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The Importance of Pre-production

We're going to jump into preproduction and it's a proposed because uh we're going to talk about how to get ready for a shoot no matter what size it is okay when the hardest things to do guests and manage for me as a director or first or first a d is how much time will everything take in a perfect world that mistakes without, you know issues with the gear without ht my cable is not working because you know let's say the actors does not hit her her lines or a monitor goes out or a cloud comes in or any number of things can happen to completely set you off schedule we'll talk about that and the reason I bring that up is as I was preparing this this whole little kino I assume that our earlier part that we ended up early by a good fifteen, twenty minutes was going to take ninety minutes I assume this gear part was going take a lot less time fail okay? S o if we had had the time, we'd have practiced the entire thing. The reality is you know, we've already been plenty busy as is, but that is ...

what you know a tv crew would do for example is going on they're going to rehearse everything's going to the academy awards, for example they're going to rehearse everything that's why you see those fake billboards of the actors make sure they're on time the truth is on almost any film or commercial there's no practice time it's usually the first aids job the first assistant director's job to really know and work with the dp and director and other key people to say how much time is going it's just gonna take it's not gonna ask you for an estimate there pretty much asking you for a written contract because they will determine the entire day based on that. So given that that happened, we are cutting a bunch of the year were supposed to show you today who care is going to control it. You tomorrow uh, in a real production, you would end up cutting your shots, which is deadly because if you cut the wrong shots or you got certain shots in but not the main ones, you don't have a movie, you can't just get anyone to come back tomorrow you may only have paid to shoot this location for this one day it's only available for that one hour there is no coming back, so we're gonna talk about avoiding that. Um before we run off, though, I'm going to show you stuff that I kind of flew through last time, maybe jumping back to the er keynote this is a go pro camera we're giving three of these away is deceptively small and deceptively cheap this is used on tv shows uh and it's by a lot of you know extreme sports people because it's waterproof amount us on a surfboard go underwater with it uh you can mount this on a uh olympic uh freestyle skier on their helmet on their skis uh I mount this on my rigs all the time to do my behind the scenes video as you see extremely light extremely simple uh they just released uh these new lcd screens in the back now so you can actually see what you're shooting the previous ones did not have an lcd screen it's pretty huge uh they've announced they have a three d model coming out at some point which is fun. Um they have all these different harnesses I will not put this on but this is a head mount so you can go ahead and do a peel the shot like feel with the three d you could do a three d p o v shot they have a chest mount that we use all the time and I just touched my mike get trouble for that. Um the amounts on bikes suction cups you name it okay and this shoot ten eighty video at thirty frames a second or seven twenty at sixty five seconds and still images and time lapses um I don't go anywhere without one of these it's just when I was little tool you know uh did a tv show italy wants to take our mountain pulling out all four reception cups of five d and h d my cable's too too much trouble something up to the front of the car and off we went all right um and um devices to record sound the zune h four n it seems to be on the show this video will collect you guys ready for sound off thea you ready cool here is this little video that you may have seen that problem for on this video video not for some transition we have nothing to worry about who'll face at all times remember I don't know how good looks on uh the stream but I can tell you that on a fifteen inch monitor it really holds up the one thing that it does not do at this point with a z you can't lock exposed the campaign related to do with these cameras but you know it's pretty amazing what you can pull off with a very small camera like this kind of shocks you come back so we actually shot this with three cameras at once three cameras set up going second trying way e I mean even shooting training like so this is a lot of background click you'll notice cigarettes flew by my head right here so I saw the first swath so there you go you can hear the audio hopefully you're hearing the original um audio on the web is excellent. So what did we do for audio? We brought a zune age foreign resume h foreign this is pretty much not going call the industry standard but it's the single most common audio device I see filmmakers and photojournalists documentary believes it has to excel or inputs on the bottom xlr is a kind of standard for any mike uh you can also plug your ear phones into its you can monitor it and has a stereo built in mike's as well. It's all digital it's compact we put that in your pocket with a lab mike on me I'm gonna ask the audio engineer uh what audio was better this guy just like this or soon you mean in this specific video or what? Not specific video? I can't I'm what would you guess? Obviously that I would say the zoom is going better work ending in the proxy zoom with, you know, a professional level your mind, right? No, really, because it picked up all the wind and it was kind of close unusable. So that was a good lesson that even now they basically have different algorithms. They used this little guy that sound we end up using was off of this little guy inside of the case was more usable than a professional system. Well, she learn new things every day did you put the I know it comes with the other back that they say you can put on for better audio did you put that always just took the one that is totally water produces the basic waterproof one that just kind of went and did it and the cool thing is, you know, uh marcus was on my right with his hand arm out like this justin was in front of me with a third camera and I had a camera myself to shoot stuff as well uh, I didn't say anything to you when you got all that really can't see it, you know? So it so it's in your pocket he zipped his jacket or when we just secured shots, he had it on his chest, you just sit this jacket down says we're going up, they can't tell you think at that point so again, the beauty of, like, small cameras, right? Pulling that off uh, I did do this with a camera uh years ago when I was ah tino the night contractor and I don't like on that four and I were on a roller coaster with a full fledged like metal I need your body and I want a rollercoaster hit the bottom of my chin on and it hurt for months, I'm sure had some sort of hairline fracture because I know that I fractured the actual he's in prison uh so heavy objects on roller coasters not going tio small little objects that if they break off and fly off uh definitely don't come in that but thiss financially won't hurt and hopefully is no one underneath um we got that out this is a more professional version this is the