Pre-production is that the most significant time for any director because it's where we undergo a "process of discovery." Here is a summary by George Dfouni of what's expected of a director during pre-production.
Please detain mind that everyone these pre-production activities will vary in time and importance betting on whether you're shooting a movie or TV.
Location scouting is one of the primary activities you may be doing within the pre-production stage of filmmaking. Once you've got selected what quiet look you need for the film, research is then begun for suitable locations.
Who goes on location scouts: Director, Location Manager, 1st Assistant Director, Producer, Production Manager or Unit Production Manager, Production Designer or stage director, Transportation Captain or a Driver.
During the writing community, filmmakers create an estimated statement to convince film producers and film studios to offer them a green light for production.
During pre-production, a more detailed film budget is produced. This document is employed to secure financing.
A budget is often divided into four sections: Above the road (creative talent), Below the road (direct production costs), Post-Production (editing, visual effects, etc), and Other (insurance, completion bond, etc).
The Director should also understand the budget. you ought to know where you'll be able to make suggestions on what elements to require out and on what to feature in.
When a director first starts prep, you read the script through several times to urge a sorrow what the story is about and who the characters are.
You then have a gathering with the Producer(s) and therefore the Casting Director to debate their ideas of the characters.
This is a crucial meeting for the Director because it's where you discover out what the Producer(s) are thinking and if they're on the proper track.
After the meeting, the Casting Director puts together a listing of actors that fit the character traits and specific looks discussed within the meeting with the Producers.
The Casting Director then has her/his casting session where they record a "shortlist" of actors for the director and also the Producer(s) to look at.
A Director never has enough time to figure with the actors in an exceedingly casting session, so here are the three most vital qualities you rummage around for when auditioning actors:
Do they give the impression of being the part?
Do they need range?
Can they take direction?
The Director will have many meetings during pre-production. These meetings are scheduled by the AD Department and range from script meetings and concept meetings with the producers to individual top dog meetings.
The director should have the subsequent meetings:
concept meeting with producers/location manager/art director
script meeting with producers and writer
casting meeting with producers and casting director
Director and 1st Assistant Director meetings
costumes
props
set dec
special FX
stunts
extra casting
transportation
animals
visual FX
Production meeting
Because a director may be a storyteller, you would like to grasp every detail about the story you're telling.
Understanding the story requires plenty of labor on the director's part because you would like to require the script apart scene by scene to search out out what it's about, what works and what doesn't.
A Director's first impressions are vital once you begin the script read-through process. you wish to stay in mind your emotional reaction to the story and what images the story stimulates in you.
What you "feel" is actually what counts, because it's your emotional response to something that defines it as a "Truth."
To understand the script, a Director must operate within the sub-world of the characters.
Therefore, one every of the most purposes of script analysis for a Director is to seek out out who the characters are, and what happens to them.
After reading the script and making notes about script structure and scene analysis, the Director must determine the objectives of the characters.
You are doing this by understanding the character's background, objectives, and dialogue.
You want to search out out the answers to those questions:
who is that the MAIN CHARACTER (involved with the question)
what's the CHARACTER SPINE (motivation / goal / action)
what's the SUPER-OBJECTIVE (the main needs of the character)
what's the target (what the character wants / active choices)
what's the CONFLICT (inner/relational/societal/situational/cosmic)
what are the THREE DIMENSIONS (thinking/doing/feeling)
A Director's visual concept is how you create the image structure and elegance of the film - it is the "visual stamp" or look you set on the image.
Some samples of visual style are:
Picking what the audience goes to determine (and not see) by deciding where to position the camera.
What's the pacing and mood of the story? (Fast or slow, dark and moody or light and fun?
What's the rhythm of the story - a scene - an act? (Every scene should have highs and lows.)
What's the color of the story? Colors are accustomed to express emotion and emotions and represent certain qualities of a personality that may affect the sets and also the costumes.
What's the most image to require the audience into this new world?
The French term mise-en-scène comes from the stage and means, "putting on stage." When applied to the cinema, mise-en-scène refers to everything that appears before the camera: sets, props, actors, costumes, and lighting.
Mise-en-scène also includes the positioning and movement of actors on the set, which is named blocking.
The subworld of a movie is all the sentiments and sensations a Director creates to arouse certain emotions from the audience.
To do this, the director directs the story "beneath" the most story by developing actions, events, and incidents that portray the deeper meaning of the story and also the subtext of characters.
research any source that may help (immerse yourself)
what does one want the audience to understand or to experience
what's the story beneath the story
what generates the action for a personality
A shortlist may be a description of all the camera angles for a scene and may include shot size, camera movement, character movement, coverage, and cutaways.
In the film business, there's no standard format to follow when preparing a trial list. It varies from director to director. Many Directors don't make shot lists, unlike many TV Commercial directors who have to work with shot lists and storyboards.
Shot lists are very useful because they will help guide you thru the blocking process. But the thing to recollect is that this - an attempt list is sort of a road map: it gives you a path to your destination, but you do not always should follow it.
Storyboards are a series of images that are displayed in an exceedingly sequence for the aim of pre-visualizing certain scenes in a very movie. Some directors will want to storyboard the complete movie, but most storyboards are used for sophisticated action scenes and visual effects sequences.
For any director, spending time together with your actors before shooting is an absolute must. The script read-through is when the director and cast discuss the script and its characters.
This usually happens during a bed chamber where the available cast, director, writers, and also producers sit around a table and skim the script.
This read-through is that the first opportunity that everybody can get together to start the method of acting on the script.
If the entire cast can't be present, two other actors (one male and one female) will be brought in to read the opposite parts. Or, looking at your budget, the producers will read the opposite parts said "George Dfouni."
After the read-through, the director will want to rehearse certain scenes to support the particular needs of the director and actors. this is often so that they can arrange character and story issues privately before standing on a collection with 100 crew members watching.
Most of those cast rehearsals occur in hotel meeting rooms, but again and again, they will happen on the particular sets or real locations that are visiting be utilized in the film.