Pre-Production Techniques in the Creative Media Industry Unit 1

Unit 1 Task 1

Pre-Production techniques in the creative media industry Sam Bizley

Pre-production is a vital part of many different creative industries, not just the gaming industry. Proper planning and pre-production is absolutely imperative to the success of any given project. The main areas of preproduction are Finance, Time, Personnel, Facilities, Materials, Contributors, Locations, Codes of Practise. There are various types of media production that require pre-production techniques. Examples of these are Film, Television, Advertising, Video Games, Internet, Radio, etc.

The type of production will influence your pre-production techniques. For instance, certain projects such as Film, the budget may be bigger than any other type of media. Pre production techniques must then change to fit whatever type of production is being undertaken.

Finance

Finance is a very important thing to consider. Many projects have failed before completion by going over their budget. In pre-production a company would try to project how much money that will be spent, which is their expenditure, and how much money they will receive both during the project and after, sources of income.

·         Sources of income include:

Sponsorship – money given to you by a company for a return of the profit or advertising benefits. Many large publishers in recent times have committed all of the project’s funding but maintain “god like” creative control over the project.

Sales – money received from commercial sale of the product

Donations – with the growing use of companies such as Kickstarter, crowd funding is becoming more popular. So the game in question may be partly or entirely financed by people’s donations. Faster Than Light is an example of a game that was conceived entirely on Kickstarter by user donations. It is one of the most popular Kickstarter projects and its target for fund raising was £10,000 which they ended up smashing with £200,000 donated towards it.

This is the game FTL Faster Than Light and a link to its Kickstarter page where it was crowdfunded

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/64409699/ftl-faster-than-light

Self funded – with video games becoming both cheaper to create and to release because of the rise of open market places such as Steam, many small companies or even individuals decide to fund everything out of their own pocket and rely on the commercial success of the product to sustain their livelihood. An example of a game that was self funded was Super Meat Boy by Team Meat. Team Meat is just two guys and apart from some promotion from Microsoft for their indie games showcase, they financed it all from their own pocket.

·         Requirements/Expenditure:

Equipment – how much does it cost to rent or buy the equipment to complete your project? In video games this might mean the cost of things like; the computers to write the code, artist tools for concept art, or motion capture equipment, etc.

Personnel – what kind of employees will you need, and how much will it cost to pay them? In creative media there are often a wide range of professionals and so you must think about how much it costs to employ them.

Advertising – most companies will need some sort of advertising to make their audience aware to what you are trying to sell. Sometimes this may come from having a publisher who will organise various events to showcase your media and the people behind it.

Housing and Transport – your company will need to be based somewhere to complete its work. What is the cost of renting or buying the space required? Also what travel requirements for your staff will there be? To work or to advertising events.

Time

Deadline – Every project in media has an estimated release date. It is essential to work towards a deadline so as not to run out of money or have staff become unavailable due to other commitments. This is especially so when working under a publisher as often in the games industry you will void whatever contract you are under if you fail to meet a certain deadline.

Personnel and Equipment Hire – Your media project is planned for a certain amount of time. So the personnel you hire may not be available to work outside that time period. Also the equipment required may be unavailable. It is therefore very important to adhere to the time contract.

Clearances – when working under a publisher you may be required to meet certain levels of progress by a certain time as you are developing your project.

Personnel

What kind of team of people will you require for your project? Things to think about are; the size and diversity of your team. Where you will find this team could be from a variety of areas. They might be a large team of industry professionals of worldwide renown, each with their own specific area. They might also be friends that happen to have the skills required to create the media and there might only be a handful of you, juggling different jobs on a shoe string budget.

·        -First find out what experience and skills your current team has.

·        -Find out what requirements the task and using the equipment to create your project has.

·        -Identify any areas that you need to strengthen.

      GTA 4 reportedly had 1000 people work on the game. This would include people such as programmers, artists, designers, PR people, producers, writers etc. It was developed by a studio called Rockstar which is one of the largest video game studios today and there are several iterations of Rockstar all around the world. There are lots of different ways to go about recruiting staff. Artists and the like may present you with a portfolio of their previous work which you will then assess and decide to bring them in for an interview. There are forums and communities online that many reputable freelance professionals use to reach out to a wide variety of employers. Indie games are often made by people with programming experience who work with a freelance artist to create their game.

Facilities



What equipment will you need to produce the media? And where will you keep and use this equipment? In film development you will likely need the use of a lot of equipment. Cameras, motion capture gear, green screens may all be things you require. The Last of Us video game used entirely motion capture for its cut scenes. This system was set up in a huge warehouse like building and this would have been one of the things they had to consider when producing the game.

