Depict - First submission feedback

                          The Pre-Production Process.

Type of moving image production (media forms):

The type of media production we produced was a short 90 second fictional horror/thriller production, aiming to meet the requirements requested by the Depict! film competition. Our film was aimed for an audience of young people who enjoy horror or mystery type of dramas. We distributed it by publishing it on several different social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and our own individual film blogs using the site Blogger. 

Type of production is the kind of content you create for your project/film/show. There are many different types of moving image media productions. As well as fictional products like children's animations, soap opera's, sci fi and ron com types of productions there are also more factual sides such as documentaries, reality TV shows and news bulletins. All of these are aiming to please many different audiences with diverse interests and needs. There are tons of different distribution methods for these types of productions such as showing them in the cinema, on television, on DVD, or on entertainment websites and apps such as Amazon and Netflix.

Sources of finance and funding:

Film finance is where an agency will look at media productions presented to them and judge the quality of them in order to determine whether or not they believe they will be a success or not. This process helps them to decide if they believe their potential investment will be worthwhile or not. If they think it will be successful, they contribute towards funding the costs necessary to help the film or TV show get produced and distributed. In the UK, there are many sources available to help with funding productions, a couple of examples are; the BFI which is the lead agency for film in the UK. This source has a number of ways to find films and invests over £26 million of Lottery funds yearly to support development, production and distribution for film and television on the UK. Channel 4's Film4 invests £15 million annually in supporting the financing  and development of films for release in cinemas, often working alongside with other filmmakers and funders. However, due to the fact that they receive so many submissions due to being such a large company, Film4 can only accept proposals submitted via production companies or agencies. 

Requirements: 

Requirements are a key point in the pre-production process of media production, and is where you must take into consideration the potential costs of everything you need in order to create your final product. Typical examples of things you'll need to spend money on and put under your requirements are; costumes, filming equipment, actors, locations, transport, props, editing software. 

In our DepicT! project, we were given a budget of five pounds by the college and looked at our requirements. We realised that to make things easier, we were actually able to acquire everything we needed ourselves, without even needing to spend the budget given. This was because we used our clothing as costumes, filming equipment was borrowed from college and handed back at the end of every filming session, we used ourselves and friends that gave permission as actors, our for filming was college meaning we did not need to pay to film there and this prevented any additional costs being spent on transport, in terms of props, our most important prop was a necklace which I was happy to provide, and we used free editing software on the college Mac Books.

Personnel:

In media production, personnel are the people who worked on the production of the film. This means the 'talent', otherwise known as the actors or the 'crew', known as the production team. The production team is made up of several different roles it takes for the people working behind the screen to create the final product. Some of these roles include; camera men, producers, directors, anybody who is providing funds or resources, scriptwriters, and editors. It depends on the type of production that is being created, but most of these people will already have skills and production in their field of work on the project. The only time it is otherwise tends to be on low budget shorts. There is a vast difference in the numbers and approaches behind the making of different media productions. This is due to different resources (what you need in order to create your project) being available because of funding. For example, all productions require the personnel listed above for them to be possible, but the extent of the crews may be much higher for television programmes and Hollywood feature films than low budget short films. For example, a low budget short's crew would be of minimal people, to keep the costs lowered. A television programme would have a larger crew, with many more people on each part of the production taking care of every aspect possible to make it run more smoothly, this means several different directors and co producers under each department. With a Hollywood feature film, the crews are even bigger, in order to take care of a wider range of needs and details. The vast differences in crew members just shows the benefits a bigger budget and higher credited experiences can make, making so many more resources and opportunities available. 

In the production of our low budget short for DepicT!, we were in a group of four, producing it all together. In the pre-production we allocated several different jobs for each of us to take care of, carefully checking with each other that everything went well together and allowing us to take time on the pre-production process and address everything as it was needed. I took care of coming up with the plot along and name with another member of our group and wrote the proposal. Another member took care of the paperwork, looking after the legalities and talent forms, another person worked on the storyboard and we all worked together on the shot list, ensuring it went with everything we'd all put together. In filming, I volunteered to act as the main character along with a friend who offered to help during her free periods, the rest of the crew took turns in directing and filming. After filming, we worked as a group to edit the footage into the final product.

Typically in larger productions, there are a lot more contributors than have been mentioned previously. For example, the cast are important as they provide viewers the ability to identify with people, get to know onscreen characters, and tell the story with their dialogue and display of it through their skill. Other contributors behind the screen may be those funding the production, without their help it might not be possible for the films to fulfil their potential. As well as this, there are also make up artists, costume designers and colourists to take care of the productions aesthetic, keeping it to a high quality and standard. Also, there will be people taking care of the legal side such as risk assessments, insurance, location releases and copyright. There may also be volunteers or interns working for free, trying to gain experience and work their way up into the industry.

