Services
Pre-Production
Our process is as follows:
Research: Get to know the project, the clients, and the scope and scale of the project needed. Previous offerings by clients, relevant industry statistics, and any information that illustrates any current trends.
Study: Examine the purpose of the project we are charged to create. Get to know the brand, the mission, and the players involved to understand the project’s potential impact.
Collaborative Brainstorming: The creative team will collaborate on ideas based on the information we have gathered individually. Some of the best ideas come from the other side of the room.
Forecast: Once we establish the scope, scale, and direction of a project, we gather our team and get them to tell us what they need to get their portion of the job done. We talk about days, equipment, manpower, technology, and locations so we can try and anticipate every angle.
Budget: All creative ideas should be budgeted for but not all budgets and afford every creative idea. We do the work of deciding what is and is not necessary for projects internally and alongside our clients keeping the budget as the governor of the project. Budgets are meant to be adhered to and even modified, if possible and or necessary to achieve certain ends.
Script and Storyboarding: The creative team will select the top choices among the various ideas considered. A storyboard and draft script will be developed for these top choices.
Presentation of Ideas: After we get our rough idea up on its feet, we approach the client with a ‘show and tell’ to ensure we are on the right track creatively. From this meeting, we either proceed or have additional development time on the project’s concept. Generally, by involving our clients in our Research, Study, and Brainstorming, we’re pretty close to a final idea after we Present our first pass.
Finalized: The project will be refined based on final feedback and the further details developed during the above process.
Casting / Hiring of Key Crew: Once we are free to proceed, we go about the process of obtaining all the players to make our vision happen. Hiring key crew members and on-camera talent is a key part of that.
Production
The principal personnel at Blue Voyage Productions all come from some form or another of documentary filmmaking. That sensibility has an overwhelming impact on how we approach projects, meaning; we tend to use only what is needed, we tend to think things through and to keep it simple. As Production begins, we focus on time-sensitive needs; permits, set building, prop acquisition, and talent rehearsals.
End of Prep: As we transition from a prepping crew into a shooting crew we start collecting deliverables from a variety of departments; Animatics from Visual Effects, Research, and Questions for Interview shoots, review of Props and Locations after our team has started to work in that direction.
Scheduling: Here we start to make the production a reality; we hang dates on our calendars and start scheduling our crew, any actors, and any necessary personnel. We collectively start working off of deadlines this scheduling yields. Our Producer and/or our Assistant Director will break down our project and schedule shooting needs.
Shoot Management: As our shooting dates arrive, our Producer or Assistant Director will produce daily call sheets/shooting schedules so the daily shooting needs get documented and accomplished. Keeping track of these shots helps the project along to completion.
Archiving: As we shoot we collect footage, and ensure it's up to the standard of our needs and is organized so that the Post-Production team can find it easily and the Edit process is clear.
Edit/Assembly/Review: As we collect the aforementioned footage, it is the purview of the Editor and the Post-Producer (if we have one on the project). They begin to rough assemble sequences and moments in the edit timeline. That way, if something is not working or cutting together well enough, we can address it sooner than later.
Post-production
Our in-house post-production services include video editing, motion media graphics, animation, and visual effects.
Begin Rough Cut Edit: As our shoot progresses, each shooting day will be digitally added to our servers. Our in-house server farm will host all media shared between our team members. Motion media and visual effects teams will have real-time access to all media. Once we are creatively on the right path and we feel most of the way ‘there’, we will send a rough cut to the client; an assembly edit with temp music and temp graphics. This attempts to lock in the final creative notes and finish the project.
Visual Effects: The process for solid and professional visual effects, especially those of the caliber that we create, starts in the pre-production stage. A host of questions must be answered about them before we finalize our shooting schedule so we can provide the right shot selection needed to accomplish them.
Music Selection: Music selection is something that can pre-date the entirety of shooting; the whole project could be based on a particular piece of music or obtaining a music license for the life of the project, or even the licensing of a sound-alike or simply finding the right license from scratch. These choices do often start earlier than the final edit and often come with the client in terms of expectations for the project.
Rough Cut Edit: The selection of music will follow. Once the client signs off of our music and graphics we will produce the first rough cut. It will have basic color correction, video effects, and audio edits. We will work with our client virtually or meet in person to go over changes. If there are changes or possible issues with deadlines we will address them at this time. Once the rough cut is presented the goal is to retrieve the client’s feedback and produce our Final Cut.
Final Cut Edit / Project Delivery: We work with our clients in the bidding stage of the project to develop and manage their expectations for deadline and delivery. So, by the time we reach the final feedback with them, the project should be very close to a finely polished product. Once the client feedback time has elapsed and all the notes have been resolved or dealt with in some capacity. If there is some sort of legal review of the project, we would ideally be made aware of that during the Pre-Production stage of things and the review would ideally be built into our existing schedule so it would not affect our final delivery.