sound devices seven four forty uh this is what they use on film sets or the bigger brother it's significant more expensive has multiple inputs and has built in time code the beauty of time code is you can jam sink the time could from this device into your slate that also has time code will be using that over the next few days this is high end it's got you have card slot it's got an internal hard drive um you know, I'm sure you can vouch for this one way mentioned terror deck I want to mention that besides being probably probably the most affordable wireless device that we can all afford I rent if I go for the bigger guys because they're fifteen grand um it is also really versatile and that it can uh transmit to your laptops that's the wireless video yes that's what we had in one of the laptops free wifi to your ipads ah and also will live stream to the web directly from this device so kind of interesting new portal right there on uh last thing I'm going to show you is this thing called the locket buddy which has just come out? This is I'm gonna markets run over here if you can um the first unit that can actually put time code on a nice diesel are pretty huge um and you explained why it's not easy so thirty seconds or less oh, well uh these guys a great cause they'll sit right on top you can with the hot shoe mountain and go right into your audio in um it's a really great device for professional sound recordist because it kind of gives a reference time code that you can you have to constantly jam so you either have to have a locket box which is like a time co generator and it's very similar to the size of that terror attack cube or you have to a little literally tether your time code from like, a sound devices um into here constantly. The problem is you can't jam this because the five d cannot be jammed. Its clock isn't precise enough is james think forcing a time code in. Yeah. So basically, um sinking two devices together like kind of like you do with your ipod and neither is this um and so we'll give you a reference time code in an audio clip which then an editor has to use a special program with final cut pro or avid which is another editing program can take that audio track and make auxiliary timecode out of it so you can sink your video to your sound very easy even though that process sound a very difficult so this is really great for professional sound recordist not the easiest peace for the average user the average user and that's my spiel yeah the whole spiel is this is the first device that I allowed you to have time code late into the movie file that you shoot that's pretty revolutionary a lot of reason people don't use this is because they can't have it as you can see though you need to have something of a jam the time code into it continually because you know here I can jam sink my time coded to the slate unplug it stays in there problem with this device right now limitation is you can't just have to do it and the second issue is that you have to have software on the other end that can read it doesn't just pop right into your editing device cool uh fast word for the slide chugging zoom sound devices seven forty forty uh de nicky slate get all this stuff is on my blogged and I'm fast forwarding through it and the wireless territo cube they will be using a week uh and we're gonna get into that stuff later okay so this is stuff uh that we will talk about tomorrow let's go into preproduction we have forty five minutes to do uh quite a bit of work all right why pre production number question question number one why do we do preproduction on anything that involves um I think you do pre production every day the photographer to a certain degree uh how do you prepare for a and we've got to go quick so how do you prepare daniel for a still shoot? I mean the biggest thing yes to do is just make sure you have kind of your gear in order make sure that you know your batteries are charged your you know cf cards of formatted you've got your couple hard drives to back things up and you know make sure things are clean make sure the sensor doesn't have some huge spot on it and just kind of really go through and check to make sure when you get there you can't just you know stop and it's like then you're on their time so and obviously you have to make sure that you have a phone number for you to contact right your subject a destination right like you know what when where before you they're available while you're shooting where the reporter is that's basically it as a photo journalist you know you have your gear ready and a destination and subject to shoot and a deadline that's pre production as your crew grows it gets exponentially more complicated all right and it is the one thing that will kill you every single time any production is when you don't do enough preproduction rights going walk for some of the steps of um why you need this when you go into filmmaking whether it's a music video and you're the only operator um it's more complicated moment you pull out a video camera people have more interest in you okay? They're more interesting where you can go where you can't they're more interested in what you can and cannot shoot uh especially if there's two of you because you've got your sound engineer three of you because you've got your director with you four of you because you've got a producer with you five of you because you get the idea it becomes, you know, a whole machine um footprint footprint first the size of your crew so a smaller footprint that you can have as a film crew in general, the less hassle you're going to get. One of the best ways to get people to give you access to stuff is to promise and also deliver a small footprint it's just three of us with one can and camera and no try popular handheld you're going to get into a lot of places where as it's five of us with the same year we don't have room for five people, let alone fine of us with a slider a light panel on audio engineer you get the idea and when it gets to fifteen, twenty, thirty, fifty people things exponentially more difficult. Okay, um permission depends on a lot of issues but you cannot just shoot video in the majority places in the world today without permission. Stills are getting more and more difficult as you all know uh, but you're still often in the tourist kind of type thing or as a journalist you have a first amendment right in the united states to be in a public place as a film crew. Unless you're working for a news team, a tv news channel you don't have that luxury you got have to have permission to be in a lot of locations to shoot buildings, et cetera. Um, so you can eat to clear everything a whole other issue. Logistics are a huge part of that uh as your crew grows, you're gonna have to have specific schedules gonna have to do parking permits because now you've got let's just say ten people you can't fit ten people into the clown car, you have several cars now. Now you have a van with equipment, perhaps where do you park those? You know you've got a budget for it, you're gonna make sure that a lot that will accept you aa lot where you can get in and out in case you're you know, leaving here in the equipment in equipment van and if you do so howie recommended lee the driver sitting in the equipment man a way that we do like low impact productions is we have vans filled with here uh and a driver that lives in that van uh and it's in a secured lot overnight or we unloaded if we don't feel secure enough that allows us