(A) Assignment | hahaabababab-unit4

Pre-production considerations and the requirements of the film

Introduction

Before anyone picks up a camera or starts filming there’s much work to be done. This work, before the actual production, is known as pre-production and aims to cover all aspects of the process that will enable the film to be made.

Starting with an idea, that idea needs to be broken down into all its parts and stages. We need to understand what the film aims to do, its genre, its audience, its scope and identity. We also need to sell the idea.

Anyone who is going to be supporting the film will need to know the answer to the unknowns addressed in this report.

Practical considerations - The project needs money, it needs to be legal, it needs to be advertised, there needs to be a plan.

So many things need to be considered. On day one of filming everyone needs to be on set and on the same page. Everyone and everything needs to be ready to go: the paperwork, filming permits, contracts and agreements. There needs to be a detailed schedule, so you know what you are going to do on the day, and the next day throughout the project’s entirety.

In order to have the money for hiring or purchasing equipment, actors, crew, props, costumes and for location fees and post-production, finance needs to be sourced and a budget created detailing not only how much things will cost, but when money will be available and when needed.

Full documentation will be needed: contracts, permissions, risk assessments, non-disclosure agreements etc. The paperwork illustrates everyone’s expectations and how they will be met.

In this report, I will discuss sources of finance, logistics, legalities & permissions, advertising and pre-production documentation.

Sources of finance

There may be ways to limit the costs, however there will always be costs. Without preparation and a proper understanding of your film’s scope, it is easy

to run out of money. Therefore, it is important to find sources of funding, to be able to intricately detail your budget and to ask for an appropriate amount. Funding may be available from grant making bodies, personal finance, crowdfunding and sponsorship both private and corporate.

Public funding (BBC) - Programs on the BBC such as Doctor Who are publicly funded and come from an annual television licence fee which is charged to households and organisations which receive television broadcasts.

Crowdfunding - Crowdfunding is the method of sourcing funds through pitching your project online, on websites such as kickstarter or gofundme, and asking people to donate to the campaign often for rewards such as posters or tickets if it’s a film or, if it is a product, then possibly the product itself. Crowdfunding has the benefit of being its own advertisement campaign and can get a large viewership before production has even started. A notable example of a crowdfunded feature film would be the 2014 Veronica Mars movie, which would act as a continuation of the 2004-2007 cult classic television series. The campaign saw over 90,000 backers raise almost $6 million, nearly tripling the initial $2 million goal. The campaign offered numerous rewards at different backer price points, including a speaking role in the film with a donation price tag of only $10,000.

Crowdfunding can be incredibly effective

National lottery - The British Film Institute (BFI) is funded by the National Lottery and aims to support distinctive, up-and-coming filmmakers as well as projects with cultural significance. Films Funded in this method include Billy Eliot (2000) and The King’s Speech (2010).

Alternative funding avenues - Similarly to the BFI’s involvement in supporting up-and-coming British film makers in general, smaller more local organisations such as Film London aim to achieve a similar result within their reach. Film London’s flagship feature film scheme dubbed their ‘Microwave Scheme’ teamed up with BBC Films in 2006, and later in 2012, and aimed to “inspire and develop the capital’s best new filmmakers”.

One such film, funded by this scheme, is the 2008 crime thriller, Shifty, produced by ‘Between the Eyes’ which is the partnership of Rory Aitiken and Ben Pugh. They were given a budget of £100 000 and a shooting schedule of just eighteen days.

A film that is interesting is The Cottage, not for its content, but for its pre-production history. Filmmakers, Andrew Williams and Ken Marshall who make up ‘Steel Mill Pictures’ initially worked on and hoped to release the film in the early 2000s. However due to having too small a budget, instead decided to work on an alternative project, London to Brighton, in the hope of summing enough profit to make The Cottage a reality.

London to Brighton, a British Realist film, was achievable on a lower budget because of its genre. Realism doesn’t require staged sets and instead uses public spaces, but which might not have the conventional permissions.

