Bor ch01

PART ONE
Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition
Chapter 1
otion pictures are so much a part of our lives that its hard to imagine a world
without them. Our appetite for lm sustains an immense industry. Today every
lm that makes its way into a theater is part of a process involving a sophisticated technology and thousands of workers.
MECHANICS OF THE MOVIES

You are entering a theater with some friends. You pay for your ticket, scan the posters
announcing upcoming releases, buy popcorn and soda at the concession stand, and
meander toward the auditorium screening the lm youve selected. Once inside, you
settle into your seat and prepare to be amused, moved, provoked, or just entertained.
The lights dim, leaving only the Exit signs glowing. As sound lls the theater from
all sides, the screen becomes a bright rectangle lled with a moving picture.
Already something fairly mysterious is happening. You have the impression of
seeing a moving image, but this is an illusion. The smoothly moving picture you see
consists of thousands of slightly different still images called frames projected in
rapid succession. Each frame ashing by is accompanied by bursts of blackness. Although you arent aware of it, the screen is completely dark for nearly half the time
youre watching! Our eyes ignore the gaps and see continuous light. Just as important, our minds somehow create a continuous action out of a string of still pictures.
What makes a movie move? No one knows the full answer. Many people have
speculated that the effect results from persistence of vision, the tendency of an
image to linger briey on our retina. Yet if this were the real cause, wed see a bewildering blur of superimposed stills instead of smooth action. At present, researchers believe that two psychological processes are involved in cinematic
motion: critical icker fusion and apparent motion.
If you ash a light faster and faster, at a certain point (around 50 ashes per second) you will see not a pulsating light but a continuous beam. A lm is usually shot
and projected at 24 still frames per second. The projector shutter breaks the light
beam once as a new image is slid into place and once while it is held in place. Thus
each frame is actually projected on the screen twice. This raises the number of ashes
to the threshold of what is called critical icker fusion. Early silent lms were shot at
a lower rate (often 16 or 20 images per second), and projectors broke the beam only
Mechanics of the Movies

once per image. The picture had a pronounced ickerhence an early slang term for
movies, ickers, which survives today when people call a lm a ick.
Apparent motion is a second factor in creating cinemas illusion. If a visual display is changed rapidly enough, our eye can be fooled into seeing movement. Neon
advertising signs often seem to show a thrusting arrow, but that illusion is created simply by static lights ashing on and off at a particular rate. It seems likely that certain
cells in our eye or brain are devoted to analyzing motion, and any stimulus resembling
movement tricks those cells into sending the message that motion is present.
Apparent motion, like critical icker fusion, is a quirk within our visual system. To take advantage of these quirks and create the illusion of movement, inventors had to devise certain machines. Some of these go back before the invention of
lm (1.1, 1.2). Film as we know it began when the images were imprinted on a
strip of exible celluloid.
After your movie is over, imagine that a friendly manager lets you into the
projection room at the rear of the theater. There youll nd the movie mounted on
the projector as a ribbon of celluloid. It is very long: The movie that lasted two
hours takes up over two miles of lm. There is so much footage because a sound
movie runs through the projector at 90 feet per minute.
Like a reel-to-reel tape recorder, the projector unwinds the lm from one reel,
passes it through the lens mechanism, and winds it up on another reel. The projection
booth youre visiting has put the entire lm on one big platter, with another platter
below it to take it up. This arrangement allows the operator to use only one projector
for showing the whole movie. Other theaters use a changeover system alternating
between two projectors, each one using a reel holding about 25 minutes of lm.
Interestingly, the projector is very much like two other machines involved in
creating the movie we see. In each one, a mechanism controls how light is admitted to the lm, advances the strip of lm a frame at a time, and exposes it to light
for the proper interval. At the heart of cinema are machines that, in essence, pull a
strip of sensitive plastic past a light.
First, there is the camera (1.3). In a light-tight chamber, a drive mechanism
feeds the unexposed motion-picture lm from a reel (a) past a lens (b) and aperture
(c) to a take-up reel (d). The lens focuses light reected from a scene onto each
frame of lm (e). The mechanism moves the lm intermittently, with a brief pause
while each frame is held in the aperture. A shutter (f) admits light through the lens
only when each frame is unmoving and ready for exposure. The standard shooting
rate for sound lm is 24 frames per second (fps).
1.1 The Mutoscope, a 19th-century

entertainment, displayed images by
ipping a row of cards in front of a
peephole.
1.2 The Zoetrope, an earlier device,

printed its images on a strip of paper
that was rotated in a drum.
1.3
The camera.
1.4
CHAPTER ONE
The contact printer.
1.5
The optical printer.
After a lm has been processed, it runs through a machine similar to the camera, the printer (1.4, 1.5). Printers exist in various designs, but all consist of lighttight chambers that drive a negative or positive roll of lm from a reel (a) past an
aperture (b) to a take-up reel (c). At the same time, a roll of unexposed lm (a, c)
moves through the aperture (b or b ), either intermittently or continuously. By
means of a lens (d), light beamed through the aperture prints the image (e) on the
unexposed lm (e). The two rolls of lm may pass through the aperture simultaneously. A printer of this sort, called a contact printer, is diagrammed in 1.4. Contact
printers are used for making workprints and release prints, as well as for various
special effects. In another sort of printer, the optical printer, light coming through
the original may be beamed to the unexposed roll through lenses, mirrors, or
prisms. This is shown in (f) in 1.5. Optical printers are used for rephotographing
camera images, for making prints of different gauges, and for certain special effects, such as freeze-frames.
The printer is something of a combined camera and projector. Like a projector, it controls the passage of light through exposed lm (the original negative or
positive). Like a camera, it focuses light to form an image (on the unexposed roll
of lm).
Now we can see that the projector is basically an inverted camera, with the light
source inside the machine rather than in the world outside (1.6). A drive mechanism
feeds the lm from a reel (a) past a lens (b) and aperture (c) to a take-up reel (d).
Light is beamed through the images (e) and magnied by the lens for projection on
a screen. Again, a mechanism moves the lm intermittently past the aperture, while
a shutter (f) admits light only when each frame is pausing. As weve seen, the standard projection rate for sound lm is 24 frames per second, and the shutter blocks
and reveals each frame twice in order to reduce the icker effect on the screen.
Although the lmmaker can create nonphotographic images on the lm strip
by drawing, cutting, or punching holes, etching, or painting, most lmmakers have
relied on the camera, the printer, and other photographic technology. The images
that we see in movement are usually created photographically.
In the projection booth, the projectionist hands you a scrap of lm. Turning it
over, you notice that one side is much shinier than the other. Like lm used in still
photography, motion-picture lm consists of a transparent acetate base (the shiny
side), which supports an emulsion, layers of gelatin containing light-sensitive
1.6
The projector.
materials. On a black-and-white lm strip the emulsion contains grains of silver

halide. When light reecting from a scene strikes them, it triggers a chemical reaction that makes the crystals cluster into tiny specks. Billions of these specks are
formed on each frame of exposed lm. Taken together, these specks form a latent
image which corresponds to the areas of light and dark in the scene lmed. Chemical processing makes the latent image visible as a conguration of black grains on
a white ground. The resulting image is either a negative one, from which positive
prints can be struck, or a positive one (called a reversal image).
Color lm emulsion has more layers. Three of these contain chemical dyes,
each one sensitive to a primary color (red, yellow, or blue). Extra layers lter out
light of other colors. During exposure and development, the silver halide crystals
create an image by reacting with the dyes and other organic chemicals in the emulsion layers. With color negative lm, the developing process yields an image that is
opposite, or complementary, to the original color values: For example, blue shows
up on the negative as yellow. Most professional lmmaking uses negative emulsion
so as to allow better control of print quality and larger numbers of positive prints to
be made. Sometimes, however, amateur lmmakers use color reversal lm, which
yields a positive image with colors conforming to the original scene.
Looking at the scrap of lm in your hands, you can see what enables it to run
through a camera, a printer, and a projector. The strip is perforated along both
edges, so that small teeth (called sprockets) in the machines can seize the perforations (sprocket holes) and pull the lm at a uniform rate and smoothness. You also
notice that the strip reserves space for a sound track.
The size and placement of the perforations and the area occupied by the sound
track have been standardized around the world. So too has the width of the lm
strip, which is called the gauge and is measured in millimeters. The strip you are
holding is a piece of 35mm lm, which is the normal commercial gauge, but other
gauges also have been standardized internationally: Super 8mm, 16mm, and 70mm
(1.71.11).
Usually image quality increases with the width of the lm because the greater
picture area gives the images better denition and detail. All other things being
equal, 35mm provides signicantly better picture quality than does 16mm, and
70mm is superior to both. The nest image quality currently available for public
screenings is that offered by the Imax system (1.12).
CHAPTER ONE

The print we see of a lm, however, may not be in the gauge of the original.
Most lms shown in cinema courses on 16mm were originally shot on 35mm. During the 1950s and 1960s, several lms were produced and shown on 70mm, but
few venues are equipped to show them in that gauge today, so revivals are shown
in 35mm. Often, quality deteriorates when a lm shot on one gauge is transferred
to another one. A 35mm print of Keatons The General will almost certainly be
1.8 16mm lm is used for both amateur

and professional lm work. A variable-area
optical sound track runs down the right side.
1.7 Super 8mm has been a popular gauge

for amateurs and experimental lmmakers.
The Year of the Horse, a concert lm
featuring Neil Young, was shot entirely
on Super 8.
1.9 35mm is the standard theatrical lm

gauge. The sound track, a variable-area one,
runs down the left alongside the images.
1.10 In this 35mm strip from Jurassic Park,

note the optical stereophonic sound track,
encoded as two parallel squiggles. The stripe
along the left edge, the Morse codelike
dots between the stereophonic track and the
picture area, and the speckled areas around
the sprocket holds indicate that the print can
also be run on various digital sound systems.
1.11 70mm lm, another theatrical gauge, has often

been used for historical spectacles and epic action
lms. In this strip from The Hunt for Red October, a
stereophonic magnetic sound track runs along both
edges of the lm strip.
1.12 The Imax image is printed on 70mm lm but runs horizontally along the strip, allowing
each image to be 10 times larger than 35mm and triple the size of 70mm. The Imax lm can be
projected on a very large screen with no loss of detail.
CHAPTER ONE

photographically superior to a 16mm print, whereas a lm shot on Super 8 will
look fuzzy and grainy if printed and projected in 35mm. Independent lmmakers
who work in 16mm face the problem that blowing up their negative to 35mm will
decrease photographic quality. It was largely to solve this problem that a higherdelity 16mm format, called Super 16, was developed.
Youve already noticed the sound track running down the lm strip youre examining. The sound track may be either magnetic or optical. In the magnetic type
(1.11), one or more strips of magnetic recording tape run along the lms edges.
During projection, the lms track is read by a sound head similar to that on a
tape recorder. Magnetic tracks are rather rare in theaters today.
Your lm strip has an optical sound track, which encodes sonic information in
the form of patches of light and dark running down along the frames. During production, electrical impulses from a microphone are translated into pulsations of
light which are photographically inscribed on the moving lm strip. When the lm
is projected, the optical track produces varying intensities of light that are translated back into electrical impulses and then into sound waves. The optical sound
track of 16mm lm is on the right side (1.8), while 35mm puts an optical track on
the left (1.9, 1.10). In each the sound is encoded as variable-area, a wavy contour
of black and white along the picture strip.
A lms sound track may be monophonic or stereophonic. The 16mm lm strip
(1.8) and the rst 35mm lm strip (1.9) have monophonic optical tracks. Stereophonic
optical sound is registered as a pair of squiggles running down the left side (1.10). For
digital sound, a string of dots and dashes running along the lms perforations, between the perforations, or close to the very left edge of the frames provides the soundtrack information (1.10). The projector scans these marks as if reading a bar code.
Your trip behind the scenes reminds us that movies, with all their appeals to
our emotions and imagination, depend upon some very tangible materials and machines. The dynamic images and sounds we experience are conjured up from a
strip of perforated celluloid carrying certain kinds of information. Important as
technology is, though, it is only part of the story. To get a fuller sense of how lms
reach an audience, we must return to the theater lobby.
BRINGING THE FILM TO THE SPECTATOR
GUS VAN SANT : Your lms have

dominated the museum circuit in
AmericaMinneapolis, Columbus . . .
DEREK JARMAN: Yes,
Minneapolis
in particular. Thats where the lms
have actually had their life. Theyve
crept into the student curriculum
which is a life. And now they go on
through video. I never really feel
shut out.
Gus Van Sant, director, interviewing

Derek Jarman, independent lmmaker
When you went into the movie theater, you were not thinking of critical fusion frequency or lm gauges. You were a customer, participating in a business transaction. Like most businesses, lmmaking involves creating the product, distributing
it, and retailing it. In this business, the three phases are known as production, distribution, and exhibition.
Theatrical and Nontheatrical Exhibition

We are most familiar with the exhibition phase, the moment when we pay for a
movie ticket or rent a videocassette or watch a lm on television. Commercial
movie houses showing current lms constitute theatrical exhibition sites, while all
other presentations, such as home video or screenings in schools, libraries, and
hospitals, are considered nontheatrical. While some lms, chiey experimental
and documentary lms, are made for nontheatrical showing, the most visible sector
of movie exhibition remains the rst-run theater. Most commercial theaters show
mass-entertainment movies, while others specialize in foreign or independent lms.
Bringing the Film to the Spectator

