Requirments for production

Type of production

The first requirment for this assgnment was to create a ninety second short film/video for a competition for depict. This is also to be uploaded to the internet on YouTube; the product was called BODIES IN FICTION and is a hybrid of genres including, comedy, action, thriller, horror and crime. There are lots of different competions which can be entered like the depict one. There is virgin shorts which not only gives you financial reward but sometimes features them at the cinema before a movie, Sundance London which is held once a year in London. These can be beneficial to someones career because the more competitions you win the more of a reputation you can build.

Finance and sources of funding

To get funding for a film there are various things you can do in the production of big movies, it's up to the producer to get the money and they source it from different places. Some of those places are banks though that's harder to do recently because of the current financial climate but you can also get them from high networth individuals which are people with the much money to fund a film. an example of this was Megan Ellison who has produced a number of films and saved two films from being shut down. You can get money in movies through funding and marketing; another way is through the National Lottery fund which is particularly used in the UK, one of those groups called the BFI was closed down receantly but the funding has continued. Other companies, which are Creative England produce British films which not only create projects but help to develop talent and support them as they progress through the system.

What will the money be spent on

When making any filming products there are somethings that are always required; the first thing you need is your personnel. Everyone has an individual job to do, so you need your writers, people to work the equipment, eg cameras lighting microphones lighting etc, you need your actors of course. You need props and costumes which are very important, for example if your making a period piece like "Downton abby" then you need the costumes and props to represent the era that they are presenting to the audience. You need your transport to get to your locations for film (but sometimes, not too often now days though filming is done in a studio) and to get your actors and crew back and forth to where they need to be. You need to get your clearance (permission) to film in your location and contact the police to let them know your filming. During the filming of 'TRANSFORMERS' they didn't tell the police and a police car crashed into bumble bee. When you have finished filming you need to hire people and facilities to add special/visual effects.

What we had to spend money on/obtain

The college gave us a budget of five pounds but we didn't need spend it because the college provided all the equipment required and most of the props except for a suit that I brought in. We needed camera, tripod, lighting, suitcase, suit, cooking utensils and a pile of video's. We didn't need to travel to our locations to film so transport wasn't an issue; we used everyone in the group to act but had to use two other people outside the group for two small but vital roles. We had to get permission to film in the DVD store in the college and to knock the videos over. We edited the product on the "MAC's" at college so we didn't have to pay for editors of the equipment or facilities.

Time

We thought that we had finished filming in the required but during editing we noticed a problem with one of the shots; there is a shot where one of the characters looks at a TV and sees a program on, we planned to place the show on the screen of the television during editing but as we started to edit we realized that the camera movement was to quick and shaky to put it on so we had to re-shoot that shot again so we could place the show on the television screen. When you sign up to make a movie you put a lot at stake including money, reputation and trust; if you don't meet deadlines then you could miss a window when it would be appropriate for your film to be released, for example if you make a Christmas movie and miss your deadline then you have to wait until next year to release it and that a lot of time and money lost. An example of what could happen if you miss deadlines and go over budget is Michael Cimino's "Heavens Gate". He went a whopping forty million dollars over budget, and when the movie was released it was a box office flop, practically end Michael Cimino's career as a director. While It was easy for the group I was in to get our equipment, it's a lot harder and in some cases easier to get equipment in the film industry, there many different department that you can get rent equipment or if your with a big film company like twentieth century fox they will have there own filming equipment. They also you rate cards which are obtained through independent places that give you the equipment for and allocated amount of time. An example of one of those places is TFGtv which gives equipment out to low budget independent films for a arranged amount of time. During the making of our video we had to sort out who was available to shoot on what days; this wasn't too bad for most of our group. We had one of our teachers in a small role and as we were filming during lesson time we had them for as long as we needed for. Two members of the group including myself were always available to film so that was fine but one of the team had another commitment during one of the days so we had to get all of there scenes done before hand so that was against the clock and we also had another student from a different group in a small role and was only available for one day of shooting to we had to get all of their shots done in a very short space of time.

Personnel

When making the project we were in groups of three so everyone was multitasking different jobs on the set, plus we guest appeared two people. Of course on actual film sets everyone has a separate job like director, actor, stage, manager, writer, producer, camera operator, lighting and so on. In our group we all had roles acting at some point; Matthew had the role of the angry customer which I don't know if he's ever had any experience in that role before, and there was Shauna who was playing the cook and my character the dodgy dealer which I have kind of done before in some of my other video projects like "LIFE ON ICE" or "London Noir". Depending on what job you do and how much experience you have had depends on how much you get paid. For instance if you were a first time working on lighting you probably wont be paid a substantial amount of money, while if your a successful actor like Christian Bale your likely to receive a large sum of money.      