Independent funding - Independent funding gives the filmmakers more control. The more independent your production’s funding is, the more creative and artistic control you are allowed. Sponsors and production studios may have conditions to their funding and are also allowed to ask for changes to be made which may affect content or running time. Ridley Scott’s 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner is a notable example which resulted in 5 different versions being produced (excluding prototype or preview), including a Final Cut released 25 years after the film’s initial release.

Raising sufficient funds is incredibly important to the film as without you might end up with a sub-par product, or worse no product at all. In order to estimate an accurate sum of money required to properly make the film, one must realise the importance of budgeting and logistics.

Crowdsourcing - Life in a Day was a crowdsourced documentary produced by ‘Scott Free productions’ a company founded by filmmakers Ridley and Tony Scott, in partnership with YouTube Inc. Crowdsourcing is where the media presented is supplied solely by the public. This approach will alter where the budget goes and is likely to reduce the total budget. However, pre-production planning may be more complex. Money and effort saved in filming, will instead be spent sourcing, selecting and editing of the clips. The logistics will be different in a crowdsourced film.

Life in a Day gathered around 80 000 submissions from 192 different countries worldwide. Collected on the YouTube website, the footage was then sifted and later split into themes such as love and death. The film was also given a section especially for mundanities.

Logistics

Logistics encompasses all of the problems that you will have to deal with, expected and unforeseen, such as: transport of people, props and equipment; scouting locations and assessing them for quality, accessibility, risk and permissions.

There needs to be some contingency for breakages and unforeseen circumstances cost wise, but perhaps, additional time may also be required. Pretty much anything that could go wrong needs a contingency in some form. An example is Russian Arc, described below. Alexander Sokurov didn’t ask for, but did in the end need, a second day of filming.

Detailed budgets will be needed and these need to be linked to production schedules and deadlines,using the budget effectively to ensure adequate money to spend when you need it.

Russian Ark was an experimental historical drama released in 2002 and directed by Alexander Sokurov. The film follows an unnamed narrator through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg and in each room he encounters real and fictional people from the city’s 300 year history. The film was to be filmed in one continuous shot for its 96-minute duration, and to further add to the director’s masochistic vision, he asked for permission to film over one single day, however he was offered two days.

With over two thousand actors to choreograph and so little time for retakes, the director had to have a really focussed understanding of how the filming would play out. This is production scheduling put to the extreme.

This example also illustrates the importance of ensuring the availability of people and equipment. The film’s finale alone, showcases an entire orchestra of musicians, each and every one of them will need to be briefed and choreographed in great detail.

Upfront payment or long-term royalties - When hiring actors, composers (among others) you have the decision whether to pay them an upfront value or credit for royalties; paying them a percentage royalty every time their work or performance is used or sold. Upfront payments avoid withering your profits later on, however for smaller projects the greatly decreased upfront cost of royalties may be essential for keeping budget.

Legalities and permissions

This will include insurances, permissions, NDAs, contracts, filming permits, risk assessments as well as other legal considerations. There are organisations which oversee these considerations such as those governing royalties, copyrights and trade unions.

Filming in public spaces - In order to film in public spaces, you are legally obliged to contact and ask for permission from the local authority or council. The authority will often ask that your filming crew have the proper and sometimes excessive insurance coverage which can be costly. To avoid these budget setbacks a filmmaker may choose to deploy a technique called Guerrilla filmmaking, a method characterised by small filming crews, referred to as skeleton crews, few props, and the scenes are shot quickly. This method would not be appropriate if the crew was filming on a highway, using special effects such as explosions or using replica guns. These would require informing and getting additional permission from the local police force as well as the Highways Department.

