Requirements for Production

Requirements for Production 

For this assignment, our task was to create a 90 second short clip for the internet competition DepicT. It`s run by watershed and ars which has existed since 1999, and its an arts centre which can be located in Bristol.There are many different media forms such as TV, Internet, Magazines, News paper, Radio, Mobile phones, Computers, Tablets etc. Our product is a short film for the internet. The website challenges young new film makers on any budget from anywhere in the world to show their stuff in just a minute and a half.

Finance and sources of funding
On the finance side and how the funding is sourced we wanted to know how it all happened and what goes on. We also wanted to find out how so many film makers manage to gather the funds and how they spend it. In the working media industry the sources of funding can be quite tough.The sources can include Advertising and marketing where many different sponsors,brands or companies allocate an amount of money to the selected film company, Product placement which subtly advertises products inside another program may also be known as 'Embedded marketing', Loans, Development fund and financial aid and Private investors which can include some 'High net individuals' such as Megan Ellison who now runs her own movie company started from her own $33-million. One other thing many young film makers may look at to start their career is competitions. Not only is it fun but it is easy to get yourself involved, its very cheap and you don't have to be a serious film maker to start out. All you need in many competitions like `Depict ` or `Virgin Media Shorts` is an ambition and an obvious liking for the media industry. Places such as `Creative England` and the BFI support film makers in the UK either making their first film or are very well known to create entertaining and creative work for the public. Here is another example of development funds better known as the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/before-you-start/funding.   The requirements for any production which is what the funding is spent on are Personnel, Equipment  Materials, Facility Hire, Clearances and Transport.

What will the money be spent on?
The winners of the Depict competition will get to spend the money on Personnel which means better/more talent and possibly more advance crew, they can increase their salary for their staff for example the more money the film makers have the better chance they have of getting the better quality which they deserve. Another really important factor is the equipment. Again the more money the better quality the equipment for example you will be able to get better quality cameras,microphones, editing software the list goes on. Another main thing I feel hits the cost quite hard is the facility hire. Things such as special effects, sound and editing suites are incredibly useful in the post-production to give the piece a more professionally and maybe edgy effect. Props and costumes are vital in everything no matter what you are filming you will need some kind of outfit or prop just to make that scene that bit better and to also make the talent feel the role and sometimes the materials can be quite pricey. Clearances are probably one of the most important thing in the budget as not only do you need to make sure the locations are free but you also have to make sure all personnel weather on or off of camera have all the legal documents filled in correctly and  are checked. Within these legal documents consists the releases to say the talent gives permission for them to appear on screen even if they are just a small extra they still need to fill in either a child release or an adult release. You also need to check that the locations are permitted and you have a license to film there at a certain time. One final example of where the funding will go is that it will go towards transport and accommodation for the personnel and maybe even the equipment and materials. If there is no transport for the personnel and you`re going to a place which is quite a journey then a film maker will need to prepare and think about how to get everyone there and where they will stay. 

         

What did we have to spend our budget on?

For our piece our source of funding was the college. Being on a low budget, we had to limit what we spent our money on and for our piece we had to attain the Props, Costumes, Equipment and Clearance. We were lucky enough to have most of our equipment from college therefore we only had to obtain a few other items outside. We were also very lucky to not have to pay for any of our personnel as we were all part of the group. Saying that we did have to fill in certain legal forms and releases to allow each person on or off the camera to be part of the production. Another legal procedure we had to perform was the permissions for the locations we used in our final clip. All we had to do for this was to just simply email the police to confirm where and when we would be filming. This was purely so that if need be they could let the public know and we would be covered if anything were to happen during filming. We filmed down the road at a local park called the shrubs which luckily enough we didn't have to pay for transport we just had to walk down with our equipment to the local park. There was only 3 bits of materials we had to obtain outside of college were a pair of dungarees, a teddy bear and a birthday cake. Known of these cost to much and were within our £5 budget. We did have to use a sofa and a couple of tables inside of college but we obtained them really easily.

What was your time-frame and how well did you use the time you were given? 