Also depending on the size of production will depend on costs, if you making a film like "winter's bone" a low budget drama directed by Debra Granik and staring an at that time unknown Jennifer Lawrence and shot mostly in the same kind of location using limited cameras and equipment, the costs are pretty minimum. If your shooting a big budget action movie like "Expendables 2" with a large cast ensemble, staring actors like Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Lee, and so on them most of your money is going to be spent on actors and special effects, all the guns and visual effects and the amount of crew you need. To make our production we needed lighting for the cooking show scene, my character need a suit, a gun and a briefcase and Matts scene required him to knock over a pile of VSRs (video tapes). In the professional business when deciding who you want doing what parts it's usually easy to pick your actors, you normally just look at there previous work and you usually have a good idea about what you want your character to look like; for example you wouldn't pick Arnold Schwarzenegger for a romantic comedy, and you probably wouldn't cast Taylor Swift for and action film. When look for your crew, you usually look at there CV which would show there previous projects and you can see how much experience they have had. Even when you have an idea of who you want in your movie you have to make sure there available and stay available for the remainder on the project you draw up a contract with them which hold them down for a selected amount of time again getting back to sticking to timings if you over run you might lose your talent if they have signed up for another movie. During the filming of "The Expendables", director Slyvester Stallone had sustained an injury during filming and was faced with the choice of stopping filming until he recovered and losing Jason Statham because he had signed to another movie, or carrying on filming and risk further injury.

Facilities
During the production of a product you need your essential equipment like camera, lighting, recording equipment and so on but it's actually during post-production when you have to edit everything together and add your effects. It's actually surprising how much editing they have to do to some simple looking shots, for example in the film "no country for old men" there is a scene where actor Josh Brolins character is being chased by some drug dealers. In the scene it is dawn but still very dark, when the actual shot was taken it was late afternoon. For post-production you need your computers and the right kind of software to edit and adjust; the program we used was premier pro which is an adobe program. (a similar program was actually used to edit no country for old men, final cut pro). The editing all takes place in facility houses which are places you rent out to get the editing done, there many places where you can do this, in British cinema there are places like VET based in Hoxtan, central London. Of course there are the Hollywood facilities like Technicolor which unlike British places have a lot bigger budgets to play with. Most British places don't have the ability to add all the visual effects that Hollywood movies have like "Avengers Assembled". A lot of the time you would have to g to outsourcing parties for your crew which basically means that they are freelance; surprisingly a whopping 89% of the UK film workers are freelance. Of course when securing your facilities you have to make sure that you have enough hired help, then you need to look at the financial cost; if for example you used somewhere/someone that doesn't cost much then you might save money but the quality of your product might not be very good. But if you go somewhere/someone that cost a lot you might have good quality but the cost effect will have a larger effect on your budget. Also you need to make sure that the facility is available for enough time to edit your product, and that your staff are available long enough to edit the product. If a large production company like lionsgate or twentieth centery fox is involoved in a film then usual they own all the places requried to cut and edit films so they don't go outside their own company which saves them money.

Locations
Before you film you have to find location in which you can film at, so you go and recce places that you like the look of and place them in a documented file so you can look over them all once you have finished. When you have looked at all the locations that you have what to film at and have decided which ones you want to use then you have to get documented permission from the owners of the sight to be allowed to film on that sight. When making our video we had to find three specific location to shoot; we had to find a DVD store or at least somewhere that could looked like a DVD store, we had to find a corridor long and wide enough to do the opening and closing shot, and we needed to find a room that we could make into a set of a cooking show. When shooting the opening and closing scene to the product we had to have the camera operator to stand on a chair so we could do the shot as you will see on the video and we had the risk that they would fall off and hurt themselves; we also had the risk that when the videos got knocked over in the DVD store that someone might get hit by them, plus there wasn't a lot of space in there for the camera so there was a risk that someone would trip. To counter these risks we made a risk assessment sheet with all the possible/potential accidents so we could take measures to prevent them.

