Location Recces and Copyright Clearance letters

A recce is an essential part of the preparation and research processes to meet potential contributors, assess locations and research stories.It refers to a pre-filming visit to a location to work out its suitability for shooting, including access to necessary facilities and assessment of any potential lighting or sound issues, and is closely related to location scouting. The term ‘recce’ is also used in radio and television production.

Before you start recording, you will need to obtain copyright clearance for any copyrighted materials you intend on using. When requesting copyright clearance, you need to be specific about which materials and how they will be used (pepsi to consume on recording). You should also indicate that you are contacting them because you believe they are the copyright holder and should have permission to use or promote their product. After sending out the copyright clearance letters, be prepared to wait. Organizations that are copyright holders will sometimes take a long time to respond to copyright clearance requests. If they don’t respond or they deny permission you can improvise or use another product.

Personally, in a production these are considerably the most important steps to a recording and if done wrong or not done properly, you will end up being in trouble.

The Crew, Contact’s and Actor lists, its in the title!

The Crew List is as it states, its a list of members in a cast (an actor list) in which the performers names, what role they are playing, their agents number and their personal numbers or a crew list in which has the names of the people working on the production, what their job is (editor, producer or cameraman), their company number’s and their own numbers. Contact lists is basically a large table of all the cast members, companies, crew’s personal and agents numbers in which if a member goes missing or a mix up occurs then the producer can call their agents or work boss to sort it out.

Lists are very useful to have on hand as it makes everything more organised and on hand if a problem occurs on set.

Production Schedule, Contingency plans and Risk Assessments

A production schedule is one of the most efficient ways of planning out how you are going to do each step in your preproduction. Common methods of making a production schedule is to make a Gantt chart.

Gantt charts are a simple and efficient way of laying out the tasks you need to do as a group and how much time you will need to lay out for each task. I would personally use a Gantt chart for planning as I find it very efficient and it prompts me to work

Contingency Plan and Risk Assessment

When a minor problem rises and it needs to be resolved, a contingency plan is used to solve it.

Situation	Problem	Solution
Driving to filming location.	Primary Camera doesn’t work.	Use secondary camera for filming.

A contingency plan is very useful for visualising a situation and considering minor problems like a broken camera and forgetting or losing vital equipment that could happen and what you would do to sort it out.

A risk assessment is essentially a more serious version of a Contingency plan in which it is used when a medical or an environmental problem occurs.

Situation	Problem	Solution
Driving to filming location.	Car collision on the way to location	·        Make sure that other colleagues are ok. ·        Call for authorities for assistance. ·        Call for a taxi to location if vehicle cannot be driven

Personally, risk assessments and Contingency plans are very important as and can save a lot of time if a problem does arrive as you have prepared for the problem and you can sort it out promptly and efficiently.

Funding Research Log and Sources for Funding

Funding is the act of providing financial resources, usually in the form of money, or other values such as effort or time, to finance a need, program, and project, usually by an organisation or government.

A Funding Research log is basically a timeline of what has been funded to a project (for example – “Bob” donated £15 to Project “death to fluffy ducks” on 7/7/07). This will all be put into a tally in which the people’s names are written with the amount donated and the total accumulated for the project.

Source’s for funding consists of crowd funding, donations and having a private investor but for newer directors, the most cost effective way of sourcing is through crowd funding like Patreon, Kickstarter and through other sources. The best thing about Patreon and Kickstarter is that if they reach a certain point in funding they then reward donators with benefits (memorabilia, autographs of cast and/or director and bonus perks).

Floor Plans

A floor plan is a drawing to scale, showing a view from above, of the relationships between rooms, spaces and other physical features at one level of a structure. This can be used in pre-production to plan, visualise and develop a location for recording.

Floor Plans can also be used to plan a set if you have a low budget and you have to make your own locations for productions. It can help you visualise because of how you lay it out and how you go about recording it will help you get to the end of the recording.

Some examples of floor plans are shown below…

information soured from wikipedia

Mood Boards

A Mood Board is a type of collage which consists of text, pictures and objects in a composition. Using a mood board helps you visually illustrate your ideas from your mind onto the paper, but they can also be used to visually explain a certain style of writing or a setting for a story.

Mood boards can be made of a variety of materials like paper or cardboard but it is most commonly made of foam boards just because it is easier to cut with a scalpel and can have spray mounted cut outs put onto it for a better visual effect. Creating mood boards in a digital form may be easier and quicker, but physical objects often tend to have a higher impact on the observer, in contrast with the digital mood boards. Mood boards can also be painted.

Some examples of mood boards for genres in movies can consist of…

Action:

• Explosions – Transformers Franchise
• Men and guns – The Expendables Franchise
• Martial arts – The Matrix Franchise
• Superheroes – The Marvel Series

Fantasy:

• Medieval – The lord of the Rings + Hobbit Franchise
• Psychological – Alice in Wonderland
• Steampunk – Howls Moving Castle
• Science Fiction – Star Wars Franchise.

Personally, I feel that Mood Boards are a brilliant way of conveying ones thoughts or ideas for a production into a creative and logical collage which can help you develop your ideas even further.

information sourced from wikipedia

Film Budgeting and tactics

Film budgeting refers to the process by which a line producer, unit production manager, or filmmaker prepares a budget for a film production. This document is used to secure financing for and lead to pre-production and production of the film. Multiple drafts of the budget may be required to whittle down costs.

A budget is typically divided into four sections: above the line (creative talent), below the line (direct production costs), post-production (editing, visual effects, etc.), and other(insurance, completion bond, etc.) Film financing can be acquired from a private investor, sponsor, product placement, film studio, Entertainment Company, and/or out-of-pocket funds.

Here are some good tactics for cutting costs in a production…

• Eliminate night scenes – Shooting scenes in the night can require powerful lighting which can cost a lot of money. A good way to do a night scene is to do the “day to night” scene (reduced exposure).
• Try to avoid filming in famous or commercial areas – Shooting a scene on, for example, Times Square requires stopping traffic with a resultant drop in revenue to the city of  To reduce costs, shift the location to a place that is similar to Times square to reduce the cost by a lot.
• Use unknown cast members rather than stars – To use unknown cast members can reduce the costs because of how new they are. This can mean that you can spend less money on your cast members and saving money on your budget.
• Film your action scenes early on a Sunday Morning – You can stop traffic earlier in the Sunday morning as there aren’t many cars active in the morning.

Information sourced from wikipedia

Scripts. What are they?

A script is written work by screenwriters for a movie production, video game or a television program. A script consists of movements of the actors, the actions they do, the dialogues that they say and expressions they express.

The format is structured in a way that one page usually equates to one minute of screen time. In a “shooting script“, each scene is numbered, and technical direction may be given. The major components are action and dialogue. The “action” is written in the present tense. The “dialogue” are the lines the characters speak.

Various screenwriting software packages are available to help screenwriters adhere to the strict formatting conventions. Detailed computer programs are designed specifically to format screenplays, teleplays, and stage plays. Such packages include BPC-Screenplay and Movie Magic Screenwriter.

Here is an example of a script from “The Dark Knight Rises” by Christopher Nolan.

Info sourced from wikipedia.