Content Overview

The whole film, scene by scene, in enough detail to make it clear what you will see and hear, including cinematic ideas and technical language.  Obviously you only need to think about the cinematic techniques that are going to be relevant to your plans.

• Where are you going to shoot? Why there? How will you do a recce? Why?

• Risk Assessment – You don’t have to produce a standard risk assessment form in the actual controlled assessment but you do have to demonstrate that you know that you need risk assessments, why you need them, and how you will carry them out, and you have to identify what you will do

  • For example – “My video will be feature a group of men sitting in armchairs trying to play football against a younger group standing up and running around. One of the issues for Risk Assessment is safe handling and moving of the armchairs.  Bad handling procedures can cause serious injuries.  Chairs must always be moved by more than one person, must not be moved unless it’s necessary, and anyone involved must have basic manual handling training.”

•   There are stages to this work – identify likely locations, carry out a recce, decide on locations, risk assess the production activity in each and every location and produce a risk assessment and a plan to minimise risk.  The purpose of a risk assessment is to identify any likely risk of harm or damage to people or equipment that could happen through carrying out production activity in that location, using a system to estimate the likely risk of harm occurring and the likely extent of that harm, making plans to minimise the risk of harm occurring and to minimise the extent of any harm that could still occur, and then to use that Risk Assessment as a working document on set to keep cast, crew and the public safe.  Risk assessments would need to consider slip and trip hazards, electrical equipment and trailing leads, makeup sensitivity, photo-sensitive epilepsy and any other existing medical conditions of the staff 

• Equipment lists – what are you going to need to use – be precise and don’t forget about editing, or about contingencies (spare battery packs, for example). We will produce a list of our available equipment for you.

• Contributors – what people will need to be involved behind and in front of the camera?

• Assets – what else do you have or might you need?  Make up artists? Costumes and props?  Music?

Legal and Ethical Issues

The exam board’s model we have is very brief on legal and ethical. I’ve written a long model just on this so that there are things there that will be relevant whatever the actual brief is and whatever your plans are. You don’t need to discuss things that are irrelevant to your project – there’s no need to discuss protecting children from extreme material if there’s no extreme material in your plans, for example.  My model (which, I will repeat myself and say again, is deliberately much longer than you will need) is here…

Technical Considerations

• Identify any specialist equipment or locations you might need – both media production equipment (smoke machine?) or something specialist needed as a prop or setting (a gym machine in a public gym of some kind would produce more than the usual health and safety needs, for example. A car on a public road might be another example).

• Identify any on camera or post-production special effects that will be needed

• Identify any requirements for voice-over (not ADR, which is a different issue and is just part of production – it needs to be provided for in contingency planning in your schedule, below)

Scheduling/Planning

• You need a detailed production plan that ties into the key dates you have been given in the commission brief.

• You need to plan to be finished in advance of the required date so that your work can be presented to the client for approval  before it’s needed

• You don’t need the kind of extraordinarily detailed time planning you do for Unit 10. A day by day plan for the shoot and the edit, breaking down shooting plans for different locations, and a week by week plan for the preproduction, is okay.

• You need a realistic budget. Use your equipment list, and use the cost list we always use from the lighthouse, which is here…