A release document is a legal document usually drawn up by film or production company lawyers with the assistance of the film company which would then be signed by cast and crew to make sure they had no rights over the material that was being produced. The ownership of characters and ideas can sometimes be protected by a clause called intellectual property. For example if a wrestler portrays a character with one company the company has the rights to that character so the wrestler can’t take that character to another company without the jurisdiction of the company that owns the intellectual property. This was the case with the character of the Stig in the popular British television program Top Gear. The actor who played the Stig revealed his identity and released an autobiography about his experience on top gear. So top gear still used the character of the Stig with another actor playing the role.

The release documents were useful for me because at one point one of the actors did not want the adverts displayed on Youtube. Having this release document would allow me to display it on Youtube even if he didn’t agree. He eventually agreed so it was fine

The Location Recce is an inspection of the locations that filming is going to take place. Directors sometimes send out scouts to locations they have considered using to film a particular scene in a film and the scout will construct location Recce which gives feedback to the director on information about the location such as what health and safety hazards their might be. Or they might tell the scouts what type of location they are looking for and it’s up to the scout to decided which location to visit. The location Recce should contain information such:health and safety hazards Logistical problems Creative issues Aesthetic issue [can buildings cast shadows] Transport issues [weather you can quickly get equipment from the storage base to the location.]

The location Recce wasn’t that useful to me as the locations were all very local to where the cast and crew would be otherwise situated. So we all knew the area well so there wasn’t going to be many issues with the location Recce.

A footage log is often kept by directors and camera man in order to organize their footage. It’s records where the footage is stored what footage it is where it goes and how long it is. A footage log measures footage in takes. It’s recorded during production so in post production editors don’t have to waste time looking through all of the footage if they already know where the good bits and the bad bits are. It’s a very useful tool as it can get hard to remember what bits of footage where the good ones and what where the bad ones when editing if it’d been filmed 3 months before. It’s a way of categorizing footage. I don’t think it can really be called a pre production tool as a footage log is kept in production.

I found the footage log very useful as reduced the time that I had to spend looking through the footage and therefore left more time for the actual editing. It’s very useful as I know what order in the narrative the footage goes.