Far more people will see a Hollywood lm on video than in its initial release.
Only a small part of the population visits theaters regularly. In the United States,
habitual moviegoerswho make up less than 20 percent of the audienceaccount
for 66 percent of total ticket sales. You probably watch more lms on video than in
theaters. Studios earn much more from home video than from theatrical release. So
why is the movie theater still important? The theatrical screening focuses public
interest: Critics review the lm, television programs publicize it, and people tell
others about it. The theatrical run is the lms launching pad, determining how
successful it will be in other markets. Theatrical hits may account for as much as
80 percent of a video stores rentals.
The most heavily patronized theaters belong to chains or circuits, and these
are in turn controlled by relatively few companies. To be efcient businesses, theater chains have tried to standardize exhibition and minimize costs. The multiscreen cinemas of today testify to both these aims. By offering a variety of
programs, multiplexes can lure more people than a single-screen cinema, and they
can cut costs through centralized projection and concession sales. Multiplexes
have also raised the standard of lm presentation, offering stadium seating and
multichannel sound. Some multiplexes have become entertainment centers, boasting videogame arcades and snacks adjusted to local tastespopcorn and candy
around the world, but also beer (in Europe) and dried squid (in Hong Kong). There
are also theaters, often with only a single screen, which specialize in foreign or
independent movies.
Theatrical exhibition is seasonally driven. In Europe, autumn has traditionally
been the heavy moviegoing period, while in North America, people ock to theaters during June, July, and August. As we would expect, the summer audience is
dominated by teenagers looking for light entertainment. Blockbuster action lms,
horror movies, science-ction tales, and raunchy comedies are the tentpole or
locomotive lms that distributors hope will pay for the less successful ones.
American distributors tend to save their most prestigious adult-oriented lms for
the period from Thanksgiving to New Years, because that is when the lm industry is considering candidates for its spring Academy Awards.
Distribution: The Center of Power

Exhibitors rent lms from distribution companies, and these form the core of economic power in the lm industry. Distributors link lmmakers to audiences and
supply exhibitors with a reliable stream of material to show. In the United States,
exhibitors bid for each lm a distributor releases, and in most states they must be
allowed to see the lm before bidding. Elsewhere in the world, distributors may
practice blind booking (forcing exhibitors to rent a lm without seeing it) or even
block booking (forcing exhibitors to rent a package of lms in order to get a few
desirable items).
The major lm distributorsWarner Bros., Paramount, Disney/Buena Vista,
Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, and Universalprovide mainstream entertainment to theater chains around the world. The distributors sponsor trade shows
where exhibitors are treated to screenings of forthcoming releases, usually accompanied by splashy parties and chances to meet stars. The lms released by the majors attract 95 percent of ticket sales in the United States and Canada and more
than half of the international market. These giant distributors all belong to multinational corporations devoted to leisure activities. (See Box, pp. 1415.)
The major distributors have won such power because large companies can best
endure the high risks of theatrical moviemaking. Filmmaking is costly, and most
Film and Video: Crossing Paths

ilm and video are both moving-image media. Although
F
our concern is primarily with lm, video is converging
with cinema in several ways.
There is a fundamental difference of materials and
technology. Cinema is a photographic medium. Light reected from the scene creates an image by triggering chemical changes on the lm emulsion. Video, in contrast, translates
light waves into electrical pulses and records those on magnetic tape, disk, or hard drive. In analog video, phosphors
in the cameras tube pick up light from a scene. Digital
video (DV), the dominant production technology and coming to be the preferred consumer format, captures light reected from the scene on a computer chip behind the
camera lens. As in a music CD, the information is encoded
as a string of ones and zeros.
The highest standard of digital video is the high-denition
(HD) format, which offers many more lines of resolution than
conventional U.S. or European video. It replaces interlaced arrays (as on a typical television monitor) with progressive-scan
arrays (as on a computer monitor), which yields a cleaner
image. Sony has recently developed a 24p HD camera, which
provides 24-frame video compatible with the rate of motionpicture lm. It could also be adjusted to the frame rates suitable
for North American or European television broadcast, DVDs,
or Internet transmission. As of 2002, the Sony system was digital videos closest approximation to cinema.
Yet even a high-denition video image carries signicantly less information than motion-picture lm. A broadcastquality video frame can display about 350,000 pixels (picture
elements), while Sonys 24p video frames currently have
around 2 million pixels. A frame of 35mm motion-picture
lm can contain the equivalent of over 12 million pixels.
The widest range of color possible in video is about 17 million hues, a staggering number until we realize that lm
can display over 800 million. Digital storage also requires
that picture information be compressed, and this often
yields blocky breakup during movement and aliasing
jagged edges where straight lines should be. Image artifacts are particularly apparent in long shots of landscapes
or densely packed architecture. Finally, from an archival
point of view, preserving moving images on lm is preferable to digital tape or disk, which deteriorates much more
rapidly.
No pictures can capture the vast range of light intensities that our eyes can detect, but cinema comes closer
than video. Film stock can convey ne details of light,
color, and texture because of its robust contrast ratio, the
10
1.13 For The Buena Vista Social Club, Wim Wenders used
mini-DV cameras to follow Cuban musicians around Havana. The
high contrast and blown-out light areas (note the top of the hat)
are characteristic of video. For more on the lms production,
see www.buenavistasocialclub.de.
relation between the brightest and the darkest areas of the

image. The Sony 24p DV camera can produce a contrast
ratio of up to 150:1, while 35mm lm negative can reach
1000:1. This means that lm more faithfully renders extremes of bright and dark, pure black and pure white, as
well as smooth gradations from one color or light level to
another. Video steps up contrasts; pale colors look brighter,
while saturated colors look even more saturated. Because
video accentuates contrast, when a lm is transferred to
video, its colors are likely to look warmer. A video image
shot in mixed lighting conditionssay, a scene including
both sunlight and deep shadewill lose more textures than
a lm image will (1.13). High-denition digital video is
less contrasty and can preserve details in dark areas, but
bright areas still tend to burn out or blow out into pure
white patches.
Despite the differences between the two media, there
are many areas of convergence. Low-budget lmmakers
have been attracted by the comparatively low costs of digital video cameras and tape. DV cameras are easy to set up,
and takes can be reviewed immediately for errors, so shooting moves more quickly than in a lm-based project. If lit
by an experienced cinematographer, even consumer-format
video can look very attractive, as in Spike Lees Bamboozled, lmed by Ellen Kuras. Perhaps most important, audiences do not notice shortcomings in image quality if the
story is engrossing. Strong plots and performances helped
carry Chuck and Buck, The Anniversary Party, Atanarjuat:
1.14 In julien donkey-boy, transferring low-delity video to lm

creates hallucinatory images.
The Fast Runner, and other independent lms shot on digital video.
Sometimes the video format ideally suits the subject the
lmmaker wants to present. Series 7: The Contenders poses
as a reality-TV program in which contestants compete in a
murder game, trailed by camera crews recording the killings
on video. Other directors seek to explore the distinctive look
of video imagery. Lars von Triers Dancer in the Dark uses
highly saturated DV imagery to suggest the fantasy world
of a young mother going blind. Harmony Korine shot julien
donkey-boy with mini-DV consumer video cameras and then
blew up the footage several times to lm. In the nal result,
pixels and grain create a unique texture, and the high contrast exaggerates pure colors and shapes (1.14).
Bigger-budget lmmakers have taken advantage of the
economies offered by digital video. A string of animated
feature lms, launched by Toy Story (5.80), bypassed the

time-consuming process of cel animation (see p. 163) and
created cartoon characters directly on computer. George
Lucas lmed Star Wars: Episode IIAttack of the Clones
entirely with Sonys 24p HD cameras, saving millions of
dollars. The same system was used for Spy Kids 2, which
director Robert Rodriguez claimed cost far less than if it
had been made on lm. The digital format allowed him to
edit, mix sound, and create special effects in his garage in
Austin, Texas.
Lucas also embraces digital cinema for the control it offers. In Attack of the Clones, computer-generated imagery
(CGI) made it possible to create vast futuristic landscapes
full of dynamic movement (1.15). Lucas claimed that if an
actor blinked at the wrong time, he would digitally erase the
blink. He is convinced that the lower cost and greater exibility of digital video will make it the format of choice for
most lmmakers. Rodriguez agrees: Ive abandoned lm
forever. You cant go back. Its like trying to go back to vinyl
after youve got recordable DVD.
Most digital features shown commercially have been
screened from lm transfers, but some distributors have been
pressing exhibitors to install video projectors. If movies could
be sent to theaters on hard drives or via satellite links, studios
would save hundreds of millions of dollars in laboratory costs.
Lucas intended Attack of the Clones to be screened widely in
a digital format, although only a few theaters screened it electronically. Most exhibitors have resisted converting, but not
just because the quality of projection still leaves much to be
desired. Electronic projectors can cost as much as $200,000
(compared with $30,000 for a lm projector), and any model
is likely to become obsolete quickly. The chief incentive for
1.15 The chase through the airways

of Coruscant in Attack of the Clones,
with backgrounds and motion created
through CGI.
11
1.16 Extreme tonal contrast, washed-out

colors, and an overbright sky evoke video
reports of the Persian Gulf War in the
35mm feature Three Kings.
going digital, many exhibitors believe, is that the public might

pay higher prices to see lms in that format.
Digital technology has made its widest impact on postproduction. Finishing a lm now depends heavily on software for editing, sound, and special effects.
Those who shoot on video sometimes try to match the
lm look, but at the same time some lmmakers work-
12
ing in 35mm have given their footage a rawer quality. Both

Steven Soderbergs Trafc and David O. Russells Three
Kings manipulate lm stock and printing to suggest the
harsh contrasts and blown-out skies that digital video can
yield (1.16). Experiments with achieving a video look
on lm point up another way in which the two media are
converging.

lms do not make prots in theatrical release. Worldwide, the top 10 percent of all
lms released garner 50 percent of all box-ofce receipts. The most popular
30 percent of lms account for 80 percent of receipts. Typically, a lm breaks even
or shows a prot only after it has been released on cable, satellite, or home video.
So great is the distributors bargaining power that the movie theater gets a surprisingly small percentage of total box-ofce receipts (known as the gross or
grosses). One standard contract guarantees the distributor a minimum of 90 percent of the rst weeks gross, dropping gradually to 30 percent after several weeks.
This arrangement isnt favorable to the exhibitor. A failure that closes quickly will
yield almost nothing to the theatre, and even a successful lm will make most of its
money in the rst two or three weeks of release, when the exhibitor gets less of the
revenue. Averaged out, a long-running success will yield no more than 50 percent
of the gross to the theater. To make up for this drawback, the distributor allows the
exhibitor to deduct from the gross the expenses of running the theater (a negotiated
gure called the house nut). In addition, the exhibitor gets all the cash from the
concession stand, which may deliver up to 70 percent of the theaters prots. Without high-priced snacks, movie houses couldnt survive.
Once the grosses are split with the exhibitor, the share returning to the distribution company (the rentals) is further divided. A major U.S. distributor typically
takes 35 percent of the rentals as its distribution fee. If the distributor helped fund
the lm, it takes another percentage off the top. In addition, the cost of prints and
advertising (currently around $30 million for a high-end lm) are deducted as well.
What remains comes back to the lmmakers. Out of the proceeds the producer
must pay all prot participantsthe directors, actors, executives, and investors
who have negotiated a share of the rental returns.
For most lms, the amount returned to the production company is relatively
small. Once the salaried workers have been paid, the producer and other major
players must wait, perhaps years, to receive their share from video and other ancillary markets. Because of this delay, and the suspicion that the major distributors
practice misleading accounting, the most powerful actors and directors have demanded rst-dollar participation, meaning their share will derive from the earliest money the picture returns to the distributor.
Independent and overseas lmmakers usually dont have access to direct funding from major distribution companies, so they try to presell distribution rights to
nance production. Alternatively, they try to attract distributors attention by
showcasing their lm at festivals. Michael Moores documentary on gun control,
Bowling for Columbine, sold to several European distributors after winning a prize
at the 2002 Cannes festival, while at that years Toronto International Film Festival, major U.S. distributors bought rights to the French Jet Lag and the Chinese
Together.
Specialized distributors, such as the New York rms Kino and Milestone, rent
foreign and independent lms to art cinemas, colleges, and museums. As audiences for these lms grew in the 1990s, major distributors acquired specialized
distribution companies. The independent Miramax generated enough low-budget
hits (My Left Foot, The Crying Game) to be purchased by the Disney corporation.
With the benet of Disneys funding and wider distribution reach, Miramax movies
like Pulp Fiction, Scream, and Shakespeare in Love earned even bigger box-ofce
receipts. Other major companies, such as Sony, have subsidiaries to handle lms
aimed at the art-house market. Sony Classics release, Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon was successful enough to break out of art-house screens and win large
grosses at multiplexes. (See Box, pp. 1618.)
Selling food is my job. I just

happen to work in a theater.
A theater manager in upstate New York
13
Putting the Pieces Together

By belonging to powerful multinational conglomerates,
lm distributors gain access to bank nancing, stock issues,
and other media markets. Just as important, multimedia distributors can build synergythe coordination of sectors
within the company around a single piece of content, usually one that is branded. The X-Files, a lm released in
1998, grew out of a brand launched on television ve years
earlier. News Corp.s Twentieth Century Fox Television
subsidiary produced the series and broadcast it on Foxs
U.S. cable channel. When the rst season was released on
video in Japan and Europe, it became a huge success, and
the series was soon programmed on News Corp.s international satellite platform BSkyB. The series spawned video
games (from Fox Interactive), books (from HarperCollins,
owned by News Corp.), music CDs (from Fox Music), and
clothing, notebooks, and other merchandise (via Fox Licensing and Merchandising). The theatrical lm was only
one more link in synergys value chain.
Synergy and branding work together. Every product
promotes the others, and each part of the parent corporation gets a bit of the business. Although synergy sometimes
proves unsuccessful, multimedia giants are in the best posi-
1.17 Lethal Weapon: As Murtagh and Riggs leave a hot-dog

stand, they pass in front of a movie theater advertising The Lost
Boys, another Warner Bros. lm (released four months after
Lethal Weapon). The prominence of Pepsi-Cola in this shot is an
example of product placementfeaturing well-known brands in a
lm in exchange for payment or cross-promotional services.
tion to take advantage of it. One lm can even advertise another within its story (1.17).
Six Major Media Companies and Some of Their Holdings

AOL Time
Warner
Film production
and distribution
14
Warner Bros.,
CastleRock,
New Line, Fine
Line
News
Corp.
Disney
Viacom
Sony
Buena Vista,
Hollywood
Pictures, Touchstone, Walt Disney
Pictures, Miramax
Paramount
Pictures
Columbia Pictures, Twentieth

