Why is Pre-Production so important?

There are 13 stages of production in total listed below. The first 10 are pre-production. This is why pre-production is so important, it is where the most work is required. Pre-production is more than just useless paperwork to jump through hoops. Pre-production is vital to all members of the crew. It ensures that the entire crew knows exactly what’s going on. If they need to know why we’re shooting in a certain way, or why we’re shooting in a certain place, they can see the entire process that we’ve gone through in order to get to where we are. Pre-Production is also very important if you are working for a client. When working for a client it is important to show them exactly where you are in your work and where you are heading in order to give them feedback. Pre-production will help with the overall quality of the production by organising it.

• Brainstorming
• Research-Primary-Secondary
• Proposal-Pitch(Synopsis)
• Production Schedule
• Budget
• Storyboard
• Location Recce -Risk Assessment
• Contingency Plan -Back Up Plan
• Shooting Schedule
• Call Sheets
• Production-Film Shoot -Shot Blog
• Offline Edit -Rough Cut
• Watch-Reveiw=Online Edit

Brainstorming – Brainstorming is the process of drawing up and expanding on initial ideas. If this stage of the pre-production is not documented then it will be very difficult to have any ideas to fall back on incase your original idea falls through. It is important to jot down any and all ideas at this stage even if they clearly will not work. There may be certain elements of an idea that you can revisit and add into your project. When Brianstorming for my Music Video
Research (Primary and Secondary) – In this part of the pre-production, your mission is to make sure all parts of your video product are accurate. Primary research is research that you collect yourself. This may be a questionnaire, or a focus group. Secondary research is research that has already been collected by someone else. This could be published statistics, texts or personal documents. It could be argued that this is the most important part of the entire process as if your research is solid, there will not many questions that will be asked laster on in the process.
Proposal-Pitch(Synopsis) – This is also one of the crucial stages of pre-production. If your idea does not pass this stage then you must review and revise your idea. For a proposal you usually must create a treatment (A small page of information going into detail on what it is that you are creating and how you are going to be creating it) as well as a synopsis (A small paragraph outlining what it is that you are creating.) Here is an example of a pitch: Here is an example of a treatment: 
Production Schedule – This is when you plan out exactly when you’ll be shooting, where and what equipment you will need. The production schedule is important to keep order and keep your production on track. Going off track will ultimately loose you and your funding partner money, making you seem less reliable.
Budget – This is where you get your money together and sort out where you divvi your money. This is very good to get right as it is often easy to forget that this is a business. No-one will give you funding for your production if you frivolously waste your money, so it is important to prove that you can handle your money. Here is an example of a budget
Storyboard – This is a very important stage of pre-production as it forces you to properly flesh out your ideas onto paper. A shoot without a storyboard usually takes twice as long as there is usually a large amount of deliberation due to the amount of different ideas on set. A storyboard can either be drawn or, if you have found your location, you can take pictures using stand-ins. Here is an example of a storyboard:
Location Reece – This is a significant part of the pre-production process. Location Recceing is the process of going to locations and scouting them out to see if they are suitable for your shooting. It is usually advisable to take photos of where your camera would be positioned to get an exact view of how your footage will look. This is an example of a location Recce form:
Contingency Plan – Your contingency plan is your back-up plan; what to do when things go wrong. It is completely necessary that a contingency plan is created in detail, even if it is never used. If things were to go wrong and you ended up just having to call off a shoot days. This would cause massive problems as finding time to reshoot would be very difficult and most importantly would cost your funder money.
Shooting Schedule – A shooting schedule is an exact timeline of when you’re going to shoot and for how long you’re going to shoot. It is best to get these details down as early as possible to make sure that you entire cast and crew will be able to make the shoot. These can be very difficult to get correct due to other workers commitment. This is
Call Sheets – Call sheets are very important to get correct as they go out to every single cast and crew member. Call sheets are just to ensure what every single person working on the shoot knows where they need to be and when. If these are filled out incorrectly you could be seen as unreliable and people would be less likely to work with you in the future. Here is what a sample call sheet looks like: