MEDIA PRODUCTION
What does pre-production mean?
Pre-production is the pre-planning and arrangements made to prepare for the production of the media. When in preparation, various aspects and responsibilities are considered such as scripts, budgeting, and equipment. It also includes responsibilities such as:
- casting roles and crew and team members to maintain and manage everyone
- scheduling
- location scouting
- set construction
- scripting and storyboarding
- buying costumes and props.
Some other things to consider would be researching prior to the casting, and to budget and finance for the production.
Examples of Media:
- Advertising
- Radio
- Magazine
- Film
- Music
- Social Media
F A N T A S T I C M R . F O X
-Fantastic Mr Fox is the story of Mr.Fox, a family man, going back to his way's of stealing, due to his inability to resist his animal instincts. However he begins to find himself trapped when three farmers want to kill him.
-The film was financed by FOX, Indian Paintbrush and Regency for $40 Million.
-They made the puppets and figures using stop-motion animation, and set designs.
-He used actors he was familiar with, such as George Clooney as Mr Fox, Meryl Streep as Mrs Fox, Bill Murray as Badger, and Owen Wilson as Coach Skip.
-The script was developed by Wes Anderson, took him around 10 years to fully commit to the film, and two years to produce. It was based on the novel by Roald Dahl, which was one of Wes Anderson's favourite growing up.
-Wes Anderson was an absentee director on the set of Fantastic Mr. Fox and it irritated so much of the crew. Anderson directed most of the project via email from Paris and his few set visits were documented for PR purposes to make it look like he was a literal hands-on director.
-To create Fantastic Mr. Fox, the production crew had to craft and capture about 125,000 individual pictures and then string them together to create the moving film. Every second in the film is made up from about 24 individual shots.
K I C K S T A R T E R
Veronica Mars
Who were the producers behind Veronica Mars?
- Kristen Bell
- Dan Etheridge
- Rob Thomas
- Diane Ruggiero-Wright
- Warner Brothers
What other films has this company made?
- White Reindeer
- The Babadook
How much money did it cost to make Veronica Mars?
- £6 Million
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Kungfury (2015)
Kungfury, made in 2015, uses the English language, but is actually a Swedish martial arts comedy written and directed by David Sandberg. Set in the 1980's, it is inspired and pays homage by action films of that era such as Karate Kid, and other action films. The film stars Sandberg in the title role, Jorma Taccone, Leopold Nilsson, and a cameo appearance by David Hasselhoff. The movie was crowdfunded through Kickstarter from December 2013 to January 2014, and it had gained $630,019, which exceeded the goal of $200,000 by over 200%. A second goal was added with the target set to $1 million to rewrite the story into a full-length feature and a possible distribution deal.
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London to Brighton
London to Brighton is the story of Kelly (Lorraine Stanley), a prostitute, being sent by her pimp Derek (Johnny Harris), to procure a young girl for gangster Duncan (Alexander Morton). She brings back 11-year-old Joanne (Georgia Groome), but not all goes to plan when the gangster is inadvertently killed.
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Who were the producers behind London to Brighton?
- Paul Andrew Williams
- Ken Marshall
- Steel Mill Pictures
The company went on to make other films such as The Cottage, Filth, Song for Marion and Cherry Tree Lane.
​The film was financed with private equity and completion money from the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund. They had a budget of roughly £80,000, and made £2 Million.
​What was the name of the distribution company for LtoB (UK)?
-Vertigo
What does guerilla filmmaking mean?
-Low budget filmmaking, where you film without having a permit to film.
-They kept costs low by filming it over only 19 days too.
The founders intended to make a horror comedy film, but it took too long and cost too much money so they filmed a social British realist film.Thus they financed with private equity and completion money from UK Films Council's Cinema Fund with a £80,000 budget. Through the funding of this film, they were able to make The Cottage.
What is Kickstarter?
Kickstarter is the way to gain money from the public, to support your budding companies, art ,films, projects etc.
SHIFTY
Who were the producers behind Shifty?