to not have to deal with parking permits so that you know if you get chased away the van just drives off ok and it's gonna communions otherwise you've got to get permits to block off the entire street which requires someone coming in days in advance to post get permits from the city to tell everyone you can't park here in three days for this amount of time they're gonna get someone to come into cones or whatever it is to sit on it because people will not pay attention to those permits it's that you can see how it gets very quickly more complicated um as the production gets bigger, you're going to start having the need for you know kraft ease of food so they'll come with their little van they need some place to park um you're going tohave wardrobe people coming in with, you know, cars or vans or trucks filled with wardrobe you're going to have uh you're going to have equipment vans lighting vans great vans generators get the idea you know, obviously this gets more complex as you get bigger um in terms of logistics while you've got to take care of all the travel needs even if you're traveling across the city in your own city don't assume people confined where they're need I need to go. You would be amazed at what the number one issue with any production bigger small, his people getting lost and one critical person gets lost or delayed let's say your key actor or director everyone sits and waits no one could do anything. Um access is all about you know, knowing people pulling in favors getting the right permits uh it's a full time job producers do that for a living line producers location manager's location scouts on again power the moment you start getting into lights like you see here that are bigger than ones we have in the studio you need generators and generators need special permits because they create noise and fumes and then you have to run cables you can see how quickly why films and big shows cost so much money. Okay, benjamin's uh I got to tell you the number one thing that never ceases surprise me is the moment people see you walking over with the video camera looks semi professional you can see the dollar signs in people's eyes literally especially nowhere else mohr than in los angeles. Because everyone out in l a wants to make money. You cannot pull a camera out in l a look. Semiprofessional. Um, without getting someone coming out saying, do you have permission? Where's? Your permit. You gotta pay me, ok? And they'll stand in front of your camera until you stop shooting. But it was such a it's. Such a problem that l a has actually passed a law that if someone inhibits you from shooting a film, that you have a permit for it by purposely making noise or doing something to destructive production, they get a huge fight. Thank god the people would do that until they got paid. Is a black male. Okay? Uh, but just to give an example, I shot a commercial in, um, I want to shoot a commercial in paris. Every every single building in paris is copyrighted. If you shoot a wide shot of paris, you're technically need to get a copyright. Really is from every single building in paris. No one shoots in paris as a reason a zoo result, or that you'll see very limited. You know, uh, in new york, certain buildings are copyrighted as well, so when you go from just shooting, your little documentary is one thing the moment you start making a commercial piece you've got to start to worry about all these permits for locations getting permission um I'll have you guys guess how much it cost me get act access to the roof of the building in new york um for three hours to shoot an overall gv shot of the city ten grand ten grand grand ten grand in my budget for three hours standing on a roof and it kills you alright that's just how it gets and they don't care if you're spielberg or john q public if it's for commercial use they're not going to get up there without you paying because they know they know how much money they could stand to make um so you know be wary of that let's go into the process quickly how does a commercial director get work and do things generally you get a rep um and they represent your work you have they have agents around the country they show them to agencies and the best email you can get as a commercial director is you just received some boards from an agency so they send you these boards because he really have a concept of what they want to shoot and you have to go ahead and then write a treatment a treatment is a two to twenty page document that you write with um basically you're effectively telling them exactly you pull off the shoot from how you see the tone of the piece the music you see yourself using you'll include musical references deal includes stylistic references in terms of lighting wardrobe the type of people you think are going to cast the locations you want to shoot in um and so on and so on and so on it's a tremendous amount of work so before you even get the job you're basically doing and the majority of the on that one the majority of the production private ever getting going toe commercial photography work with the camera what you bid basically create we talk about all this stuff bid is just a budget there's a longer but one recently passed a year and a half photographers are being asked to treatments in the commercial world uh but for me on average I'll spend four to seven hours thank you on a treatment if not two to three days and sometimes a week or two if it's in a foreign assignment we've got actually contact productions companies overseas to get kind of ideas of what the budget might be yes so the board that they're giving you this just has like really limited information that you were kind of using to create your treatment it ranges you know sometimes the bigger that job the less information there is usually a mme and the least you have to go off of but it's ah it's amazing how little information given sometimes it's very common to say we don't really have a concept yet but is there a general you know that I would do anything locked down but get going so you'll go ahead and write your treatment uh you prepare a budget where you have to kind of estimate on the fly what this whole thing's going to cost you and they're gonna expect you to stick to that um and then eventually they will work with other companies overseas or if you live in l a and you're shooting us in new york we're going local production company with local scouts local experts will tell you well it's gonna cost you ten thousand dollars for a roof in new york say what you know and then you need to know to put that in your budget and eventually hopefully you get a ward of the job and then you actually start real production uh the film process is a little bit different um you tend to try and find either they find you, which is nice, but unless you're spielberg it really happens um but you tend to find a story or a screenplay that you can have ownership to or by rights too and go from there you're going to go ahead and um also trying often associate some sort of talent to that movie because these days who stars in is almost as important as what's more important very often in a director or even the story you know tom cruise is in it everyone's in you know or some great actor or highly recognized actor um and you also write a treatment um and you're gonna make the pitch to have right of people to get funding um yes I'm really fast forward fast forwarding for a lot of concepts giving an idea and then uh the pitch