The Importance of Pre-Production

The Importance of Pre-Production

Pre-production is a very important part of any film production, as it decides how the film will turn out before it has even begun filming. Pre-production is basically all the different things you need to do before you can actually make a film like; casting, risk assessments, location scouting, script readings and re-writes if necessary. All the things that will dictate how and where the film is made and who with. In order to successfully produce a film, you need to have prim and proper pre-production paperwork. This means that everything that needs doing is done days, maybe even weeks, beforehand, making sure that everyone know what they are doing and where to be. If this is done properly then all should be good.

On my short film, Hidden, when I first took over the director’s role on the film not much of the pre-production paperwork had been done so we were already at a disadvantage from the start. I tried to salvage what I could for the film to be made but at that point it was too little too late and the whole filmed suffered and ultimately got cancelled because of a lack of quality pre-production paperwork. Because we lacked even a small amount of the correct paperwork on the shoot day, we couldn’t film what we need to, putting us a day behind, meaning we then had to wait for another day to open so we could film. All because we lacked a few bits of paper, an entire short film went down like a lead balloon.


The production of Truth went much better comparatively, mainly due to better pre-production work. Amy, the director, worked on most of the paperwork long before the film went into production, so the actual production of the film went a lot smoother. All the paperwork was done in advance so that it was ready for when it was needed, I worked on the risk assessments for each location, and filled them with all kinds of crazy scenarios that would never happen, but they needed to be listed just in case. The casting-call sheets where all done the night before so the actors and makeup people knew what was going on the next day. Due to the better use of time and the better management of the pre-production paperwork, the production of the film went better overall. 

Of all the different paperwork used in the pre-production of a film, there isn’t much used on an actual film set, just things like the script, shoot schedule, shot list and makeup and costume paperwork. A great example of a single piece of paperwork not being done dooming a shoot would be the first shoot day for Hidden in Plain Sight. The original director had not properly done any location scouting and this caused people to not know where they were going or what we needed to do or take, so the whole shoot just fell apart. I feel that we have taken this in stride and learned from it, and we will not make these same mistakes again.

All in all it is obvious that pre-production is a very important part of film making, and without it, there would be no film making. As is the case in Hollywood and in all other areas of film making, if even one piece of paperwork is not done, the whole shoot will fall apart. I have seen this first hand and it is not a pretty sight.