Unit 6 : Feature Film

Task 1 : Research

    1) My Letter of Application & Media CV that I created to apply for my job role of the Production Manager on this Feature Film.

     Media CV

Letter of Application

    2) My research on the TV drama genre, explain how this has helped me in my role after conducting the research.

While researching my role at the beginning of this task I understood the key roles in which I'd be taking on and what was expected of me during the Pre-Production, Production & Post-Production Processes.

I did some research that concluded of the basic coverage of my role just to help me understand the overall expectations of the role at hand, I decided that it was something I was interested in so I decided to keep at it and move into the next stage which was actually applying for the role after conducting my extensive research. Upon further research i learned that my salary in industry would be £44,896 according to a website called Glassdoor, in doing this i also discovered other potential career paths and what sort of companies i can work for like the BBC or ITV and many other big TV names who would be open to accept different levels of Production Managers from Unexperienced to Fully Experienced there was jobs for all the available options.  

Proof of my research (More will be added - date of this update is 27/02/2023)

Task 2 : Your Role on the shoot and your team

    1) About my role as Productions Manager.

I am the Production Manager for this Feature Film and I will be working closely with the Producer, Directing team & All the other teams that partake within the production and my job is to make sure everyone is communicating and up to date with information and schedules etc.

My responsibilities consist of Budget management, Organization & Communication between the other teams / departments within the Feature Film Production. Another part of my job is that i find the locations and secure them and coordinate the schedule effectively to ensure that we stick to the schedule and that everyone who should be present is there and that all the required scenes are been filmed, this is part of my day to day work called the production diary which consists of filling out a document that i made so that we can see what we get done in that production day. Me and Harry worked closely to secure locations, he would find some on google maps after i gave him a brief of what we needed and he would find some within that category and then i would make the phone calls and check the calendar and availability with the locations and our plan. This was a huge part of getting the film complete because me and Harry were in charge of securing the GYM and Coffee shop as well as a few other places which unfortunately we couldn't secure due to the locations not answering phones over the course of a few weeks and we couldn't hold on for them so we just had to find elsewhere. My expectations are very clear, i must be able to know who is doing what at that exact moment, i make sure everyone is organised and checking that everyone is working and if not i can assign a quick job to them so they have something to do to help with the production operation. I work directly with the production team but broadly across all teams to ensure they are on task and on schedule because i organise their week and other stuff to ensure they get the most work done possible in their given time slot, this is where the time management comes into play and helps production move swiftly. I made sure to guide and mentor Robert and Harry while making their shooting schedules to ensure they were set out correctly and followed the correct formats with the correct info, this took some time but towards the end they were getting better, it was just a case of the people and where they needed to be, but other than that they knew exactly what they were doing. 

    2) Peer Review Sheet

My job role would affect the production team as well as many others but mainly it would be the production team as i directly give them tasks and check in on them the most throughout the process. i would have to say any of the Assistant Directors would have been affected by my job role, having someone really on the ball helps things run smoothly and efficiently however if not then it can go catastrophically wrong.

If i did not give tasks to any of the AD team (Assistant Directors) then they wouldn't know what to do day to day, i helped them a lot fill out any documents required, by doing daily check-ins multiple times a day to keep up to speed with what they were doing throughout all 3 processes of Production. 

Harry was a 2nd AD meaning me and him contacted regularly about information, keeping him updated on information as well as Harry keeping me up to date with information on stuff that was happening in the production team. This helped me out a lot during the creation of my documents like the production diary. Without Harry the coordination within the AD team would be minimal, he really helped the team with communication and organisation to optimise the time in a given location or on a task. 

    3) My Team - Production Team

    

Our team worked coherently towards set goals and made sure we made good progress and clear work toward those goals to ensure that we were on target and schedule, by doing this we made great progress, we have photos of the whole production which are inserted below, so you can see everyone hard at work on set working hard to get all the tasks done which i will have overviewed beforehand to ensure they fit in with the day plans, so everything that happens on set will have been verified and checked by me, so everyone who is involved will have been affected by my work in one form or another. The work that i assign or help with has huge impact on the production as i manage a lot of things during Pre-production, Production and post production. It was super fun to stretch my ability and manage various groups and teams it was great experience and it was a pleasure to work with Freya as the Producer she was really good at being organised too which made my jobs easier too because i can turn the things she visions into documents to give to the creatives who make all the visuals and overall everyone is very happy with the end result, which is fantastic. 