TriStar, Mandalay, Century Fox,
Sony Pictures
Fox Searchlight
Classics
Vivendi Universal
Universal,
Working Title,
Universal Focus
American lms have long been the worlds most popular, and many earn more
abroad than at home. The Hollywood studios have planted distribution subsidiaries
in most major countries. These branch ofces arrange for prints to be made in the
local language (either dubbing in the dialogue or adding subtitling) and schedule
the lms release. Local circumstances dictate when a Hollywood lm opens. A
lm may be released in Europe many months after the U.S. opening, but it is likely
to be released in Asia much sooner, largely because the regions widespread video
piracy tends to erode the audience. With strong marketing units in every region, the
majors can distribute non-U.S. lms as well as Hollywood products. For example,
Kazuo Miyazakis popular animated lms (My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away)
are now distributed on video by Disneys Buena Vista arm even in Japan itself.
Six Major Media Companies (continued)

AOL Time
Warner
Disney
Viacom
Sony
Famous Players,
Cinamerica
(50% with AOL
Time Warner)
Loews Cineplex
Entertainment
Sony Pictures
Television
Movie theaters
Cinamerica (50%
with Viacom)
Broadcast,
cable, and
satellite TV
CNN, HBO, WB
TV, Turner
Network
Television, Turner
Classic Movies,
Cartoon
Network
ABC network,
A & E, Disney
Channel, Lifetime,
ESPN, local
TV stations
CBS, MTV, VH1,

Nickelodeon,
UPN, Showtime,
Comedy Central
Publishing
Little, Brown;
Warner Books,
Time, Life, Sports
Illustrated, People,
DC Comics
Capital City
newspapers,
magazines,
Hyperion Books
Simon & Schuster,

Prentice-Hall, Free
Press, Websters
Dictionary
Music
Warner Music,
Atlantic, Elektra,
America Online
Internet service
Disney Music
Other
Six Flags theme

parks, Atlanta
Braves, Atlanta
Hawks
Merchandising,
Disney theme
parks and resorts,
the Mighty Ducks
News
Corp.
Twentieth
Century Fox TV,
Fox Broadcasting Company,
Sky TV, Star TV
Universal
Television, USA
Network (partial
ownership)
Newspapers,
TV Guide,
HarperCollins,
Westview Press
Penguin, Putnam
Columbia, Epic,
Sony Classical
Blockbuster video
stores, Great
America and Kings
Dominion theme
parks
Video games,
consumer
electronics
(Walkman,
Trinitron, etc.),
professional
electronics (highdefinition video,
etc.)
Vivendi Universal
Music
Corporation
of America,
PolyGram
Sheep farming,
airlines
Beverages,
Universal theme
parks, real estate,
Universal Interactive
Selling The Film
Distributors make prints, schedule release dates, and launch advertising campaigns. For big companies, distribution can be efcient because the
costs can be spread out over many units. A poster design can be used in various
markets, and a distributor who orders a hundred prints from a laboratory will pay
less per print than the lmmaker who orders one. Still, distribution costs have risen
dramatically in recent years, largely because of greater lm output and increased
competition. Today, when the average Hollywood lm is estimated to cost around
$50 million to make, it costs an additional $30 million to distribute.
The distributor provides not only the movie but also a publicity campaign, the
costs of which are shared by the exhibitor. The theater will be supplied with trailers, the previews of coming attractions. There may be a music video to build
15
16
CHAPTER ONE
Independent Production and Mainstream Hollywood:

The Case of Good Machine
During the 1990s, independent film production and distribution companies achieved
more prominence. With the major Hollywood
firms increasingly concentrating on widerelease blockbusters, smaller firms could target films toward more specific audiences.
Niche audiences, however, could be fairly
large, and during the decade many independent films became substantial hits. These films
seldom made as much as the summer tentpole films, but they attracted the attention
of big producers because they were relatively
cheap to make or acquire and hence could be
profitable with minimal risk. In 1993, Disney
started a trend by buying the prestigious independent firm Miramax, which had successfully distributed such films as sex, lies, and
videotape (1989) and Reservoir Dogs (1992);
as a subsidiary, Miramax continued to operate as a largely autonomous firm.
One company that exemplifies the rise of
the independents is Good Machine, which
was founded in New York in 1991 by Columbia University film professor James Schamus
and producer Ted Hope. The pair sought to
match a projects potential income to a reasonable budget. Good Machines partners
quickly assumed a high profile. Schamus produced prominent Chilean migr director
Raoul Ruizs The Golden Boat and executiveproduced Todd Hayness Poison (winner of
the Grand Prize at Sundance, the premiere
film festival for independents. Hope produced Hal Hartleys Trust (winner of the Sundance screenplay award). The latter two were
to remain among the most respected American independent films of the decade.
Hartley continued working with Ted
Hope for Simple Men (1992) and Amateur
(1994), while Good Machine executiveproduced Hayness Safe (1995). The firm
also produced two films directed by actor
Edward Burns, The Brothers McMullen
(1995) and Shes the One (1996).
The filmmaker most closely linked to
Good Machine was Ang Lee, whose first
feature, Pushing Hands (1992), was pro-
duced on a budget of $400,000. Schamus

collaborated on the screenplay, and he continued to play this dual role as producer and
scriptwriter on other Lee films, including The
Wedding Banquet (1993), Eat Drink Man
Woman (1994), and The Ice Storm (1997).
Variety claimed that, given its small budget,
The Wedding Banquet was proportionately
the most profitable film of 1993 exactly
what made independent films attractive to
the big studios. The Ice Storm won Schamus
the prize for best screenplay at Cannes.
By 1993, Good Machines consistent success attracted increasing attention within the
mainstream industry. Aside from Schamuss
screenplay award, Schamus and Hope took
four films to the Sundance festival. Paramount expressed interest in making Good
Machine its classics division, but the negotiations came to nothing. Good Machine
was expanding its foreign interests and in
August formed Good Machine International.
Its president, David Linde, had formerly run
Miramaxs foreign sales and had marketed
Pulp Fiction (1994) abroad. GMI began to
import films, including Joan Chens Xiu Xiu
the Sent-Down Girl (1999) and Lars von
Triers Dancer in the Dark (2000).
In 2000, Good Machine gained even
greater prominence with an unexpected
foreign-language hit. With Schamus again
co-scripting and producing and Lee directing,
the pair participated in an AmericanHong
KongTaiwanese co-production, Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film, made on a
modest budget of about $15 million, was
successfully marketed to a broad spectrum of
niche audiences beyond the usual action-film
fans, including teenage girls, women, and audiences interested in Asian culture (1.18). Its
strong plot and balletic swordplay scenes,
staged by veteran Hong Kong fights choreographer Yuen Wo-ping, gave the martialarts genre a new respectability among mature
audiences. Viewers unaccustomed to foreignlanguage films found themselves willingly
reading subtitles. Crouching Tiger, Hidden
17
1.18 The prominence of two female

characters in both the swordplay and
romance storylines of Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon made the lm appealing
to women as well as to male action fans.
Dragon ultimately grossed over $200 million

and won four Oscars. Also in 2000, Good
Machine made a hit of a modest romantic
comedy by Jenniphr Goodman, The Tao of
Steve. The films cinematography, editing,
and acting belied its low budget, and it became a date movie for the art-house set.
During 2001, its last year as a small independent firm, Good Machine distributed
Todd Fields first feature, In the Bedroom.
It also planned a larger, popularly oriented
production for Lee: The Hulk.
While Good Machine prospered, a series
of events occurred that resulted in the small
companys being absorbed into one of the
worlds largest media conglomerates, Vivendi Universal:
September 1997: Good Machine International becomes the exclusive foreign sales
company for another successful American
independent firm, October Films.
October 1997: Universal, which already
owns a share of the Sundance Channel,
buys a majority stake in October Films.
1999: Universal sells October to Barry
Diller, who renames it USA Films.
2000: Universal forms a subsidiary, Universal Focus, to distribute independent
films such as Billy Elliot.
2001: Universal buys USA Films back
from Diller.
May 2002: Vivendi Universal buys Good

Machine and merges it into USA Films
and Universal Focus, creating a new
company, Focus Features. USA Films becomes a production wing within Focus.
For Vivendi Universal, the roughly $10 million paid to acquire Good Machine brought
it both prestige and the potential for profitable films made on modest budgets. It also
brought in Ang Lee, a director who could
move between independent films and popcorn movies, as he did with The Hulk. Other
talented directors could be attracted to a
company with a successful track record.
Good Machine followed a major trend of
the 1990s independents by becoming the
art or niche wing of a much larger company. It was bolstered by the combination
with USA Films, which had recently released
several major independent films, most notably Steven Soderberghs Traffic (2000), Joel
and Ethan Coens The Man Who Wasnt
There (2001), and Robert Altmans Gosford
Park (2001). Focus continued distributing
Mira Nairs Monsoon Wedding (2002),
which had been picked up by USA Films.
Schamus and Linde stayed on to head
Focus, maintaining a considerable amount of
control. They also now had a ready source of
funding, rather than needing to find support
for each individual project. Hope struck out
on his own as an independent producer,
though he enjoyed a first look deal with
18
CHAPTER ONE
1.19
The suburban couple in Far from Heaven, already starting to fracture.
This was a Web site that was an

entertainment experience in itself.
The movie was an extension of the
Web site.
A studio marketing executive on
The Blair Witch Project
Focus. Focuss first acquisition for distribution

was Roman Polanksis The Pianist, winner of
the 2002 Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival. Later that year the company returned
to its Good Machine roots by taking over
the American distribution of Todd Hayness
award-winning Far from Heaven (1.19),
which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
In May, industry trade journal Variety
remarked, this freshly minted indie with
deep studio pockets stands as the hottest
go-to shingle for a top-flight indie project.
The comment points up how loose the term
independent had become by this point,
since, strictly speaking, Good Machine was
now wholly owned by a conglomerate. Yet
Schamus and Linde had declared their intentions to continue supporting the small,
often prestigious, films that had made Good
Machine attractive to Vivendi Universal,
and that kind of film had come to be
thought of as independentwhatever
its source.
interest in the movie and its soundtrack album, infotainment TV programs will
build audience awareness, and a cable channel may run a Making of . . . program. For print journalists the distributor will provide press kits, complete with
photos and background information. Local TV outlets will get electronic press
kits containing star sound bites and clips of splashy scenes. Even a modestly budgeted production like Waiting to Exhale had heavy promotion: ve separate music
videos, star visits to the Oprah Winfrey show, and promotions in thousands of bookstores and beauty salons. My Big Fat Greek Wedding cost $5 million to produce,
but the distributor spent over $10 million publicizing it.
Distributors have also learned the power of the Internet. Webpages entice potential viewers with plot information, star biographies, games, screensavers, and
links to merchandising. The Net proved crucial in marketing The Blair Witch Project to its target audience of young summer lmgoers. While cutting their $35,000
movie, directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez lled a website with fake
documents about the legend of the Blair Witch and the mysterious fate of the students who had disappeared while investigating her. Fan sites sprang up before the
lm had been screened. The small distribution rm Artisan Entertainment committed $15 million to promoting it, updating the webpage and leaking the trailer to
other movie-related sites. The Blair Witch Project became one of the most profitable lms ever made, earning over $130 million in North America alone.
Merchandising is one form of promotion that pays back its investment directly.
Manufacturing companies buy the rights to use the lms characters, title, or im-

ages on products. Childrens lms are released accompanied by toys, games, clothing, lunchboxes, schoolbags, and tie-ins with fast-food outlets. Such spin-offs can
be immensely protable. By 1992, Star Wars merchandise had racked up sales of
$2.6 billionmore than the lms themselves had earned.
Nearly all major motion pictures rely on merchandising, if only of a novelization or a sound track CD, to lower production and distribution costs and to provide
new prot centers. A common practice is cross-promotion, which allows both a
lm and a product line to be advertised at once. MGM arranged for the stars of the
James Bond lm Tomorrow Never Dies to appear in advertisements for Heineken,
Smirnoff, BMW, Visa, and Ericsson. The ve companies spent nearly $100 million
on the campaign, which publicized the lm around the world. As payback, the lm
included scenes prominently featuring the products. Austin Powers: The Spy Who
Shagged Me had advertising partnerships with Mitsubishi, Heineken, Visa, Virgin
Atlantic, Philips Electronics, Starbucks, and the American Academy of Periodontology (Dont Forget to Floss, Baby!). Even less mainstream fare has relied on
cross-promotion: The documentary Hoop Dreams was publicized by Nike and the
National Basketball Association.
The marketing of the lm does not end when it starts playing theaters. Distribution executives track the box-ofce receipts of a lms opening weekend and report
them to their superiors, the production company, and the press. Distribution companies also undertake exit polling to gauge whether lmgoers will recommend the picture to their friends. Most lms achieve their largest audience on the opening
weekend, but a few build an audience more slowly as viewers tell their friends about
them. Across the spring and summer of 2002, the $5 million romantic comedy My
Big Fat Greek Wedding rose in box-ofce ranking largely on the strength of word of
mouth. It eventually surpassed $210 million in North American ticket sales.
Ancillary Markets When a lm leaves theatrical exhibition, its life is far from over.
Since the late 1970s, video has created a vast array of ancillary markets, and these
typically return more money than the original release. (Since 1988, U.S. home
video has generated more than twice the income of domestic theatrical box ofce.) Distribution companies carefully plan their video windows to widen the
lms availability gradually. A release appears rst over hotel television systems
and airline ights, then on pay-per-view television, then on cable television and
DVD or videocassette, and eventually on network broadcast and cable reruns.
Video has proved a boon to smaller distributors as well: Foreign and independent
lms usually yield slim theatrical returns, but video markets can make these items
protable.
The ultimate extension of video distribution may be cyberspace. Major lm
companies are experimenting with websites that deliver movies on demand. Already digital versions of some independent lms are available on the Internet, and
hundreds of sites offer bootlegged versions of studio releases. In 2002, buccaneering fans uploaded pirated video copies of Signs and Star Wars: Episode IIAttack
of the Clones. Thanks to the enormous number of video distribution channels and
exhibition sites, movies permeate world culture as never before. Yet lms now appear in so many guises that it is hard to recapture a sense of the way the original
looked. (See Box, pp. 2123.)
A lm can continue its life in other media. Star Wars spawned bestselling
paperback novels; Buffy the Vampire Slayer was spun off as a comic book and TV
series; Universals theme park offers a ride based on Back to the Future; Grease
and The Lion King were adapted as Broadway shows; Die Hard and A Bugs Life
became video games; Beetlejuice turned into a TV cartoon. Because distribution
Our underlying philosophy is that

