Equipment list- Or a shopping list for digital production

 How is it useful

So when we talk about lists I guess an immediate list that you would think of is a Christmas or shopping one as the defaults and to some extent you'd be thinking along those lines with this one too. Only when it comes to production its less about what you wish you had and more of a list of items that you will use for making the thing.

It's genuinely that simple. Now the use of an equipment list is important as you can keep track of items in a production which is especially important when renting equipment or scheduling for timetabled use of equipment like an boom mike from the office as it allows the production to keep track of what they start with and then what they end with or to ensure that any equipment that's used (like a camera) which takes from the actual production itself can be marked for easy identification of what needs to be taken for the file transfer.

There's also additional legal protection that can be gotten from having this list and from it a fair bit of detail within it, so say for example you rent a camera for your production and when you collect you notice there's some pre-existing damage with it having pictures and the evidence against the equipment itself protects you from having to pay any extra unnecessary cash.

Now below is a screenshot of the equipment list I generated for this production in order to show how this relates to the main topic of discussion:

So here you can see my example of what an equipment list looks like and more importantly what sort of detail is needed for them to be used effectively. Now I have covered the camera portion side of things extensively in the Budgeting post of the costing and why but the others need a bit of explaining so lets go through them in order.

The first is the microphone now as we have these in house we don't really need to cover pricing or things like this but it is liked to the second thing that I have included here and that is Photographs of before and after production. This is more the help of us than say our client. If objects and the like get damaged during the production then we may need to claim back for the damages recieved now of course the client could come back with risk assessment details and other such details which would make our claims all but void. So how can we avoid it? Well we have to head back into the legal barrel once again and cover ourselves.

The best way to make sure that we keep covered not only for ourselves but our actors too we can invest in what's called Public Liability Insurance our research of this came from a website called filmmaking.net where they talk about what types of insurance are the bets for filmmakers and the like and we come under this bracket. In essence what's being said is that Public Liability is the highest recommended and gives the best coverage incase things go wrong during production like damage of property or injury on set during the filming of the production. This is great as we are filming in a public location that could have a lot of hazards (as previously discussed in the Legal post) so making sure that we are covered is great.

Now unfortunately I couldn't find out if this covered rental property or not and this is a big thing as the cameras (and the lights however these are in contingency and backup plan they aren't covered as in-depth) are rental property that we then have to return to the company and we are liable for the welfare and use of equipment given to us therefore we need to consider coverage in the case of damages done to the equipment while filming.

Well hopefully this has given you a good idea and look at how useful an equipment list can be and what it can do to help you and your production not to mention how much easier it will be to keep track of all the items.

Have a great day! 

Client communication

 What you chatting?

So obviously there's a necessity in talking with your client otherwise you won't know anything about what your making or you might not even get anything made! There's a semblance of requirement about it though because it makes sure that you can keep up with what the client wants to get out of your production and how important it is that some elements are used when doing so.

So throughout the posts I have done so far (and possibly some future ones too.) I have brought up the idea of client communication and how I have used it to make sure that they get the most out of their budgets and commission possible so below are a few screenshots of the communication where I talk about a few details on the app itself as well as a screenshot of the moodboard that I used in order to intro the initial concept idea and what was contained within the meeting itself.

   

Initial Pitch meeting (Screenshot and bullet-points)

• Meeting starts
• Discussion about the moodboard and the meanings behind each shot and how they relate to the commission and brief
• Begin explanation of Idea 1
• End explanation of Idea 1
• Begin explanation of Idea 2
• End explanation of Idea 2
• Feedback based on explanations- Too general and up in the air, nothing concrete or solid for proof of concept (for example terminology 'I'm going to do X that leads into Y"), Bit of a mess and haphazard with a lot of noise going on around them. Need to bring it down and get something solid in place for a single concept that reaches mark.
• Discussion afterwards in budgeting (roughly) for both concepts at roughly the same price and how achievable and looking is it for the client
• Quick summary of everything discussed and what they want to see.
• Meeting end.

Hopefully this gives you some context behind the references to the client info that I have mentioned in posts and maybe given a bit of an image as to how important this idea of communication is with the client.

Have a great day!

Legal and health- What're the rules?

 What are we talking about?

So when we say legal maybe your brain automatically goes to lawyers right? Courts about goodness knows what and laws seemingly dropping from the sky but actually when it comes to the laws and conventions of film and video production it's actually pretty simple when you know what you're looking at ad how they're broken down.