Materials
There are many materials available to filmmakers that they can use; there are original materials, there's the internet, there are books available in the library or archives (special libraries that list years or information on particular subjects). There are many images available like the ones I'm using and most definitely video. There are also sounds that are available to the filmmakers which can be obtained through a sound library or you can even record you own music, using well known composers like Ennio Morricone who is best know for his music for films such as Sergio Leone's Dollars films and "the good the bad and the ugly". Or you could go to an original source of music that's already been made and putting it on your product (I'll tell you how they do that later). They even hire a well known music stars to write songs for the film. When making "The Hunger Games" they hired singer/song writer Taylor Swift and "The Civil Wars" to make the films soundtrack "safe and sound".
                                                


You also have all you props and costumes that you will need for the shoot. When using any media materials that you don't own the rights to then you have to gain permission from whoever to gain access to whatever it is that you need. Once you have all that you need before releasing your product just check that you have clearance to use them or you will end up getting sued. This has happened many times to the the creators of the popular TV show "south park" for not being granted permission for use of photo's and videos. To gain the use of such materials you usually have to gain permission by paying a contribution to the owners or music label and so on. There many different people who contribute to the making of films, you know about the set workers and actors and all the important people but you can't make a film without a few other key essential people. You most definitely need your extras; in the Richard Attenborough film "Gandhi" over 300,000 extras were used in the funeral scene. You also need your experts and specialist, if making an action movie then you will need someone who can manage the weapons and ensure there use safely. You might want to get a contributes biography which is essentially collected information on a particular person which would very useful if your planning to hire them or maybe even make a film on them.

Legal issues
Getting clearance means that you have all the the permissions needed to use certain things in a movie; things are all listed in the last paragraph. If permission is not granted and still used then you can be taken to court over it; Michael Bays film "The Island" was sued for taking the storyline from another film from 1979 called "Parts: The Clonus Horror".

Public liability insurance
This is something that is needed for any movie, it is a form of insurance that is paid out to someone if there is an accident on set or there family if the worst happens and they die. This has happened on the sets of films such as, "Expendables 2", "The crow", "transformers" and probably more famously "Ben Hur" during the well remembered chariot scene, six stunt men died.
There is also the completion insurance that is the filmmakers agreement that the product will be finished on time or they will have to pay for compensation.

Regulation
OFcom (office of communications) is the company that regulates TV and radio so they are suitable for the time they are on, for instance if something on TV has violence or strong language in it then it will be regulated by OFcom and put on after the watershed time which is nine O clock.
There are many forms of OFcom that are out there regulating different forms of media; there is PCC which is the press complainants commission which deals with magazines and news papers. There is the ASA which is the advertising standards authority which deals with advertising on the telly and so on. There is also PEGI which is the pan European gaming industry which gives age ratings to video games. The most well known one is probably the BBFC which is the British Board of Film Censorship; which gives age ratings for films, over the last two decades the BBFC has become a lot more relaxed about what goes into films and giving filmmakers to put more and more in to shock the audience. They also have become more relaxed about what films should be rated what, because a lot for films that are fifteen rating have a lot of content in them that would have made them an eighteen less than ten years ago, an example of this is "Hitman" which was rated fifteen for strong bloody violence, strong language and nudity; if you have seen it you would probably agree that this is one film that would have been an eighteen no questions asked if it had been released less than five years before it was. There are many films that would probably have been banned if released ten or fifteen years earlier, another fine example of this is "RAMBO 4" which has scenes of very strong brutality in it. Another in the newly released "DREDD" which was incredibly gory, but believe it or not that is what a lot of people want to see in films these days and that's what a lot of filmmakers want to put in because everyone wants to see how far they can go, the question is how far is too far.      
When looking at our video we all decided that if ever released it would probably get either twelve or fifteen for moderate violence and strong language once implied.



Trade unions and trade associations
A trade union are members of a particular workforce eg teachers, and the fight (not literally) for better treatment, pay, benefits, pension and so on. A group similar to this is PACT which is the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television. PACT is the UK trade association representing and promoting the commercial interests of independent feature film, television, digital, children's and animation media companies. There is also BECTU which is the broadcasting, entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union which provide a range of support services to staff and freelances working in the media and entertainment sectors and negotiate pay and conditions of work and represent our members on all employment issues. They are also committed to supporting new entrants to the industry to secure good contracts, good pay and the training they need to develop successful careers. A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association or sector association, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry. An industry trade association works in public relations activities such as advertising, education, political donations, lobbying and publishing, but its main focus is working between companies. BIMA (British Interactive Media Association), ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publisher's Association) and TIGA (The Independent game developer Association) are all groups that ensure the correct treatment of media groups and inderviduals and do exactly what any union would do.
Sources of information

www.IMDB.com

www.bbfc.co.uk

www.BIMA.co.uk

www.TIGA.com

www.ELSPA.com

www.BETCTU.co.uk

Norwich library

www.TFGtv.com

East norfolk sixth form college library

www.google.co.uk/images

www.YouTube.com