all media are one.
Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp.
and Twentieth Century Fox
19
20
CHAPTER ONE

companies belong to multinational conglomerates, lms often serve as content
fed to the companys other media outlets.
Beyond Hollywood: International Distribution and Exhibition The major production

and distribution companies are identied with America, but many belong to international companies. The Japanese electronics rm Sony owns Columbia Pictures,
Australias News Corp. owns Twentieth Century Fox, and a French rm, Vivendi,
owns Universal. In addition, many of the worlds top media companies are European and Asian. Asahi Broadcasting of Japan invests in lm studios, as does the
newspaper chain Nippon Herald. Sylvio Berlusconi, currently prime minister of
Italy, runs a conglomerate consisting of lm production and distribution companies, book and magazine publishers, and the countrys top commercial TV broadcaster. Many regional and national distributors acquire lms from each other.
Worldwide, theatrical grosses were $17.5 billion dollars in 2001. The sources
of income are distributed very unevenly. The United States is by far the most lucrative market, contributing over 40 percent of the total. By nation, Japan comes in
second; its ticket prices are the highest in the world (averaging $10 in 2001). Western European and AsianPacic countries follow. Providing about 25 percent of
global box ofce, Western Europe (including the United Kingdom and the Nordic
countries) emerges as the most important regional market outside North America.
The less signicant market regions are Latin America, Eastern Europe, mainland China, India, the Middle East, and Africa. The underdeveloped economies of
these regions cannot sustain high admission prices; in Latin America, a movie
ticket averages $3. China and India have huge populations, but because of low
ticket prices (an average of $0.13), together they contributed only about $700 million to the 2001 global totalless than Germany did. For all these reasons, lmmakers around the world aim for distribution in the United States, Western Europe,
and Japan.
MAKING THE MOVIE: FILM PRODUCTION

The movie that is distributed and exhibited to us must rst be produced. The
process of lm production involves not only technology and funding but also people working together. Most lms go through three phases of production.
1. Preparation. The idea for the lm is developed and committed to paper in
some form. The lmmaker also begins to acquire funds to support the lm.
2. Shooting. Here the lmmaker creates images in the form of shots. A shot is a
series of frames produced by the camera in an uninterrupted operation. The
lmmaker also records sounds, consisting of dialogue, noises, or music.
3. Assembly. At this stage, which may overlap with the shooting phase, the images and sounds are combined in their nal form. This involves cutting picture
and sound, executing special effects, adding music or extra dialogue, and
adding titles.
Every phase changes what went before. The idea for the lm may be radically modied when the script is hammered out; the scripts presentation of the action may be
drastically changed in shooting; and the material that is shot takes on new signicance
in the process of assembly. As the French director Robert Bresson puts it, A lm is
Film and Video: Where Did the Picture Go?

ilmmakers often complain that video versions dont look
F
like their original lms. Sometimes its a matter of technical differences between the two media. (See Box, pp. 10
12.) But lms are also deliberately altered for video exhibition. Versions for airline video projection and for broadcast
television trim sex and violence and eliminate potentially
offensive dialogue from sound tracks. Sometimes TV versions are created during production: The broadcast version
of The Silence of the Lambs contains different footage than
the theatrical release. Broadcasters also use time compression, a device that speeds up the lm slightly so more commercials can be squeezed in. Even premium cable
channels snip out nudity and use redubbed lines of dialogue.
What about a rental video? Doesnt that conform to the
original theatrical release? Often not. Directors occasionally revise lms for video release, as Sam Raimi did with
The Evil Dead by eliminating a crudely animated shot of
lightning striking a tree (and depriving many fans of their
favorite shot). Songs are often replaced in video release,
largely because the rights could not be negotiated. Some
video rental chains force distribution companies to prepare
softer versions of R-rated lms. And, as in broadcast and
cable exhibition, video rental copies alter the image to t
the TV screen.
The most apparent difference between a rental video
and the original lm involves the shape of the screen. Since
the mid-1950s virtually all lms have been designed to be
shown on wide theater screens, not squarish TV monitors.
High-denition televisions (HDTV) with wider screens are
slowly gaining a share of the market, but these are still not
as wide as many theatrical lms made since the 1950s.
One solution has been to release some video copies of
lms with letterboxing, dark horizontal bands at the top and
bottom of the TV screen that approximate the lms original shape on theater screens. This practice became widespread on home video in 1985, when Woody Allen, who
controlled the video release of his lm Manhattan (1979),
insisted that the lm be released letterboxed. In 1986, the
Criterion company started a series of letterboxed laser
discs, and this type of video formatting has grown in popularity. Many viewers, however, nd letterboxing distracting, especially if their television screens are relatively
small; they often opt for the full-frame video versions of
lms, where the image has no black masking. Such versions often begin with the enigmatic warning, This lm
has been modied from its original version. It has been formatted to t your television.
Today many lms are released in letterboxed video versions, though the practice remains more common with DVDs
than with VHS cassettes. Some DVDs contain both the letterboxed and full-frame versions of the same lm. Because
A Bugs Life was made in digital animation, the lmmakers
recomposed the original widescreen shots to t household
TV monitors, thus providing both letterboxed and full-frame
versions where the entire original image is visible.
DVDs are rapidly gaining on VHS in popularity, with
some lms selling more copies on DVD than on VHS. In
2002, a record 70 percent of the video sales of The Lord of
the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring were DVDs, and
slightly more letterboxed than full-frame DVDs were purchased. Compare this with the sales of the two best-selling
video titles of 2000: Tarzan, 7 percent on DVD, and Toy
Story 2, 12 percent on DVD. DVDs offer the additional attractions of better visual quality and, in many cases, extra
features like voiceover commentaries by lmmakers and
documentaries on the making of the lm.
No video version of a lm wholly replicates the lm
image as it appeared on the theater screen. Even letterboxed
images do not necessarily show absolutely the entire image,
since very wide lms are often cropped slightly at the sides.
The changes in the pictures in full-frame versions, however, are more dramatic. There have been a number of approaches to creating full-frame images. One older method
is called pan and scan, where as much as 50 percent of
the image can disappear.
In preparing the video version, a controller watches
the lm and decides what portions of the widescreen image
to eliminate. If the controller decides that important action
is taking place at opposite ends of the frame, a computercontrolled scanner moves across the imagehence the
name for the process, panning and scanning. Sometimes
the controller decides to make separate shots out of what
was originally a single shot (1.201.22). Whatever choice
is made, the original lm is altered, often drastically.
As a result, nearly all videocassette copies of lms made
in the past 40 years alter the compositions intended by the
lmmakers. Accepting the inevitable, some directors shoot
for the box and try to keep all the important action in an area
that will survive the transfer to video (1.23, 1.24). They may
hope that letterboxed versions on DVD and some cassettes
will be faithful to their original images. James Cameron shot
Titanic with an eye to successful video sales, using Super
35mm lm stock. In this process, additional image area is exposed above and below the widescreen composition. Those
21
1.20 In Otto Premingers Advise and

Consent, a single shot in the original . . .
1.21
. . . becomes a pair of shots and . . .
1.22 . . . loses the sense of actors

simultaneously reacting to each other.
1.23 Many widescreen compositions try for only one center

of interest . . .
1.24 . . . so that the video version can

concentrate on it. Note, however, the loss of
compositional balance and the change of
scale; the actor dominates the frame in a way
she does not in the original (from Aliens).
parts of the image are not included in the theatrical versions,

but they are put into full-frame videos to give a TV-shaped
picture. Often, however, the upper and lower areas tend not to
include much of interest, while important parts of the horizontal composition may be lost (1.25, 1.26).
22
As a nal example, consider a shot from Paul Thomas

Andersons widescreen lm Magnolia (1.271.29). Here
two characters have been balanced at opposite sides
of the frame, and one nearly vanishes in the full-frame
video.
1.25 As Rose, the heroine of Titanic, feels the exhilaration of ying on the ships prow,
the strongly horizontal composition emphasizes her outstretched arms as wings against a
wide horizon.
1.26 Nearly all sense of the horizontal

composition has disappeared in the video
version, as more of the sky is visible, and
one of Roses arms is largely outside the
frame.
1.27 This framing from Magnolia keeps both the patient and nurse visible through much of
their conversation and also balances the light bedclothes and the darkness around the nurse.
1.29 In the full-frame VHS copy, the

framing selects the nurse and holds the
framing on him, while only the patients
covered legs and feebly moving hands
are visible.
1.28 The letterboxed DVD image largely preserves this balance, though the very edges of the
wide frame have been cropped out.
23
24
CHAPTER ONE

born in my head and I kill it on paper. It is brought back to life by the actors and then
killed in the camera. It is then resurrected into a third and nal life in the editing room
where the dismembered pieces are assembled into their nished form.
These three phases include many particular jobs. Most lms that we see in theaters culminate from dozens of specialized tasks carried out by hundreds of experts. This ne-grained division of labor has proved to be a reliable way to prepare,
shoot, and assemble large-budget movies.
The Preproduction Phase

In professional lmmaking, the preparation phase is known as preproduction. At
this point, two roles are central: that of producer and that of screenwriter.
The tasks of the producer are chiey nancial and organizational. She or he
may be an independent producer, unearthing lm projects and trying to convince
production companies or distributors to nance the lm. Or the producer may work
for a distribution company and generate ideas for lms. A studio may also hire a
producer to put together a particular package.
The producer nurses the project through the script process, obtains nancial support, and arranges to hire the personnel who will work on the lm. During shooting
and assembly, the producer usually acts as the liaison between the writer or director
and the company that is nancing the lm. After the lm is completed, the producer
will often have the task of arranging the distribution, promotion, and marketing of
the lm and of monitoring the paying back of the money invested in the production.
A single producer may take on all these tasks, but in the contemporary American lm industry the producers work is further subdivided. The executive producer is often the person who arranged the nancing for the project or obtained the
literary property (although many lmmakers complain that the credit of executive
producer is sometimes given to people who did little work). Once the production is
under way, the line producer oversees the day-to-day activities of director, cast,
and crew. The line producer is assigned by an associate producer, who acts as a liaison with laboratories or technical personnel.
The chief task of the screenwriter is to prepare the screenplay (or script).
Sometimes the writer will send a screenplay to an agent, who submits it to a production company. Or an experienced screenwriter meets with a producer in a pitch
session, where the writer can propose ideas for scripts. The rst scene of Robert
Altmans The Player satirizes pitch sessions by showing celebrity screenwriters
proposing strained ideas like Pretty Woman meets Out of Africa. Alternatively,
sometimes the producer has an idea for a lm and hires a screenwriter to develop
it. This course of action is common if the producer has bought the rights to a novel
or play and wants it adapted into a lm.
The screenplay will go through several stages. These stages include a treatment, a synopsis of the action; then one or more full-length scripts; and a nal version, the shooting script. Extensive rewriting is common, and writers have resigned
themselves to seeing their work recast over and over. Often the director or star will
want changes in the script. For example, in the original screenplay of Witness the
protagonist was Rachel, the Amish widow with whom John Book falls in love. The
romance, and Rachels confused feelings about Book, formed the central plot line.
But the director, Peter Weir, wanted to emphasize the clash between pacism and
violence. So William Kelley and Earl Wallace revised their screenplay to emphasize the mystery plot line and to center the action on Book, who brings urban crime
into the peaceful Amish community. Shooting scripts are constantly altered too.
Some directors allow actors to modify the dialogue, and problems on location or in
Making the Film: Film Production
1.30 A publicity still for Alfred Hitchcocks Notorious, showing a scene that was eliminated
from the nal lm. The actress sitting next to Cary Grant, apparently given a prominent part in
this sequence, can be glimpsed in only one other scene.
a set may necessitate changes in the scene. In the assembly stage, script scenes that
have been shot are often condensed, rearranged, or dropped entirely (1.30).
If the producer or director nds one writers screenplay unsatisfactory, other
writers may be hired to revise it. Most Hollywood screenwriters earn their living by
rewriting other writers scripts. As you may imagine, this often leads to conicts
about which writer or writers deserve onscreen credit for the lm. In the American
lm industry, these disputes are adjudicated by the Screen Writers Guild.
As the screenplay is being written or rewritten, the producer is planning the lms
nances. He or she has sought out a director and stars to make the package seem a
promising investment. The producer must prepare a budget spelling out above-theline costs (the costs of literary property, scriptwriter, director, and major cast) and
below-the-line costs (the expenses allotted to the crew, secondary cast, the shooting
and assembly phases, insurance, and publicity). The sum of above- and below-the-line
costs is called the negative cost (that is, the total cost of producing the lms master
negative). In 2001, the average Hollywood negative cost ran about $50 million.
The producer must also prepare a daily schedule for shooting the lm. This will
be done with an eye on the budget. The producer assumes that the separate shots will
be made out of continuitythat is, in the most convenient order for productionand
put in proper order in the editing room. Since transporting equipment and personnel to
a location is a major expense, producers usually prefer to shoot all the scenes taking
place in one location at one time. For Jurassic Park, the main characters arrival on the
island and their departure at the end of the lm were both shot at the start of production, during the three weeks of location in Hawaii. A producer must also plan to shoot
around actors who cant be on the set every day. Many producers try to schedule the
most difcult scenes early, before cast and crew begin to tire. For Raging Bull the
25
26
CHAPTER ONE

complex prizeght sequences were lmed rst, with the dialogue scenes shot later.
Keeping all such contingencies in mind, the producer comes up with a schedule that
juggles cast, crew, locations, and even seasons and geography most efciently.
The Production Phase

Although production is the term for the entire process of making a lm, Hollywood lmmakers also use it to refer to the shooting phase (as in, Now that weve
got a nished script, we go into production next week). Production is also known
as principal photography.
The director is often involved at various stages of preproduction, but he or she
is primarily responsible for overseeing the shooting and assembly phases. Within
most lm industries, the director is considered the single person most responsible
for the look and sound of the nished lm.
Because of the specialized division of labor in large-scale production, the director orchestrates the contributions of several units.
1.31 A page from the storyboard for

Hitchcocks The Birds.
If you wander unbidden onto a set,

youll always know the AD because
he or she is the one wholl probably
throw you off. Thats the AD
yelling, Places! Quiet on the set!
Lunch one-half hour! and
Thats a wrap, people! Its all very
ritualistic, like reveille and taps on a
military base, at once grating and
oddly comforting.
Christine Vachon, independent
producer, on assistant directors
1. During the preparation phase, the director has already begun to work with the
set unit, or production design unit, headed by a production designer. The production designer is in charge of visualizing the lms settings. This unit creates drawings and plans that determine the architecture and the color schemes
of the sets. Under the production designers supervision, an art director supervises the construction and painting of the sets. The set decorator, often someone with experience in interior decoration, modies the sets for specic
lming purposes, supervising a staff who nd props and a set dresser who
arranges things on the set during shooting. The costume designer is in charge
of planning and executing the wardrobe for the production.
Working with the production designer, a graphic artist may be assigned to
produce a storyboard, a series of comic-strip-like sketches of the shots in each
scene, including notations about costume, lighting, camerawork, and other matters
(1.31). Most directors do not demand a storyboard for every scene, but action sequences and shots using special effects or complicated camerawork tend to be
storyboarded in detail. The storyboard gives the cinematography unit and the
special-effects unit a preliminary sense of what the nished shots should look like.
2. During the shooting, the director will rely on what is called the directors
crew. This includes
a. The script supervisor, known in the classic studio era as a script girl.
(Today one-fth of Hollywood script supervisors are male.) The script
supervisor is in charge of all details of continuity from shot to shot, such
as details of performers appearances (in the last scene, was the carnation in
the left or right buttonhole?), props, lighting, movement, camera position,
and the running time of each shot.
b. The rst assistant director, a jack-of-all-trades who, with the director, plans
out each days shooting schedule and sets up each shot for the directors
approval, while keeping track of the actors, monitoring safety conditions,
and keeping the energy level high.
c. The second assistant director, who is the liaison among the rst assistant
director, the camera crew, and the electricians crew.
d. The third assistant director, who serves as messenger for director and staff.
e. The dialogue coach, who feeds performers their lines and speaks the lines
of offscreen characters during shots of other performers.

f. The second unit director, who lms stunts, location footage, action scenes,
and the like, at a distance from where principal shooting is taking place.
3. The most visible group of workers is the cast. The cast may include stars,
well-known players assigned to major roles and likely to attract audiences.
The cast also includes supporting players, or performers in secondary roles;
minor players; and extras, those anonymous persons who pass by in the
street, come together for crowd scenes, and ll distant desks in large ofce
sets. One of the directors major jobs is to shape the performances of the cast.
Most directors will spend a good deal of time explaining how a line or gesture should be rendered, reminding the actor of the place of this scene in the
overall lm, and helping the actor create a coherent performance. The rst
assistant director usually works with the extras and takes charge of arranging
crowd scenes.
On some productions, there are still more specialized roles. Stunt persons
will be supervised by a stunt coordinator; professional dancers will work with
a choreographer. If animals join the cast, they will be handled by a wrangler.
There have been pig wranglers (Mad Max beyond Thunder Dome), snake
wranglers (Raiders of the Lost Ark), and spider wranglers (Arachnophobia).
4. Another unit of specialized labor is the photography unit. This leader is the
cinematographer, also known as the director of photography, or DP. The cinematographer is an expert on photographic processes, lighting, and camera
technique. The cinematographer consults with the director on how each scene
will be lit and lmed (1.32). The cinematographer supervises
a. The camera operator, who runs the machine and who may also have assistants to load the camera, adjust and follow focus, push a dolly, and so on.
1.32 On the set of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles directs from his wheelchair on the far right,
cinematographer Gregg Toland crouches below the camera, and actress Dorothy Comingore
kneels at the left. The female script supervisor can be seen in the background left.
27
28
CHAPTER ONE

b. The key grip, the person who supervises the grips. These workers carry and
arrange equipment, props, and elements of the setting and lighting.
c. The gaffer, the head electrician who supervises the placement and rigging
of the lights. In Hollywood production the gaffers assistant is called the
best boy.
5. Parallel to the photography unit is the sound unit. This is headed by the
production recordist (also called the sound mixer). The recordists principal
responsibility is to record dialogue during shooting. Typically the recordist
will use a portable tape recorder, several sorts of microphones, and a console
to balance and combine the inputs. The recordist will also attempt to tape
some ambient sound when no actors are speaking. These bits of room tone
will later be inserted to ll pauses in the dialogue. The recordists staff
includes
a. The boom operator, who manipulates the boom microphone and conceals
radio microphones on the actors.
b. The third man, who places other microphones, lays sound cables, and is in
charge of controlling ambient sound.
Some productions also have a sound designer, who enters the process during
the preparation phase and who, like the production designer, plans a sonic
style appropriate for the entire lm.
6. A special-effects unit is charged with preparing and executing process shots,
miniatures, matte work, computer-generated graphics, and other technical
shots (1.33). During the planning phase, the director and the production designer will have determined what effects will be needed, and the specialeffects unit consults with the director and the cinematographer on an ongoing
basis. On a contemporary production, the special-effects unit can number hundreds of workers, from puppet- and model-makers to specialists in digital
compositing.
7. A miscellaneous unit includes a makeup staff, a costume staff, hairdressers,
and drivers (who transport cast and crew).
1.33 Sculpting a model dinosaur for Jurassic Park: The Lost

World. The model was scanned into a computer for digital
manipulation.
29
8. During shooting, the producer is represented by a unit often called the producers crew. This consists of the production manager, also known as the
production coordinator or the associate producer. This person will manage
daily organizational business, such as arranging for meals and accommodations. A production accountant (or production auditor) monitors expenditures, a production secretary coordinates telephone communications
among units and with the producer, and production assistants (or PAs) run
errands. Newcomers to the lm industry often start out working as production assistants.
All this coordinated effort, involving perhaps hundreds of workers, results in
many thousands of feet of exposed lm and recorded sound-on-tape. For every
shot called for in the script or storyboard, the director usually makes several takes,
or varying versions, of that shot. For instance, if the nished lm requires one shot
of an actor saying a line, the director may make several takes of that speech, each
time asking the actor to vary the delivery. Not all takes are printed, and only one of
those becomes the shot included in the nished lm. Extra footage can be used in
coming-attractions trailers and electronic press kits.
Because shooting usually proceeds out of continuity, the director and crew
must have some way of labeling each take. As soon as the camera starts, one of the
cinematographers staff holds up a slate before the lens. On the slate is written the
production, scene, shot, and take. A hinged arm at the top, the clapboard, makes a
sharp smack that allows the recordist to synchronize the sound track with the
footage in the assembly phase (1.34). Thus every take is identied for future reference. There are also electronic slates which keep track of each take automatically
and provide digital readouts.
In lming a scene, most directors and technicians follow an organized procedure. While crews set up the lighting and test the sound recording, the director rehearses the actors and instructs the cinematographer. The director then supervises
the lming of a master shot. The master shot typically records the entire action and
dialogue of the scene. There may be several takes of the master shot. Then portions
of the scene are restaged and shot in closer views or from different angles. These
shots are called coverage, and each one may require many takes. Today most directors shoot a great deal of coverage, often by using two or more cameras lming at
the same time. The script supervisor checks to ensure that continuity details are
consistent within all these shots.
For most of lm history, scenes were lmed with a single camera, which was
moved to different points for different setups. More recently, with pressures to nish principal photography as fast as possible, the director and the camera unit will
use two or more cameras. Action scenes are often shot from several angles simultaneously because chases, crashes, and explosions are difcult to repeat for retakes.
The battles in Gladiator were lmed by 7 cameras, while 13 cameras were used
for stunts in XXX. For dialogue scenes, a common tactic is to lm with an A camera and a B camera, an arrangement that can capture two actors in alternating shots.
The lower cost of digital video cameras has allowed some directors to experiment
with shooting conversations from many angles at once, hoping to capture unexpected spontaneity in the performance. Scenes in Spike Lees Bamboozled were
lmed with as many as 11 mini-DV cameras. According to director Lars von Trier,
some scenes in Dancer in the Dark employed 100 digital cameras.
When special effects are to be included, the shooting phase must carefully plan for
them. In many cases, actors will be lmed against neutral blue or green backgrounds so
1.34 A slate shown at the beginning of a

shot in Jean-Luc Godards La Chinoise.
30
CHAPTER ONE
1.35 For the climax of Jurassic Park, the

actors were shot in the set of the visitors
center, but the velociraptors and the
Tyrannosaurus rex were computergenerated images added later.
that their gures may be inserted into computer-created settings. Or the director will
lm performers with the understanding that other material will be composited into the
frame (1.35).
The Postproduction Phase

Filmmakers call the assembly phase postproduction. (If something goes wrong,
someone may promise to x it in post.) Yet this phase does not begin simply after
the shooting is nished. Postproduction staff members work behind the scenes
throughout shooting.
Before the shooting has begun, the director or producer has probably hired an
editor (also known as the supervising editor). This person catalogues and assembles the takes produced during shooting. The editor also works with the director to
make creative decisions about how the footage can best be cut together.
Because each shot usually exists in several takes, because the lm is shot out
of continuity, and because the master-shot/coverage approach yields so much
footage, the editors job can be a vast one. A 100-minute feature, which amounts to
about 9000 feet of 35mm lm, may have been carved out of 500,000 feet of lm.
For this reason, postproduction on major Hollywood pictures often takes ve to
seven months. Sometimes several editors and assistants will be brought in.
Typically, the editor receives the processed footage from the laboratory as
quickly as possible. This footage is known as the dailies, or the rushes. The editor
inspects the dailies, leaving it to the assistant editor to synchronize image and
sound and to sort the takes by scene. The editor will meet with the director to examine the dailies, or if the production is lming far away, the editor will call to inform the director of how the footage looks. Since retaking shots is costly and
troublesome, constant checking of the dailies is important for spotting any problems with focus, exposure, framing, or other visual factors. From the dailies the director selects the best takes and the editor records the choices. To save money,
dailies are often shown to the producer and director on video, but since video can
conceal defects in the original footage, editors will check the original shots before
cutting the lm.
As the footage accumulates, the editor assembles it into a rough cutthe shots
loosely strung in sequence, without sound effects or music. Rough cuts tend to run
long; that of Apocalypse Now ran seven and a half hours. From the rough cut the editor, in consultation with the director, builds toward a ne cut or nal cut. The unused shots constitute the outtakes. While the nal cut is being prepared, a second
unit may be shooting inserts, footage to ll in at certain places. These are typically
Some Terms and Roles in Film Production

The rise of packaged productions, pressures from unionized workers, and other factors have led producers to credit
everyone who worked on a lm. Meanwhile, the specialization of large-scale lmmaking has created its own jargon. Some of the most colorful terms (gaffer, best boy) are
explained in the text. Here are some other terms that you
may see in a lms credits.
ACE: After the name of the editor; abbreviation for the
American Cinema Editors, a professional association.
ASC: After the name of the director of photography;
abbreviation for the American Society of Cinematographers, a professional association. The British equivalent is the BSC.
Additional photography: A crew shooting footage
apart from the principal photography supervised by
the director of photography.
Casting director: Searches for and auditions performers for the lm. Will suggest actors for leading roles
(principal characters) as well as character parts (fairly
standardized or stereotyped roles).
Clapper boy: Crew member who operates the
clapboard that identies each take.
Dialogue editor: Sound editor specializing in making
sure recorded speech is audible.
Dolly grip: Crew member who pushes the dolly that
carries the camera, either from one setup to another or
during a take for moving camera shots.
Foley artist: A sound-effects specialist who creates
sounds of body movement by walking or by moving
materials across large trays of different substances
(sand, earth, glass, and so on). Named for Jack Foley,
a pioneer in postproduction sound.
Greenery man: Crew member who chooses and maintains trees, shrubs, and grass in settings.
Lead man: Member of set crew responsible for tracking down various props and items of decor for the set.
Loader: Member of photography unit who loads and

unloads camera magazines, as well as logging the
shots taken and sending the lm to the laboratory.
Matte artist: Member of special-effects unit who
paints backdrops that are then photographically incorporated into a shot in order to suggest a particular
setting.
Model-maker: (1) Member of production design unit
who prepares architectural models for sets to be built.
(2) Member of the special-effects unit who fabricates
scale models of locales, vehicles, or characters to be
lmed as substitutes for full-size ones.
Optical effects: Laboratory workers responsible for
such effects as fades and dissolves.
Property master: Member of set crew who supervises
the use of all props, or movable objects in the lm.
Publicist, Unit publicist: Member of producers crew
who creates and distributes promotional material regarding the production. The publicist may arrange for press
and television interviews with the director and stars and
for coverage of the production in the mass media.
Scenic artist: Member of set crew responsible for
painting surfaces of set.
Still photographer: Member of crew who takes photographs of scenes and behind-the-scenes shots of cast
members and others. These photographs may be used
to check lighting or set design or color, and many will
be used in promoting and publicizing the lm.
Timer, Color timer: Laboratory worker who inspects
the negative lm and who adjusts the printer light
to achieve consistency of color across the nished
product.
Video assist: The use of a video camera mounted
alongside the motion-picture camera to check lighting,
framing, or performances. In this way, the director and
the cinematographer can try out a shot or scene on
tape before committing it to lm.
31
32
CHAPTER ONE
[ADR for Apocalypse Now] was

