PRE-PRODUCTION
Before we begin on a film, commercial or other project, Cutting Factory ensures everything is covered in pre-production.
Everything from finding locations, crew, cast, insurance and all other legalities will be arranged. We can also organise the buying or hiring of equipment, props, costumes.
All other requirements such as scheduling, planning and budgeting will, of course, have already been taken care of!
Mood boards
The first phase in pre-production is creating the script and arranging mood boards/look books.
We ensure that our clients know in advance what we hope to achieve with the initial idea.
Character & Set Drawings
We begin by drafting sets and characters to populate the production.
Our animation studio understands the processes required to develop and work with a character, and bring them to life within a compelling story.
Annotated sketches and regular reviews allow us to work with clients, improving and finalising elements such as facial expressions.
Storyboards
A storyboard is a key component in planning any kind of video.
Our pre-production team takes the time to generate hand drawn or digital art storyboards to demonstrate that we fully understand your messaging or artistic idea, and can produce it effectively.
As a second stage, our camera-ready storyboards and animatics show you exactly how the film will look with shot timings, interior and exterior designs and any other created features.
Animatics
Cutting Factory’s pre-production tools, which are used in both film and animation settings, take individual images from storyboards and serves them into one combined movie.
The benefits of turning a storyboard into an animatic lie in removing a lot of explanation that occurs alongside the still storyboard, making it far easier to present the idea to colleagues, friends, or even funding opportunities.
Timing is also a key factor when considering animatics – it is hard to present timings when using storyboards alone. We can communicate precisely how long each shot is likely to be, suggest how a camera might move, or when a piece of dialogue might occur.
When the animatic is then handed over to our Studio Director, she will know exactly what is required to turn the animatic into a production.
“I really appreciate the creativity and commitment of the team at Cutting Factory. They have completed several projects for us. They understood our situation and objectives and, with their creativity and talent, realised the projects, making suggestions to improve on our idea and to effectively balance the complexity & costs”
Bill Mortimer, VP Strategic Marketing, Spirent Communications