1) The working title for Episode 801, written by Heather Conkie, is “Growing Pains.” (It’s a working title because Episode 306 was titled “Growing Pains.” The new title will be posted here as soon as I know it)
2) The title for Episode 802, written by David Preston, is “The Big Red Wall.”
3) We will - once again - see a species of animal on Heartland in Season 8 that we have never seen before.
That's all there is for now, so I decided to share with you everything I know about pre-production.
Pre-production:
You can’t expect the crew and cast to just show up on the first day of filming and jump right into it; many things have to be set in place and that is why there is a pre-production period. Officially for Heartland this year it was three weeks long (April 21 - May 9).
Many things have to be done before you can start filming. For example:
The scripts to the first two episodes have to be written, and then broken down by the Assistant Director team, who come up with a 15 day shooting schedule that starts on May 12.
All of the things you see in Heartland that the production company does not own has to be secured for the upcoming season. This includes vehicles seen in the series, animals, locations, and specific props and equipment needed.
Each department head, for areas like the art department, the camera department, construction, costumes, greens, editing, accounting, locations, the production office, props, security, set decoration, stunts, publicity, transportation and wranglers, has to ensure that his or her team is in place for the upcoming season. There is a turnover of staff each year, and everyone has to be knowledgeable and ready for when filming begins.
Accommodations have to be found for all out-of-town cast and crew and guest stars.
Flights have to be booked. Sometimes an actor will be working on two productions at once; coordination has to take place to ensure everyone is where they need to be at the right time.
Production meetings have to take place. It is essential that everyone be on the same page, so no one sees something in the script and thinks, "What?” So there are constant meetings; art department, casting, props, hair and budget, to name a few.
There are location scouts, where the Locations Manager takes the Producer, the episode's director, the Production Designer, the ADs and the Director of Photography to the various locations where Heartland will be filming.
Heartland’s Amy - Amber Marshall - has been attending the meetings and shadowing director Scaini, to learn more about what production entails. Once filming begins she will of course be on set and will be unable to attend pre-production meetings for the subsequent blocks of filming.
For those of you new to this blog, I should mention that it takes 15 days of filming to shoot two episodes, so 18 episodes = 9 blocks. There are tons (literally!) of equipment that has to be transported from location to location, so by filming two episodes at once time and money are saved by greatly reducing the number of moves.
So that is what pre-production, or “prep,” is mostly about. I hope you found it interesting, and I will be explaining more about the whole process of producing television’s favourite family series.
Hope to get input from you guys soon!
Credit goes to Heartland.
