Action! Stage 3 of the Filmmaking Process: Production
Lights Camera Action!
Remember when you were a child, lining up for a race and in each moment of silence between the “ready?” “set…” “GO!” you could feel the adrenaline building?
In filmmaking, the catchphrase “Lights, camera, action” is synonymous with “Ready? Set, Go!” and is powered by adrenaline, anticipation, and excitement. This is the moment that a movie production film crew has been awaiting.
In this blog series, we have been dissecting what it takes to create a film, breaking it down and dissecting the seven stages of filmmaking.
So far we’ve covered the Development and Pre-Production stages in the 7 Stages of Filmmaking. This blog covers the third stage, Production:
1. Development
3. Production
4. Photography
5. Wrap
6. Post-Production
7. Distribution
Our first blog in the filmmaking series was a deep dive into the development stage — where an idea is brought to life and begins its transformation into a motion picture.
We then took you a step further in the process of pre-production. Where we guided you through one of the most mentally straining and detail oriented stages of filmmaking. This stage involves all the planning — from who will make up the crew to fine-tuning and finalizing the script.
Now, we are ready to move to production, the third stage in the process of creating a movie.
Planning is Producing
Filming day has arrived! All the rehearsals and practice runs come to fruition, and it’s time to get the cameras rolling. It is Production time.
A typical day on a movie set could look something like this:
Early AM: Generally, the crew are the first to arrive at the film location. Actors begin arriving throughout the day based on their call times.
Behind the Scenes: While the crew opens the location and sets up for the entire production, the entertainers are being cosmetically prepared (costumes, hair, and makeup). Last minute rehearsals are completed, and then it’s action time.
On Set: Throughout the day, according to schedules created in pre-production, the director and other crew members work in tandem to coordinate shooting as many takes and scenes needed to get the shot.
For most, production is the most exciting time in filmmaking.
The essence of production is to breathe life into a story in a captivating — yet natural — manner that transforms the viewer’s experience. This is when talent really gets to shine and all the preparation pays off.
Unlike in the previous stages, production is not a step by step process with a how-to guide to follow. The production stage is fluid and organic, happening in real-time and each aspect and moment is interconnected, like a web.
There are key components in the production stage of filmmaking that are crucial to successful filming:
- Communication
- Schedule
- Budget
Communication | The Human Connection
A film is a living breathing aspect of the imagination and requires constructive and instructive communication to keep it alive.
Remember back in pre-production when it was time to select your team that would become your core crew members? To jog your memory, those core members are:
1. The Director
2. The Assistant Director (AD)
3. The Production Manager
4. The Casting Director
5. The Director of Photography, and
6. The Costume designer
Each core crew has a team under them that manage. Within each silo, that team is respectively responsible for a lot of moving parts that will eventually come together (like an ecosystem) to create a bigger picture — or a motion picture in this case. With so many intricate, small roles that play a big part of the film, communication must remain a priority.
Communication is more than the Director yelling “cut” or “action.” Communication is the deciding factor in how the film is created. It is the domino effect of the AD calling out “Picture is Up!” to lights being manipulated to create a certain mood, timing the sound and atmosphere. There are clapper loaders “marking” and synchronizing sounds and images on set to aid in post-production, and, of course, the anticipated moment of hearing the director call ‘Action!’
These moving parts and this ecosystem continues for every single scene. After all the planning that went into the development and pre-production phases, an even more intricate layer of planning goes into production to execute a film perfectly.
While the crew and their teams are coordinating one scene with actors at certain times, setup for the next scene and take down of the current scene are all in play.
The key to a smooth production is planning ahead of the daily shoot, being vigilant of the needs, any potential changes in those needs, and communicating effectively amongst the different crew members and their teams.
For every second of filming, a minute is spent planning it. The primary aim of production and reason for so much planning is to stick to the schedule and the budget.
Schedules
Film schedules are not designed to cater to a single actor or group of actors. As you might have caught on, a good film isn’t made by the actors alone. There is a lot more that went into bringing a film like Mission Impossible to the big screen than Tom Cruise showing up on a certain time to act on set.
Movie and set schedules read more like an index — the overall production and the day to day responsibilities and activities are laid out for everyone’s awareness. Entertainers, sound engineers and the film crew all receive and adhere to a production schedule: the plan for ensuring smooth and on-schedule productions.
Production schedules break down the entire filming process, including details for each scene, talent and cast, scene or block time frames, and the crew needed for each scene. This component is critical in ensuring a path for success when it comes to productivity, budget and time.
Sometimes, additional crew members are hired to help teams stick to the schedule and budget. For example, a script supervisor may be hired to check the continuity of the script throughout different scenes and phases of production; or, a property master might be hired to oversee props, and a production coordinator to oversee the day to day happenings.
No matter what, when in the production phase, everyone must be communicating effectively with one another to stay on schedule. Time is money, and sticking to the schedule helps ensure the budget is always aligned.
Budget Friendly
Ah, the budget. Really no aspect of filmmaking can be discussed without the budget coming into play. That’s because when the money is gone, the money is gone. It is that simple.
If you fail to plan, or stick to the budget, then your project is headed for failure. Effectively allocating and managing the budget is crucial to a film’s success.
Keep in mind, a careful amount of detail and thought are put into setting the budget for a film. Before anyone will give you financing for a film they want to see a budget and they want to see the plan, so that they know exactly how their money is being used, and where it will be allocated. Staying on budget allows for the project to complete in a timely manner. Then, budget comes into play when it comes time to make edits in the next phases of the filmmaking process.
Conclusion
A substantial amount of planning and execution goes into producing quality content.
In the production phase of the filmmaking process effective communication is a must to maintain cohesiveness and stay on schedule. A good production schedule is a roadmap for a successful film project — with all the steps and inner workings laid out. These components are all critical when it comes to protecting the project’s budget. The budget ensures that those shots and raw footage created in production make it to the next step in the process: photography.
Check out next week’s blog to learn more about how what is captured in productions is transformed into visual viewing experiences.
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