-Ben Pugh
-Rory Aitken
-Company called Between the Eyes
What other films has this company gone on to make?
-Welcome to the Punch
-Turning Shadows
How much money did Shifty cost to make?
-100,000
What was the name of the distribution company for Shifty (UK)?
-Metrodome
What is the microwave scheme?
-The Lottery and the British Film Council have a responsibility to make a Class A British film. They have a budget of 100,000, and in order to complete this with this amount of money, shifty was made in only 18 days.
-Their production company, Between The Eyes, gained success and joined with other people, to create a bigger company called 42.
-Metrodome made three different trailers to appeal to different audiences, one had a classical soundtrack, one had a hip-hop track - to widen target audience.
-They used fly-posters, advertising on pirate radio stations, as well as viral advertising continued using drug dealer “business cards”.
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LIFE IN A DAY
Life in a Day is a documentary-style film, and on July 24 2010, thousands of people around the world uploaded small clips to Youtube to document what their life is like on a single day on Earth.
The film was directed by Kevin Mcdonald, but distributed by National Geographic Films, and the film was crowd sourced so the footage wasn’t led by a director.
Similar films Scott Free Productions have produced are Before I Gosleep, Gladiator and The Martian.
The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on 27 January 2011,and the premiere was streamed live on YouTube on 31 October 2011 for free, as it wasn't about making profit.
It made $252,788 at the box office.
One of the main reasons why the producers decided the day for the film to be in July, was because it was summer and people would be more active in their clips.
The crew had to sit through 4,500 hours of footage in 80,000 submissions from 192 nations overall.
A one-to-five star system was developed to rate the videos, and they had a record of most, if not all, the major human experiences: birth, childhood, love, pain, joy, art, exhilaration, illness and death. Here were the fundamentals of every life, present in all their colours.
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Theory Of Everything
In this film, Stephen Hawking, an astrophysics student working on his research, learns that he suffers from motor neurone disease and has around two years to live.The film is a romance/drama that was produced by Anthony McCarten, Tim Bevan, Lise Bruse and Eric Fellner. The producers intended for an audience of a more mature age as this film has upsetting scenes, and the BBFC gave it a certificate of 12A. Although distributed in the UK, it cost $15,000,000 to make. It gained a worldwide gross profit of $123,726,688.
Who were the producers behind The Theory Of Everything?
-Working Title
What other films has this company made?
-Bridget Jones
What was the name of the distribution company for The Theory Of Everything?
-Universal
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A film where pre-production could of been better:
Jaws
- The budget was originally $4 Million, and increased to $9 Million, due to Spielberg’s decision to shoot on actual open water, instead of in a water tank.
- Numerous problems were caused, such as with the mechanical shark being unusable due to malfunctions in the water.
- Spielberg had to postpone production, due to the storyline being reimagined to be more suspenseful.
- These delay’s were even longer due to the constant delays filming in the sea, as the cast and crew members got very sick, cameras malfunctioned, and redoing the set took hours.
- The filming was originally planned to be 55 days, an ended up being a total of 159 days.
SYNERGY
Synergy is the concept that the combined value and performance of two companies will be greater than the sum of the separate individual parts.
DEFINITIONS
Vertical Integration:
A strategy where a company owns and controls their suppliers, distributors so they can control its value or supply chain.
The Big 5 owned the rights to Production, Distribution and Exhibition, meaning they accumulated all the money.
'The Little Three' (Universal, Columbia, United Artists) Also owned two aspects of the vertical chain. However, the eight companies essentially controlled the entire market, causing an oligopoly, stopping smaller companies from earning money.
What is the difference between 'crowdsourcing' and crowd funding?'
Crowdsourcing:
Is process of collecting ideas, services, and/or content with the help of contributions from a large number of people usually through the internet.
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Crowdfunding:
Is a way of raising finance by asking a large number of people each for a small amount of money through the internet such as either any type of social media.
Horizontal Integration:
Where a company or individual owns several media-based companies across a range of different platforms. This allows them to advertise across their platforms.
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E.g Rupert Murdoch owning many companies.