A film project from its beginning to the time it shows in the theater can be a rather long tedious journey. Most films never make it mostly because of the complexity of the project, faith in the project dwindles, or for the lack money. It’s interesting to think that many of the great films: "The Wizard of Oz," "Gone with the Wind," "Casablanca," "On the Waterfront" and "Star Wars" almost never made it to the theater.
It all starts with an idea that some property will make a great film. Most but not all films today start at small companies called Production Houses. Actors, Directors, Producers own these small businesses and can be run by anywhere from one to twenty people. The idea for a film can be original, from a book, play, or just about
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A novel could be 400 pages, which then must be distilled into 50 or so pages. This could take a year or more just to get the script into a presentable entity. Once this is complete, selecting a Director for the film is next - someone who is right for the project. Scripts go out to the director or to several directors - and then more waiting to hear back. Once a director is interested, they both sit down and start to think about hiring a cast, Director of Cinematography, film editor, etc.. Scripts go out to all of these people and the wait continues. It could take a considerable length of time to hear back from these …show more content…
On the movie "Jaws" – Spielberg was way over budget on location in Martha’s Vineyard and the studio was going to close down the whole production. If this had happened we would have never had this wonderful masterpiece. Its amazing how many of our greatest films, the films we know and love almost never were made. Even when the financing was in place there can be studio, actor, and director disagreements, actors fighting and quitting, going over budget, studio executives interfering, etc. The list goes on and on and every film has a story associated with it.
There’s also Post Production work on a film after in comes back for editing. Sound has to be equalized and perfected, lab corrections on color, sound effects have to be cleaned, dialogue needs to be rerecorded and cleaned up, referred to as Automatic Dialogue Replacement (ADR) and music must be composed and recorded. The whole sound track (dialogue, sound effects and music) needs to be mixed down into a stereo or quad audio track and matched to the film. This can easily add another 6 to 12 months to the project.
ADR (Automated Dialogue
An example in the film that highlights the demise of the studio system is when Joe pitches a script idea to a producer of Paramount. Joe is quick to say that the film only needs one main character, has many outdoor locations and can be made ‘for under a million dollars’ (Joe Gillis, Sunset Boulevard, 1950), which highlights the idea of saving money on a s...
The reason why movies are so expensive to produce, market and distribute is that there is a long list of people involved in the process of filmmaking. Producers, writers, directors, actors, technical crews, film crews, set designers, costume designers, hair stylists and makeup artists, are some of the people who need to be paid whose names are seen as the credits roll at the end of any film. Not to mention the overhead costs of a myriad of equipment, props and the costumes themselves required in the production of a film. There are travel, food and shelter expenses if a movie is filmed on location and not in a Hollywood studio (there is a fee to use studio space as well). Once the actual filming of a movie is completed, more people are involved in editing, special effects and sound. These expenses are dependent on the sophistication of the technology and expertise. Additionally, and most costly is the marketing and distribution of a film.
Identify specific elements of a motion picture that film studios look for in a successful movie.
Grapes of Wrath and It's a Wonderful Life Following the relatively prosperous era nicknamed the "Roaring Twenties" came the Great Depression. Unemployment skyrocketed and good times were hard to find. In the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" we see the transformation from stability to utter chaos. With World War I freshly over, there was joy and celebration to welcome American 'boys' back home.
Classical Hollywood Cinema is a chain of events that has a cause – effect relationship within a time and space. The environment looks realistic and believable to the viewers because the style is predictable, and the time is linear throughout the film. Each scene with the development of the plot and story is motivated by cause and effect. The filmmaking process involves four major steps that cut across the board. The process revolves around these levels that make it orderly to every individual involved in filming. The process has the following stages: Idea and Development, Pre-Production, Production and Post- Production. In Idea and Development it is normally
Largely influenced by the French New Wave and other international film movements, many American filmmakers in the late 1960s to 1970s sought to revolutionize Hollywood cinema in a similar way. The New Hollywood movement, also referred to as the “American New Wave” and the “Hollywood Renaissance,” defied traditional Hollywood standards and practices in countless ways, creating a more innovative and artistic style of filmmaking. Due to the advent and popularity of television, significant decrease in movie theater attendance, rising production costs, and changing tastes of American audiences, particularly in the younger generation, Hollywood studios were in a state of financial disaster. Many studios thus hired a host of young filmmakers to revitalize the business, and let them experiment and have almost complete creative control over their films. In addition, the abandonment of the restrictive Motion Picture Production Code in 1967 and the subsequent adoption of the MPAA’s rating system in 1968 opened the door to an era of increased artistic freedom and expression.
The Studio System Key point about the studio system could be: Despite being one of the biggest industries in the United States, indeed the World, the internal workings of the 'dream factory' that is Hollywood is little understood outside the business. The Hollywood Studio System: A History is the first book to describe and analyse the complete development, classic operation, and reinvention of the global corporate entities which produce and distribute most of the films we watch. Starting in 1920, Adolph Zukor, head of Paramount Pictures, over the decade of the 1920s helped to fashion Hollywood into a vertically integrated system, a set of economic innovations which was firmly in place by 1930.
With this short but very interesting and informative class I have just scratched the surface of the what it takes to make a full fleged film. It takes much more than I had presumed to make a movie in Hollywood. The number of people that it takes to make a minute of a movie let alone the entire movie was astonishing to me. There are many things that it takes to start making a movie but without an idea of some sort there is no movie to be made.
In a period of despair and depression one gleam of light shone through the midst of darkness, Frank Baum’s classic work of fiction, The Wizard of Oz. In 1900, The Wizard of Oz was published. The late nineteenth century was hard on the average American worker, especially farmers. Droughts, tariffs and deflation forced farmers in an economic depression. They relied on railroads to transport their goods to the north, so the railroad companies took advantage of this and raised the prices. Not only that, but the government put high taxes and tariffs on their products. Farmers lost money. Frank Baum struggled too; The Wizard of Oz was his way of escaping the dark times. He wanted to produce happier fairy tale and make a new genre for children and young adults; writing The Wizard of Oz was his way of doing so. Baum wrote the novel during a time called the Populist Movement and many believe this influenced the plot. In a short time The Wizard of Oz flew off the shelves and spread quickly throughout America. The Library of Congress, the official library of the United States, recognized his achievement and that is why for years the novel has been selected for “The Books That Shaped America”, a list of books selected across the country by the Library of Congress. Frank Baum captured the hearts of the young and the old with The Wizard of Oz, yet what was supposed to be the new “sweet fairytale” turned into a controversial political scandal, making it an immensely popular, inspiring writers and young literature enthusiasts to produce similar works.
This will help out the timing of the scenes and help animators and post-production editors to adjust the scenes according to the timing. They also add in sound effects, along with simple voice-overs, and rough soundtracks. This will be considered as a rough idea as to how the animation will look like at the end of the project. And after various edits from each part of the pre-production, the team can finally move on to production, where every asset is created
Similarities between fairy tales are evident all throughout the tales. A specific similarity that I thought was important was the element of some kind of deal made between the protagonist and the antagonist of the story. For example, in Rapunzel, The Little Mermaid, and Jack and the Beanstalk. In Rapunzel, the two parents were stealing a plant called a rampion from an old witch and she didn’t like this. She made a deal with them that they could take as many plants as they wanted as long as when their first born child was born, they would give it to the witch. In The Little Mermaid, a mermaid named Ariel is sick and tired of living under the sea. She observes all the fun that humans get to have and she wants to be apart of it. She makes
This involves contacting appropiate sources, finding on filming locations that will fit the story, hiring crew etc. The director also, has to set up a shooting schedule with the production manager which includes providing information for essential paperwork- risk assessment, location and contributor permissions and archive permissions if it’s crucial. They then have to check availability of everyone involved in shoot, locations, crew then create a shooting plan- consider dates, times, travel time, food and transporting equipment. They should aim to shoot in one day depending on the availability of everyone. After, they have made sure that they have prepared themselves enough they
and decide on the size, cost, and content of a production. They hire directors, principal
One girl and her dog are whisked away by a tornado to a magical world. L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and published it in the year 1900. The novel tells the exciting story of a girl named dorothy who was swept up in a tornado with her dog Toto taken from Kansas to Oz. She wakes up to find that her house has crushed the Wicked Witch of the East and freed the munchkin people, but all Dorothy wants to do is get back home to her Aunt and Uncle. They tell her to follow the yellow brick road which will lead to Oz a great and powerful wizard who should be able to help send her back home. Along the way Dorothy makes some friends a scarecrow who wants brains, a tin man who wants a heart, and a cowardly lion who wants courage. The friends
Offering the unique ability to visually and audibly convey a story, films remain a cornerstone in modern society. Combined with a viewer’s desire to escape the everyday parameters of life, and the excitement of enthralling themselves deep into another world, many people enjoy what films stand to offer. With the rising popularity of films across the world, the amount of film makers increases every day. Many technological innovations mark the advancement of film making, but the essential process remains the same. Pre-production accounts for everything taken place before any shooting occurs, followed by the actual production of the film, post-production will then consist of piecing the film together, and finally the film must reach an audience. Each step of this process contributes to the final product, and does so in a unique right. The process of film making will now start chronologically, stemming from the idea of the story, producing that story into a film, editing that footage together, and finally delivering that story to its viewers.