Time:

In media production, you limit yourself to a set amount of time to spend making it, this includes a set amount of time on pre-production, filming - this means the time you give each individual shot to last as well as how long it takes to film the entire product, and post-production work such as editing. This is called a time frame, and it's usually down to how much you look into and how careful you are with the pre-production process that helps you stick to this. It's important to stick to this, so you can meet deadlines.

Meeting deadlines and sticking to time limits in the media industry is extremely vital for many reasons such as losing funding or having to spend over your budget which may not always be possible, the fact that there are people waiting to consume your work and delaying it's release is dangerous as there is a chance you may lose your chances to distrubute it, your target audience may complain or lose interest, the availability of your cast and crew may not agree with this in case they have other projects they're scheduled to work on, and you lose credibilty and look unprofessional. 

In class, we went a little over our time limit for filming, but managed to still meet our overall deadline for finishing, uploading and distributing our final product on time. This is because we payed a lot of attenion to editing our work, making sure we did it efficiently
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Equipment/Facilities:

The equipment/facilities are the props or stuff you will need to be filming with such as cameras, microphones and lighting equipment. It's important you consider the costs of these beforehand, meaning how much you'll have to spend to obtain such equipment. Also, you'll need to check out the availability of them, this means working out how long you'll have access to your equipment and if it matches your time frame established.

In order to obtain equipment for professional media productions there are facility houses in which you can use their professional equipment and team to help create your product. For example, Parkside Media house was built in 2013 and is situated in central Birmingham. Some of the facilities available to use in this particular media facility house are three broadcast quality multi media camera TV studios, a green screen studio, three video suites, two audio suites, twelve Sony HD cameras as well as many more types of equipment available. These houses are a great opportunity to fulfil your work to it's highest standards and best quality, also teaching a little more what it's like in the professional industry and working on set. To find out the cost of this house, you must contact them using the telephone numbers and addresses posted on their official website; http://www.bcu.ac.uk/parkside-mediahouse. This is where you'll list your plans e.g time frame for availability and a quote for the costs depending on the equipment you'll be needing. 

The college lent us their filming equipment, free of charge, in order for us to make our product, we used them over several filming sessions and handed them back at the end of each one. 

Locations:

Locations are the places in which you film your work. Before you make an official decision on where to film, you must carry out a location recce and location release. A location recce is where you visit a potential location and decide whether or not you think it's an appropriate place to shoot, this includes checking it for any risks e.g anything that could harm your crew, cast or equipment harm as well as the public, ensuring you have access to facilities that will be needed, and checking that it provides you with lighting and sound you can work with and checking that there aren't too many limitations, e.g any legal problems with the location or anything that implements the potential quality or time spent on your work. A location release is a form created with the purpose to confirm that you will have permission to film in that location by the owner, stopping any legal issues or complaints from cropping up at any point later on in the production. It usually consists of why and when the location will be used, insurance, and the set dates of use. 

We picked several parts of the college to film our DepicT! video, we went around deciding what would be appropriate for the times of day (in case areas were busy, loud, or previously booked up). In the end, we based our short film in four different places. The outside of college as an establishing shot, a computer room opposite our classroom, a corridor, and a room used especially for media productions in college. Our decisions were based on lighting, atmosphere, and most appropriate places to film without being disturbed or disturbing others.

The logistical issues and risks we faced were mainly keeping out of the way of other students at college, ensuring that we didn't end up getting them in the background and therefor having them in our film without legal permission and messing with the continuity of our cast and scenes. In order to stop this from happening, during our location recce we scouted out for the most quiet and empty places during our shooting sessions to avoid this from happening. 

Materials:

As well as cast, crew and equipment there are other materials needed in addition to these to create your moving text image. This may mean make up and costumes or materials to create a costume, to anything that can be used to create an illusion of special effects if you're on a low budget and are unable to afford people to help with stunts or special effects equipment/editing. 

It is important to plan and look into the preparation and availability down to the last details with extra materials as there are financial considerations that need to be addressed within these additions. For instance, it's important to look into how you can obtain such things, can these be brought from home, are they already accessible for free? Or will they be needed to be brought or hired? And are they completely necessary? This is important to think about because not only buying them tighten your budget, you have to think about what may happen if you damage or lose any of these materials that have been hired, because these will be additional costs that cannot afford to be spent. 

Legal issues:

There are many legal issues to be taken into consideration when it comes to media production and it is important to keep these in check in every aspect of pre-production, filming, and post-production to stop your work, crew and cast from being penalised or to prevent your work from being stolen, used, or redistributed without your permission.

