Production roles

Production roles

When creating a film, there are different roles that individuals need to take on, in order to be organised, and successful in making the film. 

The main roles within film production are camera operator, actors, film director, location manager and storyboard organiser. 

The role of the film director is to direct and manage the actors and film crew when creating the production. They control the dramatic and artistic factors within the production, making important decisions on how the film will be displayed on screen, and how each character will be portrayed. As a group, we decided that Amy will take on this role, as she has a clear vision of how the film should appear as a final product, and how each character should be portrayed to the audience. 

The role of camera operator, usually referred to as a cinematographer, controls the part of the film production involved in actually filming the different shots, ensuring that they are all shot perfectly, or if any changes need to be made making sure that these shots are filmed again. The group decision was that I would take on this role within the film production, as I will ensure that all scenes are shot perfectly in order to create an effectively dramatic, and suspenseful thriller film. 

The actors within the film play the roles of the different characters. Their job is to make the film and events taking place appear as realistic as possible, ensuring that the audience is drawn into the film, believing that these events could actually take place. We decided that George would take on the role of the masked attacker, as he would be able to give a believable performance that would have the audience on the edge of their seats. 

Location manager is a role that requires the individual to find the different locations for the film to be shot in, and ensuring that the environment will be suitable for the setting of the scene, i.e. ensuring that the usually busy Oxford Street in London is deserted for a post apocalyptic zombie film, or a crowded beach for an upbeat chick flick. This was a role that we all took on, as it was decided by all of our group members where we should film. This allowed us to look at all possible locations and select the best one for our film. 

The storyboard organiser is responsible for deciding the order in which the different frames will appear within the film, and making sure that they are in a believable, yet creative or artistic fashion. They will draw out every frame to be included, in the correct order to clearly see the flow of the film, and give a visual presentation of what the final film will look like, and aid the director in making any changes to the way in which the film will be presented. 

The storyboards for our group narrative were created by myself and Amy. This helped us to put all of our ideas down on paper and ensure that each of us had a creative influence over the final product. This helped us to ensure that we had the best, and most dramatic ideas possible. 

As well as the group roles of location manager and storyboard organiser, as a group we decided to take on the role of film editor, as this would further enable us to have maximum positive creative influence over the film. The role of a film editor is to take the raw footage, and put it together in a way which will create the final finished product. An editor is able to add computer generated effects to the raw footage such as a shallow focus, or computer generated images (CGI) of fantasy characters. For our thriller, we will edit the scenes together in an appropriate order, before adding in visual effects such as shallow focus.