Understanding the requirements of pre-production
Types of Production
A documentary is a radio report, television programme or film that’s sole purpose is to inform and educate viewers about a specific subject matter e.g. a documentary on the effects on global warming and how we can protect the planet. Channel 4 is a prime example of a broadcaster that specialising in high quality documentaries.
A news program can also be presented in all the same formats as a documentary but the purpose of a news report is to present recent events in the world in an informative and professional manner, it’s important they present it in this serious professional manner because sometimes they have to talk about emotionally provoking and shocking stories.
A factual programme is an informative nonfiction programme, it’s important that informative given is proven to be fact. If it’s not a factual programme if you’re presenting information that isn’t factual it then becomes more like a docu-drama or simply a drama. Factual programmes have almost identical criteria as a documentary but they tend to be very specific to one topic.
Finance and Materials
Our film needs very little financing because all of the graffiti writers featured have agreed to participate in this film as long as we protect their identities and meet all their requirements.
All of the artist will be supplying their own paint which means that we as film makers can keep our cost to an absolute minimum.
The only thing that were going to have to pay for is travel , so that we can meet up and produce our film, but this will come out of our own money and doesn’t really need to be tied in with the film as its small change.
We don’t need to pay to hire cameras as we already have two HD cameras in our group which we will be using, this means that we aren’t going to have to worry about borrowing cameras or damaging them because it becomes our responsibility as film makers to take care of our own equipment, which is how it is in the real world of film making.
Crew/Staff
The talent involved in our film is going to be the artists. Without the artists that contribute to this documentary we would have no live action to film and I feel this is the most important and most engaging part of a graffiti documentary.
Our film crew will consist of a producer, a director and two members of crew will be filming the whole documentary. I think this is a sufficient amount of crew members to film and produce a ten minute observational documentary.
As the producer I’m going to be working with the director when it comes to editing to narrow down the hours of footage we are going to get in to a good quality ten minute film with a professional standard Introductions and full credits to represent everybody that was involved in the production and the artists involved in the film.
Deadlines and timescales for clearance
Deadlines and timescales are dates and times set to complete certain tasks in a project, it’s important to keep to date with these because the project can run on for longer than planned and can in turn cause massive problems e.g. having to crew more money because they have to carry on filming for an extra three months.
The only time restraint that our documentary is going to have trouble with is the hand in date, but we won’t have to worry about times that we can borrow cameras or days that we can film because we own a few cameras between the group and it doesn’t take the whole crew to film footage.
Personnel
The size of a production team varies between the budget and timescale for a film for example if you’re creating a film on a multi-million pound budget then you’re going to need to get a lot of crew in over a long period of time.
Each different member of crew has a different role and responsibility, here is a short list of some of the different types of crew members you might have on a large scale production.
Producer - A producer can be paid anything between £100 a day to £400+ if it’s a larger scale production.
Director- The director is basically the second person in charges their one in charge of pointing everybody towards what their supposed to be doing in order to get the production to run properly.
The producer is the one that runs things behind the scenes but the director is the one that runs things when it comes to what is on the screen; the producer is a higher paid and more important job than a director.
Camera – The cost of a camera crew massively differs depending on how many cameras you want and how many cameras you want used and how much equipment you want them to use e.g. Camera cranes and camera rails. Here is a link to a company that can provide camera crews - http://www.tallboy.co.uk/prices/camera-crews.php The prices on their site are based on a ten hour day and for a full crew your looking to spend at least £1000 plus.
Facilities
All of our footage will be filmed in a outdoor environment so were not going to have to hire out any locations because things like interviews will be filmed in the street with pedestrians selected at random to give their opinion.
Alot of graffiti is painted on the sides of abandoned buildings , on public property and rooftops , some of these places will require us to get permission from the council for filming otherwise we could potentially end up with a fine for trespassing.
Im going to be recording any voice over work that I do in the college studio using an AKG condenser microphone in my home studio.
Materials
We’re going to need a soundtrack for our production and were also going to be using videos that we have gathered from the internet e.g. news reports and other relevant footage. Were also going to be getting interview footage, which means a member of our crew is going to have to read off a script.
Contributors
We won’t need any additional help from other people in our film the only people that are going to be in the film that we don’t know are the people involved in the interview but they won’t need to have anything to do with the inner workings of the documentary and we will only have to deal with them for five minutes or so whilst we interview them.
Locations
We’re planning on taking a trip to Southbank and Waterloo tunnel in London we will also be doing a lot of filming in the local area e.g. Reading, Maidenhead and Henley. Ideally we would be allowed to travel the world looking for the best graffiti in all of the major cities but clearly that’s not possible