In the working media industry, deadlines are one of the most important thing to consider. They are there to make sure directors, producers and all personnel keep on track of what is happening. If deadlines are not met in the professional industry it can severely effect the reputation of the personnel mainly the directors and producers. It can even lessen your chance of getting the funding you require for the production and finding work again. A lot of trust is lost when deadlines are not met. A great example of deadlines not being met and directors failing is Michael Cimino with the film 'Heaven`s gate'. All the deadlines set were completely lost and as a result of this it ruined Criminos reputation as a director. Due to the major set backs during film production the film has been considered one of the biggest box office bombs and in some views may possibly be one of the worst films made yet. The outcome of the film was that it was late to screening, opened to poor reviews and also earned less then $3 million from the estimated budget of $44 million. We were given many deadlines for our production. We had 14 lessons all together to complete all tasks including pre-production, production and post production. The first 5 lessons were spent doing pre-production and paper work. This included all the legal permissions, clearances, story boards and planning. We managed to hit the deadline for this spot on and we started to film for the next 6/7 lessons. Unfortunately our filming took a bit longer then we expected due to either members of our group being absent or the weather not being right but after hard work in our own time and a bit of extra time from the teachers we managed to film and edit our piece just to hit the final deadline. Luckily enough all of our equipment, materials and personnel were available to use at appropriate times therefore we didn't have to use a rota with other groups.

Personnel 

My own group for the production consisted of 3 members; Luke, Olly and Myself. Luke was both the driver of the car, did some camera work and did most of the editing, Olly did most of the camera work and sound and I performed the role of teddy`s best friend and help assist with the editing and sound choice. The amount of skill and experience which affect the production can differ. The more experience and skill the personnel have the more they are going to charge for their services. It can also affect the professional look and outcome of the product. Another affect from personnel which can highly affect the cost can be the size of the production. The more personnel you need for the production the higher the cost will rise by. For our production the only resources we had to furnish our personnel with were specific costumes and a few props. To find out a bit more background information on the personnel and to help decide who to use in production you would look at previous experiences, curriculum virtues, resumes, previous work, interviews, talent, how appropriate to the role that person is etc. To then go on and check the availability of the personnel you have chosen you would need to go on and draw up contracts and get talent releases signed. The cost of big stars against unknown stars is really different. If you'd rather pay big money for big stars resulting in a better end product then it may cost a lot where as hiring a unknown star who might not be as good will cost a lot less. Availability can be a huge problem with personnel as you have to organise times and places that the personnel can be at. It can be a bit of a costly thing as well as if the person already has plans then it can cost more then normal to hire them that day and may even affect other costs if you have to choose a different date.

                                                                          Facilities

Many different facilities/equipment are required when producing films/media products. It can really depend on what genre film you are going to create. Our clip could be classed as a Drama (melodrama) as it is intended to be quite sad. This means that we needed to find somewhere quite dull and sad looking. The weather being quite dull also helped quite a lot. The equipment we used for production were; standard HD Camera, Tri-pod and all ambient lighting. For the post production we used an Apple Mac and to edit our shots together we used a program Adobe Premier Pro. All of our sound was sourced from http://freeplaymusic.com/ which is a website given to us but our tutors. In the professional media industry, they have certain studios for post production called a facility house. This is where all of the magic happens. An example of a facility house and studio is 'Industrial light and magic'. Outsourcing in the media industry is where a company hires in people to achieve more then they usually work, for example they could hire in more professional editor which may cost more but achieve a higher standard for the piece. When securing facilities the financial considerations that exist are the cost . For example our teddy bear that was used in the production cost us £3.50. The other considerations that exist when securing facilities are the suitability and the availability. The suitability applies to the each scene and how well they suit the actual piece. It also applies to the facilities you use such as materials and props for a certain scene. The availability applies to when the settings and materials will be available. It may also apply to the availability of the personnel because if they are not available at certain times then it may not work.


Locations 
A location Reece is the foundation for the setting. When choosing your locations you need to scout around for your locations and take a look at what is available for use. A location Reece basically documents which areas have been scouted. A location release is the follow up document from the Reece`s. This documents the chosen locations with permission from whoever owns the land and also gives information on when it will be used for filming.Not only did we have to do a location release, we also emailed the police to inform them of the future filming. We overall decided to film at the park down the road called the shrub lands. The reason why we chose this location for the majority of the filming was because it was quiet, out of the way and the park just over the road didn't fit what we wanted where as this park ticked all the boxes. The limitations and risks we faced as a group were the traffic, the weather and the public. We assessed them by doing a risk assessment used crew t-shirts to prevent people interrupting us and contacted the local authority to notify them of our filming schedule.