Trade Unions - BECTU, or the Broadcast, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union, controls the conditions of employment within these fields. Within pre-production you would be expected to work within the union’s guidelines. This is to protect staff and workers from exploitation with respect to hours, working conditions and pay. Furthermore, children can only work certain hours and are also required to continue within education whether that is within schools or with private tutors. In order to work with children, you should contact the Local Education Authority. The RSPCA has guidelines for working with animals.

Copyright - The copyright law in the film industry prevents one company using the material of another: this includes titles, logos, songs etc. However, it is important too, not to bend or twist the words of copyright.

Warner Brothers attempted to sue the Marx Brothers for breach of copyright for their film, A Night in Casablanca, claiming to have the copyright of ‘Casablanca’. Groucho Marx’s relied that WB could not have the copyright of a city, adding both that the public could probably distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo Marx. He then went on to claim that the Marx Brothers were called brothers first. This is all very entertaining but highlights the issues.

Advertising and promotion

Advertisements and promotion are crucial for a film’s outreach and by extension, success. These may be in the form of the traditional poster and series of trailers approach or through attempting a ‘viral advertising campaign’ that's goal is to grab people's attention by attempting something different. An example of this would be Shifty’s advertisement campaign in which people were encouraged to forfeit a friend’s email which would then be sent a message stating that they are being investigated by the police for drug offences. The campaign was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority, but not before garnering the film additional attention, on top of the initial campaign throughout the media’s coverage; reinstating that “all publicity is good publicity”.

Pre-production documentation

Throughout the process all plans must be documented, and those plans need to be up to date and accessible as needed. Documentation can be scripts, storyboards and the documented agreements required on set.

There aren’t always set protocols for any particular practise when it comes to documentation, but some documents, scripts and storyboards in particular, will be revised during production, and so standards within the production will need to be set.

For instance, in the case of the Harry Potter films there would first be a white script, any alterations would require a second script on blue paper so as to be easily distinguishable from the first on set. Further revisions may require a pink script. The final revision is once again printed on white and the convention is that it uses size 12 font, Courier New. This industry standard allows someone presented with a script to quickly estimate the length of the film the script relates to.

Storyboards simply lay out the different shots in the scenes, using a small sketch of the composition with filming notes, often having appropriate lines from the script below their respective shots. This develops the script for the cinematographer, director or animators, giving shot types, compositions and movement.

During production it is important to protect your work from being leaked prematurely. To this end, limited scripts (amount and content) are given to those on set at any time. To further protect these documents and your work, you may ask your employees to sign a non-disclosure agreement. As its name suggests, this agreement prohibits anyone from sharing details of the production.

Conclusion

There is some crossover between logistics and legalities, for instance with copyrights and royalties. There is clearly a strong link between finance and budgeting.

Production schedules seems to be a really key thing, and in my opinion, it is the most key as it brings all other things into reality. Logistics such as the permissions and employees’ personal timetables can be accorded for and be detailed. It will show when announcements and advertisements can be sent out. It will give an overview of filming, calculate the budget and even allow for estimation of overall costs.

I have come to understand pre-production to a much greater extent. I have found some of the unusual films and their methods interesting; especially Russian Ark whose pre-production was incredibly extensive and must have been quite stressful for all involved.

References

http://britishfilmcommission.org.uk/guidance/regulations/ ~ BFI

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/may/06/drugs-email-shifty-advertising ~ Shify Advertisment campaign

https://archive.org/details/Groucho_Marx_Letter_to_Warner_Brothers ~ Warner Bros Groucho Marx anacdote

https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/licencefee ~ BBC

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project ~ Veronica Mars

http://filmlondon.org.uk/feature-film-funding/ ~ Shifty

http://steelmillpictures.co.uk/about/ ~ Steel Mill Pictures (London to Brighton and The Cottage)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versions_of_Blade_Runner ~ Blade Runner

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/movies/life-in-a-day-review.html ~ Life in a Day

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/heavyweight/kwhx6r ~ Russian Ark

http://www.intellectualpropertylawfirms.com/resources/intellectual-property/intellectual-property-b-0 ~ Royalties