Type of production (media forms)

For our project we created a ninety second short film for the Depict

internet video competition. The competition is run by Watershed; it

has been running since 1998 and has seen hundreds of different

applicants and videos uploaded in a fierce competition for their cash

prize and an opportunity to be discovered on a more professional

level. This means that our film needs to be exciting and different to

any of the other videos that are being entered by other amateur film makers. Further details

and information about the depict competition are available on their website

http://www.depict.org/. There are lots of different media forms in which films are played on

which need to be able to adapt too, our video needs to be available on TV’s, on the internet,

films and much more. There are many other forms of media, media continues to dominate

our world things like Radio which is very influential in a modern world as has been over 60

years from announcing that we are at war in 1939 to announcing the latest number one

week in week out. Media has always had a massive influence on fashion and even our own

personal opinions.

Finance and sources of funding

There are many different sources and ways of funding films, big films are often funded by

loans and sponsorship deals. Smaller films are often personally funded off of their own back

having to loan equipment and hire out editing studios to make them what they are although

this isn’t necessarily always the case a few examples of who

fund films are; Big studious such as Hollywood or Paramount,

they fund movies through their own cash, bank loans and

often from investors who are not only interested in making

money but the glamour that surrounds the movie business

itself. Sometimes production companies will fund a film, this may be because they know

that they can sell the movie to a distributor who can make a lot of money off it. Movies can

also be funded through national funding for example the film council in the UK; also through

loans with some places like in Mexico they offer a 0% interest loan through the New Mexico

film commission. Then there are the self-financed films, particularly low budget but can still

be very successful such as El Mariachi which was financed by Robert Rodriguez. I found this

information through Wikipedia, BFI and Paramount websites. Product placement is

something else that is often done in films and has just started to be used in TV as it was

previously restricted due to laws. This is a great way for people to get advertisement money

for example in the new James Bond movie Skyfall, he is seen to be drinking Heineken, it is

likely they have paid a lot of money for this product placement due to his iconic stature in

the male universe. Funds also come from places such as the national lottery and the BFI who

have promised to fund over £500m worth of film making in the next 5 years. A lot of

companies and channels such as channel 4 just take a commission from ideas that are used

on their channel, they don’t actually create any of their own programmes they just take ides

from other people and then take a commission from them if they think it is a good idea for a

programme and if it is going to get them good viewing. Crowd funding is often used to help

smaller companies to get them started and on the move, often used in other things such as

disaster funding, it’s done by a group of individuals that make money to put into a fund to

help such projects as mentioned. This money is often made online with anybody able to

donate. Movies can also be funded by individual investors such as Megan Ellison, the heiress

has helped fund films such as True Grit and Catch.44 with more of her father’s money being

made available to her now she has invested a lot more in the past 2 years.

What will the money be spent on?

The money that is generated by these sources needs to spread over a variety of things, the

amount of people involved in productions will change depending on the type of film. Films

such as James Bond will require a lot more crew than something smaller like Clerks by Kevin

Smith. This means that the amount of money needed to pay for all of the crew is going to be

a lot more. Additionally costs for things such as, use of

CGI workshops, film that are big on such graphics

(commonly Sci-Fi’s) are going to need at least one

workshop and will often have two or three groups of

people working on different aspects of CGI for their film.

Other equipment such as simply cameras, lights,

computers and tripods are going to need to be hire or

attained to create the film. Of course there is no point having great actors and great CGI if

you have no were to do your recording, whether this is on location somewhere or if it is on a

movie set. The cost for travelling to such locations or the licenses and clearances to use and

to lease them out is going to cost a lot of money. Many big companies are able to spend

millions and millions on the production of big movies, the ‘James Bond’ film ‘Casino Royale’

managed to spend £750,000 in one afternoon by destroying three Aston Martins.

What did we have to spend money on/attain?

For the production we made ourselves for the Depict entry

we had to get a few things before we could even start

recording, initially we had to buy a Teddy as it was the main

character for our production, we couldn’t just get any stuffed

bear it had to be the right size to be caught by the camera

and be cute to help the audience relate to the feelings for the

bear. As there was only one human character in our scene we

only had to think about one person’s costume, this was not particularly difficult as we know

exactly how old the child was going to be and had a picture in our heads of what she was

going to look like, this meant attaining dungarees which was fairly easy to do. From pre-

production planning we knew that we wanted a car in our piece and as we had somebody in

our group that drove to college again we knew this was going to be something that could be

easily attained and used. The equipment we used in our piece was pretty simple just the

Camera and the Tri-pod these had to be borrowed from our college AV room. The

programmes we used to edit our video and put it together was provided by the college also

on their computers, this was helpful as it meant we didn’t have to hire the facilities to do

the post production work such as editing the video. Usually money would be spent on

getting clearances for locations but due to it being a educational video we were able to get

the clearance from a local police officer by a simple e-mail, something that is not always

easily done in the movie industry, interestingly recently R&B star Rihanna was trying to

shoot for one of her music videos and did not purchase clearances for being in a farm in

Wales and was removed by the owner of the farm.