tremendously wearing on the actors
because the entire lm is looped,
and of course all of the sound for
everything had to be redone. So the
actors were locked in a room for
days and days on end shouting.
Either theyre shouting over the
noise of the helicopter, or theyre
shouting over the noise of the boat.
Walter Murch, sound designer
long shots of cities or airports or close-ups of objects. At this point titles will be prepared and further laboratory work or special-effects work may be done.
Until the mid-1980s, editors cut and spliced the work print, footage printed
from the camera negative. In trying out their options, editors were obliged to rearrange the shots physically. Now virtually all commercial lms are edited electronically. The dailies are transferred to videotape, then to a hard drive. The editor
enters notes on each take directly into a computer database. Such electronic editing
systems, usually known as nonlinear systems, permit random access to the entire
store of footage. The editor can call up any shot, paste it alongside any other shots,
trim it, or junk it. Some systems allow special effects and music to be tried out as
well. Although nonlinear systems have greatly speeded up the process of cutting,
the editor usually asks for a work print of key scenes in order to check for color,
details, and pacing.
Once the shots are arranged in something approaching nal form, the sound
editor takes charge of building up the sound track. The director, the composer, the
picture editor, and the sound editor view the lm and agree on where music and effects will be placed, a process known as spotting. The sound editor may have a
staff whose members specialize in mixing dialogue, music, or sound effects.
Surprisingly little of the sound recorded during lming winds up in the nished movie. Often half or more of the dialogue is rerecorded in postproduction,
using a process known as automated dialogue replacement (ADR, for short). ADR
usually yields better quality than location sound. With the on-set recording serving
as a guide track, the sound editor records actors in the studio speaking their lines
(called dubbing or looping). Nonsynchronized dialogue such as the babble of a
crowd (known in Hollywood as walla) will be added by ADR as well.
Similarly, very few of the noises we hear in a lm were recorded during lming. A sound editor adds sound effects, drawing on the library of stock sounds or
creating particular effects for this lm. Sound editors routinely manufacture footsteps, cars crashing, pistol shots, a st thudding into esh (often produced by
whacking a watermelon with an axe). In Terminator 2 the sound of the T-1000 cyborg passing through cell bars is that of dog food sliding slowly out of a can.
Sound-effects technicians have sensitive hearing. One veteran notes the differences
among doors: The bathroom door has a little air as opposed to the closet door.
The front door has to sound solid; you have to hear the latch sound. . . . Dont just
put in any door, make sure its right.
Like picture editing, sound editing relies on computer technology. The editor
can store recorded sounds in a database, classifying and rearranging them in any
way desired. A sounds qualities can be modied digitallyclipping off high or
low frequencies, changing pitch, reverberation, equalization, or speed. The boom
and throb of underwater action in The Hunt for Red October were slowed down
and reprocessed from such mundane sources as a diver plunging into a swimming pool, water bubbling from a garden hose, and the hum of Disneylands airconditioning plant. One technician on the lm calls digital sound editing sound
sculpting.
During the spotting of the sound track the lms composer has entered the assembly phase as well. The composer compiles cue sheets that list exactly where
the music will go and how long it should run. The composer writes the score, although she or he will probably not orchestrate it personally. While the composer
is working, the rough cut will be synchronized with a temp dub, accompaniment
pulled from recorded songs or classical pieces. Musicians record the score with
the aid of a click track, a taped series of metronome beats synchronized with the
nal cut.
Modes of Production
Dialogue, effects, and music are recorded on different magnetic tapes, and
each bit of sound may occupy a separate track. At a nal mixing session, the director, editor, and sound editor put dozens of such separate tracks together into a single
master track. The sound specialist who performs the task is the rerecording mixer.
Often the dialogue track is organized rst, then sound effects are balanced with
that, and nally music is added to create the nal mix. Often there will need to be
equalization, ltering, and other adjustments to the track. Once fully mixed, the
master track is transferred onto sound recording lm, which encodes the magnetic
sound as optical or digital information on 35mm lm.
The lms camera negative, which was used to make the dailies and the work
print, is normally too precious to serve as the source for nal prints. Instead, from
the negative footage the laboratory draws an interpositive, which in turn furnishes
an internegative. This internegative is assembled in accordance with the nal cut,
and it will be the primary source for future prints. Then the master sound track is
synchronized with it. The rst positive print, complete with picture and sound, is
called the answer print. After the director, producer, and cinematographer have approved an answer print, release prints are made for distribution. These are the
copies shown in theaters.
The work of production does not end when the nal theatrical version has been
assembled. In consultation with the producer and director, the postproduction staffs
prepare airline and broadcast television versions. In some cases, different versions
may be prepared for different countries. Scenes in Sergio Leones Once upon a
Time in America were completely rearranged for its American release. European
prints of Stanley Kubricks Eyes Wide Shut featured more nudity than American
ones, in which some naked couples were blocked by digital gures added to the
foreground. Once the various versions are decided upon, each is copied to a master
videotape, the source of future versions. This video transfer process often demands
new judgments about color quality and sound balance.
Many ctional lms have been made about the process of lm production.
Federico Fellinis 812 concerns itself with the preproduction stage of a lm that is
abandoned before shooting starts. Franois Truffauts Day for Night takes place
during the shooting phase of a project interrupted by the death of a cast member.
The action of Brian De Palmas Blow Out occurs while a low-budget thriller is in
sound editing. Singin in the Rain follows a single lm through the entire process,
with a gigantic publicity billboard lling the nal shot.
MODES OF PRODUCTION
Large-Scale Production
The ne-grained division of labor weve been describing is characteristic of studio
lmmaking. A studio is a company in the business of manufacturing lms. The
most famous studios ourished in Hollywood between the 1920s and the 1960s
Paramount, Warner Bros., Columbia, and so on. These companies owned equipment and extensive physical plants, and they retained most of their workers on
long-term contracts (1.38, p. 36). Each studios central management planned all
projects, then delegated authority to individual supervisors, who in turn assembled
casts and crews from the studios pool of workers. Organized as efcient businesses,
the studios created a tradition of carefully tracking the entire process through paper
records. At the start there were versions of the script; during shooting, reports were
33
Making Movies in the Digital Era

ver the past 20 years, all phases of lm production have
O
been changed by computer technology. There is software to help draft screenplays, prepare budgets and schedules, draw storyboards, prepare set designs, test makeup,
and diagram camera placement. Composers can prepare
rst drafts of scores directly on digital synthesizers and
send the results to the director for fast synchronization with
edited sequences. Cinematographers can previsualize complicated camera movements in virtual sets. Filmmakers
speak of the digital backlot, software programs that can
put performers into articially composed settings that automatically change the angle of sunlight or the texture of rain
or fog. For the nal storm in The Truman Show, shots of the
heros sailboat in a studio tank were blended with a vast
seascape created digitally.
The arrival of digital, or nonlinear, editing has drastically changed the assembly process. Databases enable editors to keep track of every take and bit of sound. In the days
when editors cut directly on lm, they had to splice and resplice the footage if they wanted to try out different
arrangements. Now, with all takes stored on the hard drive,
shots can be rearranged in seconds. Neil Travis, editor of
Patriot Games, prepared the sequence in which Jack Ryan
1.36
34
watches in horror as a satellite transmits infrared images of

a commando raid on a terrorist camp. With the aid of digital editing, Travis began trimming two frames off every
shot, again and again, until he pared the shots down to mere
ashes. To do all this by hand would have been discouragingly slow, because Travis would have had to order many
reprints of the shots and to keep track of dozens of bits of
lm. Now that fast cutting is easy, the pace of movie editing has picked up. In Armageddon, which has nearly 4000
shots, the average shot lasts only 2.3 seconds.
Other phases of postproduction have been transformed
by computer-generated imagery (CGI). By transferring
photographed lm to a digital format, it is now easy to
delete distracting background elements, to clone a character (as in Multiplicity), or to build crowds out of only a few
spectators (in several scenes of Forrest Gump). Flying characters are lmed suspended from cables, which are then
digitally erased. Digital compositing can construct virtual
characters like Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace and
create wounded soldiers, as in Saving Private Ryans
Omaha beach assault.
The natural home for CGI is fantasy and science ction.
For The Matrix, still photographs were digitized to create
For The Matrix a ring of still cameras captured all aspects of gures in ight . . .
virtual sets seen in smoothly changing three-dimensional

perspectives, as if lmed by a moving camera. Software
added lens distortions, color shifts, light are, and even lm
grain. Directors Larry and Andy Wachowski wanted midair
combats in which the camera could glide rapidly around
gunmen who are frozen in place or oating in slow motion.
The effect was achieved through surrounding the wiresuspended actors with 120 still cameras and feeding the sep-
1.37
arate images to a high-speed computers motion-capture

system. The lmmakers had already previsualized the ghters movements on computer and were able to provide the
system with information about every twist and leap. The
software then created synthetic in-between images based on
the frames on either side, so that the shot could vary the
speed of the action at will. The result was larger-than-life
movement in a virtual world (1.36, 1.37).
. . . permitting the nal shot to move around characters hovering in space.
35
36
CHAPTER ONE
1.38 In a World War IIera publicity photo, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, front row
center, shows off his stable of contract stars.
written about camera footage, sound recording, special-effects work, and laboratory results; in the assembly phase there were logs of shots catalogued in editing
and a variety of cue sheets for music, mixing, looping, and title layout. This sort of
record keeping has remained a part of large-scale lmmaking, though now it is
done for the most part on computer.
Although studio production might seem to resemble a factorys assembly line,
it was always more creative, collaborative, and chaotic than turning out cars or TV
sets. Each lm is a unique product, not a replica of a basic design. In studio lmmaking, skilled specialists collaborated to create such a product while still adhering to a blueprint prepared by management.
The centralized studio production system has virtually disappeared. The giants
of Hollywoods golden age have become distribution companies, although they
often initiate, fund, and oversee the making of the lms they distribute. The old
studios had stars and staff under long-term contracts, so the same group of people
might work together on lm after lm. Now each lm is planned as a distinct package, with director, actors, staff, and technicians brought together for this project
alone. The studio may provide its own soundstages, sets, and ofces for the project, but in most cases the producer arranges with outside rms to supply cameras,
catering, locations, special effects, and everything else required.
Still, the detailed production stages remain similar to what they were in the
heyday of studio production. In fact, lmmaking has become vastly more complicated in recent years, largely because of the expansion of production budgets and
the growth of computer-based special effects. Titanic listed over 1,400 names in its
nal credits.
Modes of Production
No division of labor can prevent all problems. Every large-scale production is
plagued by compromises, accidents, and foul-ups. Weather may throw the shooting
off schedule. Disagreements may result in the ring of a producer or a cinematographer. Last-minute script changes or poor reactions in a test screening may require
that some scenes be reshot. Weary lmmakers admit that at any moment the whole
enterprise could run out of control. Every major lm that is released, good or bad,
is remarkable to the extent that it got nished at all, and the precise division of
labor created by the studio tradition is largely responsible.
Exploitation and Independent Production

Not all lms using the division of labor we have outlined are big-budget projects
nanced by major companies. There are also low-budget exploitation products tailored to a particular marketin earlier decades, fringe theatres and drive-ins; now,
videocassette rentals. Troma Films, maker of The Toxic Avenger, is probably the most
famous exploitation company, turning out horror movies and teen sex comedies for
$100,000 or even less. Nonetheless, exploitation lmmakers usually divide the
labor along studio lines. There is the producers role, the directors role, and so on,
and the production tasks are parceled out in ways which roughly conform to massproduction practices. True, in such circumstances people often double up on jobs:
The director might produce the lm and write the script; the picture editor might
cut sound as well.
To take an extreme example, Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi as an exploitation lm for the Spanish-language video market. The 21-year-old director
also functioned as producer, scriptwriter, cinematographer, camera operator, still
photographer, and sound recordist and mixer. Rodriguezs friend Carlos Gallardo
starred, coproduced, and coscripted; he also served as unit production manager and
grip. Gallardos mother fed the cast and crew. El Mariachi wound up costing only
about $7000.
Unlike El Mariachi, most exploitation lms dont enter the theatrical market,
but other low-budget productions, loosely known as independent lms, do. Independent lms are made for the theatrical market but without major distributor nancing. Sometimes the independent lmmaker is a well-known director, such as
Jane Campion, David Cronenberg, or Alan Rudolph, who prefers to work with budgets signicantly below the industry norm. The lower scale of investment allows
the lmmaker more freedom in choosing stories and performers. The director usually initiates the project and partners with a producer to get it realized. Financing
often comes from European television rms, with major U.S. distributors buying
the rights if the project seems to have good prospects. For example, David Lynchs
low-budget The Straight Story was nanced by French and British television before it was bought for distribution by Disney.
As we would expect, these industry-based independents organize production
in ways very close to the full-edged studio mode. Nonetheless, because these
projects require less nancing, the directors can demand more control over the production process. Woody Allen, for instance, is allowed by his contract to rewrite and
reshoot extensive portions of his lm after he has assembled an initial rough cut.
The category of independent production is a roomy one, and it also includes
more modest projects by less well known lmmakers. Examples would be Edward
Burnss The Brothers McMullen and Victor Nuezs Ulees Gold. Even though
their budgets are much smaller than for most commercial lms, independent productions face many obstacles (1.39). Filmmakers may have to nance the project
Deep down inside, everybody in

the United States has a desperate
need to believe that some day, if
the breaks fall their way, they can
quit their jobs as claims adjusters,
legal secretaries, certied public
accountants, or mobsters, and go
out and make their own low-budget
movie. Otherwise, the future is just
too bleak.
Joe Queenan, critic and independent
lmmaker
37
38
CHAPTER ONE
1.39 In making Just Another Girl on the