etcetera are all to raise money to get a budget do what you want tio but that's just so you know what we do in the commercial and on the film end and how you guys were going to do that whenever you have to do a proposal um and we're not going to go too much more into that here because you could spend a whole day on how to repair the perfect treatment but just I want to give you the outline of how it is done on the higher end so that you know that that's kind of step by step process we go through um let's go into the next step which is once you get awarded quit best word in the word in the world job's been awarded you know we're gonna go ahead and go for it you've been green lighted um the first step is just going to be the location scout so you actually get money and you send scouts out it's not practical for myself as a director unless it's in my city to fly out to new york and scout over you know, because a it's going taking time to get there be uh location scout that I hire in new york is a professional location scout who knows where to go who can also tell you this is a fantastic place and they have the whole role decks of locations they've shot him before but it is almost impossible get yes they that's their job they know what you're going to get you know in the time period that you have and they're going to say I know you'd love to shoot in the lobby of the chrysler building but you they say yes, the one person out of the thousand so how about this lobby downtown that no one knows looks a lot like it and costs you nothing right um and, um we're gonna look at images from that and online they're gonna put web galleries up you know, look at it and say here's five options for your warehouse you can shoot your film in you look at it and say, look, look, I like the look of this again you're just kind of going off of the feel of the images they take I very often hire photographers to do this uh with location scouts because location scouts know locations and permitting they don't really have an eye so I will send a photographer along who has a great eye who will say it's a great and easy location to get to in parker crew around but it looks like crap and light you know is back with all day unless you're looking for back like the next step will be the tech scout so again as I go through these steps of a location scout text got et cetera understand that you don't do this really productions but you should do something similar in terms of steps no matter how big or small your production is do we hope we all get that out there and over here? So the next step for us in my case would be myself as a director, my dp and all the keys all the lead leads of every department um to go out to the actual physical location and so I go back um this is where we're actually going to get to this room right here and realize that there's a new station across the street or the helicopter that lands every five minutes this is not a viable location to shoot a scene where people whispering all day we're going to go and have uh, the grips look around and say I can't mount lights anywhere without doing damage this building which was never the issue they'll say I need to bring a lot of great equipment because we can't touch the building oh hey guess what? We came out something on that metal beam no problem and not do any damage uh and the electrical department say we need to run cables um and we're going to run them from how much cable do we need ok so you don't show up the day of the shoot with not enough cable uh and they'll find out that no one is allowed to park a generator downstairs or they'll look at you know how much power you have in the wall sockets so that you can use up to eight hundred watts you have light but moment you want to k or anything bigger you say you've got to go to generator the dp is going to be here uh doing the obvious looking for with the director cool shots beautiful shots um also the light where is the sun rise and set I uses an application on my I fell iphone called sunseeker we're actually in see the path of light in augmented reality and you know any time of the day I highly recommend sunseeker on this new ipad has a built in camera you can sure you could do it on that well very cool um so we're gonna be talking about you know that um someone you will joey not have a sound person at the tech scout but the director and producers know enough to say this room is very echoey you know um and it's it's going to be a problem you know? So we have one room here that has a concrete floor lot more echo in the room next door that has a rug okay uh any other thing I'm forgetting in terms of logistics you would find in a text count um you know, the producers will look around where we going part of the crew we're going put crafty um and all those logistics right it's just like the idea is on this text cow is where all decisions are made do we need a dolly? Do we need a wheelchair? Do we need sticks? Do we need a a techno crane? Do we need a specialty lens a specialty light a specialty? Anything because by the time you leave this text cal that's when everyone from the team goes out orders what they need and adjust their budget hopefully not this way uh but sometimes you have to this is the most important meeting because you cannot show up the day of the shoot and realized that that window doesn't open and you can't run a cable down to the street or that you can't get your lights up through the elevator because they won't fit I mean you little you're measuring exact wits and heights of elevators if the available is available, the elevators available from certain times that they are not you could get control over um when the silliest things you can do is assume you get all your gear up with the elevator in a high rise the tower and realize that you only put so much dear per elevator and it's going take you seven or eight shifts and it's shared for the entire building and you just lost forty five minutes and production on that roof that cost you ten thousand dollars for three hours they're not giving us forty five minutes back okay? It's gets very, very intricate uh logistics I mean that's that's where all the geniuses in all this um and that's where generally you're going tohave line producers and producers and um location scouts location managers working out every single permit detail potential problem issue etcetera ahead of time writes about a time you show up on set everyone knows what they're doing we're going talk about that in the second all right, how much time do we have? Twenty minutes. Perfect. Okay, um in the meantime, while all this is going on and you're doing a production and all your line producers and people are getting permits uh it's the director would generally be doing telling casting um in terms of going to going to casting agency, if you're a small production, you're gonna find actors and you're going to email them and you're going to ask them to uh can I chat with you and read the part or I checked themselves and email you something I have to have a casting director in a casting room to go to but I highly recommend you see what your actor looks like and how they perform not only based on the work that sends you but on the script you give them hey get a nice chat you're on your iphone with this face time thing and say look at me read me two lines oh you're so not right for the part nothing personal that's the thing it's not personal you is the director know what you're looking for? Okay uh