Many studios especially small low budget ones will use the outsourcing of freelancers to produce their media. Team Meat is two guys and they produced Super Meat Boy from miles away as one of them lived in California and the other in North Carolina. They had to consider how difficult it would be to work together and launch their game effectively so far apart.

Motion capture from The Last Of Us, featuring Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson

Materials

All types of creative media require raw materials to produce the project. There are various ways of gathering these materials and producing original content might only be a small part of the content used.

When producing original content, it is usually prudent to organise preliminary photo shoots or recordings to gain more insight on what and how much original content you will use. Creating original content is the most expensive way of gathering materials so extra care is needed.

For example if you are trying to create sound effects of traffic in the middle of a city, you might travel into London at rush hour. You might then find that the sound of the traffic recorded is not quite what you would like to use and you feel New York traffic may be better suited. However you are based in the UK and it is very expensive to fly all the way to the US. Instead you may decide to use copyright free recordings that have been uploaded to the internet. You are sacrificing the specificity of the recordings for your budgets sake. You might also decide to use copyrighted materials that would require you to gain permission from the creator of the content. This would usually involve paying the original creator depending on how much of their content you plan to use.

Contributors

What are the people outside of development who are going to propel your media forward? Whether as a special consultant or with advertising. Many big budget video games today are turning to people who are already in the public eye. For example the music artist Eminem wrote a song called “Survival” that debuted in a trailer for the game Call of Duty: Ghosts. This was in fact the third time that an Eminem song had been uses to promote a Call of Duty game. Clearly the series has a large fan base of teenage to adult males and the same can be said of Eminem so it is makes sense to combine the two.

Beyond Two Souls is a very cinematic, big budget game for the Playstation 3. The creator of the game, David Cage, attempted to create a game that is more like an interactive movie. To do this he incorporated motion capture of A-list actors from the film industry. The game stars Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. The game is very accessible to people of all skill ranges and so the transition from watching film to interactive fiction has been made easy.

The game received generally positive reviews even though the game itself wasn't particularly captivating the performance of the actors was exemplary.

This is a short trailer featuring Eminem and Pink's song Won't Back Down promoting Call of Duty Black Ops.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrQOcE_osjE

Motion Capture of Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page in Beyond Two Souls

Locations

In creative media, inspiration from real world environments are often used and finding appropriate locations in the pre-production stage can save time and money during the production stage. Bringing employees and equipment to a location, especially if your location is a large distance away, can be very expensive. To counter this you need to know exactly what you want to accomplish and in how much time. You also need to find out the availability of the location, ie travel requirements, whether you have permission and any risk or health and safety issues you might need to think about.

A location reconnaissance or “recce” is a visit to a potential location to find out any information needed and suitability of the site. You will try to find out things such as, travel requirements, access, weather issues, cost and health and safety requirements. All these things will inform the decisions you make during the production phase and help you plan out each aspect of your work on location.

So for example if you want to take photographs of a jungle, where will you have to go? First you would go about finding a site, either from places people have shot before or somewhere completely unique. You would then go out and find information on this chosen site by travelling there. How are you going to get to the site? In rainforest areas the climate will probably mean a lot of rain, how will this affect your shooting?
The game Skyrim developed by Bethesda Softworks takes heavy inspiration from Nordic and Scandinavian culture.

(top) image of an Inn in Skyrim.
(bottom) recreation of a Nordic household

Codes of Practise

One very important reason to do pre-production in the media industry is to make sure everything that you plan to do adheres to the law and the relevant codes of practise. In other topics I have mentioned the need to gain permission to use copyrighted materials and to make sure health and safety regulations are met.

Public liability is another consideration that those working in the media industry have to make. Public liability insurance protects you from legal action if someone is injured on your site. This is particularly relevant when working in areas where there is a risk to the public because of your production activities. Companies will have a range of other insurance that will protect against things such as equipment damage, personnel injury and completion insurance.

You also need to be aware of the rules and regulations of the body that governs your area of work. These rules and regulations can vary considerably between different media types, so you may need to do some in depth research on exactly what is allowed and recommended in your area. Some examples of these bodies are; Pan European Game Information, Entertainment Software Rating Board. These two governing bodies are responsible for age ratings on games and content warnings. When creating media you must be careful that the content is deemed appropriate for mass consumption and that your target audience is not alienated by a different age rating. The ASA or Advertising Standards Authority is a group that helps to regulate media and advertising and make sure it adheres to the advertising standards codes. Ofcom or the Office of Communications is a government approved regulatory and competitive body. Its job is to represent the interests of its citizens by promoting competition in the industry and protecting people from harmful content. It mainly governs over television, radio and the postal service.

