Media Production
What does pre-production mean?
Pre - Production is the pre-planning and the arrangements made to prepare for the elements involved in a film, play or other performance. There are three parts in a production: pre-production, production and post-production. Pre-production ends when the planning ends and the content starts being produced
Media
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Advertisment
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Radio
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TV
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Films
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Blogs
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Social media
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Magazine
Finance
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Crew
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Costumes
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Hair and Makeup
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Venue hire
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Travel
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Props
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Copyright charges
Jungle Cruise
Jungle Cruise is a 2021 live action film from Disney. It stars Emily Blunt, Dwayne Johnson as well and Jack Whitehall. It is set in a dystopian fantasy jungle with the protagonist aiming to find a magical yet hidden tree despite the challehnges from some intersting 'people' along the way.
In 2015 the making of Jungle Cruise was released with the instant plans of casting and starring Dwayne Johnson, with Emily Blunt joining the film cast in 2018. This happens to be when the script for the film was reportedly rewritten in order to help fit the characters and actors more. As far as other casting goes, in the march of 2018 an open cast call was put out looking for cast members of all ages and ethnicities, this would help portray the incredible diversity present in all aspects of jungle tribes and people. Once Jack Whitehall was cast as the brother of the protagonist there was a change in the script to feature a coming out scene from the character in order to help Disney and their films become more inclusive becoming the second Disney coming out on screen moment.
Due to the large extent of the film the pre-production required took more than a few months. One of the sets (the Porto Velho set) took a month alone just to scout, followed by 2 months to design and then 4 months to build, dress & landscape. The screenwriting process was inspired by not only WWI but also the suffragette movement, this helped the screenwriters to captivate producers and helped inspire many of the characters in the film such as Lily who was a strong independent woman much inspired by a suffragette.
Due to the extensive cast the wardrobe department had their work cut out for them. Despite the time the film was set it was important for the protagonist, Lily (Emily Blunt), to wear trousers in order to combat the social expectations a woman would have faced in the period the film was set. Costume designer and two time academy award nominee Paco Dalgado worked for months in pre production on creating costumes that not only fit the time period the film was set in but also creating and designing costumes that fit all of the characters complex descriptions.
The film is set and based off the Disney World Florida ride 'Jungle Cruise' this made any sort of copyright guidelines easy for Disney to use as it was based off their previous works.
Vertical integration: This is when a media company owns multiple different companies that are all in the same chain of production and distribution. This helps them to gain money from every part of their, for example, film release by profiting from DVD sales, cinema viewings and TV channels. For example until the 1940s a set of 5 large companies controlled film and a further 3 smaller companies. The 3 little companies are Columbia, Universal and United artists. The big 5 are pictured below:
Horizontal integration: A company or individual owns several media based companies across a range of different platforms. This allows them to cross advertise across their platforms in order to bring in more business to their other companies. An example of someone horizontally integrated into the media industry is Rupert Murdoch who owns multiple news outlets, newspapers and radio stations as well as more. Even after a 'scandal' a few years ago he was able to close down the effected newspaper which ulimately forced people to read his other newspapers which meant he barely lost out at all.
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Kickstarter
Kickstarter is a global American business that helps to fund and create a platform for creative projects. Project creators can pitch their ideas and every project creator sets their project's funding goal and deadline. If someone likes the idea or project then they can pledge money in order to make the project happen!
Veronica Mars
The 2014 film produced by Kristen Bell, Rob Thomas, Dan Etheridge, Danielle Stokdyk and Michael Sanducci quickly became one of the most successful films to go through the kickstarter scheme.
After Warner Brothers refused the film Kristen Bell and Rob Thomas went about funding the film through kickstarter, some significant achievements for the film are:
- Fastest project to reach $1 million.
- Fastest project to reach $2 million.
- All-time highest-funded project in FILM category.
- Third highest-funded project in Kickstarter history.
- Most project backers of any project in Kickstarter history.
- https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project
Anomalisa
This 2015/2016 stopmotion film from Charlie Kaufman was another popular film brought to life through the kickstarter scheme.
In the end they managed to raise a total of $406,237 with 5770 backers for the film. Whilst this film was not as big as Veronica Mars was it is still an impressive sum of money considering the style of the film as well as the lack of popularity from the creator of which Veronica Mars did have.
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Life in a day (2011)
Life in a day in a crowd sourced film produced by Liza Marshall and Ridley Scott and aimed to take a look into the lives of thouands of people around the globe. The idea was, to have clips sent in from different people all across the world whom all live completely different lives. This seemed like a clever and unique idea until it came down to the logistics of how it would work. In the end the creators ended up sending hundreds of cameras to countries and areas where technology was scarce in order to truly aquire the level of diversity they wanted these cameras cost £40,000 alone. The use of the internet and new technologies allowed the producers vision to come to life even after what could be described as a logistical nightmare. The end result showed a compilation of 80,000 individual clips ranging from births, love, death and just people being themselves.
London to Brighton (2006)
Created with Steel Mill Pictures, London to Brighton was a second option for the filmmakers after there initial plan could cost upwards of £2 million. The crime thriller was funded through private investors as well as Paul Andrew Williams and Ken Marshall (The creators) themselves. Budgets were till tight so the film was mainly created by Guerrilla filmmaking, this style of filming was used for around 19 days of the filming process when they would not have got licenses to film in certain locations, the crew size would remain small and limited technology would be used. The film itself is actually largely unscripted. This is another money saving technique to avoid the costs of scriptwriters. In the end the film ended up costing around £80,000 pounds to create.
Shifty (2008)
This 2008 thriller made from a small company called Between the Eyes. In order to be able to afford and finance their film, the creators decided to apply for public funding. They used the national lottery in order to apply for money to make their film. This helps as it stops British films having to go through the American media system and get funding throught the USA and putting money into the American economy. The microwave scheme allows filmmakers to showcase their films and apply for £100,000 in order to make and produce their films. Shifty won this money and was able to use ways of keeping costs down such as reducing logistics and planning as well as shortening filming time which was able to be done in just 18 days. Social media also played a large role in the financial saving of this film as the ability to market their film for free or with extremely low costs meant they had a viral film without the cost of marketing.
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A script is something written in pre-production which determines the course of the storyline and plot throughout a media product, commonly a film or TV show. It contains dialogue between characters, stage directions and general instructions for actors.
A storyboard is a more visual version of a script and instead of detailed dialogue it often contains bulletpoints or pictures. This helps to be a quick way to work out what the script will say and how the plot will go without detailed writing.
A risk assessment is a detailed report that shows every possible risk when it comes to creating the film. This could be anything from things that could cause minor injuries to fatalities. A risk assessment will look at ways of preventing risks as well as how much of a risk something actually is.
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Warner Brothers Studios trip!
In a trip to the Harry Potter studios we saw the ins and outs of pre production for one of the worlds biggest film franchises. From costumes to screen writing and set building to SFX makeup, the pre-production for Harry Potter is incredibly detailed and meticulous even down to the amount of flyaways on a character's hair style. The hundreds of mock ups and models in order to ensure the movies came out as well as possible is truly what brings the films to life as well as what helps to make the studios so interesting to visit.
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Assignment
I collated all the information about pre-production in the film industry and used it to complete an assignment to create an information booklet about pre-production to give to young filmmakers entering a film festival