So lets start with the most well known. Copyright. Now the way it works within the UK is that there is no official register for the protection of your own copyright and the essential is that if you come-up with an original piece of work like literature or creative works. So in terms of protection for the client we know that we can say he's safely protected against anything that might be ripped off as long as he can provide the evidence the idea is his. This actually comes from the government themselves in their most recent reports on the copyright protection of ideas and distribution within the UK themselves.

Now onto the bigger one, how could we step on it and there's a fair few ways that this can be done but for the sake of argumentum and the fact that a few won't be related to this production we'll stick with the relevant ones. The first is music, now music or backing tracks are what can make a an ad into a great one and can help to set the tone for what you want, when picking a track unless you make sure that you have permission to use protected music in a licensed production as this you need to make sure legal protection on both sides is available. How can you tell whether the track you have chosen is licensed? Well there's a few ways but a general one is to simply search it on the internet if you've found it on the internet or its come from a link so chances are if you want to be safe then the best way to find music without the legal hassle is to place 'Fair use' at the end of your searches as this will help to filter what results you get for the music that you look for.

Now for my production in an effort to keep costs down and work in time constraints with the processing for the licensing the most effective way to make sure that we can get the tracks that we want to ensure that we can get the production off to a good start and since these tracks are edited but in the base form we have a bit more leeway in making the track fit our production better.

So now we've talked audio lets talk visuals, now for my production this isn't a majorly impacting factor to the production we won't cover it as deeply but it essentially follows the same pattern as audio where licensing or permission is needed for the use of restricted and protected images and therefore would take more time for the production but as any images used within this are made by us or given by the client we didn't need to consider the ideas of using protected images in order to add emphasis to our productions outcome.

The final thing to worry about is the idea of talent release. This is a form that is signed by actors or anyone on camera to make sure that they're okay not only with being on camera but also that we as a producer and the client are protected against getting sued for deliberately using someone likeness or voice without permission in a monetized and corporate way helping to protect all parties involved with the production. For context of what this is and how one can look in its basic form I have a premade one attached below.

  So now we have the technical and legal stuff out of the way we can get into the health of it all. Now when I say health I mean the health and safety of the production during the filming within the filming area and other similar areas.

So we are filming within a small park during an off-peak time (during the week roughly at a high point of business/school time) legal issues are at a lesser risk, however as we are filming in a public park there are numerous health and safety areas to cover within this. I'll talk through a few here.

So the first is waste, now you may think that in a public park the rubbish collection services and bins around the area would help but it's still a major concern as there could be broken bottles with glass surrounding the area making potentially dangerous hazards not just to the actors but the film crew as well, there's a lot of travelling with cameras in this production making them more susceptible to injury by the feet. Now for actors the injury to the feet is a similar concern but for those who have extra interaction with the ground could risk more serious injury.

The second is the equipment itself, not only are we renting which makes us responsible for damages to the equipment themselves but also there's the risk of accidental injury to one of the crew or a pedestrian with the motions of the camera itself. From the storyboard and our script we have a lot of dramatic and fast motions which need to be highlighted, without proper indication of the movement and the timing of said moves one of the actors could potentially get injured from a transitioning shot; and its not just them but pedestrians too, as we are using a public space we can't keep pedestrians out of the area permanently for the entire length that we're filming for so there could be some who come past the production area and get caught by an actor mid shot or by a cameraman performing a tracking shot.

Hopefully this has given you a clear idea of what legal and health concerns are present in a production and how they are considered before being tackled through my own productions examples.

Have a great day!  

Storyboarding. The What and Why?

 What is a story board?

A story board is basically a drawing of whatever idea that you have. It's where you can apply your script (which we will discuss in a separate post.) alongside the chance to draw out different camera angles to see how it work in production and then have the option to make changes in order for the scene/shot to look better than how it appears in the first instance.

As you can see from the reference image that I have the storyboard provides a good visualization of the shots that you have in mind and more importantly how these would look which helps to give the client a more rounded view of the production that you'll be completing for them.

However while these are good for visualizing the shots that you want to complete and demonstrating your ideas to the client than just words it's not all they can do. Depending on how detailed you want them to be content can include things like shot length the type that you're looking to do to the mis-en-scene and even what audio that you want in it too. However it's not just about time saving and a visual demonstration of what you want to do but also for highlighting any problems that could come out of it before they happen with the shot types like timing or camera positions which can then be fixed before showing the client or your DP.

