The Requirements for Production

Production essay 

Media forms 

The piece of media we produced was for the depict short film competition, it was a 90 second film (which are the requirements for the depict competition). The film will be distributed by the college YouTube channel. There are many other ways of distributing it, for example there are physical ways of distributing it although uploading it on the college YouTube channel will be very simple and will reach the most amount of people. 

We ran into a few problems when filming, but it all fit to the plan in the end. Roughly the last 30 seconds had to be filmed again because of rain on the lens and unfocused footage. Although we had to go into our editing time to re shoot it, but we only took one extra lesson to film. The rest of the filming went as planned. Although we slightly disrupted our production schedule, but we still had plenty of time edit and finish it. When it came to editing, we didn’t have to cut down our video it fit I the 90 seconds we had, although we did have to makes some of the shots a little bit longer so it could be 90 seconds long. We didn’t run into too many problems when we were editing. Finding the right sound effects for the different gun shots etc. The whole editing process to a bit longer than we originally thought. We ran into a few problems when we were adding visual effects on the video, like just not finding the right looking effects to match with the visuals. It also took some time to sync the effects to raw video. 

Finance 

There any many different type of funding for media productions, for example production companies could invest in a film and take a cut of the revenue that the film makes, although it isn’t easy to get funded by a production company because films are a very risky business, many films flop and don’t profit. This goes for all types of funding, it’s not easy. relatively new way of funding media productions would be crowd funding. Websites such as Kick-starter and Gofundme allow anyone with an idea to upload a project explaining why they want people to donate to them. This idea has only come to be a viable way of funding in the last decade or so. It has been very good for making lesser known talents to create projects of their own. This is a great way for film students to get their ideas known and noticed by larger investors. But he down side of crowd funding is that there are many people who try it so it’s difficult to stand out.  

 There are also people who specifically invest into movies and take a cut of the total revenue. This is a very large part of the media industry. 

There are lots of things that you need to spend money on when making a media production. This is why movies tend to cost millions and millions of pounds to make, on top to paying for everything, production companies have to pay for licenses for different songs etc. it’s typically very expensive. Things such as. Here are some examples: 

• Talents (actors) 
• Camera 

• Sets (if needed) 
• Licenses for filming in curtain places 
• Copyrights (for music, effects etc.) 
• Camera men/women
• Props  

• Costumes 
• Makeup 
• People who work on the set 

The depict project was very cheap relative to other major media projects. We had to but a few props for example we bought the plastic grenade and an ammo belt, for the costumes we had to buy two blue shirts and 2 red shirts. I already had the Nerf guns so all together it cost roughly £45. As for the actors they all volunteered. Whereas professionally made films could cost hundreds of millions to make. Having a massive budget doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a good film. For example, the film billionaire boys club cost roughly 15 million dollars to make but was a complete flop and only made 2.2 million dollars. Whereas there have been many films that have had a tiny budget but been massively successful, for example, the Blair witch project cost roughly 60,000 dollars to make but made 248 million dollars.  

The makeup of a low budget short would be very different from a Hollywood feature. A low budget short would typically have a lot less people working on than a feature. People working on a low budget short could have a lot more roles, they could film and act (to save money). Like a few people would do everything e.g. acting, writing, directing, producing etc. Whereas in a feature film everyone would typically have a specific role, although that's not always the case, some people act and direct etc. As for a TV show the makeup of a typical team would be very similar to a feature film, although it could be a smaller because TV shows after a running for a while tend to be more expensive than films, so having a smaller team could save some money. 

We evenly spread out the roles of the production in our small group. We had relatively similar acting roles. A member of our group didn't feel comfortable in front of the camera, so they took most of the camera work, we've all done our fair share of editing. I have had experience in filming and editing as I've filmed and edited my own personal projects. 

People involved in a media production 

• Camera men 
• Directors 
• Actors 

• Producers 
• Audio engineers 
• On set caterer 
• Lighting engineers 
• Editors 

• Composers 

Production timing 

We were given 2 weeks for planning our project, 3 weeks to film and 2 weeks to edit. We finished the whole project in the right amount of time although because of weather conditions we had to edit the first halve of the film during the filming period, and because of this we had to cut into the rest of the editing time to finish filming. We used our time very carefully to make sure we could do everything we needed to. It can be very stressful, trying to meet deadlines, but as we were very calm and efficient throughout the whole process. Although we did have to be quite fast with the film as we knew that we didn’t have a lot of time to fit it all in. We took our time more with the editing, as we knew less about it so we had to use some of our time to learn techniques. We also took our time in the pre-production phase because we knew that it was very important to get right. I believe that the finished product was very good. If I had to do something differently I wouldn’t have tried to film when it was raing because all of that footage wasn’t useable, so we effectively just wasted a whole lesson wen we could have been putting togther the rough cut of the edit. 

It is very important to meet deadlines in the media industry. There are very serious repercussions if deadlines aren’t met. People could easily lose their jobs if deadlines aren‘t met. This I why it can be a very stressful business to work in. That’s why it is essential to meet deadlines in the media industry. 

