Task 1 – Understand requirements for a specific media production

When starting  any creative media project, you must carry out pre-production.

“Pre-production is a fairly loose term which refers to the tasks undertaken before production begins. Exactly what is included in this stage depends on the medium and situation.”

Taken from Media College

This includes the type of production, finance, time, personnel, facilities, materials, contributors, locations and code of practice and regulations. 

Type of Production

For different productions, the pre-production process is very different. For example, the pre-production process for a computer game is completely different to the process for a tv show because usually when a computer game is produced they don’t need to worry about the different locations used to make a game because you’re usually in a game studio whereas for a tv show you need to figure out where the best place to set the show and the different safety procedures.

Finance

There are different sources of financing the certain production, for example; crowd funding, this is a process used by a lot of indie game developers, this process allows the audience to fund money to help create and finance the production. Kickstarter is a private-profit company that provides tools to raise funds for creative projects via crowd funding through it’s website. Grant funding is another source of finance for the production, these are non-repayable funds disbursed by grant parties.

Time

In pre-production, time is very important, the reason for this is because you need to set deadlines, which are sort of like milestones and must be met to ensure that nothing hinders the progress of development and to also make sure that the pace of production runs smoothly. In the game development industry, deadlines are used a lot, the deadlines can be to make sure the concept art is finished at a particular date. These are usually set by the lead designer or a publisher such as EA. Missing a deadline can cause huge problems for both the developers and publishers, as missing one could cause you to be sacked and hinder the progress of the game development. The availability of equipment is something that needs to be looked at too, this is because if you are unable to use certain equipment when you need to, then you won’t be able to do the thing that you need to with that equipment, again hindering the development of the production.

Personnel

This refers to the size of the team used to create a certain production, the roles the team have, their skills and the cost. When deciding on the size of your team, you need to take into account on how much time you have set to spend on creating the production, so with that in mind you can choose the correct amount of people to help you with the development of the production, each job will need at least one person to do it but to help you keep up with the deadlines set, then you’ll need others to help you. The only negative with having a lot of different people working to create the certain production is the cost of hiring them and paying them, also there could be a breakdown between communications within the group. There are many different roles within the production team, they all have a different set of skills to enable the production to be made without too many complications and for it to run smoothly and hit deadlines.

Facilities

There are many things you need to take into account when it comes to facilities, these are space, cost and quality. You need to consider the amount of space you have for the facilities, this is to help you get the most out of the facilities you have. The cost and quality is also important because even if you are spending a lot of money on certain facilities, it doesn’t always mean you’re getting the most out of your money, you could essentially be paying a lot of money because of the brand of the equipment and not the quality it gives you. When talking about facilities, it could refer to recording studios or offices.

Materials

During pre-production you need to plan what materials you are going to use and how you are going to acquire them, when planning for this you need to take into account what supplier you will be using as this could change the cost majorly. There are many ways you can gather materials:

• Original Materials 
• Archive and library materials
• Sound Library
• The Internet

These are just a few of the ways of gathering materials. Archives and library materials are essentially secondary data, this means that the materials found here have been collected by different people and not yourself, whereas original materials are things that collect and gather yourself, this is known as primary data in the business world.

Contributors

This the name of the people that are involved in adding different things to that certain production, for example in the games industry the people that are known as contributors are:

• Developers
• Programmers
• Artists
• Designers
• Publishers 

These people make up a game development team. They each are responsible for adding different things into the game at different times. Designers do a lot of work before the alpha deadline, whereas  the artists and programmers will do more work before the beta deadline. The way publishers get involved is by telling the developers how they want the game to look like and what it will consist of, they have to go with what the publishers say!

Location

In pre-production, the location is an important aspect, because you have to consider where you are going to put the studio that you work at or the place where you use certain equipment or facilities. The things to consider are:

• Accessibility
• Distance
• Weather
• Cost

When considering accessibility you need to find a place that is easily accessible to you and the team, because if the location is hard to get to then you can guarantee late arrivals and the team won’t want to work there. You also need to consider the distance the location is to you and the team, this will ensure that you and your team can be there on time and everyday, because if not then the production might not run as smoothly as you would like. The weather is pretty self explanitory when choosing a location, because if the weather is bad then that will hinder the production process. The cost is another thing that needs to be considered this is because it will cost the company money to buy or rent a certain location and if you don’t consider the things above then essentially you are just wasting and costing the company money.

Codes of Practice and Regulation

In pre-production you need to take into account copyright, regulations, ethics, trademarks and rules. Copyright is a the protection of a creator’s work and is the legal process of getting exclusive rights to productions. Trademark is the protection of a word, symbol or phrase that can represent a company, this helps to ensure that the company is unique. Ethics are moral principles that can help to influence the audience’s actions or emotions, by making them thing what is right and wrong.