Contingency Plan

A contingency plan is vital when undertaking a creative project, to ensure that the production process can still run as smoothly as possible if you run into any problems. The contingency plan outlines any disruptions to filming that may occur, and how we will overcome these issues.

For our contingency plan, we needed to consider the availability of the members of our group, possible weather conditions and methods of travel to filming locations. We decided that these are the factors that would be most likely to go wrong/cause us problems during filming, for these reasons:

The availability of our group - Members of our group have lots of other commitments outside of school time, such as part time jobs, which means that they may not always be able to attend filming sessions. It is difficult to arrange a period of time in which all members of our group are free for a long enough period to go out to location and film.

Weather conditions - The weather is out of our control, so it is always a possibility that this may affect our ability to film; especially as we are using a multitude of outdoor locations to film in.

Methods of travel - No members of our group have the ability to drive, and therefore, we are reliant on being able to have lifts from other people. We will have to attempt to schedule filming around the availability of people that will be giving us lifts.

Our Contingency Plan

Availability of our group - If Hannah is unable to film, then we will have to reschedule our filming session. This is because Hannah plays the role of the protagonist in our piece, which means that she is included in nearly every shot in the music video.

Josh and Jade are featured in many shots within the video, so it is important that at least one of them is present at most of our filming days. If one of them becomes unavailable, we will attempt to arrange to film with the other, so that time is not wasted. They are not initially planned to feature together in any shots, which means that it is not necessary for them both to be present. If we know Josh is unavailable on an occasion in advance, then we will attempt to schedule to film with Jade on this day.

It is essential that there is a member of the group available to operate the camera when we are scheduled to film. It was decided that I will be the main camera operator, and if I am unable to attend a filming session, then Caitlin will take on this role. However, if neither Caitlin or myself are able to attend, Jade will have to be the one responsible for filming. This will mean that during these shooting sessions, scenes with only Hannah, or with Hannah and Josh can be filmed. We would be unable to shoot scenes with Hannah and Jade, as although Josh is in our film, he is not in our group, which means it would be unfair to ask him to assist us in this way unless it was absolutely necessary we filmed on that occasion. If no one is available to operate the camera, then filming will be required to be rescheduled.

In order to be able to communicate effectively about our scheduled filming days, we have created a group chat on Facebook. This allows us to have a place to discuss times, and also provides a platform for people to use to tell the whole group that they are suddenly unavailable, rather than having to message everyone separately. This also allows for ease of attempting to alter the filming arrangements if the original plans have fallen through, as we could see who else was available.

In Jade's role as the producer, she is responsible for making a filming schedule, and co-ordinating when everyone is available. This proves to be difficult due to the late issuing of work rota's for some members of our group, which means that there may be a few last minute changes to schedules. In order to try and combat this problem, we will have multiple filming plans that we could carry out on each day that are reserves for the original plans. This will mean that we will not need to waste the time that we have allotted to filming, and it will help us keep on track with our time management plan.

Poor weather conditions - Unfortunately, the time in which our production process will take place is winter. This means that it is likely that we will be faced with a lot of bad weather, which has the ability to be the reason of cancelling a scheduled filming session. With review of the weather forecast, we will attempt to arrange filming for days that weather conditions are meant to be ok. However, as the weather is so unpredictable, if we find we have a reasonable day with lots of time available, we will attempt to film as many of the outdoor shots we have planned as possible. This would prove to be an advantage to us if we were hit with a period of bad weather, as we would have all of this footage to work with during this time. Additionally, if we make sure that we film outside on any days that there is appropriate filming conditions, we would be able to film all of the indoor shots during a period of bad weather.

Methods of travel - Relying on friends and family for lifts to filming locations that are not accessible by public transport can prove to be unreliable. As we have to work around the schedule of those people, this limits our availability to film. We will not be able to venture to filming locations as of when we would like to, which adds pressure to our filming sessions, as we will have to ensure that we film everything well, and that we film as much as we can in the time we have at each location. If no one is available to give us a lift, then we will be unable to film.

As an attempt to try and combat this, we have tried to mostly choose filming locations that we could reach by public transport, or that we could walk to. This would mean we would be able to get there without the necessity for anyone to drive us there. Additionally, to attempt to alleviate pressure of filming in locations that we cannot access without getting a lift, we will try to come to agreements with certain people of when they will be available to take us to location. Planning this in advance will help us to be able to fit our schedule around their commitments and their availability, to try to make sure that we stick to our project timeline.

If our arranged lift cancels last minute, we will attempt to arrange another lift. If this is not possible, then we would have to cancel filming on that day, and reschedule it. However, if we were approaching our filming deadline, we may have to brainstorm a similar filming location to those we have planned, and making the best of what we can access ourselves at that point.