Now for my storyboard I tried to make it as detailed as possible so I made sure to include what shot types that I wanted, their length and positions too. Each one has a maximum of 10 seconds with a minimum of four to make sure that each portion gets enough exposure time to ensure that the idea of curiosity comes across in the video and makes the audience want to explore the app on their own to find out more about it and maybe themselves too.

In terms of content I feel that I covered it well with what's on camera and how long it would be, visual edits and camera shot types as well as distancing for the angle. In terms of detail however I feel that I could have included more but but as this is only meant to be the start of the planning stage I feel that the content within it covers it well enough.

Now I could have worked to try and include more detail in the actual lists themselves such as what different types of audio that I would be using in each shot or talking about the physical actions that would be happening within them.

So hopefully this has given you a good idea into what goes behind the development of a storyboard and how effective they can be when used within a production.

Have a great day! 

Scripts, what's the point?

 Writing and checking

So what's a script and more to the point, what's the use of them? I mean all they tell you is the words of the actors in the scene or clip being filmed. WRONG! While it's true that this is a part of it there's more to them than meets the eye, they dictate the chronology of the sequence or film and help to give a guidance to the client and editors of how they want the scene to flow as well as the director for what they want the scene to contain and/or the events, characters and dialogue within it.

So what's the purpose behind having a script? Well you can begin to nail down some more secure ideas for a structure of the video your making whilst working out what edits you think work best alongside the structure that you made for it.

So how can this be useful for the client? I mean surely all that they need to know is the progress. Well that's not exactly true before you make the product for the client you need to show them what the idea is that you have on paper to see if it's something that works with them and meets what they wanted to get out of them and to ensure it meets the target audience. So when making a script you have to make sure it ticks off on the objectives made by the client in order to achieve what they wanted.

In the brief that our client gave us he asked for our ads to be appealing to the wider age scale of 24-60 so when making the script I had to think about how I could making appealing in a general sense rather than having a narrow down in mind. He also asked for a certain demographic to be people who are explorers or mainstreamers or aspirers so in order to make sure that I hit that goal the language I have used is more tailored to promote that idea of curiosity within my audience.

   

So from here it's difficult to see but in essence this is all the content that the video will have in it the structure lets you clearly see where the actors lines are but also where the edits for them are so you know where in the sequence that you need a scene change or where you want an edit to be place to fulfil your mandate in the production of the video and more importantly where it will be most effective.

So a good point about this type of script is that it actually shows the length of the clip without saying it specifically, so for example this script is a page long and this means that from the content of the video will roughly last for a minute long which is good for the type of ad that you do which helps promote the objective given by the client in order to get people curious and thinking about topics covered.

However there's a bad point from this and that's also the run-time as for the money being put into it if the quality of the video isn't great then this will cause a lot of issues for me as a producer of the video but this will be covered in the legal & health post later on.

Well hopefully this has given you a clearer insight into script making and how useful it can be to have it written out to get a general idea of how it will flow but also how long your product will be.

Have a great day!

Budgeting-Prices galore

 The ins and outs

So when budgeting is mentioned I know that a lot of people begin to sweat thinking about the amount of money that goes into things that life revolves around but when it comes to the world of video making and production it does still total a large amount of money but the structure is less intimidating than the source image used here.

So one of the biggest factors that influence the production of a professional film or video is the budget that's made and given. In essence what happens is when you get the base of your idea down and the research behind renting costs for equipment as well as actor costs and additional expenses like travel and food.

Now ordinarily when you receive a commission you might get the budget that they're willing to use that might be willing to be negotiated or that there's a small range available.

When it comes to the commission that I have received I got a rough amount of two budgets for the commission the first was the major budget for the actual production itself which stemmed between £8,000 to £20,000 which allowed for more flexibility when it came to going away and taking the feedback on the idea process itself.

So with this knowledge I went away and began to get more solid ideas on the budget itself, first thing I went away to figure out is how much the standard rate is for actor hire. So for the length of that the production would be one actor for the period of filming as well as the possibility of doing re-shoots and use of the contingency would be £2,251 so in my production I would need three actors meaning that the cost would come to £6,753 which would cover the time it would take to film and any need for contingencies or re-shoots that would take up time and would be blocked in just in case we need to use a back-up actor or a schedule changes.

