A Spoonful Of Sugar (Missmikan)
Kioku didn’t mind it so much when Mikan let her mind wander a bit – she’d felt it too, after all. The anticipation of a new story, up on the screen, an experience so much bigger than yourself and that was any movie. If you loved the story that just meant more anticipation for the moviegoer. There was nothing quite like the anticipation of a movie premiere, or even the excitement of actually going to see it for the first time – even better if you had a friend or a few to share it with. Midnight premieres especially. Those were Kioku’s favorite. But she was getting off track.
“Well, thank you.” Kioku said. “And I think you’re right, which just makes me all the more thankful to be here.” She cleared her throat a bit. “As I was saying, I see a film from development to distribution. Development of a film starts with an idea submitted to or selected by a producer, which is then organized into a step outline – one paragraph per scene, a treatment – twenty-five to thirty pages of descriptions from settings to characters. Then, finally, a screenplay is written. Sometimes producers skip a lot of these steps and go straight for the screenplay, but that’s not often recommended. Or, sometimes, they’ll contact distributors to see how well they estimate a film will do. That is recommended. The last step is the pitch: submitting the idea to distributors and financers. Someone picks it up and that’s where development ends.”
“Pre-production is where the crew is hired and the visuals are laid out.” She continued. “Storyboards are made in this stage, a budget is drawn up, sets and costumes are made – ehh, there’s actually not a lot to cover here. Everything’s set up before the cast comes in. Production is the part you’re probably familiar with: the shooting. The cast is hired and they’re thrown onto set and told to say their lines and do their scenes. Have you seen those Harry Potter extras where the cast holds up those cards that say “day ‘whatever’?” That’s during production.” Post-production is editing and putting everything together – potentially re-shooting if there’s call for it. Anything that ends up on the cutting room floor – cut scenes and bloopers and the like –meets its end during post-production. And, finally, distribution is all the advertisement and the screenings and the making of the money and the praying that we break even.”
Kioku took a deep breath, done with her first little speech and summary. “Any questions so far?”
With a jolt, Mikan realized that she should be taking notes. She silently pinched herself for her stupidity. She quickly whipped open her notebook to an open page, and after scrawling the date at the top, she looked up to Kioku. After she finished speaking, she neatly wrote Film Development at the top of her paper, and under that, she started bullet points.
Once she was done writing, she looked up from her paper. "They have to approve the idea, right? Like a book has to be edited and judged by a publisher?" She hoped she wasn't asking too many stupid questions. She didn't really know much about movies, she she had to pay real close attention to Kioku.
"So the cast only act?" She found it kind of strange that the producers weren't as well known as the actors. If the producers did most of the work, they should get most of the credit, right? Next time Mikan watched a movie, she'd actually sit through all of the credits. Normally, she found it boring and preferred to skip it, but now, she knew that everyone has a part in a film.
After writing down the last few bullets, Mikan shook her head and smiled. "Making a film is a lot more complicated than I thought." She said.