                                                                Materials

When creating any type of media, from a film to a short clip you are obviously going to need a numerous amount of materials. These materials can range from Original materials, internet, sound library materials, recorded materials, archive materials, video library materials, scripts, interviews and props/costumes. Because these materials don't belong to the film maker, you are going to need to attain legal permissions weather its a written permissions or contracts. You also need clearance which is a check to confirm all the permissions and contracts have been obtained or drawn up in order to use the materials. One last thing you will have to seriously consider when using someone else's material is the cost. The more you pay the better the quality. Though some materials may not charge some may which has to be taken into consideration quite early on. The difference between types of materials and sources of materials is that types of materials is what materials you can get for example is a camera or a tripod and sources of materials is where you get them from for example you could source your materials from a shop or a company that hires the materials out.

Contributors

When people create their media products, 9 times out of 10 people contribute tend to do some kind of contribution to it. The kind of people which are most likely to contribute to the production of a media text are  the extras, the public, specialists, experts and the talent within the text. A contributors biography is a large section of information on someone before hiring them. A contributors biography is always incredible handy when looking for employment as it gives your employer the knowledge of your background. To the right you can see a picture of many different logos. All of which are contributors to the Canadian media fund.

Legal Issues
The term 'clearance' means acquiring all the necessary permissions are present and granted. Basically clearance gives the green light for the production to go ahead with the project. You will need clearance for a wide range of materials such as: Music, Images, Talent, Locations and Videos.If the clearance for all aspects of production are not present, you can either be taken to court, legal action may be taken against you, you may have to pay compensation or you may just get fined a sum. Copyright can hugely effect a lot of the media aspects. The list includes: images, ideas, concepts and narrative. A public liability insurance is where the personnel in the media production pay money to cover any accidents that may occur in the media production. One example would be that if there was a car scene and you crashed the car it would be covered by the liability insurance. Completion insurance/a completion guarantee is a contract/agreement that the film will be finished in the time given.

Regulation
Ofcom is a office of communications regulation.It is a company which regulates TV, Radio and Advertising. Its function is to protect the public from harmful, offensive materials and scams. Ofcom licenses all UK commercial television and radio in the UK. Broadcasters must comply by the terms of their licence, or risk having it revoked. PCC stands for Press Complaints Commission. This is an independent self regulator body which deals with complaints about content within newspapers and magazines. The PCC keep industry standards high by training journalists and editors, and they work pro-actively 
behind the scenes to prevent harassment. ASA stands for Advertising Standards Authority. This is the UK`s
independent regulator of advertising across all media. The company are there to make sure advertising in all 
media is legal, decent, honest and truthful. PEGI stands for Pan European Game Information. This is a European 
video game content rating system. The aim is to help players make informed decisions on buying computer games.
Major companies such a Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all support PEGI and here are the 5 PEGI ages. 

BBFC stands for British Board of Film Classification. This is a non-governmental organisation funded purely by the film industry and they are responsible for the national classification and censorship of films within the United Kingdom. Here is the BBFC logo and classification ages.

Our Depict videos could relate to this because they could all be rated by the content. My Depict entry is a sad genre, so I would rate it as a PG because its not very sad but some younger viewers may need parental guidance. 

Trade unions and trade associations 

 A trade union is an organisation of workers who have come together to achieve common goals such as protecting the integrity of it trade, achieving higher pay, increasing the amount of employees an employer hires and better working conditions. To sum it up a trade union fight for their rights as an employee. A trade union exist to make sure employees are being treated in the best way possible. PACT is a UK trade association representing and promoting the commercial interests of independent feature film, television, digital, children`s and animation media companies. http://www.pact.co.uk/home/ BECTU is the independent trade union for those working in broadcasting, film, theatre, entertainment, leisure, interactive media and allied areas. Both companies offer support for all the workers they deal with both financially and emotional support. A trade association is an organisation founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry. An industry trade association takes part in public activities such as advertising, education, political donations, lobbying and publishing. Their main focus is collaboration between companies or standardization. BIMA stands for British Interactive Media Association. BIMA exists to do three key things: support and promote the British digital industry, share knowledge and best practice and reward great work and encourage the next generation. ELSPA stands for Entertainment And Leisure Software Publishers Association. ELSPA`s goal was to establish a specific and collective identity for the interactive leisure software industry across the European community. TIGA is a non-profit trade association representing the UK`s game industry. Their members include a wide range of people including games developers, in-house publisher-owned developers, outsourcing companies, technology businesses and universities. All three of these companies are designed to support different media companies. To the right above you can see a picture of logos. All of which are either trade unions or trade associations.