An important legal aspect of media production to consider and take care of is Copyright. Copyright exists to save people's work from being used without the creator's permission. This means it stops it from either being copied, redistributed, sold, adapted or being shown in public without your permission. In order to get Copyright, you don't have to pay for the protection or apply for it in the UK. You're automatically allowed to copyright your work if you have created anything original, this can range from web software such as databases, composing and publishing music, making a TV or film recording, broadcasts, and artwork including illustration and photography. If you wish to, you can mark your work with the '©' symbol. This is the Copyright symbol and if you see this on a piece of work, it means it's Copyright protected. However, not putting this on your work doesn't stop it from being protected too, it just makes it easy for people to identify that the work is being covered by Copyright. Although Copyright is there to protect your work, you're responsible for defending it against infringement (this means protecting it against anything Copyright can cover you from). It's important to check whether somewhere or someone is permitted to use your work before trying to stop them, because some places such as schools, colleges or libraries may be permitted to do so. If you think someone is using your work without being aware that you own the rights, you must check that they hold a license or have applied for one, if they don't, you can apply to have their application stopped or claim the licence fee that's been paid. Copyright begins protecting your work the second it is finished, but there is an expiration date on how long it lasts for. In terms of films, Copyright stops covering your work 70 years after the death of the director, screenplay author and composer. Another aspect of Copyright to look out for is to make sure you don't accidentally infringe Copyright whilst creating your own work, this can be using brands, music, or adapting work without permission because breaking copyright can have a punishment of not only stopping your work from being distributed, but if you get convicted of Copyright, you could be facing a six month prison sentence or a fine of up to £50,000.

In the making of our DepicT! production, we had to look out for Copyright by making sure our work was 100% original, we didn't accidentally get any brands our shots, this means either on the clothing of the talent or in the background of any shots. To ensure we didn't infringe Copyright in the music we used, we ensure we edited our music into our final product from websites that specialised in Copyright free music samples. 

Another legality to look out for is Clearance, this means making sure you have all the recquired permission needed for a production to take place. For example, pre-production paperwork such as location recces, location releases, talent forms for all the personnel. This is necessary to avoid problems with liability, which brings us onto Public Liability Insurance. This covers you should any accidents take place during the production such as any injuries that may be inflicted upon the cast or crew or damage to the property you're working on. Public Liability Insurance covers this, preventing you from having to pay out any excess cash to compensate for any of the possibilities stated above. Another type of insurance used in media production is a Complexion Guarantee. This is where a completion guarantee company for independently financed films to guarantee that the producer will complete a film by a certain time, this is judged on elements such as budget, cast and script. This is created so that it is distributed by a certain time, so that the producer secures a "minimum distribution guarantee". 

Regulation:

A regulatory body is an agency or authority that is responsible for regulating and or supervising any kind of project that is exposed to the public. This means looking after and checking things such as rule making to benefit the public, secondary legislation, administrative law and regulatory law.

A regulatory body for broadcasting and telecommunications and postal industries in the UK is OFCOM; an abbreviation for Office of Communications. Ofcom has the power to regulate postal sectors, radio, telecoms and television. It looks after licensing, complaints, codes and policies, competition, research and the interest of the public, protecting us from being exposed to offensive or harmful materials on any of the platforms they are eligible to regulate. 

A big television company such as the BBC is regulated by a number of outside bodies. The BBC'S regulatory bodies are the Office of Fair Trading otherwise known as OFT, OFCOM and the European Comission for competition policy. OFCOM also covers the BBC with their OFCOM Fairness Code. However, the Trust governs the BBC most of all. the Trust works with them on fair trading policies, minimises any negative competitive impacts on the wider market, checks the public purposes and focuses on the Competitive Impact Principle (CIP). The difference between OFCOM and the Trust is that although they both regulate areas of the BBC, OFCOM is a statutory regulator and the Trust is a sovereign body with the BBC under the Royal Charter. 

Another regulator is the BBFC, the BBFC is the UK's regulator of TV and film. The BBFC are responsible for setting age ratings on films such as 12A, PG and U. It's their job to legally decide what is appropriate for certain members of the public and can even reject or cut work if decided necessary. 

When it comes to regulation online, it's much harder to manage due to the fact that anybody, from any part of the world, can upload anything they want at anytime. In the UK, racism and blasphemy are illegal online and will be taken down after being reported and investigated. Large, respected and responsible websites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook will have zero tolerance for the crimes above and indecent or distasteful material such as dangerous or illegal acts, pornography or violence. There is also a small protection against children accessing programmes on sites such as Iplayer and 4od that were originally shown on TV after the watershed by making it a requirement that you must be over 18 to sign up for such websites.

After researching the regulations, I have discovered that although our DepicT! film didn't contain any violence, nudity, or illegal acts it would probably still need to be regulated as our short film as a horror/thriller that might not be suitable for younger viewers as it could potentially scare them or be difficult for them to understand. 

Trade unions and trade associations:

A trade union is a group of workers in a profession, trade, or group of trades who's purpose is to protect their trade along with making sure their interests and rights are represented. Trade unions are important because they can be used as worker representatives in the possibility that there may be legal matters and due to the fact that the rights of employees are more protected meaning that they have more security in their jobs. 

