It's a wrap!

Published by Asia Jarzyna on 16 April 2020

Running the risk of being taken for a very neurotic person I need to share with you this disturbing question: “Why don’t we start thinking about the wrap in early pre-production!?”

Wrap doesn’t mean the production it’s completed, it is actually far from it. Precisely, a well-planned production wrap and hand-over is essential to secure fluid and peaceful post-production, promotion and distribution.

Poorly wrapped production will make any reshoot, promotional job, audit, post-production and distribution much more difficult, expensive, frustrating, time-consuming and, in some extreme cases, even impossible!

So, how to plan and organise a beautiful wrap of production?

We need to start thinking about the wrap the day we begin our work in a new project. We need to plan it thoroughly and communicate to all departments. It is so much easier when everybody follows certain simple rules from the very beginning.

Wrap elements

Let’s start defining the principal elements of production wrap:

• Strike of the physical production

• Collection of walkie-talkies, mobile phones and routers, any other rented equipment, keys, parking passes, badges, etc.

• Wrap party 💃🏻

• Return of rented vehicles, equipment and materials

• Assets inventory, their sale or storage

• Storage of “hero” Set Dressing, Props, Costume and other assets

• Donation, sale or proper recycling of non-hero off-camera assets

• Storage inventory lists

• Loss & damage reports

• Storage of physical files in head-office

• Final digital file of complete legal and production paperworkHand-over memo

• Draft screen credits

• Cancellation of all contracted services (deliveries, phone and internet lines, suppliers accounts etc.)

• Closing of the production office, warehouses and workshops.

• Tying up the loose ends 😓

Good strating poit is finding out the rules of the studio’s or the parent production company regarding:

• Physical archive requirements

• Digital file instructions for directories and nomenclature

• Screen credit policies

• Assets policy

Wrapping by departments

Not all departments suffer alike from wrapping. I daresay that the Accounting team wins this trophy by far, followed by the production team. So usually, when all the crew jump for joy and talk about their next jobs, dream holidays or catching up on their sleep, these two departments will be drowning their sorrows in alcohol.

Overview of production wrap tasks by departments:

• Accounts: payroll and invoices files · final cost report · pending payments · tax statements, reports and rebates · labour legal file · bank information and reconciliations

• Production: returns of rented equipment · storage, sale or donation of off-camera assets · final production file · storage inventories · tentative screen credits · clearances file · hand-over memo

• Costume: wardrobe continuity file · return of rented wardrobe · hero costume embargoes agreements (costume returned but retained in the rental house for certain period of time in case of a reshoot or subsequent season shoot) · loss and damage reports · hero costume storage (properly labelled and photographed) · detailed inventories · strike of warehouses and workshops

• Locations: locations strike, return of deposits, hand-over of all executed locations contracts, with thanks notes for the end credits

• Set Dressing and Props: strike of warehouses and workshops · continuity files · returns and embargoes · loss and damage reports · product placement returns · hero props storage (properly labelled and photographed) · detailed inventories of stored items

• Construction: strike of built sets (allowing the maximum recovery of materials 🐸) · fold & hold (pieces stored for reshoots, promotion, etc) · donation or sale of set materials · proper recycling plan of waste

• Transport: vehicles returns · last invoices and insurance claims and fines

• Continuity: final continuity notes · final shot script

Some departments will dedicate just a few days for striking, cleaning, packing, checking and returning their equipment to the rental houses. These will be:

• Camera department

• Lighting department

• Grips

Then, there is a number of no-wrap happy departments:

• AD’s

• Sound

• Hair and Makeup

• Casting

• Script

Storage

If production is a TV series or it’s likely to follow at some point with reshoots, a storage has to be arranged for some built sets, hero wardrobe and props and production assets.

My advice here would be to sell or donate the majority of non-hero assets, to avoid having your warehouse over-packed. Sometimes it is quite a pain to get a piece of material from the storage, so here a some alternatives for the off-camera assets:

• Sell or pass to other productions
• Sell to crew
• Resale to prop and wardrobe rental houses
• Exchange for lost or damaged pieces
• Donate to local community organisations

And some storage tips from the trenches:

• Get plenty of shelving units and costume racks
• Make security arrangements (alarm, warehouse security service)
• Provide strict inventory, packaging and labelling rules
• Number all the boxes sequentially by departments and stick a list of their content outside and inside the box.

There’s nothing more beautiful than a neat label 😍. The name of the show and the department should be clearly identified and all the boxes must be sequentially numbered.

Here you can find some templates of labels for the boxes and storage inventories:

Master storage inventory template

Costume, Props inventory template

Box Inventory template

Box label template

Final production file

This is the most important file for potential reshoots, audits, promotion and, above all, distribution.

Not only is it the source of documents to refer to when seeking information in the future, but most importantly, the base for the delivery file for the distributors. No film or TV show can be distributed without the complete set of legal documents proving the property of all the images shown on screen.

The Production Wrap File thus must contain all the paperwork for the following purposes:

• Continuity files, books and photos for Costume, Hair and Makeup, Set Dressing, Props and Picture Vehicles - for reshoots, promotion or subsequent seasons productions

• Storage inventory file with proper nomenclature and reference photographs of “hero / key” costume, hair and makeup, set dressing, props and picture vehicles - again, for subsequent shoots

• Original artwork created for the show - the same purpose as above

• Legal paperwork: production agreements, cast & crew contracts, location contracts, accounting tax reports, child licences, etc. - for audits, legal requirements and distribution deliverables

• Release and clearance agreements (chain of title, clearances agreements, props and products release agreements, crowd release forms, etc. - same thing, foor legal and distribution purposes

• Production reference documents: Crew and Cast lists, Supplier List, Locations Lists, etc, Scripts, Schedules, Call sheets and daily reports etc.

• Budget reference documents: final budget, final cost report, main supplier agreements

• Insurance: all claims submitted, especially the ongoing and unsettled ones

• Wrap memo: where the production person tries to synthetize all the above.

To get a full picture of a lovely wrap file, have a look and download our templates:

WRAP MEMO

DELIVERY FILE CHECKLIST

And always keep in mind the golden rule: reduce (hopefully you did, back during production), reuse, recycle!