ideally you want to have a reversal before you get to the shoot you do not want to be meeting your actor for the first time the day of the shoot that ever having this after anything, let alone the hearst alliance as one of its actually sadly a luxury in our business most professional actors show up, do their thing and leave the professionals. Um camera tests seems like a luxury it's. So is not so marcus who is a professional first a c uh usually generally the day before the shoot, which sounds a little nerve racking but it's actually the way it works that's pretty cool we'll go to the rental house with list that he is given by the dp and he will check the camera out and every accessory there given make sure the lenses sharp make sure the iris works make sure the flans distances right this and every element and the sensors everything's in focus uh everything every bell missile works that were renting okay and something goes wrong you're going to scramble to get a replacement from their rental house the scramble to get something else that's also where they'll set theat actual camera settings etcetera er and all those things and cameras you cannot show up on set davor shoot messing your picture styles I mean guys it's too late to do it the night before you know that camera tests can be at a rental house it could be in your bedroom you know that before but do it um also take camera sex another level uh actually for hollywood they actually bring in the actors and new lighting tests and camera tests so they'll take a famous actor and shoot with a variety of lights a variety of salt of wardrobe to see not only what they look good in it get like that get expensive stars you get most of your bank for your buck you're going to wardrobe tests and they're gonna go through it and you're going to see that you know uh this actor looks terrible in that wardrobe in the light doesn't work well with their hair and more importantly, the dp is going to watch what angles that actor's face the light what angle of light works well with that face on what angle of light looks horrendous and take notes on that because you cannot thanks to a whole set up like this on a movie set have your actor walk in and go look at you know that accentuates their nose or you know some some defect in their skin it's done before and they do a different film stocks or different cameras different lenses so you get you get the idea that like every potential problem you're trying to take care of before you ever set foot on on set okay um camera prep uh so I mixed up camera test on camera prep camera prep is what I was talking about like pressuring the cameras and the equipment okay let's see what's next days leading up to the shoot storyboards we'll note storyboards are uh this is when you know at certain point you're going to lock down a script okay no more rewrites stuff that we've got three written the day of that you have tried have discipline tow lock down your script for several reasons until you have a lock down script uh the actors cannot start to rehearse they cannot start to memorize the dp and director and the whole crew can start to know what we're shooting right so I worked on a number of productions and I was you know earlier in my career where the director kept saying I'm still working on scripts historic conscripts told a film script and it's like ok, seven days prior to the shoot you will be done where wherever it isthe and we're gonna work off of that and any radical change need to make and you're gonna have to clear through us because we may not be able to adjust for it it's like it's a total vicious cycle okay, so based on the script you will do storyboards uh, the reason you would do that is so that, um he is a printed page with texts and dialogue you want translate that into a visual medium and you want to get your whole team around you to understand your visual interpretation of that. So here is an example of the storyboard I'm not going to mention where it's from but if you've seen something I shot recently you can probably put the two together um and this since some of visual storyboards we went off of how does this work the vast majority of the time and definitely for me um I draw it myself first and if it's for a professional high end thing, I will give it to professional storyboard artist this was a very unique situation where the storyboard artists said, um just give me like your general mood and you're you know, whatever specifics you need and he actually all the story wars by himself without any input for me just definite out the way I want to do it but I tried it and I was fascinated to see that he wasn't far off from a lot of the stuff that I did and the beauty of it is he came up with like one or two shots I thought pretty interesting and different you know, in terms of coverage could you remember this guy does story watch for a living he's you know, an expert on transitions and you know and and all that uh and eventually we kind of did what he did a rough draft we got together and said, you know what is this yesterday? Sure sure sure no, I won't do this this and that and this is the final process but you go ahead and you have these story boards and you khun the whole crew can visually understand what they're going to be asked shoot how the camera's going to move whatthe shot number is going to be the dp is an idea of what type of lens we're going to use you get the idea everyone start to get on the same page get the story about wars done early you know I did a production where the director of small production kept saying I'm going to the storyboards and three months later they weren't done and I was like we're dead were dead dead dead so that's kind of a very important part to have because that's between the script in the storyboards you can go ahead and do a shot list all this stuff we're going to be doing over the next few days okay I saw this is the laying that groundwork part and then we're going to do it together yes you know we're like you take those storyboards and like this dan a matic pleases like previously pre visualization eyes very calm these days do you find that helps our do you tend to just work okay with the storyboard went what you're kind of it depends on who you are on the crew if you're a gp I tell the hate getting previous because I have uh a computer game telling me how I'm going to shoot my thing sure this means you animate that's what you're saying I don't have any forward well basically um you know they'll go into an environment and they will measure the environment and they'll measure the you know uh actors that's pretty simple but the car is in the building and they will create a three d I said I was going try and show you one of mine but I couldn't get clearance on it for commercial job uh but what the previous allows you to do is they create that environment just with gray stick figure that's dynastic figures in like three d figures um and they will actually animate them uh and the camera movement and lens and to the point of especially common visual effects um the on the base level it's great is you khun everyone then really has the clearest idea of exactly what's in the director's mind and the pacing you can see right around on a previous this is just way too slow or this shot doesn't work and you know when you go into production you find a previous depending on what level you do, it is actually a very cheap and incredible alternative to saving time money on set because the worst thing