Eduardo Angel Visuals

Notes from the Field.

This is a scan from my jour­nal that I bring with me to every pre­pro­duc­tion meet­ing that I have with clients, direc­tors, pro­duc­ers, and oth­ers. In this scan you can see my handy “pre­pro­duc­tion notes.”

Here’s how my sys­tem works: first, I like to get the con­ver­sa­tion going by shar­ing movies that we like and movies that could be related to the project at hand. This helps tremen­dously in our effort to under­stand both tech­ni­cally and aes­thet­i­cally what the client or direc­tor is going after, and if we are a good match for the project.

About a year ago I sat down with a direc­tor who began envi­sion­ing a project as “film noir meets sci­ence fiction/kung fu—but in a funny way,” which saved us both a lot of time, as I was defin­i­tively not interested!

Let’s take a look at the other things I con­sider on every video production:

• Script: Do we have a script? Is it from a book or is it an orig­i­nal script? When can I see it? If there isn’t a script, who is going to write it and when? This is a very impor­tant step. Even though I always write the scripts for my own projects, it needs to be clearly defined who will per­form this inte­gral part when it comes to some­one else’s project. I have been using Celtx, and I am very happy with the results. The script is by far THE most impor­tant piece on any video pro­duc­tion puzzle.

• Shot list: As soon as I have the script, I start cre­at­ing a shot list: what kind of gear do we need? Do we own it? Do we need to rent it? How many shots can we accom­plish in one day? The answers to these ques­tions can vary greatly depend­ing on loca­tion, the scenes’ com­plex­ity, per­mits, and even the weather.

• Loca­tion Per­mits: Since most of us don’t have access to Hollywood’s sets and pro­duc­tion bud­gets, being cre­ative is extremely impor­tant. Hav­ing access to loca­tions that other peo­ple don’t have access to is key. There are sev­eral beau­ti­ful aban­doned build­ings on Wall Street that no one knows about. In Harlem there are fan­tas­tic man­sions that you can shoot if you know the right peo­ple. Bat­tery Park is Fed­eral prop­erty while Cen­tral Park is not. Both require shoot­ing per­mits, issued by dif­fer­ent offices.

• Loca­tion Scout­ing: I am often sur­prised to see how many peo­ple ignore this crit­i­cal step. In cities like New York things change, and they change fast. The park that you so fondly remem­ber is now a park­ing lot. And that awe­some aban­doned build­ing? Well, it’s now a lux­ury condo.

With cur­rent smart phone appli­ca­tions you don’t need to bring a lot of gear. How tall are the ceil­ings? What is the color of the walls? Where are the win­dows? Do you have easy access to power out­lets? Freight ele­va­tors? Load­ing docks? It pays to plan ahead.

• Crew: The two main ques­tions are: who would be ideal for this job, and, who is avail­able? The answers very often don’t match up. Once you have your “dream team” set up it is impor­tant to clearly define tasks. You might have three pho­tog­ra­phers work­ing together and all of them want to be the direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy at the same time. This can­not hap­pen. At a min­i­mum you will need a direc­tor, a pro­ducer, a direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy, a gaffer, and some­one in charge of sound. You will also need an expe­ri­enced video edi­tor. If you are only two peo­ple, it does not mean that these jobs go away or are not needed. It means that each one of you will be doing sev­eral jobs at once, which is not ideal.

• Food: I absolutely believe that feed­ing your crew well is para­mount. It is the least you can do for peo­ple giv­ing you their time and knowl­edge and mak­ing your dreams pos­si­ble. Unless you are in high school and this is your first shoot, pizza and pop don’t cut it anymore.

• Bud­get: This is per­haps the most impor­tant and dif­fi­cult part to mas­ter. Addi­tional gear, unre­li­able crewmem­bers, unpre­dictable weather, or re-shoots can throw a per­fectly cal­cu­lated bud­get out the win­dow. It is very easy to under­es­ti­mate the time needed for post­pro­duc­tion. Leave ample room for emer­gen­cies. The money runs out faster at the end.

• Secu­rity: Who has access to the freight ele­va­tor? Are there lim­ited access hours? Some build­ings in Man­hat­tan will only use the freight ele­va­tor on cer­tain week­days. Who will be the man­ager on duty?

• Work­flow: I can­not empha­size this enough: test your work­flow before your start shoot­ing. Test your file for­mats, your mem­ory cards, your hard dri­ves and edit­ing soft­ware, and never, ever, bring gear that you don’t know how to use to a shoot.

• Back-Up Plan: You can con­trol many things, but you can­not con­trol the weather. You always need a Plan B. If you show up and no one is there, what would you do? If the cho­sen loca­tion is not avail­able, where do you go next? If you have 10 peo­ple with you, how will you be mov­ing around? HDSLR sys­tems over­heat eas­ily, espe­cially dur­ing the sum­mer and shoot­ing out­side. Be sure to bring a back up sys­tem. Bring back up bat­ter­ies, bulbs, cards. This is com­mon sense. But com­mon sense is not common.

• Appli­ca­tions:

We use Google Doc­u­ments to share infor­ma­tion with the rest of the crew in one sin­gle doc­u­ment con­tain­ing the day’s itin­er­ary, sched­ule, con­tact infor­ma­tion, loca­tions, weather fore­casts, last minute details, etc. Start­ing time changed? Are we switch­ing loca­tions? No prob­lem. With Google Docs every­one has access to the most cur­rent ver­sion of any document.

We also love Google Earth: Remem­ber the time when you had to fly some­where or hire a local scout to research cer­tain loca­tions? Google Earth is a god­send. You can access any loca­tion and deter­mine accu­rate sun­rise and sun­set times, inter­est­ing van­tage points, and even nearby accommodations.

• Gear: The gear list is so long and changes so often that it deserves a sep­a­rate post. In the mean­time check PDN’s recent arti­cle “13 Prod­ucts You Need to Add HD Video to Your Busi­ness.” The arti­cle is avail­able as a com­ple­men­tary down­load to our newslet­ter subscribers. Click here to sign up!

We hope this helps you to stream­line your pre­pro­duc­tion work­flow. These are all things that we have learned from expe­ri­ence and that have been extremely help­ful on every new assign­ment that we accept. If you want to share your expe­ri­ences or add some­thing we might have missed please add your com­ments below.