Pre-production is all about management.
In our group, pre-production was the most vital part. More vital than the actual production. Once the pre-production is perfected, the production will be smooth and will have a good foundation of schedules and guidelines to work with.
During the pre-production phase of our project, we have to deal with matters of time, cost of food, costumes, supply for props , creative aspects of the production such as shot lists and storyboards, location scouting , location permits, call sheets, and last but not least rehearsals. We made ourselves timelines so that we could finish projects on time and meet the deadlines. As young adults, we are prone to procrastination, so having a timeline put us under pressure of meeting them. This helped us finish everything before the day of our shooting. This is also where scheduling came into play. Our producer prepared schedules for everything and breakdowns of things that needed to be fulfilled. It is easy to forget what needs to be done, so these schedules really kept us on track. As students, we had to use our own money for budget. We tried to be realistic and minimal but make it work at the same time. We all helped each other out and communicated well and are happy with the amount of money we have all equally spent. In these matters, it is easy for a group to feel conflicted but through communication we made sure everyone is happy adding to the appropriate budget.
The shot lists were made in the early stages of pre-production to start helping us get a vision of the story. There was one storyboard made for one our commercials. Lack of time made us compromise on the other two, which did not heavily affect our production. Our producer was in charge of location permits and she went out to get permission for a theatre hall which was not granted to us as it was in use. Our director and producer both went out for location scouting to gather sites that we could use for the shoots. Rehearsals played a big role in preparing everyone for the production. Without rehearsals, the actors wouldn't be prepared, the camera angles would not be tested as well as the position of lights could not be figured out.
Time wise we are almost on track. We left a lot of the prop preparation till the end. For example, till the day of the shoot we were unable to finish painting the prop. We also ended up wasting up most of the rehearsal day setting up the house. We should have spared one full day only dedicated to making the house look like the envisioned set. It took a lot of valuable time out of our rehearsals. Before the day of the shoot, the person in charge of sending out the emails missed out some email id’s so some actors were not sure what time to show up so that cost us time as well. It is just part of the silly mistakes that is bound to happen from time to time. What really affected us was not following the shot list on set. We were all confident in the shots we had in our mind, at least that’s what we thought. However, we have realized that we have forgotten to take a few useful shots. In terms of location scouting, I feel like we did not put our energy to locations that were available but we opted for locations that we knew were hard to get. I reckon, going to the possible locations straight away would have really helped us with time.
All is well and good. We have great footage that an editor is happy to work with!