Pre-Productions Essay

Pre-Production Techniques for Television

When working on a television programme, there are a lot of factors that you need to understand and figure out before hand. Working out the finances is one of the main things that you should do. The prices for equipment to hire isn't cheap, so figuring out how much you will need to spend on them will help with the overall budget. Using the website www.mediadoghire.com , I worked out that for a camera I would need £99 a day hire, Macbook Laptop for editing £65 a day, Tripod £20 a day, Lighting kit £50 a day, Boom mic £23 a day and any other equipment needed. This works out to be at least £257 a day for equipment hire. This is merely an example so your funds may be different. Then you have to take into consideration the cost for Cast and Crew. On top of that, you have to provide funds for the transport to get your Cast and Crew on set.

Time is another factor that you should take into consideration. You will most likely be set a deadline. If you are given a deadline then you should work out how to use your time to fullest. A deadline could range from a few weeks to a few months, in this time you should work out if there is availability in equipment, staff and personnel.  Deadlines are usually set because the company who is paying for the programme will only pay for a certain amount of time with a certain amount of money, thus you need to make sure everything is in timed correctly or you may end up losing both money and time. If you are hiring equipment then you need to make sure that you know your deadlines because you have hired for a certain amount of time and if you go over that time it will cost more money, money that you might not be able to afford with a budget.

There are many different roles in the television industry. These include Producer, Director, Editor, Location Manager, Actors & Actresses, Sound Man, Camera Crew, Floor Manager, Set Manager, Costume Designer, Cinematography and Costume Designer. Each role has their own important job. A researcher has to find out what will be the most entertaining to get more people to watch it and get their money back. Location Manager has to know what location will work best with the script and then make sure to do a risk assessment to make the location usable for the actors and actresses. The producers job is make sure everything happens exactly as they want it to, they are in charge of everything, hiring the director, setting up the budget and making sure the director has everything they need to make the film. The Director is in charge of what happens for the film, making the script come to life in their very own vision of it by guiding the cast and crew to what they should be doing. An editors job is to take the footage that the director has taken for them and to chooses the best shots for each scene to make the film look it's absolute best. The floor manager makes sure that the sets, equipment and props are safe to use ready for filming and to help people taking part to understand their roles. If you want to hire a Runner, then you would have to contact an agency and have them send you CV's. CV's will be coming from students or graduates looking to get into the media business.

In the television industry, there are different types of materials you can use. The main type of materials are Archive materials and Library Materials. The North West Film Archive is a good example of archive materials. Library Materials are more like photos and sound. You would use Library materials when you want to add a good song over your programme or pictured examples if you are trying to prove a point by showing evidence. Contributors can help with a lot of important stuff too. Contribute funding can be used to help us with our budget, if you needed extras but didn't have enough to pay them then the contributors can pay them the minimum amount instead.

When it comes to locations there are certain paperwork that you have to do. A recce is one of the pieces of paperwork needed. A recce when filled in will be able to tell you all you need to know about the location, like how quite the location is, is there a power source for batteries or cameras, how the lighting is. The other important paperwork is a risk assessment sheet. The risk assessment will inform you of any potential risks so that they can be dealt with, this will make sure that the location is safe for the cast and crew so that the chances of being harmed are lessened and hopefully avoided.

Copyright is one of the things you must avoid. Copyright can be something simple and people don't even realise. If you find a picture on Google images then post it somewhere else without saying it was from Google Images then this can cause some Legal problems. To avoid copyright, you should try to get the permission of the owner to use their stuff, be it photos, footage or music. If you don't know how to get the permission then you must credit the person, making it clear that it is not your own work. The easiest way to avoid copyright though is to use your own work.

The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) is very important in film and television. This is who puts the ratings on the things we watch. They  make sure that their rating match with what the public attitude towards the ratings are. BBFC are here to make sure that children are protected from unsuitable or harmful content and that consumers, mainly parents with responsibility for children, have the power to make informed decisions as to whether the programme or film is suitable.