Now armed with a baseline I could refer back to I could then begin to make arrangements for the cost of an editor against this as the total for the production and post post production of the video. An editors standard rate is around £25.40 an hour as is the suggested hourly rate as of the 1st of March 2021 so using this I managed to work out a total cost for the amount of time that I would need (in and around roughly four days or so) giving me a total of £2,438 for use in the Post production stage. Now this is a small price to pay to ensure that you make sure the client gets what they want.

Now onto the bread and butter of things that make a scene a scene apart from the human elements. The equipment you use for the making of the scene will determine anything from acting quality if your using props how the actors interact with them to the quality of the recording that you get from the materials themselves. In order to make sure that there was no panic when it comes to the use of cameras (excluding microphone attachment as we have supply enough for them) we looked into surpassing our roughly estimated time for recording to make sure that we successfully covered re-shoot and contingency time. From a company called HireCamera we were able to get a good deal of two cameras at an estimated rate of £960 for two cameras across two weeks. Below is a screenshot of said camera and the costings list for it. 

So for a grand total for the production budget is £10,151 which works right into the middle of what the client was hoping for when it came to the total cost of the production itself.

Now when it comes to getting it out we can use apps like Facebook or Instagram and advertise effectively for no cost it's about how the message has gotten out, promotions on Facebook cost roughly £0.79 which if used can be taken out of potential surplus of the production costs but then we come to the nitty gritty of things.

Below I have included a conversation between me and the client about budget for TV advertising:

Now in this we can see that the possibility of TV broadcast advertising on two majors networks has been mentioned NatGeo and Discovery so when exploring this you have to think about not only the costs but the payoff in the reach that it could have.

When researching we discovered that National Geographic has more viewers at 9.5 million people which when wanting to promote for a new product would make the most obvious choice as it gets the message out better and more than likely to get even more views and allow for more advertising on the social media end and vice-versa.

According to the website tvadvertising the rough cost of advertising on a Peak time slot is £10-£34 for a 30 second ad so for use across multiple slots at the top end of price in a minute ad would total ~£500 or around that area. This makes sure that we get the total amount of viewers that we can as we hit peak times and spread as much as we can and get people using Facebook and Instagram to see more of it and promotes one of the goals that the client wanted which is the discovery in its customers.

Well hopefully this gives you an overview of how finance and budgeting can influence a decision and how it impacts the choices made in a production and how much consideration is needed when making them.

Have a great day!

Gantt what's?

 The Charts and what?

Now this name sounds confusing and trust me it gets more bizarre in visuals but we shall persevere and try nonetheless. So when we talk about production schedules we might normally go to things like shot log and things similar to them too, however where this differs is the detail and the actual list itself its more dedicated to time management and dedication.

In terms of what you can relate it too, think of a bar chart that you might use for quantities of things, on the left hand side (or the y-axis) shows what tasks need to be done and along the bottom (x-axis) how long you want to spend on a particular task for that time and can help you plan for overlap in the tasks that you want to complete.

By completing this chart you can get a clearer picture of how long each stage of production will last and how to divide your staff in the most effective way to make sure the production reaches the maximum potential that you see it becoming.

So what did I do for my production? Well in the image below you can see how I structured my Gantt chart.

So how I structured this is different to the industry standard similar to the one above in a few quickly identifiable ways like for example actual structure of the chart itself isn't built how you'd expect without any real way of telling the weeks into production. However we do have good methods of structure such as the separation of the production itself in its three stages (pre, main, and post) a structure that shows what fits into where such as the back-ups incase of emergency and how they would fit into the production process if they're needed. 

It's always a good idea to have a contingency plan drawn up in the case that say your location loses its time slot then you have something that you know that you can go to and use which always helps, making sure that the plan has blocks on the chart to make sure that they have a suitable amount of time dedicated to them to make sure that they have the same effect as the main idea.

Now one thing that could be potentially confusing from the way that I have used the chart is the coloring system as this could be misleading to the outside perspective, so I could have made two separate charts one for the main idea production and the other for the contingency but having the two in different shades on the same doc has a better demonstration for how the contingency would fit into the initial plan for the main video idea.

To make a long story short, when you use a Gantt chart make sure that you have plan and idea of where you want it to go and how you want the plan to work together. The chart itself is more for a visual representation of how you would structure the the production itself across days and how long each section of the production would take across each day.

Hopefully this has shown about how Gantt charts are used in the production process and how one is built.

Have a great day!