Live Client Shoot 1 - Preparation

Playworks held a re-launch of the Play Action Network (PAN) which was a social event and debate on ‘the state of play today’. PAN exists to bring people interested in play together; providing a forum for debate on current issues affecting children and young people’s freedom to play, highlighting good practice and mobilising action needed to preserve and promote play at a grass roots level. This was an extremely valuable opportunity to capture some footage of the launch presentation of the Street Play project by Alice and Paul and also gather information and research from the variety of people connected to play in Nottingham.

Although I did not intend to begin filming until early February, I decided to shoot the re-launch of PAN as a form of research. Considering many important people were going to be attending it would have been a shame to shoot the event with only research objectives. This forced me to think about the narrative of my documentary and capture particular shots as well as research. This meant I would need to prepare various pre-production documents. To start off with I found this difficult to put into context as I had not planned the rest of the shoots or set the story in stone. Therefore I approached this task by looking at the basics – I considered what foundations would be required for the client project as a whole. Below is a list of the preparation I carried out:

1. Find crew for the shoot – E-mail 2^nd and 3^rd Year students

2. Book equipment

3. Create posters to inform guests of filming

4. Location Release

5. Talent Release

6. Shot List – shots that will be used in documentary

7. Location plan and Recce

8. Shoot day schedule

9. Call sheets for crew

10. Brief client on what will be filmed

11. Brief crew on what is required of them

12. Risk Assessment

13. Buy Tapes

14. Interview questions for particular guests