Pre-Production ToolsBy Tyler Miller

Storyboard

A storyboard is a graphic organizer in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at Walt Disney Productions during the early 1930s.

Script

A screenplay or script is a written work by screenwriters for a film, video game, or television program. These screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated.

Gantt Chart

A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart, developed by Henry Gantt in the 1910s, that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Terminal elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the project.

Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is the determination of quantitative or qualitative value of risk related to a concrete situation and a recognized threat (also called hazard). Quantitative risk assessment requires calculations of two components of risk, the magnitude of the potential loss, and the probability that the loss will occur.

Location Recce

It refers to pre-filming visit to a location to work out its suitability for shooting, including access to necessary facilities and assessment of any potential lighting or sound issues, and is closely related to location scouting.

Call Sheet

The daily call sheet is a filmmaking term for a sheet of paper created by an assistant director that is issued to the cast and crew of a film production to inform them of where and when they should report for a particular day of filming.

Budget

Film budgeting refers to the process by which a line producer, unit production manager, or filmmaker prepares a budget for a film production. This document, which could be over 150 pages long, is used to secure financing for and lead to pre-production and production of the film.

Release Agreement

A release agreement is a document in which is signed by actors in order to give legal consent in order to for the director to release the film and/or short film.

Shooting Script

A shooting script is the version of a screenplay used during the production of a motion picture. Shooting scripts are distinct from spec scripts in that they make use of scene numbers (along with certain other formatting conventions described below), and they follow a well defined set of procedures specifying how script revisions should be implemented and circulated.

Location Release Forms

These forms are required in order to gain permission to film in a certain location, they’re often obtained by the owner of the piece of land or from the Town Mayor.

Footage Log

Footage logging is a process in which video footage is watched and labeled according to its content.

If a video has a high shooting ratio, it can be impractical to remember exactly where each shot is on each source tape or source file. Finding a particular source shot by searching through hours of video during editing can be time consuming.

Asset Log

An asset log is where all personal assets (mainly equipment) that is taken for the purpose of filming on that day is recorded down in a log and any damage already affecting the equipment is noted.

This is particularly helpful detouring any accusation of theft etc.

Overhead Diagram

An overhead diagram is a snapshot of the area above where the filming will take place. There will be annotations of several things just like where the camera people will be located, along with where the actors will play out a certain scene etc.

EDL (Edit Decision List)

An edit decision list or EDL used in the post-production process of film editing and video editing. The list contains an ordered list of reel and timecode data representing where each video clip can be obtained in order to conform the final cut.

Shot List

A shot list is a list put together normally by the director in order to plan which shots are going to be used for what scene and at which location.