. A lot of 90 second shorts do not have comedy in them. Baconhorn is well filmed, and well thought out. The story behind it is comedic and at the end of the film, it showed us something that no one would of expected. We see the young boy in orange training to become strong enough to defeat the town 'bully'. As they are fighting the boy in orange hits the bully with a punching bag and then shortly after claims he 'is not breathing', this is unexpected because you wouldn't think a punching bag could kill somebody, this also brings out the comedic side to it. Another aspect in the 90 second short that I really liked the swift camera movement throughout the whole thing, for example, the camera slides to the right, following the characters the whole time. It is simple, and not complicated to pull off.