PART ONE

Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

1
Chapter 1

Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

M
otion pictures are so much a part of our lives that it’s hard to imagine a world
without them. Our appetite for film sustains an immense industry. Today every
film that makes its way into a theater is part of a process involving a sophisti-
cated 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 film you’ve 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 fills the theater from
all sides, the screen becomes a bright rectangle filled 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 flashing by is accompanied by bursts of blackness. Al-
though you aren’t aware of it, the screen is completely dark for nearly half the time
you’re watching! Our eyes ignore the gaps and see continuous light. Just as impor-
tant, 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 briefly on our retina. Yet if this were the real cause, we’d see a be-
wildering blur of superimposed stills instead of smooth action. At present, re-
searchers believe that two psychological processes are involved in cinematic
motion: critical flicker fusion and apparent motion.
If you flash a light faster and faster, at a certain point (around 50 flashes per sec-
ond) you will see not a pulsating light but a continuous beam. A film 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 flashes
to the threshold of what is called critical flicker fusion. Early silent films were shot at
a lower rate (often 16 or 20 images per second), and projectors broke the beam only
 Mechanics of the Movies 3

once per image. The picture had a pronounced flicker—hence an early slang term for
movies, “flickers,” which survives today when people call a film a “flick.”
Apparent motion is a second factor in creating cinema’s illusion. If a visual dis-
play 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 sim-
ply by static lights flashing 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 flicker fusion, is a quirk within our visual sys-
tem. To take advantage of these quirks and create the illusion of movement, inven-
tors had to devise certain machines. Some of these go back before the invention of
film (1.1, 1.2). Film as we know it began when the images were imprinted on a
strip of flexible celluloid. 1.1 The Mutoscope, a 19th-century
After your movie is over, imagine that a friendly manager lets you into the entertainment, displayed images by
projection room at the rear of the theater. There you’ll find the movie mounted on flipping a row of cards in front of a
the projector as a ribbon of celluloid. It is very long: The movie that lasted two peephole.
hours takes up over two miles of film. 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 film from one reel,
passes it through the lens mechanism, and winds it up on another reel. The projection
booth you’re visiting has put the entire film 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 film.
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 admit-
ted to the film, advances the strip of film 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 film from a reel (a) past a lens (b) and aperture
(c) to a take-up reel (d). The lens focuses light reflected from a scene onto each
frame of film (e). The mechanism moves the film 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 film is 24 frames per second (fps).

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.

4 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

1.4 The contact printer. 1.5 The optical printer.

After a film has been processed, it runs through a machine similar to the cam-
era, the printer (1.4, 1.5). Printers exist in various designs, but all consist of light-
tight chambers that drive a negative or positive roll of film from a reel (a) past an
aperture (b) to a take-up reel (c). At the same time, a roll of unexposed film (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 film (e´). The two rolls of film may pass through the aperture simultane-
ously. 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 ef-
fects, such as freeze-frames.
The printer is something of a combined camera and projector. Like a projec-
tor, it controls the passage of light through exposed film (the original negative or
positive). Like a camera, it focuses light to form an image (on the unexposed roll
of film).
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 film 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 magnified by the lens for projection on
a screen. Again, a mechanism moves the film intermittently past the aperture, while
a shutter (f) admits light only when each frame is pausing. As we’ve seen, the stan-
dard projection rate for sound film is 24 frames per second, and the shutter blocks
and reveals each frame twice in order to reduce the flicker effect on the screen.
Although the filmmaker can create nonphotographic images on the film strip
by drawing, cutting, or punching holes, etching, or painting, most filmmakers 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 film. Turning it
over, you notice that one side is much shinier than the other. Like film used in still
photography, motion-picture film consists of a transparent acetate base (the shiny
side), which supports an emulsion, layers of gelatin containing light-sensitive
 Mechanics of the Movies 5