Trade Unions can also be important to your project. Trade unions were set up by the people in the industry to protect themselves and others from the government and larger corporations. If you were to become involved in some kind of legal struggle any trade union you are a member of would try to help you win the case. It would help to negotiate with any company you may be working under to try and reach fair pay and employment. Also it may provide support such as sickness benefits if for some reason you are unable to work.

Some age ratings and warnings from PEGI

Some content ratings from ESRB

Wayne's Game

I have been assigned the task of creating a simple 2D maze game that must feature at least 5 levels of increasing difficulty. It must have collectables that are required to reach the next level and enemies that will kill you should they catch you. The player must avoid these enemies while collecting the items and reaching the end of the stage at a specific point. Ideally I want to include things such as a “score calculator” and background music for each stage. This may be subject to how much time and assets I have left.

For Wayne's video game project I will have to consider certain pre-production requirements. Financially I will have to set myself an overall budget for the game production and think about exactly what aspects I will spend this money on. The game will be made in Game Maker which is available on the college computers, but if I want to continue work at home, I may have to buy a copy for myself. Game Maker professional is $99.99 and the Game Maker Master edition is $799.99. The computer I currently own cost around £600 and this is another cost I have to consider. If I was in the position of a paid games developer I would be earning something around $48,000 with under 3 years experience, $62,000 with 3-6 years experience and $78,000 with 6+ years of experience. This information is from (http://www.gameindustrycareerguide.com/video-game-designer-salary/). So unless I am given a separate budget this would be how much I have to spend. Also what resources will I need to complete the project? It is very time consuming to create all resources such as sprites and sounds from scratch so I may decide to purchase copyright free material for my game, which is a cost I have to consider. Also while I am working on this project I am unavailable to work so I am in fact losing potential income.

 It should take around 3-4 weeks continuous work to complete this project as I am fairly unfamiliar with the software being used. We do not yet know the deadline for this project but I will have to plan my time into several segments of work and complete the work in the allotted time. Also if I need any other software or equipment to complete the work I will have to consider when, for how long, and how much it will cost, when hiring this equipment.

Game Maker has several free sprites and sounds that can be downloaded and used copyright free, however we have been asked to use mainly original content so I will have to devote a good portion of my time creating sounds and sprites with tools such as Photoshop. I may also have to create unique sounds and music for my game which I will create in software such as Audacity. Again this software is available on the college computers, but if I decide to continue work at home I will have to consider buying things such as Photoshop. This software is not very cheap and will take a considerable amount of money away from other potential aspects. If I was to release my game commercially I would have to obtain the correct license for Photoshop and Audacity to use content created in this software.

Since I don't have a large budget I will not be looking for contributors to improve or advertise my product and except for inspiration as contributors are usually very expensive to hire. Also it is a very small production that will not be released commercially so contributors would be unnecessary. If it was a bigger production I would perhaps think of hiring celebrities to advertise my game on the television to help increase sales. Any locations that I decide to use for my project will have to be local and be free to use since I don’t have a substantial budget. The characters and backgrounds in Wayne’s game are going to be fairly abstract so real life inspiration will be difficult to incorporate. Since the game will be created with fairly simple 2D sprites the internet will provide any images and inspiration that I would need.

There are not many Codes of Practise I must consider since I am not releasing my game commercially. However I still have to consider the codes of the college, for instance, I must not plagiarize another student’s work or a source from the internet and I must not use Wikipedia for any references. If I was to release my game commercially I would have to make sure I have permission to use the assets in my game and I would have to pay the creators of Game Maker an amount of money to be allowed to release the game after using their software to create the game. If I replicate any locations within my game world I may face legal action if I do not have permission to shoot there or recreate that area. I would also have to adhere to the guidelines of PEGI (http://www.pegi.info/en/index/) who would give my game an age rating and content warnings. If you look back at my research for Task 1a PEGI have a 12+ and a 7+ age rating and these would be the ratings I would aim to get. I may have to adjust my game’s content to get a particular rating as it is ideal to get an age rating similar to your target audience age as you don’t want it to be illegal for you target audience to play your game. The ASA or Advertising Standards Authority will monitor my game and make sure it adheres to the advertising standards code and this is something I will have to be aware of.