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Pre Production Tips

Thursday, October 17, 2013

By Samantha Messenger


I'm utterly without any organisational skill. I don't have a place for anything, whether it's my keys, phone or one of the hundreds of odd socks I own. Upon discovering that my flatmates actually hang up my keys for me if they find them in a place they know I'll never see them, I decided it was time to sort this out.

The technique of filming is a lengthy one and needs a great deal more planning and preparation than one may suspect. From my past experience if this is not planned well, a lot may go wrong. In a group there are plenty of ideas and opinions flying about and if these are not thought through and planned, the end result will not be successful. While looking for ways to make this pre-production process smoother and more efficient for the future, I found the pre-production checklist created by LAMBDA films. Which recommends three essential ways to ease a process that can become quite stressful otherwise. These included, scripting, storyboarding, and a treatment making the final purposes of the project clear everyone.

Having worked on various film and video production shoots, I can honestly say it's evident which shoots have been properly prepared in advance. While no shoot will go 100% to plan, it's amazing to see the difference in a shoot when the key production roles are all working collaboratively and the project has a real sense of forward motion - instead of just stopping and starting to indulge every guy and his 'suggestion'.

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 lots of footage to cope with. Finding one quick clip will become a ten minute long activity that only adds to the tensions of video production. What is sometimes forgotten is that there are very standard techniques that can be used to enhance the production process hugely. This process begins before you've even begun filming, I mean if you begin editing a film that had no proper or sure terms of preparing, then you're going to get nowhere when it comes to compiling the footage. Last week I came across this video blog, titled Pre Production Checklist. The video details some simple ways of generating an idea of what you want your video to look like before you've even started filming it.

As soon as you've developed a clear way of organising your work, it makes the mammoth task of going through the footage and beginning to put everything together a lot easier. Then when it comes to editing you just need to take a little time and sort the clips into appropriate bins or folders. Regrettably this is something I'm still learning, only when I'm ripping my hair out through editing related stress do I think "why didn't I just rename that clip?". I can only suggest that you learn from my production hardships and take some time to prepare, beginning with pre-production which will indeed assist you later on.

I hope you enjoyed this article and will consider putting more time and effort in to your pre production process. Use this article as a bit of a checklist - dialogue? Script it. Visuals? Accurate and detailed storyboards. Final objectives? Concisely laid out in black and white with a treatment of brief. Sticking with these materials will ensure your production runs beautifully smoothly and your final product is as good as it can be.




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