Pre-Production Final Evaluation

Pre-Production Final Evaluation

The First thing I want to say in this evaluation is, thanks so much to Kasha Wheat for being a fantastic producer, getting the folder in not only on time but early, and coping with me throughout the whole project, as I know I'm not the most relaxed person to work with.

We started Pre-Production on day one, where we chose the song we wanted to do our video too, we then began thinking about all different sorts of ideas. As mentioned in my day one Blog, we decided to make our music video based on a song by Pink Floyd called ‘Money’. I liked this song even though I wanted to initially make one for a pop song, called ‘feelings’ by John Newman, though in all honesty, I think choosing ‘Money’ was undoubtedly the better choice. ‘Money’ was a more complex song, we could make more meaning into the song, and the song was 6 minutes long which means we could film so much footage and create a powerful story with many locations.

So, Over the next few weeks, Bence and I were crafting the Recces and Risk Assessments and Archie and Kasha were creating the rest of the folder like the proposal, treatment, script, copyright considerations, contingency plans, the schedule, storyboards, shooting shot list (for me) and then going over Bence and I’s Recces and risk assessments. I made for the folder the call sheets, which were in my format that I have used for my last three projects, a mood board going over the styles of the ’70s, some of the risk assessments and recces. We also made the two budgets, actual and industry and many more jobs which required an email, for example, booking Wrington Memorial Hall and scouting out all of the locations where we were filming and getting photos for the recces.

Now I think this has got to be the most organised group I have ever worked in, in my entire life, Kasha is honestly on the ball at all times, she had completed almost all of her work by the end of the first week with only smaller changes being needed to make after this. Archie was also remarkable in planning the shoot list, exactly how I wanted it, to make things as easy to understand when we were filming. I asked Archie to create the shot list in the order of which we would be filming, however not how the scenes would appear in the film; this is how things are done in the industry as it’s easy to understand for the DOP, which was me in this case. Archie also marked the scenes with a letter and the shot with a number, even including the camera movement and equipment that would be needed for the shots, this shot list was awesome to work with, and I couldn’t have asked for a better version.

When it came to finding actors, this was a problem as we originally wanted my cousin, Ross to act with my friend Sebastian. However, they were both unavailable. We were also struggling to find elderly actors. We cut the idea down into two brothers reminiscing about their old days, which was easier for us but still not perfect. Archie who was the Director in our group had done some acting before in his career and was up for taking on one of the roles of the younger lads along with my friend Joel Hughes, who also happened to have a 70’s looking haircut, this was good news as we only had the senior actors to find. Luckily, I have two very good colleagues from where I work, called Terry and Paul, who were both up for the roles of filming, after me telling them they only had to say one line! This process wasn’t as easy as I explained. For more detail on finding the actors, please check out some of my previous blogs, where you can see how we initially really struggled to find our actors. However, we did, and they were all perfect for the job.

Next comes the prop planning, Kasha did have in mind what we would need for this project, including the forget me not flowers which we picked up from Cadbury Garden Centre, along with some clay pots, which we planted the flowers in. Next, we had to get the photograph of Joel and Archie to put in a frame, which I supplied. The photo that was used, was taken on Kasha’s phone (a Galaxy s9). Then Kasha edited the photo to make it look older, utilising the phone's software, then she sent it to me to print out in the correct size to insert into the photo frame, printing took many attempts as we had to get the photo to the perfect size. Next was the old Newspaper which Kasha did a fantastic job on, making sure it was authentic to the ’70s, she even went as far to include other stories, as well as a barcode which we researched, were around the early 70s to make it that bit more authentic. We even emphasised the beginning of the barcode’s existence by sticking one on the axe, which we used to chop a log to show how things were tracked, even in the 70s. This little Easter egg is almost a link as to what corporate companies are doing now tracking personal data, and myself as a tech guy, enjoyed putting this tiny Easter egg into the video.

Finally, the last thing for me to explain is the locations, which were all but three scouted out by myself, and were all located in Wrington. For the old Mansion, we decided to use my Grandma’s house as it represented what a wealthy person’s home would have looked like in the early ’70s, I then suggested we filmed at my Father’s Unit in Wrington where the Morgan was being kept, another vital prop to the movie. Next, I suggested we use this stretch of beautiful road on the Mendips where I could get the stunning drone shots that made it into the music video as well as the transition which led to my Grandma’s woods, located just a five-minute drive behind her house where we used the old train wreck and made a small campfire. Kasha said we should use Treats Café in town as the other café we wanted to use was unwilling to let us film there for free, due to many people asking the manager every day about filming there also. We also used Revolver Record shop for the scene where we originally stole the Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon record. Finally, we filmed at Kasha’s actual house, where we filmed Joel and Archie putting the record on a few weeks after they had stolen it.

Finally, a brief last thing to mention, we needed little planning booking out equipment as everything we used; cameras, lights, tripods, microphones, the drone, were all possessed by myself, which enabled us to be more flexible when filming as we were not relying on borrowing college equipment. Other than this, that was all the planning we needed to do; our folder was handed in on time after many checks which have been written about on other update blogs, this is more of a summery. I’ve got to say as I said at the beginning, I'm so happy with this team and we have put a lot of time and effort into the pre-production, and we hope this shines through with the final film as well.

That’s all until, the production evaluation!