As
a group of three, we produced a 90 second film short about a super hero. This
was for the DepicT competition, which consists of many short films under 90
seconds all submitted by other students and other smaller media production
companies. We worked scrupulously together to create an end product, focusing
on pre-production so that all of the details and ideas could be discussed in
depth. After post production, we decided to share our video via YouTube and
some other social media platforms. We decided this because of how accessible
YouTube is to the general public and how the other social media websites are
also very accessible to a large number of people. By posting our product onto
the web, it immediately becomes available to the world. A lot more of the
studio funded films are released within the mainstream cinemas like Odeon and
Vue. Cinema City shows more of the indie and art videos within the Norfolk
area, showcasing new films from the more independent production companies.
For
our DepicT competition, we were given £5 by the Sixth Form College, East
Norfolk. However, there are many different kind of income sources when it comes
to making films, usually ones that are feature length. Sources of income
include:
Funding
is one large aspect of film making. There are many different kinds of funding
and can range from small donations to large sums of money.
-Crowd Funding (Kickstarter/Indiegogo/Patreon)
One example of crowdfunding
was the film ‘Ashens: and The Quest for The Game Child’. The film managed to
raise over $70,000, but only managed to receive about 41% of their desired
budget of $180,000. The film still managed to be released on YouTube and then
later released on DVD and Blu-Ray. The film was well received from other
YouTube figures and also fans of Ashens.
Corridor
Digital is a YouTube channel specialising in making short films. Instead of
starting a Kickstater project, they are on a website called Patreon. Patreon
works similarly to Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but the person creating the
content gets paid every month or every project they finish. People who pledge
get added bonuses from the content creators, giving a more incentive to pledge.
-Private
Investors
One excellent example of a
Private Investor is from Megan Ellison’s production company, Annapurna
Pictures. Megan has produced such films as Her,
Zero Dark Thirty and American Hustle. As of writing this, she
has 26 Producer credits listed on IMDb. She was born into a very wealthy family
and has used that money to fund these films.
-Self
Funding/Competition
Self-funding is one way to
create a film. Some people who start off their production can self-fund with
some savings, or everyone in the production can chip in to some of the fund.
Usually, some people enter a film making competition. DepicT is one example of
a competition. The winning prize is a cash sum, so that cash sum could be used
in another production down the road for the winning team. One self funder is Kevin Smith with his trilogy named Clerks. Smith funded the three films by himself which then went onto making profit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Smith
-Banks
Banks are a source of income.
Loans are a viable option to getting the money needed for the production. This
ties in closely with self-funding. If the production doesn’t have all the money
in that moment, they can go to a bank and ask for a loan.
-BFI Film Funding
The BFI (British Film
Institute) Film Fund is “the largest public film fund in the UK”. Every year,
BFI invest over £26m of Lottery funds to support film development and
production. According to their back project search page, Over 1600 projects
have been backed by the BFI, including £92,500 given to the upcoming Glasgow
Film Festival in 2016. The BFI allows newcomers and professionals to create
films by funding their projects, large or small.
-Studio
Funding
Studio
funding is one of the most common ways to fund a film production. A production
company like Warner Bros, New Line Cinema or Walt Disney Pictures will usually
fund their own productions.
Requirements
and budgeting is a large aspect of film making. Budgeting is one of the most important
steps in the pre-production section of the entire process. Budgeting is very
important when working within a tighter budget. There are lots of different
aspects of production that need to be purchased or hired for the production to
become a reality. The list can consist of, but is not limited to:
-Props and Costumes
-Crew and Casting
-Set hiring
-Set builders
-Talent, Background and Main
-Camera and Lighting
-Hardware and Software (usually for
post-production)
-Food and Drink facilities.
For
our project, we had £5 given to us and we had to spend that on props, costumes
or something else. We had most of things required for the production, including
props and most costumes. We had to buy a cape for the super hero parts in the
movie. Our cameras (Canon 700D and Canon 550D) were supplied by East Norfolk
Sixth Form College, but we had to sign out the equipment, essentially hiring
them. We needed to spray paint two of the props, luckily we were able to do so
within the college. An example of studio funding is the Harry Potter film series. All films were estimated at a budget of $125m, from the first to the last film.
