Production Roles - Miss Miller

Production Roles

When creating a film, there are people who are allocated specific roles in order to share the pressure around as one person alone would not be able to handle it and consequently, the finished production may not be as good as it could have been. The main roles within the filming production are:

A producer is someone who has overall control on every aspect of a film's production. A director is someone who directs the making of a film. The actors job is to bring the characters and narrative to life. The director of photography, sometimes referred to as the cameraman is in complete control of the camera. The music producer has the role of selecting appropriate songs and sounds for the film to match the footage. An editor is someone who puts the finalised footage together by taking out any mistakes made while filming, or adding effects over the footage. The screenplay writer will create the script for the film which is dictating what the actors are going to say. Finally, the Mise-en-scene Coordinator is someone who decides which sound, lighting, costume and iconography elements should be used in the film.

Producer (Production names)

As a group we created our production name GoButson, but the idea came from Jake Butler who thought it would be more personal if we were to join all of our surnames together. Together as a group we agreed on the order that the names of the people involved in making the film will appear on the screen during our opening sequence. Usually they are shown in order of appearance or importance.

Directors
For the directors of our opening sequence, Molly and I were chosen due to our strong leadership skills and our ability to give direction to the actors and other group members. Also, together we had similar visual ideas for how we wanted our opening sequence to look and so it would be easier to work together to finish filming our sequence. We are responsible for making sure that our other group members and the actors that are helping out know what to do and how the sequence needs to look. Within our role we have set up times and places for us all to meet in order to film or editing our footage. Also, we have made sure that we had all of the equipment that we would need to film, mainly the camera, SIM card and camera tripod. This makes the filming and editing easy as without any footage there would be nothing for us to edit, and so the directors make sure that we have everything that we need in order to film on the days that we had decided to.

Actors

Most of the actors in our opening sequence come from outside of our immediate media group, excluding Molly Emmerson. Our antagonist Cameron will be portrayed by Morgan Brown, who we chose to be an actor in our film due to his passion for acting and his experience from taking drama at a GCSE level. Similarly, we chose Grace Wingrove to play the mother in our production as she is very passionate about acting, and she and Morgan get along well together and so we believed it would be easier for them to act together. The actors are responsible for bringing our group narrative and ideas to life, which means they have to turn up whenever we have planned to film and learn any lines that they we needed them to say during the scene. Without the actors there would be nothing for us to film or edit that an audience will relate to, therefore actors are one of the most important aspects of the filmmaking process.

Director of photography

I was allocated the role of director of photography (cameraman) for our group due to my experience from filming family events, and my passion for photography and film. I am therefore responsible for making sure that the camera and SIM card are present on days that we have planned to film, and also making sure that what we have recorded follows the group storyboard that we had created together. Throughout the filming process, I had to make sure our group completed the filming of our sequence within the time frame set, which therefore meant that I had to make sure all of our actors knew what dates and places we were meeting to film, and find a time that suited all four members involved. Having this job ensured that we would have a camera at all times and would be able to follow our filming schedule previously planned.

Music producers

Due to our various tastes in music, we decided that all three of us would work together to produce the soundtrack for our sequence. Jake Butler enjoys listening to rap music, Molly Emmerson prefers pop music, and I like indie, acoustic styles of music which means that collectively we will have an understanding for what music will work best in our sequence. We are all responsible for giving input towards the sounds within our sequence, where they will appear and the volume that they will be. This will make our filming and editing easier as we would have a better understanding of what sounds would work well alongside the footage. Also, the editing process won't take as long to finish if, as a group we already know what we want to do.

 

Screenplay writer

Jake Butler was chosen to be the screenplay writer for our group as he is studying English at A level therefore he would have a better understanding of appropriate things the characters can say that will fit in with the sequence and genre. When our group actually filmed, the script that we used was made up on the day and changed depending on how much time in our sequence it would take up. For example, during the dinner scene, instead of having a conversation, Grace was the only one who spoke. By doing this we would be able to show the audience that she is overpowering and annoying. This role should have made the filming easier as the actors would know what they were going to say before we started filming. This would mean we could finish the filming much faster and therefore spend more time editing our sequence. It would also give us more time to decide whether there were any parts of the sequence that we would need to film again if it did not flow or look good. For example, we had to re-film the frame at the beginning of the sequence where the audience see the antagonist walking through a door which closes behind him. Due to the first door we used having our school logo and pictures about the school on it, we decided it would be best to use a different door.

MES Co-ordinator

Jake Butler was allocated the role of Mise-en-scene coordinator due to his experience from taking media studies at a GCSE level and his understanding of what elements group together to make up Mise-en-scene. For this role, Jake Butler had to understand what elements of Mise-en-scene are conventional to the thriller genre and why, this would make our group planning and storyboard easier to complete as we would already have an idea of what we were going to incorporate and where it would be seen.

Editor

As a group we decided that Molly would be the lead editor within our group due to her editing experience from taking media studies at a GCSE level. She has also edited other short sequences that she has made in previous years which gave her the knowledge to guide the rest of our group on what to do. We filmed the same frame several times to give us more options when it came to the editing stage. As a group we had to decide which piece of footage we thought looked best, and then Molly would crop and place it accordingly. This will make the filming easier as we would be less worried about making mistakes, such as laughing while we're filming as the editor would be able to add in sound over the noise, or crop the footage down in order to cut out the mistakes.
 

As a producer, Jake came up with the idea to incorporate all of our group member names into the production name to make it more person and to make the film easily identifiable as ours. In the end, our group had no need for a screenplay writer as we improvised what characters lines while we were filming. If we were to redo our sequence, we could have spent more time deciding what the characters were going to say before we began to film. Jake provided the group with ideas for what Mise-en-scene elements to use in our sequence, but overall it was more of a group effort. To improve, Jake would have needed to input more of his own ideas into the overall process and take on bigger responsibilities, such as being in charge of iconography or making sure the tripod was present during every filming session. As a director, Molly was able to instruct the actors on what to do and suggest ideas as to where the camera should be placed. As an actor she managed to remember her lines and where she needed to stand in relation to the camera and other characters in the frame. As lead editor she involved all of the group members in the decision making in order to make sure that we were all happy with the final product of our sequence. I believe that with my allocated roles I completed them to the best of my abilities, and that as a group we were able to help each other out and work together in order to finish our opening sequence.