Kingsley Farrell
What is Pre-Production?
Pre-production is the phase of further developing ideas and planning before the process of production. Like all great projects the success is in the planning. Pre-production is standard in all forms of Media before they create a project. Film, Television, Advertising, Games Development, Internet, Radio, Press, Interactive media and Print.
Finance -
Why is having a budget important? Without a budget it's impossible to create, It covers everything you do, Equipment, Travel, Staff, Advertising, Publishing, Actors. Money also adds pressure, the owners of the company, bank and Kick-starter will want the game done in the shortest amount of time, it will have to be well made and not fail, you could end up in debt and could lose a lot of money and maybe in the worst case, lose the company. Budget varies on the size of the project, Bigger the game the more money it's likely to have and more like to have leeway with the development.
A good example of this is Grand
Theft Auto 5, it is the most expensive game in history with total development and
marketing spend hitting £170 million. An article by Scottish newspaper “The
Scotsman” ranks Rockstar Games’ spend on GTA 5 at £170 million ($265 million) when
compared to Hollywood movies is second only to Pirates of the Caribbean: At
World’s End and that movie had a $300 million budget. The game missed its original projected 2nd Quarter 2013 release date and pushed back to 17 September to allow for further polishing of the game. GTA V had a
reported 2.5 million pre-orders ahead of its September 17 release on PS3 &
Xbox 360. Grand Theft Auto V sold 11.21
million copies and grossed $800 million on its first day, collecting many world
records in the process and made $1 billion within 3 days of the game's release, so Rockstar
recouped their invested money very quickly.
Time –
Time is a very important aspect of Pre-Production. Deadlines have to met to have good success, the more you delay or have have problems you could lose a variety of things in that time. Availability of equipment could also be effected, if you need to book an studio for example to record music or voice acting, it would have to be booked in advance and available, this all needs to be organised and it's the same for Availability of personnel. A certain Actor may not be available for when you need them so you would need to negotiate and work out what's best for all parties. The main aim is to go Gold in gaming, when a came is fully complete and just needs to be manufactured and shipped across the world.
Personnel -
Personnel is reliant on a lot of different aspects, depending on the size of the company and size of project will determine how much support the project has.
When deciding on the size of your team, you need to understand how much time you have set to spend on creating the project, so with that in mind you can choose how many people you need to help you with the development of the production, each job will need at least one person to do it, but if you want to make sure you keep up with the deadlines set, then you’ll need others to help you. The only negative with having a lot of different people working to create the certain production is the cost of hiring them and paying them, also there could be a breakdown between communications within the group. There are many different roles within the production team, they all have a different set of skills, In Games Development their are a lot of Roles to creating a game, Here's a list of roles: Animator, Producer, Audio Engineer, Creative Director, Games Designer, Games Artist, Level Artist and Lead Programmer. To enable the production to be made without too many complications and for it to run smoothly and hit deadlines, Good personnel will always help.
Facilities
-
There are many things you need to think about when it comes to facilities, these are space, cost and quality. Knowing where will you work is important. Do you need to rent or buy studios, rooms, rent an office? This are all things you need to ask yourself and the cost and quality is also important because even if you are spending a lot of money on certain project, you might not have to do it all on your own, you might hire of company to create things for you to take some pressure of yourself, this is known as outsourcing and this very common.
Contributors
-
This the name of the people that are involved in adding different things to that certain production, for example in the games industry the people that are known as contributors are:
Actors, Developers, Programmers, Artists, Designers and Publishers.
These people make up a game development team. They each are responsible for adding different things into the game at different times. At first designers do a lot of work before then artists and programmers will do more work before the deadline. The way publishers get involved is by telling the developers how they want the game to look like and what it will consist of, they have to go with what the publishers say as their word is final.
Locations –
In certain video games, films, television shows etc. They use real life places by going to the area they want to use a take photos and maybe fly to a destination to research the people and find a realistic feel to the project. Limitations of budget could effect plans
The things to consider are:
- Accessibility
- Distance
- Weather
- Cost
- Risks
When considering accessibility you need to find a place that is easily accessible to you and the team, because if the location is hard to get to then you can guarantee you won't be able to use it. You also need to consider the distance the location is to you and the team, this will ensure that you and your team can be there on time and everyday, because if not then the production might not run as smoothly as you would like. The weather is pretty self explanatory when choosing a location, because if the weather is bad then that will hinder the production process. The cost is another thing that needs to be considered this is because it will cost the company money to buy or rent a certain location, hotels, flights etc. and if you don’t consider the things above then essentially you are just wasting and costing the company money.
Codes of
practice and regulation -
Regulatory
bodies control what you can broadcast on television I.e. Adverts. The Office of Communications (Ofcom), is the government-approved regulatory and one of the authorities for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
Ofcom has powers across the television, radio, telecoms and postal sectors. It has to represent the interests of citizens and consumers by promoting competition and protecting the public from harmful or offensive content. Ofcom's main focus areas are licensing, research, codes, policies and complaints. The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) closed on 8 September 2014 and has been replaced by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), Advertising
Standards Authority (ASA), Pan European Game Information (PEGI) and
Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).
In
the UK, Video games are rated by the PEGI rating system, they tell
you what's in the game and what age is recommended to play the
game, by law this has to happen and games can not be purchased by
someone who is not of age rating.
What is PEGI?
The Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) age rating system was created to help European parents make decisions on buying computer games. It was launched in 2003 and replaced a number of national age rating systems with a single system now used throughout most of Europe. PEGI is used in Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Latvia, Norway, Slovenia, Belgium, Estonia, Iceland, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, Bulgaria, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Sweden, Cyprus, France, Israel, Malta, Romania, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovak Republic and the United Kingdom.
The PEGI system is supported by the major console manufacturers, including Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo and by publishers and developers of games throughout the world.
Here is an example of some of their ratings and disclaimers:
Referrals:
http://www.rockstargames.com/newswire
http://www.pegi.info/en/index/