1.6 The projector.

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

halide. When light reflecting from a scene strikes them, it triggers a chemical reac-
tion that makes the crystals cluster into tiny specks. Billions of these specks are
formed on each frame of exposed film. Taken together, these specks form a latent
image which corresponds to the areas of light and dark in the scene filmed. Chemi-
cal processing makes the latent image visible as a configuration 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 film emulsion has more layers. Three of these contain chemical dyes,
each one sensitive to a primary color (red, yellow, or blue). Extra layers filter 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 emul-
sion layers. With color negative film, 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 filmmaking uses negative emulsion
so as to allow better control of print quality and larger numbers of positive prints to
be made. Sometimes, however, amateur filmmakers use color reversal film, which
yields a positive image with colors conforming to the original scene.
Looking at the scrap of film 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 perfora-
tions (sprocket holes) and pull the film 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 film
strip, which is called the gauge and is measured in millimeters. The strip you are
holding is a piece of 35mm film, which is the normal commercial gauge, but other
gauges also have been standardized internationally: Super 8mm, 16mm, and 70mm
(1.7–1.11).
Usually image quality increases with the width of the film because the greater
picture area gives the images better definition and detail. All other things being
equal, 35mm provides significantly better picture quality than does 16mm, and
70mm is superior to both. The finest image quality currently available for public
screenings is that offered by the Imax system (1.12).
6 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

The print we see of a film, however, may not be in the gauge of the original.
Most films shown in cinema courses on 16mm were originally shot on 35mm. Dur-
ing the 1950s and 1960s, several films 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 film shot on one gauge is transferred
to another one. A 35mm print of Keaton’s The General will almost certainly be

1.8 16mm film is used for both amateur

and professional film work. A variable-area
optical sound track runs down the right side.

1.10 In this 35mm strip from Jurassic Park,

1.7 Super 8mm has been a popular gauge
for amateurs and experimental filmmakers.
The Year of the Horse, a concert film
featuring Neil Young, was shot entirely
on Super 8.
1.9 35mm is the standard theatrical film
gauge. The sound track, a variable-area one,
runs down the left alongside the images.
note the optical stereophonic sound track,
encoded as two parallel squiggles. The stripe
along the left edge, the Morse code–like
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.
 Mechanics of the Movies 7

1.11 70mm film, another theatrical gauge, has often

been used for historical spectacles and epic action
films. In this strip from The Hunt for Red October, a
stereophonic magnetic sound track runs along both
edges of the film strip.

1.12 The Imax image is printed on 70mm film but runs horizontally along the strip, allowing
each image to be 10 times larger than 35mm and triple the size of 70mm. The Imax film can be
projected on a very large screen with no loss of detail.
8 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition
GUS VAN SANT : Your films have
dominated the museum circuit in
America—Minneapolis, Columbus . . .
DEREK JARMAN: Yes, Minneapolis
in particular. That’s where the films
have actually had their life. They’ve
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 filmmaker
photographically superior to a 16mm print, whereas a film shot on Super 8 will
look fuzzy and grainy if printed and projected in 35mm. Independent filmmakers
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 higher-
fidelity 16mm format, called Super 16, was developed.
You’ve already noticed the sound track running down the film strip you’re ex-
amining. 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 film’s edges.
During projection, the film’s track is “read” by a sound head similar to that on a
tape recorder. Magnetic tracks are rather rare in theaters today.
Your film 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 pro-
duction, electrical impulses from a microphone are translated into pulsations of
light which are photographically inscribed on the moving film strip. When the film
is projected, the optical track produces varying intensities of light that are trans-
lated back into electrical impulses and then into sound waves. The optical sound
track of 16mm film 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 film’s sound track may be monophonic or stereophonic. The 16mm film strip
(1.8) and the first 35mm film 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 film’s perforations, be-
tween the perforations, or close to the very left edge of the frames provides the sound-
track 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 ma-
chines. 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 films
reach an audience, we must return to the theater lobby.
BRINGING THE FILM TO THE SPECTATOR
When you went into the movie theater, you were not thinking of critical fusion fre-
quency or film gauges. You were a customer, participating in a business transac-
tion. Like most businesses, filmmaking involves creating the product, distributing
it, and retailing it. In this business, the three phases are known as production, dis-
tribution, 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 film on television. Commercial
movie houses showing current films constitute theatrical exhibition sites, while all
other presentations, such as home video or screenings in schools, libraries, and
hospitals, are considered nontheatrical. While some films, chiefly experimental
and documentary films, are made for nontheatrical showing, the most visible sector
of movie exhibition remains the first-run theater. Most commercial theaters show
mass-entertainment movies, while others specialize in foreign or independent films.
 Bringing the Film to the Spectator 9

