Production

The Pre-Production Stage



A film is divided into three phases - pre-production, production and post production. Pre-production is the first of the three parts you need to consider when producing any type of professional film. Pre-production is a critical part of getting things off on the right foot.

During this stage, you’re organizing everything so that the production phase goes smoothly. Pre-production starts out with identifying the goals and objectives of your film. Your target audience needs to be identified and scrutinized. This is of key importance, as everything from here on out should be done with your specific audience in mind. The tone, the pace, the actors, style, language, music, length, and other aspects of the production must be geared to the temperament, attitudes and interests of your intended audience.

You also need to consider how much you are willing to spend on this film. If it’s important and you plan to use this production to generate money for yourself or your company, you should expect to spend some money to do it right. Look at it as an investment.


Plan on writing your own screenplay, which is always a great idea for a Micro Budget film. After you’ve decided on the story and goals for your film, identified your target audience, and considered your budget, the next phase of pre-production involves preparing an outline for your screenplay. The easiest way is to devide the Outline into three acts, each act has a beginning, middle, and ending. This will give your film semitry, and will help make sure you have and exciting film. This Will be discussed in more detail in the SCREEN WRITING SECTION. After you prepare your outline, it’s time to go to script. The script is a detailed document that identifies what will be seen and what will be heard and in what order they’ll appear. The more specific, the better. The script should be as detailed as possible. After a theatrical Screenplay is written, and story is there, as well as all the locations, and most of the elements that make up a good story are there, then it’s time to move onto a SHOOTING SCRIPT.

The Shooting Script, is usually made and constructed by the Director. It should include direction about the shot, whether it’s wide, medium, or a close up. Specify whether it’s a static shot or if dollies, pans, pull out or other camera moves are involved. The point is that this is the time that decisions need to be made - certainly not on the set when you’re shooting your film. If you wait until you’re in production, people will get impatient and the time will slip away while you’re trying to brainstorm ideas and get agreement on them.

The pre-production stage is also when you hire your actors and crew. Do you want professional actors? Union or non-union? Are you going to have auditions? If so, who will conduct them? Do they know how to conduct one?

Have you identified the production crew? Have you seen examples of their work? Have they worked together before? Have they produced the type of production you want before?

Think about how you will feed everyone on the set as well. Who will get the food? Time is money and people work much better and happier if they are fed in a timely fashion.

Will you need a make-up artist? What will people wear? Stripes, herring boned patterns and vivid colors are no-nos, as the camera doesn’t like any of this and it will cause moray patterns and other problems on the screen. What’s better earth tones or subdued colors with simple or no patterns.

What will the set look like? Are there multiple locations? Have you figured out the backgrounds for each and every shot? Have you decided who is in each shot? Do you need props or furniture? Who will bring them? Make sure that you visit every site where you plan to shoot to make sure that there aren’t any surprises.

I remember shooting a film at a beautiful location, where I was guaranteed that no one would be around to get in the way of our shooting. I dutifully conducted my site survey and everything looked and sounded fine. Unfortunately, we didn’t hear the airplanes flying overhead when we did our site survey. And we didn’t hear the train that came by every hour. Nor did we hear or see the flock of geese when we were scouting the location. But all of these distracting nuisances were present during our shoot. Fortunately, I had a contingency plan and we had indoor locations identified in advance. Having a plan B is not a bad idea. If you want to be really safe, shoot your production in a studio, so you can be assured of complete control over the location.

Lighting is another consideration. Is the location well lit? Or do you have to supply lighting? If you have windows in the background and the sun is shining in behind the subject that you are shooting, the external lighting will play havoc with your shot. If you encounter this type of shooting situation, you should use gels on the windows to adjust for the color temperature of the light.

What about audio? Audio quality is generally assumed or forgotten about until it goes bad. And when it’s bad, it will be the main focus of everyone’s attention. So you need to make sure people are mic’ed properly. Redundant audio is a good thing to have. For instance, everyone that needs to be heard needs a lavaliere microphone or at least have a shotgun mic aimed at them. So to play it safe, you could have a lavolier mic on the person, capturing the audio on one channel and have a shotgun mic mounted on the camera capturing redundant audio on a separate channel. This way, if something goes wrong and a lavaliere mic cuts out, you can replace the audio with second channel of audio and the shot will be saved. Matching the audio can be difficult, so test your mics before you shoot your video to make sure they have a similar sound or can be ‘tweaked’ during editing.

All aspects of the Production are considered in this phase, after they’ve been considered, and all the decisions have been made including, screenplay, locations, equipment, actors, crew, and any other challenges your screenplay holds in it’s pages. Then a detailed budget should be made. Unfortunatley as Micro-Budget filmmakers the budget is small, but it must be dealt with here. Where can there be corners cut, and how can you save as much money as possible to create and accurate budget. A accurate budget will keep your production going, because you know how much money you have to spend, and if you’ve considered all the above considerations then you have an acurate budget. It’s hard to know everything to look out for, unfortanetly, that only comes with experience, but if everything is thought of at this stage, and a decision is made on what to spend money, and what to fudge, borrow, or make yourself for less, then you’ve won your budget battle. Budgets are always a battle even for studio films. As a Micro-Budget Filmmaker, you’ve planned everything out in this stage of production, so there isn’t any hidden expenditures, and this will give you the confidance you need to move into the production phase.

Now the most important part of PRE-PRODUCTION the shooting script, and the script breakdown. The regular script that everyone is familiar with identifies the sequential or chronological order of your production, but it’s not numbered, and it doesn’t have every shot listed. It’s easier to read, but it lacks the detail a shooting screenplay has for the production team. This is known as a Theatrical Screenplay, and is what every Hollywood producer reads first. A Shooting Script has every scene numbered every shot accounted for. This is how you can make a breakdown of your screenplay. It all starts with a shooting script. Then the shooting script is broken down using a organization page for each shot and scene of the film. If there’s 120 numbered scenes then there are 120 breakdown pages. All special effects, stunts, props, and etc. are also accounted for and listed on the breakdown. Every effect, and every element of each scene is marked down.. When the breakdown is acurate, and accounts for everything, then your production will go much smoother for all the cast and crew. Each member of the crew should get a scene break down, so they can get ready for each scene. All productions are different all needs of the breakdown are different, they all depend on the shots, location, and what is needed for each scene. But this will allow for the whole production to stay on the same page. This will also allow for the Filmmakers to develop a schedule, and plan everything. Most films aren’t shot in order, take for instance scenes 5, 14, 35, and 95 may take place in the cafeteria. It would take forever and be cost prohibitive to shoot your film in a different location as it sequentially appears in the script. Therefore, all of the cafeteria shots need to be shot at the same time, unless there’s a good reason not to. Grouping your shots will save time, money and patience. If your homework is done properly, and the Scrip breakdown is accurate this will also cut down on continuety errors during production. Don’t forget that even though these various shots are in the same location, if they require actors to have different clothes on because they occur later in the film or it’s supposed to be another day for instance, you need to prepare for that too. So even wardrobe is accounted for on the break down.

We will include tutorials later on, they will include How to make, storyboards, breakdowns, shooting scripts, production schedules, and ETC…

These are the major considerations for your pre-production activities. So once everyone has been contacted, told when and where to appear, and everything else has been planned, you’re ready to enter the production phase. So read on to THE PRODUCTION PHASE.