Equipment/Facilities 

There are many ways to obtain professional equipment, or examples you could just buy the equipment (although most products tend to be very expensive) or you could rent different products for example: https://mykitplace.com/camera-hire-in-east-anglia is a website where you can rent cameras, lenses etc. This still isn’t cheap. Some cameras can be rented for £20 a day whereas they are cameras that cost upwards of £350. As for big production companies it varies, a lot of production companies have their own equipment, but some rent equipment. 

It is important to keep very good care of equipment because generally, media equipment costs a lot of money so if it’s damaged it would cost a lot of money to repair. It is also very important to clean camera lenses, if the camera lens is dirty it can seriously affect how the shot will look. Smudges on the lens can also lead to scratches, this permanent damage could mean that lens would never be able to shoot a clean shot again, depending on where the scratches are. This would mean the lens would have to be replaced. It would be less dire if other types of equipment got scratched. For examples, it wouldn’t matter too much if the tripod got scratched because it wouldn’t have an impact of the function of the tripod, it would only affect how it looks. 

We had a fair amount of equipment available to us, although we only used a camera and a fluid head tripod. We obtained it by borrowing it from the library 

Locations 

The entirety of our film was filming in a public park/forest, so we didn’t need to get any permissions to film there. We picked these locations because they fit the tone of the film very well, the fact that we didn’t have to get any permissions was a bonus. There were weather conditions that we had to deal with when we were filming, so we had to work around that, also the floor in the forest had a lot of broken glass on it so we had to properly risk assess it. We overcame this by finding a patch were there was no broken glass. 

A location recce is when someone or a group of people go to a location to see if it's appropriate for filming. They would take pictures of the location so the rest of the crew could get an idea of that it looks like. A location release is something the owner of the property your filming on needs to sign to say you’re allowed to film there. This is not needed if you’re filming in a public place. 

Materials 

Different props are very important for a media production, because our film was a short film, we didn’t need too many props. We did have a problem with one of the shirts because one of the final scenes one character gets shot so we used fake but, after we filmed it, we realised that we had to re shoot some scenes before that point, so we had to turn the shirt inside out. Also, the prop grenade we had broken within the first day of filming, we still managed to use it although it was more difficult. We had all the props we needed during filming. 

Legal issues 

There are many things that could cause legal issues within a media production, for example where can’t be any copyrighted logos or brands in professional media productions without the companies consent. Also, any copyrighted music cannot be used within a media product unless you have a license to use it. For our production we found some copyright free music that we have used. We also made sure we didn’t wear clothes with logos on, so we were protected from copyright. But companies can pay production companies to feature their products in a film, this is called product placement. 

Public lability insurance is for if someone gets hurt on set, they won’t be able to sue you. Completion guarantee is someone a lot if independently financed films do to make sure that the producer will finish the film. Copyright clearance is when you make sure that you are able to do something without breaking copyright or seeing if something is copyrighted. There are some logos that are public and can be used by anyone. 

A regulatory body makes sure a piece of media isn’t breaking any rules and to enforce restrictions. They aren’t just for media productions, they cover a wide amount of professions. 

OFCOM (which stands for office of communications) is a regulatory authority for television and postal services provided by the government. They oversee licensing, complaints, etc. 

BBFC stands for British Board of Film Classification and it is the company that is responsible for different levels of censorship. They provide age ratings for films. It is a non-government organisation that was founded in 1912 by the film industry.  

Media regulation makes sure the audiences that will be viewing it are protected against things that could possible upset them. Although it has become a lot harder to regulate media effectively because of the new wave of internet content. This is because anyone anywhere can upload something on the internet, and they don’t have to go through a regulation service to make it on to the internet. Some websites such as YouTube have made algorithms to take down people's videos if they have something inappropriate in them although this doesn’t work all the time and it could take down a video that is fine. It also allows people to report videos that they think are offensive, this is a good and bad thing because it allows people to have an opinion which is great but also what’s offensive is subjective. So, the system is flawed. The system for copyright is also quite flawed. Anyone can copyright strike any video, if this happens the video will be taken down. The person taking down the video may even be able to claim the ad revenue, with minimal evidence. The creator of the video can appeal the video, but it goes back to the person how made the strike. Personally, I think this system needs to change because it's very flawed and is very one sided. If the creator was wrongly accused, then it is very hard for them to get the video back.  

 The way that videos on the internet are much less regulated can be a good thing because it allows people to be more creative, they don’t have to follow the rules and regulations of standard media. 

Trade unions 

A trade union is when a group of people come together to achieve common goals. They are important because without them working conditions could be very bad and general things about different work places may have never been improved. 

BECTU stands for broadcasting, Entertainment, communications and theater union. And they help people gets jobs in the media industry. 

A trade association is when many businesses come together to figure out a problem with the industry. For examples, in the media industry if there's something generally unacceptable about the industry many companies would come together to make a difference.

References 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6166814.stm

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/guidelines