Personnel
is also a large aspect of film making and production. For a low budget short,
we had to each become the directors, producers, actors, editors and more. For a
slightly larger (but still) small production, there would still have to be auditions
held and the cast, crew and post-production crew hired or volunteering. In a TV
programme, there are producers and the producers usually have to go look for a
writer. When the writer is selected, they must then write the screenplay and
then talk about the screenplay in depth with the producers. The team now go
find the rest of the cast and crew by going to agencies and different media
companies to see whether they would like to take part in the project. Because
of this, the team is now a lot larger, having dedicated directors, writers,
actors, background artists, crew and runners. In a Hollywood production, the
amount of people needed is scaled up, with more editors, writers, producers,
mainstream actors, background artists and more. A Hollywood production would
typically be the largest in terms of production team scale. All three would
[possibly] consist of a spokesperson or spokespeople and given the role to
interact with the general public. BBC Sherlock was created by Hartswood Films, consisting of nine people. The TV show was created with a large crew because of something called outsourcing. Outsourcing means that the production company went out and recruited the other parts of production, including actors, camera crew and the full crew.
Set of BBC Sherlock
For
our production, we had 4 people in total. 3 of us were the main group for media
and the 4th actor was a friend. The three of us were responsible for
directing, planning, producing, budgeting, risk-assessing, filming and editing.
We had to do everything in the pre-production, production and post-production stages.
Two of the three from our group were experienced more so in editing. Though,
the editing was down to two of us, we all had a similar amount of time using
the editing suite. All three of us have had at least some experience with film
making, but again, some had less experience than others. A friend named Peter
was able to offer his acting skills to our production. He played the true
antagonist to the film. At one point, we had a subject friend to work the
camera while we were all in shot. Thanks to him, we were able to get some shots
we couldn’t have achieved beforehand when the camera needed moving and there
was no one to operate said camera.
Time
is very important when we planning to make a traditional and conventional media
text. Not sticking to deadlines is a very unprofessional act to do and can
deter people or groups from funding your project. The release date of the film
could be pushed back and more money would have to go funding the cast and crew
for more days. If the deadlines are not met then there is a possibility of you
being fired and your reputation damaged indefinitely. For our production, we
were given three weeks; week one was for pre-production, one week for filming
and one week for post-production. We had one week for pre-production, one week
for production and one week for editing. During filming, we weren’t able to
film any of the scenes since the weather was bad. This would have ruined
continuity and could have damaged the equipment we had. It could have made our
filming areas dangerous since the mud was wet and there was a danger that one
of us could have fallen over and injured themselves or the equipment could have
broken. For this, we were allowed another day to make up for the filming that
we could have done on the raining day.
As
said before, we were able to essentially hire out most of the equipment from
college using our student cards. As stated before, we used a Canon 700D and a
Canon 550D during filming, but we also used a tripod, a camera mounted
microphone and a Zoom microphone for voice over. All of these were hired out
from the college and used within the production process. We were also able to
use from fans from the college that we got permission for. We were also able to
use our own props from home and we also supplied most of the costume. Some
bigger productions (like in a university) possibly have the same method, using
their student numbers to hire out equipment from the university themselves.
Some usually go to a company where they hire out the equipment for a fee. One
company, Millennium Studios, hires out professional equipment for a certain
amount of days or lets you use their facilities to rehearse, record or hire
workspace. We were able to use the green screen room at the college and use the
public property across the road. Hiring a set or stage for one (10hr) weekday costs £600 and £60 thereafter. This price excludes lighting, electric and more. Since we filmed in public property and with permission within college, this is one example of utilising our budget and making sure we use little to none of our budget for accommodation etc.
When
deciding on the story board and shot list, location was very important to
decide on. We went out in a pair and looked at the green screen location. We
also went to the park across the road and decided what places would be best for
the production. We picked the green-screen room because of how we had a lot of
freedom when it came to deciding what shots we should do for the green screen
clips. We chose the field/park across the road from the college because of the
open area we could use. We could also use the bench that was at the back of the
park. Since the outside shots were on a field, the mud could become wet and
slippery which could have been a risk. We were able to assess all risks that
correlate with the field (uneven ground, wet ground) and within the green
screen room (tripping over equipment, plug sockets). We were able to assess all
risks with the Risk Assessment we created. We suggested to take care when
moving equipment and traversing the set.
For
the film, we needed a lot more material to work with. For this, we went to two
main websites: incompetech.com and freesound.org. Incompetech is a website full
of royalty-free music. We were able to get the music tracks from incompetech and
use them in our short film. For sound effects, we went to freesound.org. For
some sound effects, we mixed them together to make them sound more realistic.