Did we meet our timeframe?

We were set a deadline for our short films to be finished by but due to uncontrollable

circumstances we were unable to complete our piece within the time frame. We were

ahead of schedule in the first instance but due to the dramatic change in weather conditions

and our film being set outside we could not continue filming otherwise there would be a

large continuity error in the film, this meant we had to change the ending to compromise.

Had this of happened on a more professional film there is a good chance we would have lost

money in the production or worse case would have been getting sacked. This has happened

before in professional film making most infamously with the production of Heaven’s Gate,

when Michael Cimino went way over budget and totally missed his deadline it was so well

publicised that it practically finished his directing career even after previously directing

some very good movies. The equipment made available to us was supplied from our college

we had to borrow them from the appropriate places with permission to use them in certain

times. For a professional film the director and the producers would have to hire this

equipment or purchase it themselves, this would often cost a lot of money as they would

use the highest quality equipment as without it, they would not be able to obtain the same

sort of quality as many of their competitors. In our production we were put into groups off

three but were allowed to use talent outside of this as long as we got them to sign a letter

of consent to be on camera. This gave us a certain amount of freedom with who we wanted

to have in the view of the camera but decided early on that we wanted to use a small

amount of crew so we had the potential to work outside of our class time and it would be

able to agree times with less people.

Talent and crew working in a media production

For our video we only had 3 people in our group this is nothing compared the hundreds or

thousands of people you would have involved in a professional film you can see the lists of

people that are involved in big films on the IMDB website http://www.imdb.com/. This

meant that everybody had to do more than just one thing and work together as a team. Out

of the three of us we had very little experience in creating our own short films, our actor

hadn’t experienced very little time in front of a camera and our production team had a

limited amount of experience. This was the same for all of our

roles; directing, cameramen, production editing and sound

engineering we had very limited experience and only at a very

basic level. Experience and skill will always have a massive effect

on the quality of a production, without it there is clear evidence of

it being an amateur production, experience makes it easier to draw things you did wrong in

the past and put them right in the production you are doing, due to our lack of this some of

the mistakes we made we didn’t notice until it was too late, in a future production we would

be able to rectify these problems at an earlier stage and make sure they are eradicated.

Although this was the case we still required certain things to make the movie possible, we

had to make sure our talent had the right queues and that they had all of the correct props

and costume every day that we recorded, we had to make sure all of our crew had working

equipment and equipment that would sync and work properly with the computers we

would be editing on later. These were all things we had to consider and think about during

the creation of the film or it would have been a shambles, this shows that even at the most

amateur standard it is important that your cast and crew have all of the correct things to

make the film. The personnel involved in a production can often be very expensive

especially in a professional production, they need to have a place to sleep, eat and wash this

is all important to keep them working at a high standard, different stars are paid vastly

different amounts of money, this depends on how successful they have been previously and

how well the production company thinks they can sell the movie and how suitable they are

for the role, for example Charlie Sheen was paid around 1.25 million dollars per episode

when he was playing the role of Charlie Harper on Two And A Half Men, this in comparison

to the likes of Jim Parsons in The Big Bang Theory who gets

paid 40,000 dollars an episode, although he is a successful

actor as well it is clear the difference between becoming big

and becoming huge is. It is also wondered sometimes is it

worth paying these stars such a mass amount of money, are

they really worth it? It’s interesting to see that the most

profitable actor is actually Matt Damon who made 29 dollars

gross, for each dollar that he made on his movie The Bourne

Ultimatum, we can also see that Friends star Jennifer Aniston makes an average of 17

dollars gross for her films making her the most profitable actress, this is according to the

Forbes Ultimate star payback list.

http://gawker.com/5611209/how-much-do-your-favorite-tv-stars-get-paid

http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/03/celebrities-hollywood-movies-biz-

cz_dp_0806starpayback.html

For our amateur production this was not so much of a problem as we worked in college

hours. We had very little in the way of equipment props and costumes for our piece the

things we did need were fairly simple and were easy to obtain. When deciding who we were

going to use in our production we considered the amount of time we were going to need

them on camera and how many different time slots this meant we were going to be

recording in. After considering these things we decided it would be easier for us to have

someone from our group being in front of the camera as we would all be together at the

same time and would be fairly flexible about when we could be working on our production.