you can do is say you know what? God wasn't cut well, you know, hopefully the provincial director and a d you can do that from storyboarding stylist I mean that's what you're supposed to train to do this is a kind of a dummies way of making absolutely sure it doesn't happen. All right? So previous is definitely very common, especially for commercials and people will often even pitch in their treatment the entire commercial in previous how does the process work if you're going to change uh, shots that were storyboard in a certain way and how close were they trying to stick to the story words we're gonna talk more about that at the end of this plea that is the question because I'm trying to stay with my shot list yeah we're going to stay on schedule but it's a good question ok, so the first thing you're gonna do is from that story board is do a shot list where you clear carefully draw out uh every shot you're going to see you could see there were going to make these documents available for download for people watching us here um they'll be available with the course material that's probably why you want to sign up for this course whether or not you're gonna want to purchase it so you can get access to it um and you'll be able to see the storyboard in detail and blow it up and you'll see that it's hard for me to read but there's an exact start and stop on the schedule with the image you will notice that they're not in order of how it's going to be cut in the in the film they are scheduled based on you know logistics we gotta shoot everything in this one direction first and they shoot everything in that one direction second and we have to shoot this section at this time of the day because at four o'clock in the afternoon is a big shadow across it that's the that's the gaffer and dps job let's say you do not want to shoot looking in this direction past three p m we have a hard stop and that's what the first eighty will work with in terms of the first a d and the director and the dp and gaffer, et cetera to set up a schedule where everything lines up perfectly on it also tells you what's going on in the scene so everyone knows going on, uh, the cast that's needed so we don't make silly mistakes and not have them ready. Uh, and what departments are involved? This is kind of like your this is your your bible on your chute so no matter what's going on that's your schedule and the moment unlike creative life, where they show me, you know, your time's up, you move on unless you're starting this is we're filmmaking on ly part of filmmaking that I don't like literally a monster in other parts, too, but this is the main one I don't like, um, is that you have it's time management, it's time and resource management at a certain point, you can have to kill your favorite shot and you're going to say, ok, we've got five shots on that story board between ten a, m and two forty five p m the, uh the car wouldn't start and were an hour late. What am I cutting and the way you're gonna make that decision process is extremely important you can't randomly cut stuff out, how are you going to cut certain shots? Which, which is going to happen to us tomorrow and sunday? Going tell you right now, how are you gonna pick? Which has to cut story development? You know what you're trying to sort of a grandiose seemed more basic than that. Do you have something you can cut together without this shot? All right, so I've got this this this academy award winning dolly shot with twenty extras. That's going to be remembered on my really rest of my life that I really want to shoot if I shoot that shot the other six shots that take that's contact for forty five minutes of the six shots to take time and teach, we won't have time to do those. So how this really one great clip, but no movie. Okay. So suddenly, in that wonderful dollar shot twenty three's becomes a stock that shot that's locked off on sticks. One person, this is like, this is where it gets complicated. This is where a professional director knows at all times. Um, this needs to cut this needs to make sense, there's much more basic than what you were talking about. The grandiose and turns the arc of my story and the character development, uh, this is like, do I have a movie or not? Because if you got to come back tomorrow a lot of times you can't and if you do it it's going to cost you a lot of money and it pushes everything back so if you come back tomorrow you've already rescheduled you've schedule everything for tomorrow already unless you're in a tv studio, you can't come back, you gotta pay a whole new ten thousand dollars fee for that roof again your producers are going to get fired the first a d and director will get fired if they can't stick to a schedule like that first will be the first I d thank goes a director if the dps too slow it's moving lights around too much he's fired the first a c messes focus up more than once or twice she's fired this is like, you know, lots of money here, even on your small productions, you know, it's money and you just don't have time. That's, why it's so nice to have small productions because you don't have twenty, thirty people and you're not paying them, you know, x amount of money per hour and, you know, I know when I'm directing how much money cost me permanent, so maybe now you may be getting a little bit of a better understanding as to why I want that fancy o'connor matt box to come right off and that cpi to lance if it exactly the same way as the other one did because if I'm a deep your director and I wantto go between a fifteen, eighty five millimeter if I don't have the right kit, it could take me a five full five minutes to redo the kit where is if it all kind of works professionally? Matt box comes off lens goes on ready to shoot the most time it takes it is to get the guy to go get the lens out of the case and hopefully you're ahead of that you're talking about a fire ready you know and people even see it happening all right that's a professional crew is it's just it's so expensive no matter how small your your production is um so you do everything you can to save time um so that's also why you buy more expensive here? Alright call sheet um we go back to this because it's like a really critical point. You've got to make the judgment of uh we're going do this together when we shoot tomorrow, especially sunday. How fancy do you want to get the fans here? You want your shots to be if you want it on a dolly forces handheld versus sticks have a very different look right the camera's moving in a certain way or on a technique your brain you know there is a cost of the equipment that's not really the thing you should be focused on it's how much you gonna cost in terms of time and do you need it where you're going to kill your day by trying to pull off this fancy shot and sacrifice others then comes your question I don't take a risk now that supposed answer that the end someone sees something that says oh would this be a great shot happens all the time not really on a professional crew it's just does decorum but someone might what? Westberg eu hey, when that great shot the first two questions I ask myself are in this order one what do you think? The first question do you have time? Do you need it? Story is gonna help your piece will it cut it no matter how good the idea is, will it cut into my sequence? Because I as a director in the on ly person depending hundred crews that surrounds me that's going to tell me that knows what im cutting