Designing your brief
If you’re thinking of getting in touch, it might be worth giving the following notes some consideration. Successful filmmaking and audio recording is all in the planning! Telling us a bit more about your ideas can help us prepare a more accurate quote and consider some possible treatments. The following list isn’t exhaustive but provides a guide to the kind of things we need to be aware of to help in the early stages of planning.
- What is your working title for the project and how would summarise the film in two sentences?
- What do you want the film to achieve – what are its key messages? Who is its intended audience and how long will the film be – roughly?
- Approximately how many contributors/interviewees do you envisage including?
- Is the film to be narrated by a voice-over or will the contributor’s interviews tell the story? Will you prepare a script or is this something you would like us to help with?
- What opportunities are there to film general shots – i.e., pictures to help illustrate the story? What kind of actuality do you want to include, if any (i.e footage that shows people doing things)?
- Do you require any specialist photography (e.g., time-lapse) or staging/lighting set ups?
- What kind of style of film are you expecting? Feature/Documentary, News/Informative, Drama, Art House, Music Video – a mix of all or any of these?
- When do you envisage filming to take place? Roughly how many days/hours might be involved?
- Do you intend using any music, archive film or stills photography? Will you source this or is this something you’d like us to help with?
- What kind of graphics are you expecting to include, i.e., title sequences, captions for interviewees, credits and subtitles?
- What are your deadlines (bear in mind time for planning and research, filming, editing and review of first draft and final delivery)?
- How should the film be delivered: For online (e.g., YouTube), DVD ROM, Playable DVD, TV Broadcast?