On a professional level there would be interviews and it is likely that the personnel would

have to produce a record of previous work to show there qualities and the capabilities to

the directors and producers, often hundreds of people are turned down from a role so that

the director can get exactly the right person. To ensure the availability of our personnel we

kept it very limited, with just three of us being involved in all of the recording and editing we

knew there was a little chance of people being unavailable meaning we could carry on and

get things done easily. In the film industry this wouldn’t be so simple they would have

double ups in place and would make sure they set scenes and do parts of the movie whilst

the people they need are available, often recording is not done in a chronological order as it

is just not practical.

Facilities needed to create a media product?

In our production there was only very basic facilities needed to create our piece, for a

professional film they would need the most expensive and quality facilities available, this is

due to the extent of the content that is produced for a professional piece, they must also

make sure that they book these facilities in advance as the top companies will be the most

sought after, movies that need to be finished on a certain timeframe need to make sure

they get everything done at the right time so they can meet their deadline. Our amateur

production didn’t need this as it was a very simple idea that could be produced with very

little facilities. During post-production we used very little equipment; we used the

computers made available to us by the college and the software they had on there to edit

our clips together and to create a well-developed piece. For big movie productions they

would often use facility houses and studios to create there movie, these are places in which

a movie company can hire out a group of people to edit there movie, they are professionals

in their field, without these people it is likely that the final piece would not be close to the

standard expected. Outsourcing is when you use a company outside of your own to help you

to do something, this is often used because other companies have experts in their fields and

can do a better job at something than perhaps the people in the company that require

something to be done. This is often needed In big

productions such as ‘The Matrix’ or ‘James Bond’

because of the amount of content involved it would be

difficult for just one company to make a high quality

movie on their own. For our own production outsourcing

was not necessary because it was an amateur production and we couldn’t afford to hire

another company to do any of the work for us. When looking at hiring out facilities

companies need to be careful financially whilst it is important to get the best available their

isn’t a lot of point in spending half of the budget on facilities that aren’t really needed to

make the film excel, for example if a film like ‘Love Actually’ wanted a little bit of CGI in their

film for whatever reason, it does not need to be of the same quality that you would see in a

film such as ‘The Matrix’ as it is not what the fans are looking to see, therefore they would

need to hunt around to find a cheaper deal on a facility that is still going to get the job done.

When hiring out facilities to be used, the company hiring them must consider what else is

available to them, to compete in the film industry companies need to be on par with their

competitors, this means using the must up to date and high tech facilities possible. If a

company uses facilities that are five years out of date then they will not be producing a

movie as good as what will be being released at the same time, this will result in a lack of

viewers and therefore a big loss in money as well as fans. I looked at several different

websites to find out about what sort of facilities a film would need, I searched on Google for

facilities used in films, and this was one of the links I used:

http://www.campaignproductions.com/film_services_and_studio_facilities/index

Locations and filming

When deciding on where to film a movie, the producers/directors need to consider all of the

places available to them, on a professional standard this is almost limitless for a high budget

film, but when creating our amateur films for the Depict entry we

were far more limited. This wasn’t just because of our lack of

budget but also because of the time we had to record. A location

recce is when part of the production team goes out and scouts a

place which could be used to see how suitable it would be for their

production, they will take photos and look at the area to see if it

would be suitable for their piece, if a director needed a park with

swings for example they might have an image in their head of what the swings look like and

If perhaps they creak when they swing, this then gives them a chance to go and test these

things out and check them for suitability rather than just turning up in a location and

immediately recording. Even after deciding on a location the crew cannot just turn up and

start recording, a location release is needed to get the land owner’s permission for the cast

and crew to use the site, as mentioned and seen with Rihanna when trying to record one of

her music videos if this is not done the land owner has permission to remove them from the

site, this was due to the fact that the farmer was not given enough information about what

exactly they would be filming when he was asked if they could use his land and being a

religious man when he realised the nature of the filming he asked them to leave.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/farmer-orders-topless-rihanna-off-his-farm/99472/

When deciding on our locations for our Depict video, we had an image of what our piece

was going to look like before we started recording, this meant we needed to go out and find

places in the local area around college that were suitable for our piece, we looked at a

couple of parks in the area but due to some of them being over crowded or not having

swings we had to decide on a park in the middle of the Shrublands estate near college.