Far more people will see a Hollywood film on video than in its initial release.
Only a small part of the population visits theaters regularly. In the United States,
habitual moviegoers—who make up less than 20 percent of the audience—account
for 66 percent of total ticket sales. You probably watch more films 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 film, television programs publicize it, and people tell
others about it. The theatrical run is the film’s launching pad, determining how
successful it will be in other markets. Theatrical hits may account for as much as
80 percent of a video store’s rentals.
The most heavily patronized theaters belong to chains or circuits, and these
are in turn controlled by relatively few companies. To be efficient businesses, the-
ater chains have tried to standardize exhibition and minimize costs. The multi-
screen 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 film presentation, offering stadium seating and
multichannel sound. Some multiplexes have become entertainment centers, boast-
ing videogame arcades and snacks adjusted to local tastes—popcorn 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 flock to the-
aters during June, July, and August. As we would expect, the summer audience is
dominated by teenagers looking for light entertainment. Blockbuster action films,
horror movies, science-fiction tales, and raunchy comedies are the “tentpole” or
“locomotive” films that distributors hope will pay for the less successful ones.
American distributors tend to save their most prestigious adult-oriented films for
the period from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, because that is when the film indus-
try is considering candidates for its spring Academy Awards.

Distribution: The Center of Power

Exhibitors rent films from distribution companies, and these form the core of eco-
nomic power in the film industry. Distributors link filmmakers to audiences and
supply exhibitors with a reliable stream of material to show. In the United States,
exhibitors bid for each film a distributor releases, and in most states they must be
allowed to see the film before bidding. Elsewhere in the world, distributors may
practice blind booking (forcing exhibitors to rent a film without seeing it) or even
block booking (forcing exhibitors to rent a package of films in order to get a few
desirable items).
The major film distributors—Warner Bros., Paramount, Disney/Buena Vista,
Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, and Universal—provide mainstream entertain-
ment to theater chains around the world. The distributors sponsor trade shows
where exhibitors are treated to screenings of forthcoming releases, usually accom-
panied by splashy parties and chances to meet stars. The films released by the ma-
jors 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 multi-
national corporations devoted to leisure activities. (See Box, pp. 14–15.)
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 film, video is converging
with cinema in several ways.
There is a fundamental difference of materials and
technology. Cinema is a photographic medium. Light re-
flected from the scene creates an image by triggering chemi-
cal changes on the film emulsion. Video, in contrast, translates
light waves into electrical pulses and records those on mag-
netic tape, disk, or hard drive. In analog video, phosphors
in the camera’s tube pick up light from a scene. Digital
video (DV), the dominant production technology and com-
ing to be the preferred consumer format, captures light re-
flected 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-definition
(HD) format, which offers many more lines of resolution than
conventional U.S. or European video. It replaces interlaced ar-
rays (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 motion-
picture film. 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 digi-
tal video’s closest approximation to cinema.
Yet even a high-definition video image carries signifi-
cantly less information than motion-picture film. A broadcast-
quality video frame can display about 350,000 pixels (picture
elements), while Sony’s 24p video frames currently have
around 2 million pixels. A frame of 35mm motion-picture
film can contain the equivalent of over 12 million pixels.
The widest range of color possible in video is about 17 mil-
lion hues, a staggering number until we realize that film
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 arti-
facts are particularly apparent in long shots of landscapes
or densely packed architecture. Finally, from an archival
point of view, preserving moving images on film is prefer-
able to digital tape or disk, which deteriorates much more
rapidly.
No pictures can capture the vast range of light intensi-
ties that our eyes can detect, but cinema comes closer
than video. Film stock can convey fine 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 film’s 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 film negative can reach
1000:1. This means that film more faithfully renders ex-
tremes 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 film is transferred to
video, its colors are likely to look warmer. A video image
shot in mixed lighting conditions—say, a scene including
both sunlight and deep shade—will lose more textures than
a film image will (1.13). High-definition 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 filmmakers
have been attracted by the comparatively low costs of digi-
tal video cameras and tape. DV cameras are easy to set up,
and takes can be reviewed immediately for errors, so shoot-
ing moves more quickly than in a film-based project. If lit
by an experienced cinematographer, even consumer-format
video can look very attractive, as in Spike Lee’s Bamboo-
zled, filmed by Ellen Kuras. Perhaps most important, audi-
ences 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-fidelity video to film
creates hallucinatory images.
The Fast Runner, and other independent films shot on digi-
tal video.
Sometimes the video format ideally suits the subject the
filmmaker 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 Trier’s 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 film. In the final result,
pixels and grain create a unique texture, and the high con-
trast exaggerates pure colors and shapes (1.14).
Bigger-budget filmmakers have taken advantage of the
economies offered by digital video. A string of animated
feature films, 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 filmed Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones
entirely with Sony’s 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 film. 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 of-
fers. 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 flexi-
bility of digital video will make it the format of choice for
most filmmakers. Rodriguez agrees: “I’ve abandoned film
forever. You can’t go back. It’s like trying to go back to vinyl
after you’ve got recordable DVD.”
Most digital features shown commercially have been
screened from film 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 elec-
tronically. 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 film 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