Task 3 : Pre - Production

During the pre-production phase of the film, the script and various other documents changed frequently throughout the process meaning the original document was added too and not adapted and re-saved, meaning the absolute original document has just been overwritten by the new existing script as the department in charge of them didn't do this, showing the variation in the documents, but we do have the updated script to a high standard.

 A few other Documents were also like this, some of the shotlist and other stuff were completed like this as the teams didn't understand this when it was mentioned and it was too late to get the original documents back as they had been overwritten in the new variations so unfortunately it isn't there but like the script we have the most up to date document available. 

THIS IS THE GROUP PRE-PRODUCTION FOLDER -> Google Drive Folder

Task 4 : Production

The daily production diary was created by me and i have the files for each day of production i'll include some examples of the production diaries below, these documents are made with daily care by myself to ensure everything is going to plan.

 

My Daily production diary for my job role :

Week 1 - For the first week of production me and Harry worked together to find Locations for the Feature Film, this took a lot of time making phone calls and planning and discussing and organising to fit in with the schedule.

Week 2 - This week we were getting all filming done internally as well as securing more locations and getting any production documents sent out regularly and focusing on getting things automated throughout the process. 

Week 3 - This week we got through all the gym shots and this was a really cold shoot this week was freezing and the gym was frozen, not ideal but still had a good time filming there. 

Week 4 - This week we were filming the coffee shop scenes that we had luckily got the location secured beforehand a few weeks before allowing us to arrive an get straight on with it.

Week 5 - This week we were filming externally and getting the last of our off site filming complete, as productions manager i was making sure the filming went smoothly, thankfully it all went to plan and looked fantastic through the camera.

Week 6 - For this week we were wrapping up and gathering video files etc ready to go out to post and make a marketing video to promote the final film this is a huge part of getting back money you invested into the making of the film.

During production people took photos of the on set happenings, i will include a few below so you can see the team working through the scenes, some shoot days were longer than expected but it was great fun and everyone definitely put all their hard work and effort into this. 

Task 5 : Distribution

We will upload the film to YouTube on the U-Films YouTube channel to go live with to premier to the public and other college student's who were involved can watch this online to see themselves in the film. This will be on the 21st of April when the final film will be posted online to youtube. 

To promote / market the film people have been posting it online as well as putting it on all the available social media platforms to increase viewership when the final film drops which is now got the running title of counterpunch.

The way in which we. are going to promote it is through the use of instagram posts and maybe other social medias with U-Films productions accounts. The posts will be slight teasers of the film to prepare everyone as to what is coming soon.

LINK TO THE FINAL FILM ON YOUTUBE -> YouTube Video

Task 6 : Evaluation

Overall i am happy with how the production turned out, it was well worth all the hard work and dedicated days and hours that were put into this by everyone from Year 1 / Year 2 Film & TV. They all worked fantastically, upon further self reflection i noticed that i should have maybe done a little more with other groups just to further improve that section of work, just in case they needed help i should have had a 5-10 minute chat with every department and had a full production discussion with those teams individually just to get all the information required for the task at hand.

Somethings that went good were the production days and organisation, it was really well organised despite one or two occasions where someone forgot a document but other than that it went smoothly which is what you want for a production team. 

Somethings that went wrong or that could be improved were the communication between other teams which could have been improved by me, if i had further enforced rules to make it absolutely clear that they must communicate any changes but i thought it was just a given to do that but some groups forgot or just didn't do it because they were too busy or just not remembering and didn't want to say, but overall that is really the only thing i'd say that could be altered to further improve Pre - Production and the actual Production. 

In the beginning i thought the production wouldn't go that well as the previous year had been a fail and not gone to plan, so i knew i had my work cut out as well as everyone else did. With this glooming over me i thought it wouldn't go well but despite all those thoughts and doubts it actually went really well and it was amazing to work on.