During our flashback scene we had a couple of other locations that we needed to use to

create a timeline of events, we used the recreation field across from the college to record

the parts of the girl in the open field, we also used a college meeting room to record scenes

for birthdays and for watching TV. Because our performance was being made in college time

and mainly in lesson time we had a lot of limitations which we had to consider before

filming, there was one limitation that we had not really considered enough in pre-

production that affected our performance which was the weather. Being in the UK the

unpredictable weather conditions can make a big difference on a recording, with only a

week to produce our pieces we were unable to work our way around the major change in

weather conditions during the time of our recording. Other limitations were things such as

travel, as we were working in class time we had at maximum 2 hours to go out record and

come back, sometimes as little as an hour, meaning that the maximum we could travel was

within 5 minutes of the college to leave us any time at all for recording. We also had very

little equipment, the camera and the tri-pod made available to us was very helpful but we

wanted to use the shoulder brace but due to its popular demand we were unable to have

any time using this for our production. In the future when we create a piece we will look at

these limitation and account for them, the weather is something that cannot so easily be

controlled but for a piece like this we will consider shooting it inside so we can control the

lighting and the feel of the mise-en-scene.

Materials

Directors need many materials to produce a film, there are different types of materials such

as original materials, and these are things that they can produce themselves that are

completely original to the producer or director themselves. Other materials such as archive

and library materials are useful. In the movie world the archives date back decades which

means a producer has an endless about of information available to him which he can look at

and take ideas or re-use ideas in his own way. The internet is an almost endless supply of

information, since the development of the internet there has been a massive increase of

prosumers means that professional companies can look at ideas of amateurs that may have

been well thought but not very well executed and make them look their own. As well as all

these things that are used to actually create the movies, professional movie makers often

have massive budgets to work with, some films spend up to $300m to make, and this means

they have great costumes, props and music technology to create the right mood and

atmosphere. They can also get in the best actors through interviews and workshops.

Although all these things are available film makers must make sure they have been given

written or contracted permission to use them, as copyright laws are so tight in the modern

world and the last thing a film maker needs is a law suit on their hands. Once these

permissions have been obtained they must be checked through clearances to further

enhance the safety of the film. Although using another person’s idea can save a lot of time

and if it has been successful in the past it means there is less risk. There can be added

budget problems as contracts for using other people’s ideas can be expensive. For our

amateur production we had very little in the way of materials as we worked on a budget of

next to nothing and were not working in the film industry itself, our only real material we

could use to help us was the internet as it is available to everybody.

Contributors

When making a film there are many different people involved, from the talent to the

cameraman. There are usually individual specialists as part of the crew, with big films using

more technical elements such as CGI and other effects there needs to be people that are

professionals in those individual roles. Experts similar to specialists are people that have a

certain skill which they excel in which can be helpful to the overall finish of the film these

people often cost a lot of money to hire in if they are the best in their field. The extras are

often just as important as the main cast in a film, to create an atmosphere of a saloon in a

western movie there needs to be a lot of people around the place drinking and being loud, if

there are only 2 people that are the 2 main casts it is boring and unrealistic. Many

contributors will have something called a contributors biography, this is information on that

person whether it be talent or an expert/specialist it gives the film maker a mass of

information on how good they are and what their past experience is, so they can see if they

have done similar things in the past and how successful these turned out a contributors bio

is different from just a regular CV as it will often contain passages about their lives work and

is more of a scrapbook of what they have done with videos images to give the film maker a

more work based idea of what they are hiring. It minimises the risk of the film maker as they

can see if someone is going to be good before they have acquired them.

Legal issues

When creating a media production one must first consider the legal issues surrounding it.

For example they must acquire clearances for anything they use. A clearance is where they

must receive permission to use a specific person or image in the production, it is important

they check all of these permission have been granted. There are different things clearances

are needed for such as Music, Talent, Locations and Images. For music it may be that you

want to use a song written by a certain person, the film maker cannot go ahead and use this

song without checking with the producers of it that they can do so. Talent must write a

consent form saying that the recorded images can be used in the final production. The

different locations will cost money to hire out especially if they are big publicly used places,

often you see movies set in cities such as London or New York, and there must be clearances

from the police when these places are being used for filming. If this is not done then the film

makers can be taken to court and be asked to pay for ‘damages’ and is likely to have to pay

compensation to the owner of the land or the person who did not give permission.