this piece in my mind right now and sometimes you fancy you got editors on set and some of your fantastic dps we're doing it with you as a director, you need to know it all times will this brilliant shop it's never been done before work and often the reality is it's the coolest shot I've ever heard of in my life and I want to shoot it. It doesn't make sense at all to the story. It doesn't make sense in the sequencing of things our schedule already done, I can't do it, and the second question is, do I have time? Um and can we pull it off? And what can I sacrifice to make this happen? It's a balancing act, which is why you need to have all those brilliant ideas before you ever set foot on set now is the single biggest difference between a photographer and filmmaker. Is it's it's expected as a photographer? You're going toe play around, see stuff and find that glare that a shot it's expected as a director and as a film crew that you will have all these revelations before you ever set foot on set, and hopefully you make your schedules reasonable enough so that when you do see something magic, you have time to take advantage of it. But when that ten minute mark comes up, I'm not freaking out because I know where we are in our lesson plan, but you have to constantly aware of that. It's it's a you are like a ceo as a director. And you have producers that are your stockholders they're going to pull the plug on you on your production at any second if you make a mistake, they don't care that you got the most amazing shot in the world because they can't you just cost him you know, three hundred dollars, three thousand dollars three hundred thousand dollars you know, you know, because you gotta come back an extra day yes really quick I was going to ask how often do you squeeze another shot in like, how often you have to make that call if you want the beauty about these canon cameras is it often takes more time to discuss it then just to shoot it so you know, um with a heavier panavision camera, you know, switching the lands and that takes a lot more time moving the hundred pound thing it takes crew where the candidate here we go last steal it you don't even bother talking about like, ok, cool what's just got you're looking first a d we're on time I'm going to have this quick shot we've got five minutes and when that clock strikes five if you're not done doesn't marry you move on ok? But no matter what if there's one lesson you take away from this whole preproduction thing is when you have that schedule and you want to change anything it's a cascade and make sure that a if you add a new shot it's going to cut in and be it will destroy the rest of the schedule because you may get in productions where it's just slash and dash guys it's just like ok, we're weii camera went down or the actor came in you know god knows what and um didn't hit their line for the first fifteen times there went my dream film but you got to stay positive and you got to find a way to me and that schedule unless the producer tells you you know what let's you know let's take a break was you know, forget that luxury and we'll do it again uh call sheet all right, we got ten minutes going forgetting that relax the call sheet what is a call? She it is something that you should all do no matter how small your protectionist even for yourself. Okay, um because it is basically a list a one a one page list most of the time less you really big production uh that goes out to everybody and it has everyone's name their position and their call time here is an actual call sheet we're gonna look on top, I blurt out stuff is extra meriel job you'll see you'll have the production name of oppression companies so they have contact in phil's everyone knows who to bill two hundred one when I first base he goes on to rent something well here's a production company there is there phone number address is there you know information so you know who to bill there is the agency because they're the ones who hired you and you want to make sure that you know they're right up there um and there's of course the clients they're the ones who are paying for everything very clear in the center is the crew call what time does the crew need to be there? Uh you know for sure you'll have actually specific times beneath for every different person okay on our lunch and breakfast clinton exactly. So you also have a breakfast time when you're going be ready for people it's very common if not customary to have food on set because people going to be late because they want to grab breakfast and you you just won't get everyone there you know get them there because someone will invariably be late uh and the lunch is clearly set in big productions you get penalized if you don't get people lunch within a certain amount of time cost you money call grace and everything and people get paid extra money they're not eating no penalties uh well it's it's funny whatever but if you don't have it then you know producers will not feed people and make them work eighteen hour days goes both ways you know it's necessary to kind of protect and make sure that your crew gets to eat and the number one a tip of the day besides marking your uh your water bottle is the single most important thing on the production is to feed your crew and hopefully well uh decides everything else that you could do a hungry crew in an unhappy crew period simple uh what else at a toil who's going to edit this uh, production phone numbers numbers of everyone knows they can call if they have a problem. Okay, the date is a good idea location where is everyone going? So they know where do you park because you rarely can park where you're going to shoot um and where is the nearest hospital? Something if someone has anything goes wrong on the way to the shoot during the shoot go at a hospital. No, you know nine hundred eleven where is this that obviously hoping not to call I want to get an ambulance there but you know that stuff you know the sunrise and sunset you know the temperatures everyone's properly dressed you'll see the director and you khun status later this director exactly producer producer russia adviser assistant uh production supervisor first eighty second eighty dp first a c section c excited, etcetera. They each have their individual call time, so uh the producer is that ceos the assistant production somebody's gonna get their one hour earlier than the producer hierarchy there and the director can get there later too because you know supposed their work is done and they can sleep a little more probably because they haven't they've actually worked way late into the night and have way amount of work do before people um and everyone knows you know where they're supposed to be and when what's blurred out there is people's names good so you can always look at people and call them by their first name I put this on my iphone screen saver I'm terrible with names I can't do it I will tell I remember what sound weird but you can quote me on this could be funny I am or what kind of stockings looked like from last year ok because it was like the big thing meteo right it was the big thing um can I remember her name but the point is most now remember so much that I could tell her what's talking she was wearing and tell her you know how she blushed that year but our people's names to me so I put on my iphone where just touch the home button and it's your screen saver your lock screen and there are my key people's names so no matter what