Pre-production Information & Pre-production Links at HealthHaven.com

Pre-production is the process of preparing all the elements involved in a film, play, or other performance.

[edit] In Film

In the film industry, pre-production usually only commences once a project has been developed and is greenlit. At this stage a project will generally be fully financed and have most of the key elements such as principal cast, director and cinematographer in place, as well as a screenplay which is satisfactory to all the financiers. It can also mean the actors of the movie are about to shoot the movie.

During pre-production, the script is broken down into individual scenes and all the locations, props, cast members, costumes, special effects and visual effects are identified. An extremely detailed schedule is produced and arrangements are made for the necessary elements to be available to the film-makers at the appropriate times. Sets are constructed, the crew are hired, financial arrangements are put in place and a start date for the beginning of principal photography is set. At some point in pre-production there will be a read-through of the script which is usually attended by all cast members with speaking parts, all heads of departments, financiers, producers, publicists, and of course the director.

Even though the writer may still be working on it, the screenplay is generally page-locked and scene-numbered at the beginning of pre-production to avoid confusion. This means that even though additions and deletions may still be made, any particular scene will always fall on the same page and have the same scene number.

[edit] In Music

In the music industry, pre-production is a process where a recording artist spends time creating and refining their music ideas and producing a demo recording or rough-draft of a song in order to establish ahead of time if the ideas are promising. This reduces time and money wasted in expensive studios. The goal is to enter into the major recording phase of production with the basic and most promising ideas already established.

Notable producers who preferred this process have been Bruce Fairbairn and Bob Rock who both produced records that went on to be smash hits such as Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet, Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood, Metallica's The Black Album and Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation. This process can be seen in the DVD documentary Aerosmith The Making of Pump.

[edit] See also

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