Copyright is a big issue for film makers in modern times, due to the tight laws around

music/images and the concepts of the production. People must make sure they either gets

written clearances or that their ideas are completely original. This wasn’t too much of an

issue for ours as we were not going to be making money off of our idea but we did still have

to get clearances for our music we used in our production. If an accident occurs during

filming there is something called public liability insurance this is a pot of money that pays for

damages and or compensation. There have been cases of this in recent years such as in

Transformers 3 a woman named Gabriella Cedillo was struck in the head by a lump of metal

that came of a stunt car and has given her permanent brain damage, the family of Gabriella

have since sued Paramount Pictures for Failing to hold up its duty of care for Gabriella whilst

she was working on set. Sometimes film makers have to work under completion insurance

or a completing guarantee, this is a contract/agreement that stipulates when the product

will be finished by, this is often used when films are coming out for a Christmas release or as

a summer blockbuster, if they are a month or two late they will miss their whole target

audience.

http://www.poynerspruill.com/publications/Pages/LegalIssuesinFilmProduction.aspx

Regulation

Regulatory bodies are groups of people that make sure the laws and guidelines for certain

sports or business are kept to the expected/required level of professionalism, whether it be

in sport or in parliament, regulatory bodies must make sure

that everything runs as it should. Ofcom are the regulators of

all TV and radio sectors, fixed line telecoms, mobiles, postal

services, plus the airwaves over which wireless devices

operate. They work under the communications act 2003, this

act of parliament tells exactly what Ofcom can do and

nothing else, this is all they can do. Their main legal duties

are to ensure that the whole of the UK has a range of electronic communication services like

high-speed broadband. They must make sure there are a wide variety of television and radio

programmes accessible to everybody. Make sure that everybody is protected from harmful

or offensive material that could be broadcasted. They also ensure that there is a universal

postal service that runs 6 days a week and that all of the prices are the same throughout.

The PCC is the executive body of the Church of England parish; they are responsible for the

financial affairs of the church and the maintenance of the church. The ASA is the first

governing body for swimming in the world and is still the English governing body for

swimming, diving, water polo and synchronised swimming. It is the leader for the swimming

industry itself. PEGI is the legally enforcing ratings body for video games in the UK; it looks

at games and decides what age range they are suitable for. The British Board of Film

Classification is a non government organisation that is funded by the film industry. It is

responsible for the age certificate of all UK films and previous to august this year some video

games. They must look at a film and decide what age limit its contents is suitable for, they

must look/listen to the music, language and screenplay and decide on its certificate which is

then displayed on the packaging of the Video/DVD and affects who can see it legally in the

cinema. This means that when creating our video for depict we had to consider what our

age certificate was going to be and had to look at the guidelines for the different age

restrictions, our video had a scene where somebody was hit by a car but there was no blood

or any visible damages, this meant that our video would have to be a PG when following the

BBFC guidelines.

http://regulatorylaw.co.uk/List_of_regulatory_bodies.html

Trade unions and trade associations

Trade unions are set up to ensure that employees work in good working condition under the

right sort of pay and enough staff to help them fulfil all of their required activities. These

unions sometimes organise strikes if they think their employers are not treating them fairly,

sometimes they will strike against the amount of hours they have to do or perhaps a lack of

pay, often strikes can lead to major issues for the employer meaning that they have to bow

to the employee’s demands. Trade unions give the employee a chance to have their voice

heard. BECTU is an individual trade union for people who work in

broadcasting, film, theatre, entertainment and leisure. They

have over 26.500 members and are funded by these members

themselves. BECTU helps to negotiate pay and contracts with their

member’s employers. They give personal advice and representation

for individual members. A union journal that is published eight times a

year. Their own personal website is set up to help their members that seek support. Trade

associations are a group of companies that come together all of which are in a similar

industry, the support each other and exist for their own benefit. They help companies

ensure that their safety is up to scratch and that they are generally running their company

to the correct guidelines and to acceptable standards. They often hold seminars and a

conference to discuss how their companies should be run and how is best to advertise and

enhance their company. BIMA is an industry body representing the digital industry in the

United Kingdom they are an organisation that is run by an elected group of 13 members

that is voted for at their AGM, it now hosts its own awards each year to celebrate excellence

within the industry. ELSPA is part of the gaming industry and helps with industry promotion

as well as its massive database of sales charts and reports on games to help industry

professionals see what is successful and what is not. They help people boost their careers

and review proposed legislation in the gaming industry. TIGA is the trade association that

supports the UK’s game industry; their members include independent games developers,

outsourcing companies, technology businesses and universities. TIGA want to make the UK

the best place in the world to do game business by keeping voices in the Westminster and

Scottish parliaments. They also have a newspaper company that voices their ambitions

among the press as well as on TV and online.

Summary

It’s easy to forget sometimes when your sat in the cinema with your giant popcorn and drink

how long it takes for a movie to be produced, we may sit there for 90-120 minutes to view a

performance that has taken 2, 3, 4 years to make this is due to the extent of planning and

production editing that goes into a common blockbuster.