Sunday, October 13, 2013

Pre Production Planning

By Cameron Ray


The procedure of filming is a long one and incorporates far more planning and preparation than one may think. From past experience if this is not organised effectively, a lot may go wrong. In a team there are a lot of ideas and opinions flying about and if these are not well thought through, planned and communicated, the end result will not be successful. When exploring tips on how to make this pre-production process smoother and more efficient for future projects, I found the pre-production checklist put together by LAMBDA films. Which outlines three fundamental strategies to ease a process that can otherwise be fairly stressful. These included, scripting, storyboarding, and a treatment making the final aims of the project clear to everyone involved.

Scripting and storyboarding are important in the pre-production of a project, they make sure that there is a vision and plan for when it comes to the filming. They both take on crucial features of the filming process. Scripting is crucial to ensure that all the needed material is included, whether this is a well developed script leaving no room of improvisation or bullet pointed topics of conversation. Scripting is not just used for speech but can also be used for movement, to express a specific message through the gestures of the actor or actress. Scripting and storyboarding are quite similar, one dealing with the people/person being shot and the other dealing with those behind the camera, filming the action. Storyboarding provides for a visual for the various shots that could be used during filming, so that everyone included has a definite understanding of exactly what the final outcome will look like shot by shot, and also to ensure filming on the day runs effortlessly. The storyboards do not have to be drawn amazingly, yet they are important to structure how the filming will take place with the various camera angles and shots.

When I'm editing I often find I have the same problem. In one project I'll have an extensive list of of unnamed sequences, audio tracks and a bucket-load of footage to contend with. Finding one short clip will become a ten minute long treasure hunt that only adds to the stresses of video production. What is easily forgotten is that there are very basic techniques that can be used to speed up the production process monumentally.

This process begins before you've even begun filming, I mean if you're begin editing a film that had no strategic or methodical terms of planning, then you're going to get nowhere when it comes to compiling the footage. I recently came across this LAMBDA Films video that details some simple ways of developing an idea of what you want your video to look like before you've even started shooting it. I've included a link to the video below.

Pre-production is important for the arrangement of what is going to be shot and includes many phases that cannot to overlooked (as I learnt). It effects the whole filming process and tends to make your life easier in the long run, with efficiency and ease when it comes to filming.

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