ABOUT THE PROJECT

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The Fun Film Pictures Project was created by a group of filmmakers from Israel (https://www.meta4.co.il/) and Ukraine. Filming on a green screen has long become an integral part of film production, and furthermore, in many countries it has turned into a great entertainment for children and adults.

Still, while the level of shooting and postproduction of big screen movies almost always makes a striking impression on us, shooting and postproduction of films as amusement activity remain on a rather low level for understandable financial reasons. And then one day we asked ourselves a question: how could we raise the level of the films shot on a green screen as part of entertaining activities? Sure, we cannot reach the Hollywood standard, but, still, the quality should be high.

Thus, the idea of this Project was born with the purpose to invest our efforts and resources into producing professional film templates so that afterwards, at minimal cost and with minimum time consumption, we could shoot anyone willing to be filmed and insert the footage into the finished template. As we found out in the process, this was not an easy task. So, we had to design a whole technology.

SCENARIOS

We started from writing scenarios of short films with the Hero that could be played by a child of 5 – 14 years of age. Though, going forward, we were surprised to discover later on that the age-limits of the “actors” were much wider than we could imagine. First of all, we designed the criteria for writing a script. For example, we make films of various genres, about subjects which are familiar to the children, and at the same time we have to make sure that we do not violate copyrights to famous characters, names, etc. The “actor” should be placed in a fantasy or unusual environment. Given that the green screen in most entertaining studios is not too large, the “actor” has to be shot alone and he or she cannot take more than two steps in any direction. Costumes and props are possible, but they should not take up too much space. We see our Project as international, so the roles should be silent. Still, we should envisage the opportunity to add titles in the actor’s language. And so on. Then we proceeded with writing scenarios in accordance with these criteria.

FILMING AND EDITING

It took us quite a while to get ready for the shooting. Eventually, we shot a whole series of short films. For the most part we shot at Odessa Film Studio (Ukraine) using its pavilions, props and costumes. After that our Israeli specialists engaged in video and sound editing and special effects in order to transform the footage into a real film. Consequently, we got a number of film templates in which only one component was missing — a Hero.

SHORT FILMS, GIF IMAGES, POSTERS

Together with a template of a whole film we prepare a short version of each film so that a client could be shot in a chosen project faster and for less money. In addition to that, we make GIF images and design different variants of posters on the subject of each film. It takes still less time and money to be shot for a GIF image or poster, but they look great.

EQUIPPING THE STUDIO FOR FILMING THE “ACTOR”

Minimum requirements for the room: 4 m/13 f wide; 5 m/16 f long. High speed Internet is a must. Equipment (minimum requirements):

We will talk about equipping the studio in detail in a special video tutorial.

HOW THE “ACTOR” IS FILMED IN THE STUDIO

In the process of shooting only an actor and his or her two companions — parents or friends — are present in the Studio, beside the employee. The employee is a film director and a cameraman at the same time. The effectiveness of the employee’s work depends on the number of films shot during the day. That is why a question arises: how can we help a client choose a project he or she would be willing to be filmed in without drawing the employee away from their work? If the employee had to show each client dozens of projects for filming, then he or she would spend the most of the working day communicating with the clients instead of shooting. That is how we came out with the idea of making FILM ALBUMS as a sort of a FILM MENU from which the clients could choose a film to their liking. Most importantly, they can look through the album before talking to the Studio employee, as several copies of the album are placed outside of the Studio — in the waiting area or in front of the entrance. The clients enter the Studio after they have made their choice. For each film template and GIF image we designed GUIDELINES on frame-by-frame shooting. It can be viewed both on a computer and a tablet or even a smartphone.

FILM EDITING PROCESS

Then the next question arose — how could we make the process of inserting the footage into the existing film templates fast, inexpensive and qualitative? If the film editor is going to work side by side with the employee, then, first, we will need additional workplace which will entail increasing the floor space of the Studio and, consequently, rental costs; second, we will have to pay a salary to a highly qualified film editor; and third, we will have to buy a powerful computer with licensed video editing software. Besides, given that the film editing requires more time than the shooting itself, each next client will have to wait for their finished film still longer than the previous. Of course, we can take a break from the shooting and wait till the film editor finishes the film for each client, but this will reduce the effectiveness of the Studio dramatically. By trial and error, we found an elegant solution for this problem — we created our own Film Editing Centre (FEC). After filming each client, the employees of each studio add the footage to the archive folder and upload it to the FEC Google Tables together with the completed form. Specially trained video editors of the FEC get the footage from all the studios in different cities and countries, perform the video and sound editing, upload the finished film to the cloud-based service and send a link to it directly to the client (as well as to the Studio) for watching and downloading. The Film Editing Centre solves a number of tasks:

MAGIC HAPPENED

Every child, albeit every grown-up as well, who wants to become a film hero comes to the Studio, chooses one of our film templates, spends 5-30 minutes — depending on the chosen template — on shooting on the green screen and within the next hour receives a finished professionally made film in which he or she is starring.

AND THAT IS NOT ALL

The actor accumulates points — “frames” — for each project (from a poster to a film) he or she takes part in. These “frames” can be seen in the actor’s personal account on our site. The number of “frames” also depends on the quantity of views of the actor’s films, GIF images and photos on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, if the actor chooses to post there his or her videos and photos made in the Studio. Additional frames are added depending on the number of people who “liked” these posts. After accumulating a certain number of “frames” the actor is awarded with bonuses and gifts. Each year ten most popular actors of Fun Film Pictures earn the right to be shot together with “real” actors in a “real” film based on the scenarios written especially for these winners.

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