going digital, many exhibitors believe, is that the public might
pay higher prices to see films in that format.
Digital technology has made its widest impact on post-
production. Finishing a film now depends heavily on soft-
ware for editing, sound, and special effects.
Those who shoot on video sometimes try to match the
“film look,” but at the same time some filmmakers work-
12
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.
ing in 35mm have given their footage a rawer quality. Both
Steven Soderberg’s Traffic and David O. Russell’s Three
Kings manipulate film 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 film point up another way in which the two media are
converging.
 Bringing the Film to the Spectator 13

films do not make profits in theatrical release. Worldwide, the top 10 percent of all
films released garner 50 percent of all box-office receipts. The most popular
30 percent of films account for 80 percent of receipts. Typically, a film breaks even
or shows a profit only after it has been released on cable, satellite, or home video.
So great is the distributor’s bargaining power that the movie theater gets a sur-
prisingly small percentage of total box-office receipts (known as the gross or
grosses). One standard contract guarantees the distributor a minimum of 90 per-
cent of the first week’s gross, dropping gradually to 30 percent after several weeks.
This arrangement isn’t favorable to the exhibitor. A failure that closes quickly will
yield almost nothing to the theatre, and even a successful film will make most of its
money in the first 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
figure 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 theater’s profits. With-
out high-priced snacks, movie houses couldn’t survive.
Once the grosses are split with the exhibitor, the share returning to the distri-
bution 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 film, it takes another percentage off the top. In addition, the cost of prints and
advertising (currently around $30 million for a high-end film) are deducted as well.
What remains comes back to the filmmakers. Out of the proceeds the producer
must pay all profit participants—the directors, actors, executives, and investors
who have negotiated a share of the rental returns.
For most films, 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 ancil-
lary markets. Because of this delay, and the suspicion that the major distributors
practice misleading accounting, the most powerful actors and directors have de-
manded “first-dollar” participation, meaning their share will derive from the earli-
est money the picture returns to the distributor.
Independent and overseas filmmakers usually don’t have access to direct fund-
ing from major distribution companies, so they try to presell distribution rights to
finance production. Alternatively, they try to attract distributors’ attention by
showcasing their film at festivals. Michael Moore’s documentary on gun control,
Bowling for Columbine, sold to several European distributors after winning a prize
at the 2002 Cannes festival, while at that year’s Toronto International Film Festi-
val, major U.S. distributors bought rights to the French Jet Lag and the Chinese
Together.
Specialized distributors, such as the New York firms Kino and Milestone, rent
foreign and independent films to art cinemas, colleges, and museums. As audi-
ences for these films 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 benefit of Disney’s funding and wider distribution reach, Miramax movies
like Pulp Fiction, Scream, and Shakespeare in Love earned even bigger box-office
receipts. Other major companies, such as Sony, have subsidiaries to handle films “Selling food is my job. I just
aimed at the art-house market. Sony Classics’ release, Crouching Tiger, Hidden happen to work in a theater.”
Dragon was successful enough to break out of art-house screens and win large — A theater manager in upstate New York
grosses at multiplexes. (See Box, pp. 16–18.)
 Putting the Pieces Together

