Pre-Production Major Project: Contract Research

When creating a contract between you and an employee you have to consider every thing that could affect you as a producer/company.
I went looking into what sorts of things needed to be covered in my contracts so that we are covered.

I found out that the contract had to be a written document as this is more professional and easier to look back over. This should be read and agreed upon by the producer and actor then both sign and get a copy whether by scanned document or a printed document.

Some of the things covered should be the pay, whether they are being paid and when. In our case we are not paying so we need to adjust this and put that we are covering travel and how much, whether its train, car or pick up.
The dates of the production in as much detail as possibly can, so for us we have said the date of the whole week even though we plan to have at least one day off in the 7 days. Plus the times of the day we play to film but keeping it in small doses.
Whether they will get a copy of the end result, on DVD, Digital copy etc.
Whether they have to supply their own wardrobe
What they are credited for and they know what role and what in entails.

From this I now know exactly what I need to cover in my contracts and for how much detail is needed so that each actor knows what they are getting and that they will provide us with what we need and not to drop out of the production. The below image shows a basic contract for a low budget production made, this is a good example to start at for me to create my own but I am to write more details into the being available, food and drink provide and the amount of  money will be paying towards their travel.

Pre-Production Major Project: Cast

After a long search and 3 audition sessions we have now found all our cast, to have done this me and Danny had to read through and pictured each of the characters from Helens character profiles compared to what we wanted from each person.
To have done this we had to our research into the character profiles and then while casting online I then researched into the actor and then invited them to auditions if they fitted or was a good actor to adapt.

This is Adam Johnson he will be playing Shaun Kelly on the team- Shaun is a health expert and a gym fanatic whereas Adam loves football and looks after himself health wise by going to the gym a lot with his muscles and six pack. Both the character and actor are very similar height and visually.




This everyone knows is Jamie Terry and he is playing Ollie Jackson, these two go hand in hand as Jamie is so much like the character Ollie with his humour and success in women we felt this was not even an argument but we did give everyone a fair trial.


This is Lilly Steel and she will be playing the character of Hannah, Lucy's best friend. We felt that the character Hannah would be a bit opposite to Lucy and be girly and wear dresses and lots of make-up. Lilly like to party but also cares about people but is the jealous type which we felt she would not really need to acct much and be more herself.



This is Daniel Wornham he is one of the four main boys playing Tom Mclean. Dan was great at auditions and played what we thought was a great Tom he could be aggressive if needed but he also has that cheeky smile which we fell for, Dan is a bit shorter than his character which is not a big deal as he makes it up in his acting.



This is Paul Bridger who is playing the role of the coach Don Johnson. Paul didn't look like the coach when he first walked into auditions but he acted it out very well and he made even us feel motivational, he is a bit younger than what we was going for but when he started his dialog we knew that he is the coach.



Malik Kaddu playing our main guy, the captain Dean Willis. Malik is a big lover of football and plays every week he has also played with minor league celebrity footballers and even models. He is cheeky chap and really loves the idea and wanted to get involved he was so motivational without even trying and with a six pack he fits the bill nicely.


Now Matt Thompson, he was the first person we loved and cast, he is playing the sweet and innocent Nathan. Matt was really good in his interview and ok his skills with a ball was not amazing he is flexible actor in his skills and we love that he has this dark horse vibe to him the same as his character.



Louis Jones is still a shy and young boy that appeared in Helens Fiction adaptation piece a year ago but he fits the part of Callum, the youngest player on the team which louis is definitely he has a love and passion for acting and gets along with everyone.


The role of Graham was a hard one to chose but David Brook fits although David is not a recovering Alcoholic he can definitely pull that one off, he is slightly younger than our aim by about 5 years but by still being the oldest team player the boys will be able to run circles around him.



Hannah Jay who is playing Lucy Mclean, Toms sister and Hannah's best friend, Hannah fitted the role very well with her sweet and innocent girl next door look and attitude. She is very friendly and easy to talk to but also when she was auditioning she had that edge which is why we felt she was the best Lucy we auditioned, she also has that potential to stun the audience in the nightclub scene and the kitchen scene the next morning.



Overall we are very pleased with this cast and they are very lovely people which we hope that will make filming easier for us and they are all so keen and excited to be apart of the film in February along with the promotional aspects in weeks to come.