IRT, independent director Leslie Harris
used locations and available lighting in
order to shoot quickly; she nished lming
in just 17 days.
1.40 In The Riddle of Lumen, Brakhage

turns shadows and everyday objects into
vivid distant patterns.
1.41 Meshes of the Afternoon: Multiple

versions of the protagonist played by the
lmmaker, Maya Deren.
themselves, with the help of relatives and friendly investors; they must also nd a
distributor specializing in independent and low-budget lms. But many lmmakers
believe the advantages of independence outweigh the drawbacks. Independent production can treat subjects that large-scale studio production ignores. No lm studios would have supported Jim Jarmuschs Stranger than Paradise or Kevin
Smiths Clerks. Because the independent lm does not need as large an audience to
repay its costs, it can be more personal and controversial. And the production
process, no matter how low-budget, still relies on the basic roles and phases established in the studio tradition.
Small-Scale Production
In large-scale and independent production, many people work on the lm, each
one a specialist in a particular task. But it is also possible for one person to do
everything: plan the lm, nance it, perform in it, run the camera, record the sound,
and put it all together. Such lms are seldom seen in commercial theatres, but they
are central to experimental and documentary traditions.
Consider Stan Brakhage, whose lms are among the most directly personal
ever made. Some, like Window Water Baby Moving, are lyrical studies of his home
and family (1.40). Others, such as Dog Star Man, are mythic treatments of nature;
still others, such as 23rd Psalm Branch, are quasi-documentary studies of war and
death. Funded by grants and his personal nances, Brakhage prepares, shoots, and
edits his lms virtually unaided. While he was working in a lm laboratory, he also
developed and printed his footage. With over 150 lms to his credit, Brakhage has
proved that the individual lmmaker can become an artisan, executing all the basic
production tasks.
The 16mm and digital video formats are customary for small-scale production.
Financial backing often comes from the lmmaker, from grants, and perhaps obliging friends and relatives. There is very little division of labor: The lmmaker oversees every production task and will perform many of them. Although technicians
or performers may help out, the creative decisions rest with the lmmaker. Experimentalist Maya Derens Meshes of the Afternoon, was shot by her husband, Alexander Hammid, but she scripted, directed, and edited it and performed in the central
role (1.41).
Such small-scale production is also common in documentary lmmaking. Jean
Rouch, a French anthropologist, has made several lms alone or with a small crew
in his efforts to record the lives of marginal people living in alien cultures. Rouch
wrote, directed, and photographed Les Matres fous (1955), his rst widely seen
lm. Here he examined the ceremonies of a Ghanaian cult whose members lived a
double life: Most of the time they worked as low-paid laborers, but in their rituals
they passed into a frenzied trance and assumed the identies of their colonial rulers.
Similarly, Barbara Koppel devoted four years to making Harlan County,
U.S.A., a record of Kentucky coal miners struggles for union representation. After
eventually obtaining funding from foundations, she and a very small crew spent
thirteen months living with miners during the workers strike. During lming Koppel acted as sound recordist, working with cameraman Hart Perry and sometimes
also a lighting person. A large crew was ruled out not only by Koppels budget but
also by the need to t naturally into the community. Like the miners, the lmmakers were constantly threatened with violence from strikebreakers (1.42).
Sometimes small-scale production becomes collective production. Here instead of a single lmmaker shaping the project, several lm workers participate
Modes of Production
equally. The group shares common goals and makes production decisions democratically. Roles may also be rotated: The sound recordist one day may serve as
cinematographer on the next.
Not surprisingly, the political movements of the late 1960s fostered many efforts toward collective lm production. In the United States, the Newsreel group
was founded in 1967 as an effort to document the student protest movement. Newsreel attempted to create not only a collective production situation, with a central
coordinating committee answerable to the complete membership, but also a community distribution network that would make Newsreel lms available for local activists around the country. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the collective
produced dozens of works, including Finally Got the News and The Womans Film.
After the mid-1970s, Newsreel moved somewhat away from purely collective production, but it retained certain policies characteristic of the collective mode, such
as equal pay for all participants in a lm. Members of Newsreel such as Robert
Kramer, Barbara Koppel, and Christine Choy have gone on to work independently.
A more recent instance of collective production is the Canadian lm Atanarjuat:
The Fast Runner. Three Inuits (Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirq, Paul Qulitalik)
and one New Yorker (Norman Cohn) formed Igloolik Isuma Productions in 1990.
After making several video shorts and a television series, the group composed a
screenplay based on an oral tale about love, murder, and revenge. With funding from
television and the National Film Board, cast and crew spent six months shooting in
the Arctic, camping in tents and eating seal meat. We dont have a hierarchy, Cohn
explained. Theres no director, second, third or fourth assistant director. We have a
team of people trying to gure out how to make this work. Because of the communal
nature of Inuit life, the Igloolik team expanded the collective effort by bringing local
people into the project. Some had to relearn traditional skills for making tools and
clothes from bone, stone, and animal skins. The Inuit process is very horizontal. We
made our lm in an Inuit way, through consensus and collaboration. Showcasing the
strengths of professional digital Beta video (1.43), Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner won
the prize for best rst lm at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. That, said Cohn, convinced people that a bunch of Eskimos from the end of the world could be sophisticated enough to make a movie.
Small-scale production allows the lmmakers to retain tight control of the
project. Now that video, particularly the digital format, is easily transferred to lm,
small-scale production will probably become more visible. The Cruise, The Blair
Witch Project, The War Room, Startup.com, Tape, The Gleaners and I, and other
1.43 The hero of

Atanarjuat: The Fast
Runner pauses in his
ight across the ice.
39
1.42 Harlan County, U.S.A.: The driver

of a passing truck res at the crew.
40
CHAPTER ONE

recent releases indicate that the theatrical market has room for works made by
single lmmakers or tiny production units.
Implications of Different Modes of Production

We often categorize lms on the basis of how they were made. For example, we
often distinguish a documentary lm from a ction lm on the basis of production
phases. Usually the documentary lmmaker controls only certain variables of
preparation, shooting, and assembly. Some variables (such as script, rehearsal)
may be omitted, whereas others (such as setting, lighting, behavior of the gures)
are present but often uncontrolled. In interviewing an eyewitness to an event, the
lmmaker typically controls camera work and editing, but does not tell the witness
what to say or how to act. For example, there was no script for the documentary
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media; lmmakers Mark Achbar
and Peter Wintonick instead shot long interviews in which Chomsky explained his
ideas. The ction lm, on the other hand, is characterized by much more control
over script and other aspects of the preparation and shooting phases.
Similarly, a compilation lm assembles images and sounds that provide historical evidence on a topic. The compilation lmmaker may skip the shooting stage
and create a story from archive footage, as in the television series The World at War
and Biography. David Wolpers biography of John Lennon, Imagine, was one of
the rare compilation lms to be released theatrically.
One more kind of lm is distinguished by the way its produced: the animated
lm, which is created frame by frame. Either images are drawn on the lm strip itself,
or, more often, the camera photographs a series of drawings or three-dimensional
models. In either case animation is characterized by unusual production work at
the shooting stage.
Production and Authorship
There is another implication of the way movies get

made. Who, it is often asked, is the author, the person responsible for the lm? In
individual production the author must be the solitary lmmakerStan Brakhage,
Louis Lumire, yourself. Collective lm production creates collective authorship:
The author is the entire group. The question of authorship becomes difcult to answer only when asked about large-scale production, particularly in the studio mode.
Studio lm production assigns tasks to so many individuals that it is often difcult to determine who controls or decides what. Is the producer the author? In the
prime years of the Hollywood system, the producer might have had nothing to do
with shooting. The writer? The writers script might be completely transformed in
shooting and editing. So is this situation like collective production, with group authorship? No, because there is a hierarchy in which a few main players make the
key decisions.
Moreover, if we consider not only control and decision making but also individual style, it seems certain that some studio workers leave recognizable and
unique traces on the lms they make. Cinematographers such as Gregg Toland, set
designers such as Hermann Warm, costumers such as Edith Head, choreographers
such as Gene Kellythe contributions of these people stand out within the lms
they made. So where does the studio-produced lm leave the idea of authorship?
Most people who study cinema regard the director as the lms author. Although the writer prepares a screenplay, later phases of production can modify it
beyond recognition. And although the producer monitors the entire process, he or
she seldom controls moment-by-moment activity on the set. It is the director who
makes the crucial decisions about performance, staging, lighting, framing, cutting,
Notes and Queries
41
and sound. On the whole, the director usually has most control over how a movie
looks and sounds.
This doesnt mean that the director is an expert at every job or dictates every
detail. The director can delegate tasks to trusted personnel, and directors often
work habitually with certain actors, cinematographers, composers, and editors. In
the days of studio moviemaking, directors learned how to blend the distinctive talents of cast and crew into the overall movie. Humphrey Bogarts unique talents
were used very differently by Michael Curtiz in Casablanca, John Huston in The
Maltese Falcon, and Howard Hawks in The Big Sleep. Gregg Tolands cinematography was pushed in different directions by Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) and
William Wyler (The Best Years of Our Lives).
Today, well-established directors can control large-scale production to a remarkable degree. Steven Spielberg and Ethan and Joel Coen can insist on editing
manually, not digitally. Both Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese dislike ADR and
use much of the on-set dialogue in the nished lm. In the days of Hollywoods
studio system, some directors exercised power more indirectly. Most studios did
not permit the director to supervise editing, but John Ford would often make only
one take of each shot. Precutting the lm in his head, Ford virtually forced the
editor to put the shots together as he had planned.
Around the world, the director is generally recognized as the key player. In
Europe, Asia, and South America, directors frequently initiate the lm and work
closely with scriptwriters. In Hollywood, directors usually operate on a freelance
basis, and the top ones select their own projects. If a production runs into trouble,
the production company will seldom re the director; more often, the producer will
get the blame. For the most part, it is the director who shapes the lms unique
form and style, and these two components are central to cinema as an art.
NOTES AND QUERIES

The Illusion of Movement
A useful introduction to visual perception is Donald D.
Hoffman, Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See
(New York: Norton, 1998). A technical treatment of the illusion of movement in lm is offered in Julian E. Hochberg,
Representation of Motion and Space in Video and Cinematic Displays, in Kenneth R. Boff, Lloyd Kaufman, and
James P. Thomas, eds., Handbook of Perception and
Human Performance, vol. 1, Sensory Processes and Perception (New York: Wiley, 1986), chap. 22. Stuart Liebman uses the perceptual mechanisms of illusion to analyze
an experimental lm in Apparent Motion and Film Structure: Paul Sharits Shutter Interface, Millennium Film
Journal 1, 2 (SpringSummer 1978): 101109.
The Technical Basis of Cinema

Andr Bazin suggests that humankind dreamed of cinema
long before it actually appeared: The concept men had of
it existed so to speak fully armed in their minds, as if in
some platonic heaven [What Is Cinema? vol. 1 (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1967), p. 17]. Still, whatever its antecedents in Greece and the Renaissance, the cinema became technically feasible only in the 19th century.
Motion pictures depended on many discoveries in various
scientic and industrial elds: optics and lens making, the control of light (especially by means of arc lamps), chemistry
(involving particularly the production of cellulose), steel production, precision machining, and other areas. The cinema machine is closely related to other machines of the period. For
example, engineers in the 19th century designed machines that
could intermittently unwind, advance, perforate, advance
again, and wind up a strip of material at a constant rate. The
drive apparatus on cameras and projectors is a late development of a technology that had already made feasible the
sewing machine, the telegraph tape, and the machine gun. The
19-century origins of lm, based on mechanical and chemical
processes, are particularly evident today, since weve become
accustomed to electronic and digital media.
On the history of lm technology, see Barry Salts
Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis (London:
42
CHAPTER ONE
Starword, 1983); David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and

Kristin Thompsons The Classical Hollywood Cinema:
Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1985), parts 4 and 6; many essays in Elisabeth Weis and John Belton, eds., Film Sound:
Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1985); and Michael Allens From Bwana Devil to
Batman Forever: Technology in Contemporary Hollywood
Cinema, in Steve Neale and Murray Smith, eds., Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London: Routledge, 1998),
pp. 109129. Primary sources of technological information are included in Raymond Fielding, ed., A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1967). Douglas Gomery
has pioneered the economic history of lm technology: For
a survey, see Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery, Film
History: Theory and Practice (New York: Knopf, 1985).
The most comprehensive reference book on the subject is
Ira Konigsberg, The Complete Film Dictionary (New York:
Penguin, 1997). An entertaining appreciation of lm technology is Nicholson Bakers The Projector, in his The
Size of Thoughts (New York: Vintage, 1994), pp. 3650.
Film Distribution and Exhibition

For comprehensive surveys of the major content providers
today, see Benjamin M. Compaine and Douglas Gomery,
Who Owns the Media? Competition and Concentration in
the Mass Media Industry (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 2000);
Barry R. Litman, The Motion Picture Mega-Industry
(Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1998); and Edward S. Herman and
Robert W. McChesney, The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Global Capitalism (London: Cassell, 1997).
Tiiu Lukk examines how Pulp Fiction, Hoop Dreams, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and other lms were distributed in
Movie Marketing: Opening the Picture and Giving It Legs
(Beverly Hills, Calif.: Silman-James, 1997). Douglas Gomerys
The Hollywood Studio System (London: Macmillan, 1985)
traces the history of todays major distribution companies,
showing their roots in vertically integrated studios, which
controlled both production and exhibition.
On moviegoing see Bruce A. Austins Immediate Seating: A Look at Movie Audiences (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth,
1988). Douglas Gomerys Shared Pleasures: A History of
Moviegoing in America (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1992) offers a history of U.S. exhibition.
Stages of Film Production

Several how-to-do-it books discuss basic stages and roles
of lm production. Especially good are Kris Malkiewicz,
Cinematography, 2d ed. (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1989);