By belonging to powerful multinational conglomerates,

film distributors gain access to bank financing, stock issues,
and other media markets. Just as important, multimedia dis-
tributors can build synergy—the coordination of sectors
within the company around a single piece of content, usu-
ally one that is “branded.” The X-Files, a film released in
1998, grew out of a brand launched on television five years
earlier. News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox Television
subsidiary produced the series and broadcast it on Fox’s
U.S. cable channel. When the first season was released on
video in Japan and Europe, it became a huge success, and
the series was soon programmed on News Corp.’s interna-
tional satellite platform BSkyB. The series spawned video
games (from Fox Interactive), books (from HarperCollins, 1.17 Lethal Weapon: As Murtagh and Riggs leave a hot-dog
owned by News Corp.), music CDs (from Fox Music), and stand, they pass in front of a movie theater advertising The Lost
clothing, notebooks, and other merchandise (via Fox Li- Boys, another Warner Bros. film (released four months after
censing and Merchandising). The theatrical film was only Lethal Weapon). The prominence of Pepsi-Cola in this shot is an
one more link in synergy’s “value chain.” example of product placement—featuring well-known brands in a
Synergy and branding work together. Every product film in exchange for payment or cross-promotional services.
promotes the others, and each part of the parent corpora-
tion gets a bit of the business. Although synergy sometimes tion to take advantage of it. One film can even advertise an-
proves unsuccessful, multimedia giants are in the best posi- other within its story (1.17).

Six Major Media Companies and Some of Their Holdings

AOL Time News

Warner Disney Viacom Sony Corp. Vivendi Universal

Film production Warner Bros., Buena Vista, Paramount Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Universal,
and distribution CastleRock, Hollywood Pictures TriStar, Mandalay, Century Fox, Working Title,
New Line, Fine Pictures, Touch- Sony Pictures Fox Searchlight Universal Focus
Line stone, Walt Disney Classics
Pictures, Miramax

American films have long been the world’s most popular, and many earn more
abroad than at home. The Hollywood studios have planted distribution subsidiaries
in most major countries. These branch offices arrange for prints to be made in the
local language (either dubbing in the dialogue or adding subtitling) and schedule
the film’s release. Local circumstances dictate when a Hollywood film opens. A
film 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 region’s widespread video
piracy tends to erode the audience. With strong marketing units in every region, the
majors can distribute non-U.S. films as well as Hollywood products. For example,
Kazuo Miyazaki’s popular animated films (My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away)
are now distributed on video by Disney’s Buena Vista arm— even in Japan itself.
14
Six Major Media Companies (continued)

AOL Time News

Warner Disney Viacom Sony Corp. Vivendi Universal

Movie theaters Cinamerica (50% Famous Players, Loews Cineplex

with Viacom) Cinamerica Entertainment
(50% with AOL
Time Warner)

Broadcast, CNN, HBO, WB ABC network, CBS, MTV, VH1, Sony Pictures Twentieth Universal
cable, and TV, Turner A & E, Disney Nickelodeon, Television Century Fox TV, Television, USA
satellite TV Network Channel, Lifetime, UPN, Showtime, Fox Broad- Network (partial
Television, Turner ESPN, local Comedy Central casting Company, ownership)
Classic Movies, TV stations Sky TV, Star TV
Cartoon
Network

Publishing Little, Brown; Capital City Simon & Schuster, Newspapers, Penguin, Putnam
Warner Books, newspapers, Prentice-Hall, Free TV Guide,
Time, Life, Sports magazines, Press, Webster’s HarperCollins,
Illustrated, People, Hyperion Books Dictionary Westview Press
DC Comics

Music Warner Music, Disney Music Columbia, Epic, Music

Atlantic, Elektra, Sony Classical Corporation
America Online of America,
Internet service PolyGram

Other Six Flags theme Merchandising, Blockbuster video Video games, Sheep farming, Beverages,
parks, Atlanta Disney theme stores, Great consumer airlines Universal theme
Braves, Atlanta parks and resorts, America and Kings electronics parks, real estate,
Hawks the Mighty Ducks Dominion theme (Walkman, Universal Interactive
parks Trinitron, etc.),
professional
electronics (high-
definition video,
etc.)

