The Importance of Pre Production

In November of 2016, I was hired to be Director of Photography for the Brisbane leg of a FOX Sports UFC Documentary called Training Grounds. Recently they released the teaser for the doco, which you can view here:

Training Grounds focuses on all the Mixed Martial Arts gyms around Australia that have Professional UFC contenders training at them. In Brisbane we focused on Gamebred Academy at Eagle Farm, which is owned by Brendan “Badger” O’Reilly and Integrated MMA at Stafford, owned by Adrian Pang. Both of the owners of each of the gyms are Pro UFC fighters at the top of their game, and both blokes were super down to earth and very welcoming of us in their spaces.Having very limited experience of UFC and being a bit of a gym junkie myself, I found the interviews to be super interesting. The commitment and drive that it takes to be a professional at anything is astounding, but to be a professional fighter it’s another level entirely. Fitness is such a large part of their line of work, the fighters spend countless hours in the gym, run hundreds of Kilometers and focus on their diets constantly, the fighting itself is only a very small part of their success. Adrian Pang said it the best, as soon as that cage closes, the work is already done, you can’t go back and do more reps in the gym or get fitter. In that moment, the opportunity to prepare has passed.

Something about that mentality really struck me as common in both our professions, PREPERATION. Prep work is always the most critical part of making sure a shoot runs smoothly, or runs at all. It simply isn’t possible to go to set, and start shooting with no preparation. In the film and video industry, the real pros are putting in the hours the client often doesn’t see.

We are doing shotlists, storyboards and scripting, scouting locations prior to the day, making lighting plans, shooting schedules, call sheets, and checking and servicing our gear constantly as to avoid embarrassing issues on set, all of these things count as pre production. Pre Production is arguably the most important part of a production. But from a client perspective, when you see pre production on a quote, the first thing you will probably think is “What is that and why do we need to pay hundreds sometimes thousands of dollars for it.”This is a fair thought to have if your cinematographer or videographer hasn’t made it clear to you prior to the quote. It’s probably going to seem like they are trying to squeeze more money out of you for nothing. With that in mind, pre production is frequently a factor that clients try to kill from a budget. Shooting without pre production is like our fighters getting in the UFC cage without training. Yeah, you’re going to get it done, but you’re also going to miss a lot of crucial stuff, and when it comes to building the final product in an edit, your results will not be nearly as good as they could have been. Basically, the shoot will kick your ass.

Here are some important parts of Pre Production that I feel should never be ignored:

If I am doing a corporate or branding video, I want to find out as much as possible about the brand. Brands and Businesses hire me to tell their story and I can’t tell a story without knowing the story first. I’ll have a few chats with the media manager or PR person at the company and figure out what is important to the brand and see if they have branding guidelines in place already. I trawl the internet for a few hours and read everything I can that tells their story. What’s their energy? What is the language that they use to convey their brand? How does it all look? These are all important in making a video that is “on brand”.

Budgets are a part of life, everything we do revolves around money in one way or another. Without a clear idea of budget, a Videographer or Cinematographer has no idea how big or small to pitch. I can quote anywhere from a small DSLR event video to an Advertisement shot on a cinema camera. The difference being tens of thousands of dollars.  Clients should attempt a basic budget prior to approaching a cinematographer or a production company. It’s ok if you’ve never done video for your business before and have no idea how much things cost, it doesn’t have to be set in stone, you just should try figure out a ballpark figure of what you can afford.

This is the stage the client sees. After doing all my research and talking to a client I will always make a proposal, this tells them how I think we should tell their story, what techniques we can use, how big or small we can make it. The proposal includes budgets, crew members and crew size, camera and lighting gear required for the job. The Pitch is the story, how it will look, what we are trying to portray, what we are trying to invoke in the audience, important parts of the story and locations that would be suitable.

Without a proposal, the client will not know what to expect of the finished product. Proposals and pitches serve as a base for what will be created, but also an opportunity for the client to add to their vision.

This can take hours (sometimes even days). This allows the cinematographer to get the vision into their head, take photos, and see what the locations look like at certain times of the day. This also helps with the Production Schedule, so that the shoot is in the best part of the day or night for each location.

It’s easy to watch a movie or an advertisement and think that it was simply filmed from start to finish. I have never EVER been on a set where this was the case. Quite often scenes are filmed non-sequentially; this can become incredibly confusing and is a recipe for disaster if it is not planned. The shooting schedule makes sure everything is shot at the best possible time, and nothing is left out. It is an exact timeline of the shoot. It will include dates of the shoot, setup times, shooting times, and when the talent will arrive to the shoot. A shooting schedule will keep the project running smoothly and avoid any confusion on the day. On smaller jobs I will include a call sheet in a shooting schedule so that everyone involved knows their commitments and who else is involved on the day. Even for smaller corporate jobs a shooting schedule is paramount to keeping things running smoothly.

This is usually a series of photos, inspiration, and examples of other shots that are similar to what we are aiming to achieve on the day. It tells the crew and client how the story will flow and can keep the style consistent throughout the shoot. A shoot without a storyboard will take twice as long. While it is important to keep on task with a shoot, sometimes a shot will be abandoned for one that simply works better. A good storyboard results in a good product.

So as you can see from these few examples, Pre Production is incredibly important to achieving a fantastic product. Although it is time consuming it is worth every minute and should never be overlooked. If you are looking to save money, dropping pre production is not the way to do it. Pre Production usually costs a fraction of the total product, and without it you may end up with a product that is a fraction of it’s total potential.