This essay will be talking about the importance of pre-production. This is because pre-production allows the development of ideas had, and therefore makes a pitch easier when beginning to look for funding to start pre-production and then onto actual production.

Pre-production allows an idea to develop and allow other people to visualise the original idea through the use of illustrations from storyboards, scripts and recce sheets as a few examples. The purpose of pre-production is in order for initial ideas to be refined and discounting of some aspects within the idea in order for them to achieve refinery. This would therefore make an initial idea become more attractive when pitching, as the development of the idea shows through pre-production and allows the people the idea is pitched to be able to visualise it. This would therefore convince them to fund the project in the first place, as they would be able to get a grasp of how the idea would look after production, and how successful it could be in terms of income. This is why using visuals to present an idea is essential, as it brings more development into pre-production and enables a successful plan. However, another crucial aspect of pre-production is the establishment of feasibility of the project. This is because it will state what in the project will be easy, and what may show to be difficult when it comes to production. This therefore shows pre-production to be crucial to the successfulness of a project, and will continue to be what this essay is about.

Finance in film is essential to the pre-production and production. This is due to the budget aspect of pre-production, as producers need to know what they’re spending money on in the process of production. This would cover a range of aspects, such as; paying the employees, feeding the crew in process of production and travel cost, materials/props, clearances and facility hire. This therefore shows to be an essential aspect of pre-production, as an unorganised budget will make production less efficient and possibly resulting in mistakes and unpaid employees, causing production to go roughly. However, the budget does not only pay for employees, but also equipment as without it, production could not happen whatsoever. Therefore, there are three types of movie funding in order to secure the successfulness of a project through finance that this essay will now discuss the positives and negatives of each.

Studio funding is a stratagem used by a majority of media producers to acquire a successful set up for their project. For example; a producer approaches Paramount Pictures with a pitch for a film, and the pitch shows to be successful, the producer therefore has a secure way to fund their project. However, using this therefore means that the producer sells the rights to the project, therefore losing majority of the control he had before on the project. This therefore creates some issues for the producer, as the studio may become too involved with the project, making major changes that may affect the producer’s enthusiasm and may end up leading the producer to cease working on the project. This therefore aside from showing a positive aspect of securing a fund for the project more easily, it also shows negatives as the studio may interfere with the work happening on the project as they will own rights to the film by funding it fully. An example of this is where Edgar Wright ceased production on Marvel’s “Ant-man”. His reason for exiting production was the interference from the studio, which stopped him from doing his work on the film. This therefore made him make a decision to stop working on the film due to the studio’s interference. This example demonstrates the appeal to studio funding, however also highlights the possible negative aspects due to studio’s interfering with production, possibly changing the sought after end result.

However, another option rather than relying on a studio to fund a project is crowd funding. This is a less popular option when funding a project, however gives the producer the most control out of the three types of funding for movies. This is desired by producers as they have control over their pre-production ideas and decisions made within it, opposed to studio funding from studios such as Universal who may interfere with production. An example of this is the Veronica Mars movie. This was crowd funded by the original cast who successfully raised $5 million towards production from a website called “Kickstarter” as a popular way to crowd fund projects. This therefore means that no forced changes were made on the film, as the producers had full control over production and therefore the success of the film was completely up to them, and not able to be blamed on a studio showing complete independence in production. This therefore demonstrates the sought after independence that producers want in production, as crowd funding allows this to happen as the audience funds the project rather than a studio, also ensuring a certain audience for the project after production without having to struggle in production with changes that would be argued for and against between producers and studios.

Public funding, as the third and final mainstream option is institution funded. This means that the producers rarely have to give the money that was funded back. However, public funding shows to be similar to studio funding as the institute get involved with production, meaning that producers again have less control over their project. However, this is also a popular option as producers may end up making more money from their project by using this strategy for film funding, even though the initial funding may show to be a slower process with this method than crowd funding, as it would have to be sorted out with documents and papers when funding. An example of this is Slumdog Millionaire, funded by Channel 4 which was incredibly successful. This is because of how Channel 4 funded the project $15 million, but after the production the film made $377 million in the box office. This therefore allowed the producers to make a lot more money than most likely intended, showing public funding to also be a very successful method of funding films and ensuring their success post-production.

Time is money. In pre-production, time must be organised by time tabling during production in order to make the most out of production days. This is important due to the longer a production is ongoing; the more money it takes to keep it running. This results in issues with funding depending on which is involved with the film, as studios will tell you to stick to a deadline. This therefore also involves how time in pre-production must be managed in order to reach a deadline set by a studio or a personal deadline in order to finish production in order to establish a efficient production without wasting money due to time. Time may also be the cause of “talent” leaving the production, as they may feel that production may be taking too long without getting anywhere, or because of a studios involvement over time or other causes due to this. Time must also be taken into consideration for travel, as traveling to different locations that have been specified to be filmed at are required to have a travel time in order to get there. This therefore also means that you may have to rent vehicles in order to transport equipment, props and personnel. This is crucial to pre-production, as not organising travel costs and time to get to different locations could result in more time being taken as it enables mistakes to happen without organisation during travel to locations that have been chosen.

In terms of location, a recce sheet should be used in order to get a grasp of the different locations available for filming in, which must be used in pre-production in order to have organisation for where filming must occur. This can also be achieved by having scouters hired in order to find different locations across the world with a brief of what the scenery must be like. However, this also means that finance must be considered in order to have the scouters paid for finding these locations. When using scouters and recce sheets in pre-production, locations must be shown in great detail in order for the producers and director to see where they can film, and what specialist type of camera men to use depending on the location, as the location may also be water based. This would also be useful to establish in pre-production, as personnel would be hired sooner without wasting time and money in order to continuously organize the production in order to start filming.

Advertisement in pre-production may also be considered to be important, as producers will need to decide on how to expose the public to the production, allowing it to develop a target audience and awaiting fans of a possible franchise depending on the production. This also comes into time and location, as in pre-production, it must be decided where to advertise production and how to do it. This may result in advertisement being mainly print based, or through social media and television, which would also affect finances due to the cost of the advertisement. However, the more spread around the advertisement is, the bigger audience the production will achieve. This would also ensure that profits would be a large sum even though that advertisement may have required a considerable amount of finance, rather than having a less well-known production for a lower cost of advertisement which would achieve lesser profits from the box office.

The BBFC is an institution that manage and award age ratings to media productions in the United Kingdom. Within pre-production, taking the BBFC into account is essential as the target audience may be limited post-production because of what the BBFC may award the production. This is avoidable by ensuring that a lower amount of swears and violence are used in films, in order to get a 12 or 15 rating on a production. However, in order for a production to be awarded a 12 rating the pre-production must ensure that the script of the production has around one or two swears. A low amount of violence must also be ensured, as a lot of blood and gore may lead to the production being awarded a 15 or 18 rating depending on the amount and severity of the violence. This rating will therefore achieve a niche market, making the production's profit lower than what it would be with a larger market which would be achieved with a 12 or lower rating, as it would therefore be targeted at a large range of people. However, once the BBFC awards the production a rating, it is the producer's choice whether to make changes to production in order to try and attempt to receive a lower age rating in order to achieve a larger market. Although, this also means that finance must be taken into consideration as for the BBFC to award an age rating, a fine must be paid with each time the BBFC is asked to analyze the production. Therefore, the producer must consider whether they should submit the production again to the BBFC, or keep the rating they were awarding in order to reduce financial casualties.  The studio may also influence the producer's decision on whether or not to resubmit the final production.

In conclusion, pre-production shows to be the key to success of any production due to the in-depth organisation and planning to a production in order for the production to be efficient and less time consuming in order to achieve a greater financial profit. This is able to be achieved through any method of financial funding. However, studio funding may show to be more efficient but less profiting to the production team depending on the box office outcome of the production. This is mainly because of how the studio takes a cut from the profits of the production, and leaves the rest to the production team and advertisement.