The end result has to be shown to an already identified audience. Be it a feature film, be it an ad film, a documentary, be it a corporate film. We need to create this content for an audience. We are not going to create content and keep it at home.
Industry as well as academics have their own jargons.
I highly support formal education and is the reason that before jumping into the field I joined Symbiosis and took a 2years mass communication course. Everything that I am implementing today, the fundamentals I got from the organized education.
What is creativity? I will sort of try to deconstruct creativity and then get into the process of filmmaking. As a child we would all have made a paper boat or an airplane. But then there would have been someone who created an Airplane like this or a Swan like this.
As a child we would have drawn on paper. Something like this. A hut with a private road. I would possibly call it the national drawing of India. But, then there would have been someone who would have drawn something like this.
The reason for these example and comparisons? I hear lot of people saying she is creative or you are creative or he is not creative, he shouldn’t join such and such field. But the difference between the people making something that stands out, is lot of hours of work in perfecting the craft, in making mistakes, in learning the nuances. So, creativity in my mind and experience is the result of a lot of work and deconstruction of the process of how you create something that stands out from the rest. There may be some people who are God gifted. But for most of people it’s a lot of hard work.
As a film maker, I have had the opportunity of working on a lot of mediums from Feature film to Ad films. The medium that I work with is an Audio and Visuals medium. And I am very careful when I am working on the medium that there is an audio component and a visual component as well. My job is to also marry both of them. So, that it can create a harmonious product that is oncourse going to the consumed by an audience.
If the visual is complementing the audio then it is a good product. But, if the visual is showing the exact same thing of what the audio is saying, then I might just close my eyes and hear radio.
What I am getting at from creativity to these examples, is that we need to break the whole process down into certain smaller processes, so as to arrive at the place where the final product needs to be.
The end result has to be shown to an already identified audience. Be it a feature film, be it an ad film, a documentary, be it a corporate film. We need to create this content for an audience. We are not going to create content and keep it at home.
So, this audience needs to see this story and the story has to be such that it engages the audience and delivers a message. The message is important because it is going to affect someone to take an action.
So to summaries, this is an audio visual medium and all content that is to be created will have the same aim, which is to deliver a message.
“We have to identify the audience and create a story for them, that will in an engaging fashion deliver the intended message.”
Now, the creation process is broken down into 3 distinct parts and many sub parts.
Pre-Production
Production
Post-Production
Pre-production is the part where we do all the planning, writing the script, creating shot breakdown, storyboard, finding a location, finding actors, crew members. This is an extensive process, yet the part where least amount of money is spent. But somehow this is neglected and I have seen many projects in which that costs dearly.
“Failing to plan is Planning to Fail”
Say you have Shahrukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor on set. It is astronomically expensive to get stars on set. And if your day is not planned down to the minutest detail, and even one shot is left out. You will never recover that day back.
So, I want to stress on the importance of this Pre-Production part. Put good time in it, it is the cheapest process. We plan on paper, we can cross reference, there is time correct the errors.
Then comes Production, where the shoot is going to take place. This is the shorts part of the complete process and yet the most expensive. This will be 60 to 70% of all the budget that is allocated for the particular thing that we are creating. So, 60% of the budget is spent on this, and this will take up about 20% of the total time, which is going to be required to complete the project. The gravity of Pre-production should be further clear with this simple comparison. A lot of ironing out can be done in pre-phase and will save a lot of heartache during production.
In production, we are on the set or the location. There is lights, there is camera, the action is happening. This is where the “Glamor” quotient of our industry stems from - with Lights. Camera. Action.
Lots and lots of people are drawn to this field, due to the production part of this complete process - exciting and fun filled.
Post-Production is when the shooting has been completed and now we enter a lab or a studio with all the footage. This is where we separate the non-good parts form the good parts and form a story form all the good footage that we have. This is for sure the longest part of our complete process. Say about 50% of the total time needed for the full project will be spent here in the post production studio.
So, here we’ll have a main editor, the assistant editors, colorist, digital data management crew. We are in the digital age. A lot of people who start out don’t understand the fact that the amount of ease & convenience digital has provided us also comes with tricky part of handling it. So, on an average anywhere from 1 to 5 backups are created for the data and also due to the fact that many people will need access to it. Hence, digital data management is a huge field within our industry.
Once the post production work of edit, coloring, graphics, dubbing, music, mixing etc are complete, as final whole as a audio-visual married product is created. It can be a video, a film, ad film etc.
So, this whole process of creativity, creation of an audio-visual product is divided into many many smaller processes, so that the intended result is achieved.
Directors deal with creativity and a lot of technology. Right from starting the script to the point when the product is created, there is a single thread that has to flow. This is compounded by the fact that there are lots of teams that are involved with their respective team leaders. The director in a sense is directing each team to execute each process in a certain manner, so as the final vision is achieved.
At the end creativity to me boils down to a lot of hard work, planning, and finally skillfully executing with a team. Without a team there can’t be a filmmaker. The best of filmmakers work with the best of teams.