because I got fifty two hundred people sometimes and a lot of john's a lot of david's or jose's you know if you're you know in spain and it's like hey john you know I mean like you can't be like uh so that helps me a little a little tip put on your iphone screen uh their names their phone numbers and you'll see their blue there because actually link so if you're on your iphone click on it your iphone will dot it nice little cool feature and their e mails ok, everyone knows how to contact each other so if you've got a um the first a c who's got a question for the dp it's a tort terrible waste of time for that first day see to have her call production office it's way busy to get the dps name they want to be immediately gets dp on the film fair enough all right and then on the bottom you'll see how a cruel this is actually what I would call a medium size crew uh for a commercial you know uh a lot of people right? You also see on the right uh you get it's broken down by department says well, everyone knows kind of where to find people on the right are all the rental places and like providers so something's wrong with your your lights you know who to call and you'll see there's a film number and a person to talk to you never want to call panavision or donne's camera house and say hey, I'm so and so and I need my library huh hey can I talk to john? You know extension four six five oh ok, cool and I mean like you need to go right away and on the bottom I forget is a town of course um and uh little courtesies also like there really will put a director's phone number on there or the stars phone numbers and emails on there because, uh you know uh you know, I keep getting tom cruise charlie sheen does not want well he doesn't want one you know glenn close does not want to have her email given out to the crew and everyone things like that then there's the map this is essential this shows you how to get to this location with very clear diagrams where it is uh what we call company moves which is when you go from location a to b in one day the best way to get there for what highways and shows you how to get there from pretty much all four corners of you know you're not okay there's no excuses you got an address you gotta call time to get all the phone numbers, you got a map and you got left to right turns and distances if you're late, you won't be there the next day you shouldn't be okay and then the final step that we all forget or I don't, but that people forget emailing this thing out is not your final step. You must make the call. Someone from the production company will call every single person to confirm they have received this piece of paper or pdf because you may have the wrong email address. They may not have checked just because you send that out. Doesn't mean they got it. People forgot their you work in the next day. I'm not kidding. I hope that's tomorrow. Okay, no problem. Every single person on the crew gets a call and gets confirmed and checked off. And that way, hopefully the next day, um, you will all be there on time, and anything goes smoothly during production. Going talk about, um, was we work next two days together. The talent needs, you know, keeping them given a dressing room, making sure that road roads ready, given personal space, um, and an ignition wardrobe has room catering. Logistics are constantly going. You should expect things to fall through it's like a pro forma thing. Things will not work. Things will break down. People will be late. Despite all your best efforts, it's part of production, they're professionals could deal with it and not stress out um you can do the best you can throughout the entire day I gotta admit for me the only thing that really stresses me out on average is a director when I've done all my pre production is making sure we can stand schedule and that's really the first day sees job first eighties job first this isn't director that's his or her job to keep you on schedule so that the director is not to stress out director just purely focused on the performance of what's going on you know I still stressed out about that um and then there's data manager we're gonna go over that later today I do recommend that you do not skimp on bana management on budgets that you do copy the files off while you're shooting but there's someone looking at them and making sure they're not corrupt uh especially with digital it's very common should an entire day's worth of stuff at the end of day you start looking at ago I shot in seven twenty or thirty or we had the wrong picture style he gets you know or something is wrong with the camera you know how expensive that is the suddenly paying that one person I mean people go toe really need to pay someone to stick cf card into a computer and I've gotten that many times I don't need a d I tear you know come on you have you know cousin louie do it it's like this is this is everything like if this data is not protected and is not solid everything you just did all that prep everything you just paid is gone so it's a very important position uh playback of course not being able to be to play back as you shoot so we have vtr people who you can call off a shot member that shot was shot six days ago or two hours ago uh take number three that I really like and I see that back pulled up right away compared to your shot right now you can see how they cut and you could see continuity issues higher end but you're going to be able do it on your ipad and if you're in a year or two you know you could already record from the red through those terror dex ryan's your ipad proxies does worse right today so every shot you shoot automatically gets logged into your ipad so as a director as a script e as anybody you look at your ipad and you recall any shot any take put your notes in there today awesome and hopefully I met my yes I met my schedule ok, but that like I said the only stresses me out you could see that I'm really so we probably went over by one minute to say anything um we're going to cut for lunch forty five minutes for lunch yes do we want to take any questions or not let me take way more questions, okay? Real quick I'm going to say we could do questions if you want when we first come back and then we could just take two questions and it takes the rest when we come back it sounds good right already have a question from went um if you could just talk about the difference between art and commercial and what what constitutes the difference no it's two on back to you we'll talk about that come back ok, ok um what do you do owe the question from canon geek was do you factor in extra takes into the schedule from from sandra in extra takes into you the schedule of course you need to know that this is a complex shot it's going to take you x amount of time to set up and rehearse and you're not going to get in the first take whereas you can expect a locked off shot twenty millimeter with no focus change you feel like a knock off on the first shot and if you don't, you've got problems but we're going to end right there to that point, one of the disciplines you have to develop is that the question of susan asked me was a fantastic question um and you can't react and say, oh that's a great question you say no, like coldly it's. Not personal were. I'm not a real answer out in time. Same thing as a director. Now we gotta move on, and people have to trust you, and they understand that it's, not personal, it's, just got move on, or we're not going to go today.