foreign [Music] the main goal early on in the pre-production process early on in the sense that before you even start talking about Crews start talking about gear getting into the nitty-gritty of the job the key thing is to develop the sandbox understand the expectations of the director first and foremost and then the production company and do those to meet are they way off does the director want something huge and the production company has the budget for not something huge because then more often than not you're that person in the middle that's trying to accommodate the
producers and the production company and also trying to service the director and get them what they are after right sometimes you'll lean more to one side sometimes you'll lean more towards the director side but it's a balance between playing those two sides and the closer that they are at the start of a project is generally a good idea to see just how successful something is going to be if you come on board and you see this treatment that is just enormous and huge in scope and then you talk to the production company and there's just
no money for it where there's no budget or there's people that are already have negative attitudes before we even start that's generally a red flag so we want to avoid those types of situations so now how do you determine the size of the sandbox right that's the tricky part there's no you don't just come out and ask the producer you don't get sent the budget none of that happens you generally tell by looking at past work uh expectations in any of the communication so far was there any negotiations in the rates was there any questions
about rates uh did they try and knock you down on rates was there has there already been other crew booked has there been equipment booked already if if some of these things have happened it's a red flag of oh I don't know if this is going to be a super smooth shoot I need to look at some things more carefully or I need to keep track of things more carefully but no you don't ask the producer you don't ask you don't badge your production assistance you start to see how professional the job is coming together
what's that what's that initial conversation like the initial communication with the production company is going to be very telling to see what you can get away with now my rule of thumb is always I will build the biggest castle that I can inside of the sandbox and until you tell me that we can't add another level I'm just going to start at the top and then I will let you reduce it down so I will be asking for all the things that I need to get the most out of the job what's the maximum that
I can get out of the shop I'm asking for that if I get initial knockback on equipment or gear or schedule or something like that well then you start to be able to squeeze the circle on just okay how big is this thing going to be what are the expectations because expectations are everything if you can deliver on what people are after people are going to enjoy that they're going to want to work with you more sets are going to be happier you don't want any surprises and that's what pre-production is really essential at eliminating
surprises on set eliminating surprises and expectations and the more that you can do that the better off you're going to be so as I mentioned in the introduction to this section of the course I'm not going to go over every single aspect of determining the sandbox but just be fully aware that right now in those early stages I need to be figuring out just what style of commercial it's going to be how big it's going to be the treatment helps me there the agency boards helps me there the initial conversations Andre helped me there now
I can start to get momentum moving I can start to say okay well what does the location look like because it's going to be so important you know looking at those agency boards we saw that everything takes place at the same time of day everything in the same location there's no moving around there's no way to hide lighting changes in Fast Cuts or Montage shots there's none of that so the pressure will come down to location and schedule which is going to be very important in the next process which is the location process right a
huge part of the commercial world is getting the locations right right when you're on a exterior job it's going to be very very important to nail it down and that is what we're going to look at next so we're done with the initial stages of pre-production we've seen the treatment we've seen the agency boards it's time to move on to determining the location based off of all of the knowledge that we have and all the conversations we're going to have with the director and the production company