Pre-Production major project: Keeping Actor interested

We finished auditions in October now thats over 3 months till the actual filming in February, in this space of time people can forget, feel ignore and lose interest in being apart of our production so we have to make sure this does not happen and they keep motivated and engaged in our production.
We planned on doing this by having them come to mini events such as:

• Filming the title sequence at the end of November 
• Doing a Photoshoot at the beginning of November 
• Recording the table read at the beginning of December 
• A regroup after the new year 

By doing these we hope to get the actors more involved and enjoy working with us, although the more the actors come and meet us to do this activities we are providing them with the travel they are then engaging into the script and seeing it unravel and get he feel and emotion to built up to next year where we are on a time limit, and I feel the better the actors relationship with us the quicker and more effectively we can get the filming done in our time scale.

Pre-Production Major Project: Football Kit

After the designs have been done and choosing the best ones I then had the job of buying and printing them, this wasn't as easy as I had to fin a plain kit which the website would have to do it in green, this is what one of the group came up with and I analysed how much it would cost including printing of the logo and back numbers. 

In this picture it doesn't show the green but if you was to scroll there is a green which shows in my basket in the underneath picture. Lucky for us we found it in the clearance sale so we would get to save money on the kit too, plus this is a set so it includes the shorts which is a benefit otherwise it would have been more money buying them separately.

I added the kits we needed to the basket to work out how much it was going to cost so we have 6 teams members wearing he green in M/L and the price includes the customisation of £30, and a yellow set for the goal keeper which customisation of £5 

Totalling £94.43 - this is the best we can come up with, after researching through sports direct and a couple online stores.

Pre-Production Major Project: Check list

Aimee's to do list

I created this for myself so I could remember and keep up with all the jobs I have to get done before printing the book at the end of November.
This helps me so I know what I still have to do and what I have done, also by adding the dates I want them done by I am then strict with myself and I would then push myself to finish each task and I can see which needs doing first. Plus by having notes I could give myself some guidance or instructions like call sheets which I have to organise with Danny what he would like to shoot on which days of the week.
I created one for each of the team members so they would know what they need to have done and give me by certain dates instead of me keep asking them. I feel these are a good idea just so we all have some type of document to look at rather then trying to remember plus they can be printed and wrote on.

Pre-Production Major Project: Budget

For the budget as a group we decided it would contain two different elements:

• We would put our own money in 
• Raising money through either fundraising or kickstarter

We are raising money just so we would have more money to put into the film as there is stuff we need which we won't get free like the football kits; these are expensive.

We was going to do fundraising but what we had in mind was a lot of time for not a lot of money which is why we came up with the idea for kickstarter and Indigogo.

We are aiming to raise £300 from Indigogo 

The money as a team we are putting in, is as follows:

Chris = £100 

Helen = £200

Danny =£150 

Aimee =£150 

plus Chris is going to sponsor the film with his production company and put in an extra £100

The budget will have to cover, Travel, Food, Football kit, props and Locations.

Travel I have budgeted  £5 per person per day = £125

Food for over 50 people for 4 days                   = £125

Football kit for 7 players including goalie        = £100

Locations (5 places)                                          = £200

Props (wedding)                                                = £50

                                                                          = £600

This does not include Indigogo money which would be a bonus to pay more actors for travel as I have only allowed for 5 people which does not include me each day. I will be calling in people to help as crew for favours such as the sound guy who is a professional, and people in the course as they know what they are doing and need the experience. 

I managed to get a designers for the kits for free.

The only things I feel I may have to change and could be more vigilant on would be that I may have under or over budgeted in certain areas as I don't have prices from Locations quotes yet, the above numbers are still estimates but there is nothing I need to add to the list so if I go under on Kit I would have more room for Travel or Locations.

Pre-Production Major Project: Funding Research

For this project even though we decided we would all put money into this project we felt it was a good idea to raise money for the budget too as the more we had the more we could pay actors or get better locations or props etc. so we have been looking into various different funding places such as Kickstarter and Indigogo. They are both online forums where people go to donate money for your project and in return you might off them some sort of goodies, but I was told about some government funding schemes that might be available and help out instead of relying of peoples donations we could then apply.

http://www.creativeengland.co.uk

I found Creative England, they give funds to starting out film makers and low budget productions.
After researching their whole website and the details so I could apply for funding I came to a conclusion that their requirements for the money we did not fit any of them as even though they fund feature films and TV dramas and the TV dramas are only for people that live in the Midlands which would have fitted us the best apart from the location. The Midlands one is for Producers who are looking to make their start in the industry and for TV with upto £1 million, the other one was for feature films only for established directors who have a budget of up to £2 million so unfortunately this did not fit what I was looking for so I am moving onto Kickstarter.