Romy Deighton Stages to producing a film

The stages involving the production of a film. Stage one: Financing. Financing happens before pre-production and includes the budget forecasting (how much money the director will be given to shoot the film with) and it also includes looking for investors to produce the film; E.g. 20th century fox, or universal etc. Stage two: Screenplay. Screenplay can be considered as a separate stage before pre-production. A screenplay includes the script of the movie, acting instructions and scene directions. Screenplays are visual and have many components which must be arranged together properly. Stage three: Pre-production. Pre-production includes planning, scripting and creating a storyboard. It is a process which prepares all the elements involved in making the film. For feature films, pre-production is more specific and only begins when things like financing and screenplay have been met. Pre-production includes: • Location scouting. • Prop and wardrobe identification and preparation. • Locating and the set up of special effects. • The production schedule. • The construction of the set. • Script locking (semi-finalisation of the script). • Script read through with the cast and director. Stage four: Production. Production is the actual shooting or recording of the film from the initial storyboard and script. When shooting takes place, each scene gets filmed on different days and from different camera angles so that when it is being edited it can be looked over to see which shot looks best for that scene. In large feature films, production can mark ‘the point of no return’ i.e. the point where it is no longer financially worth cancelling. It’s almost always cheaper to continue with the feature until it is finished than to deal with the financial fall-out of cancelling. Stage five: Post-production. Post-production occurs in the making of motion pictures and is everything between production and creating the final master copy of the film. It is part of the video production process. Common tasks in post production include: • Editing video footage. • Editing the soundtrack, adding sound effects or music. • Exposure and colour correction. • Adding the titles and graphics and special effects. • Re-shooting certain scenes if needed. Called ‘pick-up’ shots. Stage six: Distribution. After post production is complete, the distribution occurs which is when the finished film gets delivered to the audience via different routes such as: the cinema, DVD, Blu-ray and the internet (illegally or legally). Example: The making of Titanic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIOo8PbXh7I Different types of marketing methods. The ways in which films can be marketed these days is by the use of poster, trailers on TV or online, they can be in newspapers as adverts or reviews from film critics. You can also hear about films from family members, or friends (word of mouth). There are different ways to target different audiences for certain films. For example: if a horror has recently come out it will be given the age group of 18 or over, however, most 16-17 year olds manage to get in to see the films because it has been given the age group of 18 the younger audience will think it’s going to be scary. If you were to make a horror film for an age group of 15 and above, then the older teenagers will know it cannot be that scary if it is allowed to be watched by people younger than them. You might want to target an older audience and you would do this by making the trailer be based around the most adult parts of the film. Or if you wanted to attract a family audience you would take parts out of the film that you will think will attract a family’s attention E.g. a family playing together and having fun (like holiday scenes) and then you would put it in the trailer.