Steven Ascher and Edward Pincus, The Filmmakers Handbook (New York: Plume, 1999); and Ken Dancyger, The
World of Film and Video Production: Aesthetics and Practices (New York: Harcourt College, 1999).
There are many informative discussions of the studio
mode of production in the United States. See Alexander
Brouwer and Thomas Lee Wright, Working in Hollywood:
64 Film Professionals Talk about Moviemaking (New York:
Crown, 1990); Eric Taub, Gaffers, Grips, and Best Boys
(New York: St. Martins, 1987); Paul N. Lazarus III, Working in Film: The Marketplace in the 90s (New York:
St. Martins, 1993); and John Morgan Wilson, Inside Hollywood: A Writers Guide to Researching the World of Movies
and TV (Cincinnati: Writers Digest, 1998). More detailed
accounts can be found in Jason E. Squires The Movie Business Book, 2d ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). A
useful reference work is Harvey Rachlins TV and Movie
Business: An Encyclopedia of Careers, Technologies and
Practices (New York: Crown, 1991).
Entire books are devoted to particular jobs and phases
of production. The Focal Press publishes manuals for various specialties, including Pat P. Miller, Script Supervising
and Film Continuity (1986); Marvin M. Kerner, The Art of
the Sound Effects Editor (1989); and Dominic Case, Motion Picture Film Processing (1985). For the producer,
see Paul N. Lazarus III, The Film Producer (New York:
St. Martins, 1991) and Lynda Obsts acerbic memoir, Hello,
He Lied (New York: Broadway, 1996). Art Linson, producer
of The Untouchables and Fight Club, has written two entertaining books about his role: A Pound of Flesh: Perilous
Tales of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood (New York:
Grove, 1993) and What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood
Tales from the Front Line (New York: Bloomsbury, 2002).
The details of organizing preparation and shooting are explained in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Wards The Film Directors Team: A Practical Guide for Production Managers,
Assistant Directors, and All Filmmakers (Los Angeles:
Silman-James, 1992). Many making-of books include
examples of storyboards; see also Steven D. Katz, Film
Directing Shot by Shot (Studio City, Calif.: Wiese, 1991),
John Hart, The Art of the Storyboard (Boston: Focal Press,
1999) and Mark Simon Storyboards: Motion in Art (Boston:
Focal Press, 2000). On setting and production design, see
Ward Preston, What an Art Director Does (Los Angeles:
Silman-James, 1994). Norman Hollyns The Film Editing
Room Handbook (Los Angeles: Lone Eagle, 1999) offers a
detailed account of image and sound editing procedures.
Newer video- and computer-based methods are discussed
in Steven E. Browne, Nonlinear Editing Basics: Electronic
Film and Video Editing (Boston: Focal Press, 1998). The
Notes and Queries

techniques of special effects receive detailed discussion in
a richly designed magazine, Cinefex.
Several books explain how independent lms are nanced, produced, and sold. The most wide-ranging are
David Rosen and Peter Hamilton, Off-Hollywood: The
Making and Marketing of Independent Films (New York:
Grove Weidenfeld, 1990) and Gregory Goodell, Independent Feature Film Production: A Complete Guide from
Concept through Distribution, 2d ed. (New York: St. Martins, 1998). Billy Frolicks What I Really Want to Do Is Direct (New York: Plume, 1997) follows seven lm-school
graduates trying to make low-budget features. Christine Vachon, producer of Boys Dont Cry and Far from Heaven,
shares her insights in Shooting to Kill (New York: Avon,
1998).
In How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and
Never Lost a Dime (New York: Random House, 1990),
Roger Corman reviews his career in exploitation cinema. A
sample passage: In the rst half of 1957 I capitalized on
the sensational headlines following the Russians launch of
their Sputnik satellite. . . . I shot War of the Satellites in a
little under ten days. No one even knew what the satellite
was supposed to look like. It was whatever I said it should
look like (pp. 44 45). Corman also supplies the introduction to Lloyd Kaufmans All I Needed to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger: The Shocking
True Story of Troma Studios (New York: Berkley, 1998),
which details the making of such Troma classics as The
Class of Nuke Em High and Chopper Chicks in Zombietown. See as well the interviews collected in Philip Gaines
and David J. Rhodes, Micro-Budget Hollywood: Budgeting
(and Making) Feature Films for $50,000 to $500,000 (Los
Angeles: Silman-James, 1995).
John Pierson, a producer, distributor, and festival scout,
traces how Clerks; Shes Gotta Have It; sex, lies, and videotape; and other low-budget lms found success in Spike,
Mike, Slackers, and Dykes (New York: Hyperion, 1995).
Emanuel Levys Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film (New York: New York University
Press, 1999) provides a historical survey. The early history
of an important distributor of independent lms, Miramax,
is examined in Alissa Perren, sex, lies and marketing:
Miramax and the Development of the Quality Indie Blockbuster, Film Quarterly 55 2 (Winter 20012002): 3039.
We can learn a great deal about production from careful case studies. See Rudy Behlmer, Americas Favorite
Movies: Behind the Scenes (New York: Ungar, 1982); Aljean Harmetz, The Making of The Wizard of Oz (New
York: Limelight, 1984); John Sayles, Thinking in Pictures:
The Making of the Movie Matewan (Boston: Houghton
Mifin, 1987); Ronald Haver, A Star Is Born: The Mak-
43
ing of the 1954 Movie and Its 1985 Restoration (New York:
Knopf, 1988); Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the
Making of Psycho (New York: Dembuer, 1990); Paul M.
Sammon, Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner
(New York: HarperPrism, 1996); and Dan Auiler, Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic (New York:
St. Martins, 1998). John Gregory Dunnes Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (New York: Vintage, 1997) is a memoir of eight years spent rewriting the script that became Up
Close and Personal. Many of Spike Lees productions have
been documented with published journals and production
notes; see, for example, Do The Right Thing: A Spike Lee
Joint (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989). For the independent scene, Vachons Shooting to Kill, mentioned above,
documents the making of Todd Hayness Velvet Goldmine.
Directors Speak
Collections of interviews with lmmakers have become
common in recent decades. We will mention interviews
with designers, cinematographers, editors, sound technicians, and others in the chapters on individual lm techniques. The director, however, supervises the entire process
of lmmaking, so we list here some of the best interview
books: Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It (New
York: Knopf, 1997); Mike Goodrich, Directing (CransPrs-Cligny, 2002); Jeremy Kagan, Directors Close Up
(Boston: Focal Press, 2000); Andrew Sarris, ed., Interviews
with Film Directors (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967);
Eric Sherman, Directing the Film: Film Directors on Their
Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976); Laurent Tirard, Moviemakers Master Class: Private Lessons from the Worlds
Foremost Directors (New York: Faber and Faber, 2002).
Since 1992, Faber and Faber (London) has published an annual collection of interviews called Projections. Two important Hollywood directors have written books on their
craft: Edward Dmytryks On Screen Directing (Boston:
Focal Press, 1984) and Sidney Lumets Making Movies
(New York: Knopf, 1995).
Screenwriting and Rules

In mass-production lmmaking the screenwriter is expected to follow traditional storytelling patterns. For several decades, Hollywood has called for scripts about strong
central characters who struggle to achieve well-dened
goals. According to most experts, a script ought to have a
three-act structure, with the rst-act climax coming about a
quarter of the way into the lm, the second-act climax appearing about three-quarters of the way through, and the
climax of the nal act resolving the protagonists problem.
44
CHAPTER ONE
Writers will also be expected to include plot points, twists

that turn the action in new directions.
These formulas are discussed in Syd Field, Screenplay:
The Foundations of Screenwriting (New York: Delta, 1979);
Linda Seger, Making a Good Script Great (New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1987); and Michael Hauge, Writing Screenplays That Sell (New York: HarperCollins, 1988). Kristin
Thompson has argued that many nished lms have not
three but four major parts, depending on how the protagonist denes and changes important goals. See her Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical
Narrative Technique (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). Older but still useful books on screenwriting are Eugene Vale, The Technique of Screenplay
Writing (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1972) and Lewis
Herman, A Practical Manual of Screen Playwriting for
Theater and Television Films (New York: New American
Library, 1974). Pat McGilligan has collected reminiscences of screenwriters in a series of interview books
called Backstory, from the University of California Press.
A historical overview is Tom Stempel, FrameWork: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film (New York:
Continuum, 1988).
Small-Scale Production
There are few studies of artisanal and collective lm production, but here are some informative works. On Jean Rouch,
see Mick Eaton, ed., AnthropologyRealityCinema: The
Films of Jean Rouch (London: British Film Institute, 1979).
The makers of Harlan County, U.S.A. and other independent documentaries discuss their production methods in
Alan Rosenthal, The Documentary Conscience: A Casebook in Film Making (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1980). Maya Derens work is analyzed in P. Adams
Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943
1978, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
Stan Brakhage ruminates on his approach to lmmaking in
Brakhage Scrapbook: Collected Writings (New Paltz, N.Y.:
Documentext, 1982). For information on other experimentalists, see Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema: Interviews
with Independent Filmmakers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) and David E. James, Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1989).
Collective lm production is the subject of Bill
Nichols, Newsreel: Documentary Filmmaking on the American Left (New York: Arno, 1980) and Michael Renov,
Newsreel: Old and NewTowards an Historical Prole,
Film Quarterly 41 1 (Fall 1987): 2033. Collective production in lm and other media is discussed in John Downing,
Radical Media: The Political Experience of Alternative Communication (Boston: South End Press, 1984).
Production Stills versus Frame Enlargements

A lm may live in our memory as much through photographs as through our experiences of the movie. The photograph may be a copy of a single frame taken from the
nished lm; this is usually called a frame enlargement.
Most movie photographs we see in books and magazines,
however, are production stills, images shot by a still photographer on the set.
Production stills are usually photographically clearer
than frame enlargements, and they can be useful for studying details of setting or costume. But they differ from the
image on the lm strip. Usually the still photographer rearranges and relights the actors and takes the shot from an
angle and distance not comparable to that shown in the nished lm. Frame enlargements therefore offer a much
more faithful record of the nished lm.
For example, both 1.44 and 1.45 have been used to illustrate discussion of Jean Renoirs Rules of the Game. In
1.44, a production still, the actors have been posed for the
most balanced composition and the clearest view of all
three. It is not, however, faithful to the nished lm. The
1.44 A production still from Renoirs

The Rules of the Game.
1.45
A frame from The Rules of the Game.
Notes and Queries

actual shot from the lm is shown in 1.45. The frame enlargement shows that the composition is looser than that of
the production still. The frame enlargement also reveals that
Renoir uses the central doorway to suggest action taking
place in depth. Here, as often happens, a production still does
not capture important features of the directors visual style.
Virtually all of the photographs in this book are frame
enlargements.
Film and Video

Detailed comparisons of lm and digital video as media can
be found in Scott Billups, Digital Moviemaking: The Filmmakers Guide to the 21st Century (Studio City, Calif.: Wiese,
2000); Maxie D. Collier, The ilm Digital Video Filmmakers
Handbook, ed. Scott Smith (Hollywood: Lone Eagle, 2001);
Ben Long and Sonja Schenk, The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, 2nd ed. (Hingham, Mass.: Charles River Media, 2002);
and Drew Campbell, Technical Film and TV for Nontechnical
People (NewYork: Allworth, 2002). Three contemporary
lmmakers discuss the relation of cinema to video in Roger
Ebert and Gene Siskel, The Future of the Movies: Interviews
with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas
(Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews and McMeel, 1991).
45
On using video to help plan shots during production,

the Polish director Andrzej Wajda remarks, For a director
who has grown up with and been formed by lm, video is a
technique that offers no resistance. The lighting is always
sufcient, the camera movement incredibly light and
faciletoo facileand what is more, if you dont like what
you just did you can simply erase it and start again from
scratch. . . . This means you work without tension, without
the familiar atmosphere of being on the edge, constantly at
risk. The problem, of course, is that that tension, that sense
of risk, is precisely what characterizes the work in a good
lm [Wajda, Double Vision: My Life in Film, trans. Rose
Medina (New York: Holt, 1989), pp. 4344].
The boundaries between cinema and video have long
been blurred. Steven Spielberg began his career directing
for television and returned years later with Amazing Stories. David Lynch made the series Twin Peaks for network
television, while Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and John
Woo direct commercials and MTV clips. David Fincher
(Se7en), Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor), and Spike Jonze
(Being John Malkovich) began in music video. On the relation between the U.S. lm industry and television, see
Tino Balio, ed., Hollywood in the Age of Television (Boston:
Unwin Hyman, 1990).

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PART ONE

Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

MECHANICS OF THE MOVIES

Mechanics of the Movies

1.1 The Mutoscope, a 19th-century

1.2 The Zoetrope, an earlier device,

The contact printer.

Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

The optical printer.

Mechanics of the Movies

materials. On a black-and-white lm strip the emulsion contains grains of silver

Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

1.8 16mm lm is used for both amateur

1.7 Super 8mm has been a popular gauge

1.9 35mm is the standard theatrical lm

1.10 In this 35mm strip from Jurassic Park,

Mechanics of the Movies

1.11 70mm lm, another theatrical gauge, has often

Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

BRINGING THE FILM TO THE SPECTATOR

GUS VAN SANT : Your lms have

Gus Van Sant, director, interviewing

Theatrical and Nontheatrical Exhibition

Bringing the Film to the Spectator

Distribution: The Center of Power

Film and Video: Crossing Paths

relation between the brightest and the darkest areas of the

1.14 In julien donkey-boy, transferring low-delity video to lm

feature lms, launched by Toy Story (5.80), bypassed the

1.15 The chase through the airways

1.16 Extreme tonal contrast, washed-out

going digital, many exhibitors believe, is that the public might

ing in 35mm have given their footage a rawer quality. Both

Bringing the Film to the Spectator

Selling food is my job. I just

Putting the Pieces Together

1.17 Lethal Weapon: As Murtagh and Riggs leave a hot-dog

Six Major Media Companies and Some of Their Holdings

Columbia Pictures, Twentieth

Six Major Media Companies (continued)

CBS, MTV, VH1,

Simon & Schuster,

Six Flags theme

Selling The Film

Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

Independent Production and Mainstream Hollywood:

duced on a budget of $400,000. Schamus

Bringing the Film to the Spectator

1.18 The prominence of two female

Dragon ultimately grossed over $200 million

May 2002: Vivendi Universal buys Good

Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

The suburban couple in Far from Heaven, already starting to fracture.

This was a Web site that was an

Focus. Focuss first acquisition for distribution

Bringing the Film to the Spectator

Our underlying philosophy is that

Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

Beyond Hollywood: International Distribution and Exhibition The major production

MAKING THE MOVIE: FILM PRODUCTION

Film and Video: Where Did the Picture Go?

1.20 In Otto Premingers Advise and

. . . becomes a pair of shots and . . .