We also had to find some royalty free visual effects for our film. For this, we
searched on YouTube and used the keywords ‘royalty-free’. If we wanted to use
the official soundtracks from certain films or TV series, a license fee usually
needs to be paid for us to use said materials, but luckily we were able to find
music on incompetech.com.
Legal
issues are a big factor within our project. Because of this, we did not want
our video taken down or the college being taken to court because we did not
have the rights to use the materials. From gov.uk:
Copyright protects your
work and stops others from using it without your permission.
You automatically get
copyright protection when you create:
-original literary,
dramatic, musical and artistic work, including illustration and photography
-original non-literary
written work, eg software, web content and databases
-sound and music
recordings
-film and television
recordings
-broadcasts
-the layout of published
editions of written, dramatic and musical works
You can mark your work
with the copyright symbol (©), your name and the year of creation. Whether you
mark the work or not doesn’t affect the level of protection you have.
What
this means is that if someone takes our work and uses it and takes credit for
the work, we have legal grounds to sue the person who republished our work and
took credit for it. For example, if someone reused our film and replaced the
music and with their own sound effects and soundtrack, we are still allowed to
sue that publisher, however, if someone uses the same soundtrack as us we are
not allowed to sue the new publisher because the music is from another author
and is copyright-free. For our production, we had to avoid using materials from
other productions like images, sound and video. We had to find alternatives for
music and sound on freesound.org and incompetech.com. For images, we were able to
use some royalty free images and we were also able to use a picture of the moon
since any media based material from NASA is allowed to be re-used since it is
in the public domain.
“NASA still images,
audio files, video, and computer files used in the rendition of 3-dimensional
models, such as texture maps and polygon data in any format, generally are not
copyrighted. You may use this material for educational or informational
purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer
graphical simulations and Internet Web pages. This general permission extends
to personal Web pages.”
More
can be found here:
Clearance
is the act on showing your film in a public area like a cinema. We are only
allowed to show our film when we have written permission from everyone in the
production (actors).
Completion
guarantee is a system where the production team is given a budget based on an
incomplete short. The more promising ones is handed over to the BFI for them to
decide whether or not the short would be guaranteed to be completed. If so, the
BFI can then give money to the production company, respectively.
There
are two big regulatory bodies; OFCOM and the BBFC. OFCOM is a communications regulator.
What this means is that they are
responsible for maintaining the communications throughout the UK. They provide
broadband, TV and radio programmes and more. For the BBC, the BBC Trust regulates the content on the BBC. The BBC is independent of the BBC Executive board, and the employees at the BBC Trust are hand picked, then are given instructions from Ministers and Her Royal Highness, The Queen. The BBC Trust is more public-interest oriented. This means that they can regulate the content as the audience see fit, however, OFCOM is an independent regulator and they are oriented in a way that keeps communications active and online. The BBFC (British Board of Film Classifications) is about the age ratings of film, TV and some video games. They are responsible for judging the media and deciding what classification the film deserves. This stops children from viewing media that is considered adult, like violence or sexual scenes.
The different certificate ratings from the BBFC
A trade union is:
"An organized association of workers in a trade, group of trades, or profession, formed to protect and further their rights and interests."
What this means is that a group of people come together as a group and they defend their rights and privileges in that trade. For instance, there is a teachers alliance who, upon something that could affect them, come together to petition or stand against unfair changes to protect each teacher within the alliance. In the media industry, PACT is an association that helps represent many different media companies within the UK. PACT offers legal advice to said media companies to help ensure they are not having their content stolen and that they can stay clear of copyright and other legal actions against/for them. BECTU on the other hand offer support on the job side of the media industry. BECTU offer Improved pay and work conditions, protects your jobs and many more. BECTU can also ensure that you are being treated as an equal individual in the work-space.
Public liability insurance is an insurance where, if the crew were to be injured or the general public, this insurance will cover legal costs and compensation.
A trade association are organisations funded by other businesses from a specific industry. There are many trade associations around the world, including BIMA. BIMA have been operating since 1985 in areas that help and support the British digital industry and helps encourage a new generation to get into the industry. BIMA provide market statistics and more to help companies tailor their products to the audiences needs.
Hi Roisin,
ReplyDeleteYou have explained in some detail and competently presented requirements and sources of requirements for production for a specific media production.
Josh