An example of a trade union in the UK for media productions is PACT. PACT represents the commercial interests of UK independent film, television, children's, digital and animation media companies. It helps these companies with with business and legal advice alongside campaign work and services. Another top trade union for the UK is BECTU, this trade is for media and entertainment covering; independent production, broadcasting, leisure, cinema, digital media, theatre, film and the arts. BECTU has 25,000 members and the union's main aim is to protect jobs, win new recognition agreements, increase membership, improve pay and conditions of service, such as pensions. 

As well as trade unions, there are trade associations. A trade association is an organisation involved in business or trade. An example of a trade association in media production is BIMA. BIMA is the British interactive media association and has represented the British digital industry since 1985. BIMA has offices in England, Wales and Scotland. BIMA claims it's purpose is to do four things: share knowledge and best practice, support and promote the British digital industry, reward great work and encourage the next generation. 

Evaluation: The Necklace.

 Our task was to create a 90 second short film to enter into the DepicT! competition. Our idea for the plot was to create a horror/thriller type of film based around a cursed necklace that was being passed from person to person, causing a series of bad and strange things to happen to whoever had its possession. Our film focuses on the weird happenings of one girl in particular after having the necklace passed to her. After it being planted, she keeps it with her, wears it and then the curse begins to unfold. The film ends after she gets locked in a room and throws the necklace to the ground in realization that everything was fine until she found it. After this, the door is unlocked and she if free from the curse. I think our plot was a good and original idea, with a lot of thought behind how we could make it work and develop into a short film.

We each assigned ourselves different parts of the pre-production process to take care of each and tried to distribute the work as equally as possible, making sure everyone had something to do in order to ensure we didn’t fall behind and were able to start filming as soon as possible.
Once we began working, we noticed that despite making an effort to see that the pre-production work was done in time and effectively, we ended up discovering a few flaws within that work causing us to struggle with the timing of our shots and scenes meaning that when it came down to editing, we were unable to keep all of the scenes we originally wanted to. This meant we had to cut a lot of our initial ideas either out completely or down by quite a lot in order to fit into the requirements of a 90 second film.

My role in the film was helping to create the initial idea, writing the proposal, working on the shot list and acting as the cursed girl in the film itself.

I felt that despite our struggle with the timing of our shots, we still managed to succeed in sticking to our original plan of the story, and the changes that were made I feel ended up as better scenes anyway, flowing better and making more sense within the story. Next time, I’d still ensure that I checked the practicality of my shot list to avoid similar problems so that the work process was more efficient and simpler. I’d also try harder to maintain continuity. 

                              The Blair Witch Project; Low Budget Films. 

The Blair Witch Project is an extremely successful low budget film, using around $60,000 for the whole film to be produced, but the film itself ended up making $249 million. There are several different ways in which it's low budget is shown both in the film itself, and by looking into the production side of it. For example, it took eight days to film, not all of the people who played a part in the film were actual trained actors, it barely followed a script, in fact, each main character played fictionalized versions of themselves, after being told to mostly improvise. 

DepicT Research 2: Parasomnia

Parasomnia is an animation about what it feels like to suffer with sleep paralysis. I found this particularly interesting and really thought that contrast of no dialogue and black and white to screaming and multicolour after the tension builds to be really effective and captures the feeling of sleep paralysis perfectly. Another part that I think creates an effective, on edge atmosphere is the beginning, where she is sleeping and the camera doesn't appear to be steady and she is looked down on in a birds eye view, suggesting that she is in fact being watched. Another highlight was after the tension built, as well as the animation of her springing into colour, it zooms into her face to give the effect of the panic falling around her and intensifying. Overall, I thought this was a really capturing and well put together piece. 

DepicT Research: How To Tell When A Relationship Is Over

"How to tell when a relationship is over" is a slightly comical take on what happens at the end of a relationship. In the short film, it displays different stages of a relationship breaking down, it shows an accurate side to it, and a slightly more ridiculous side to it, which adds the element of comedy whilst also displaying how strange the situation can be in a more lighthearted manner. I liked the setting of this film also, they remained in the kitchen throughout and one character (the man) appears to be staying in the same seat whilst is partner is moving around, until eventually he is sat there alone almost to represent the fact that she was restless and unhappy whereas he wanted things to stay the same. One scene I really liked was when it says "you feel like you're in a french film" before she leaves him, this is because it shows the huge contrast from the beginning by the lighting. In the beginning, the room appears to be light and bright and warm whereas in these scene, the room appears dark, it is filmed in black and white and has a much colder feel to it. Another thing that caught my attention to this short film is the fact that I recognized the actor (Julian Barratt) which surprised me. Here is the link: How To Tell When A Relationship Is Over