Selling The Film Distributors make prints, schedule release dates, and launch ad-
vertising campaigns. For big companies, distribution can be efficient 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 filmmaker who orders one. Still, distribution costs have risen
dramatically in recent years, largely because of greater film output and increased
competition. Today, when the average Hollywood film 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 “trail-
ers,” the previews of coming attractions. There may be a music video to build
15
16 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition
Independent Production and Mainstream Hollywood:
The Case of Good Machine
During the 1990s, independent film produc-
tion and distribution companies achieved
more prominence. With the major Hollywood
firms increasingly concentrating on wide-
release blockbusters, smaller firms could tar-
get films toward more specific audiences.
Niche audiences, however, could be fairly
large, and during the decade many indepen-
dent films became substantial hits. These films
seldom made as much as the summer “tent-
pole” 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 in-
dependent firm Miramax, which had success-
fully distributed such films as sex, lies, and
videotape (1989) and Reservoir Dogs (1992);
as a subsidiary, Miramax continued to oper-
ate 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 Colum-
bia University film professor James Schamus
and producer Ted Hope. The pair sought to
match a project’s potential income to a rea-
sonable budget. Good Machine’s partners
quickly assumed a high profile. Schamus pro-
duced prominent Chilean émigré director
Raoul Ruiz’s The Golden Boat and executive-
produced Todd Haynes’s Poison (winner of
the Grand Prize at Sundance, the premiere
film festival for independents. Hope pro-
duced Hal Hartley’s Trust (winner of the Sun-
dance screenplay award). The latter two were
to remain among the most respected Ameri-
can independent films of the decade.
Hartley continued working with Ted
Hope for Simple Men (1992) and Amateur
(1994), while Good Machine executive-
produced Haynes’s Safe (1995). The firm
also produced two films directed by actor
Edward Burns, The Brothers McMullen
(1995) and She’s 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 con-
tinued 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 Machine’s consistent suc-
cess attracted increasing attention within the
mainstream industry. Aside from Schamus’s
screenplay award, Schamus and Hope took
four films to the Sundance festival. Para-
mount expressed interest in making Good
Machine its “classics” division, but the ne-
gotiations came to nothing. Good Machine
was expanding its foreign interests and in
August formed Good Machine International.
Its president, David Linde, had formerly run
Miramax’s foreign sales and had marketed
Pulp Fiction (1994) abroad. GMI began to
import films, including Joan Chen’s Xiu Xiu
the Sent-Down Girl (1999) and Lars von
Trier’s 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 American–Hong
Kong–Taiwanese 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 au-
diences interested in Asian culture (1.18). Its
strong plot and balletic swordplay scenes,
staged by veteran Hong Kong fights chore-
ographer Yuen Wo-ping, gave the martial-
arts genre a new respectability among mature
audiences. Viewers unaccustomed to foreign-
language films found themselves willingly
reading subtitles. Crouching Tiger, Hidden

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 film’s cinematography, editing,
and acting belied its low budget, and it be-
came a date movie for the art-house set.
During 2001, its last year as a small in-
dependent firm, Good Machine distributed
Todd Field’s 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
company’s being absorbed into one of the
world’s largest media conglomerates, Vi-
vendi Universal:
September 1997: Good Machine Interna-
tional 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, Uni-
versal Focus, to distribute independent
films such as Billy Elliot.
2001: Universal buys USA Films back
from Diller.
Bringing the Film to the Spectator 17
1.18 The prominence of two female
characters in both the swordplay and
romance storylines of Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon made the film appealing
to women as well as to male action fans.
May 2002: Vivendi Universal buys Good
Machine and merges it into USA Films
and Universal Focus, creating a new
company, Focus Features. USA Films be-
comes a production wing within Focus.
For Vivendi Universal, the roughly $10 mil-
lion paid to acquire Good Machine brought
it both prestige and the potential for prof-
itable films made on modest budgets. It also
brought in Ang Lee, a director who could
move between independent films and pop-
corn 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 com-
pany. It was bolstered by the combination
with USA Films, which had recently released
several major independent films, most no-
tably Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000), Joel
and Ethan Coen’s The Man Who Wasn’t
There (2001), and Robert Altman’s Gosford
Park (2001). Focus continued distributing
Mira Nair’s 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 Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition
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. Focus’s first acquisition for distribution
was Roman Polanksi’s The Pianist, winner of
the 2002 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes-
tival. Later that year the company returned
to its Good Machine roots by taking over
the American distribution of Todd Haynes’s
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 in-
tentions 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 “independent”—whatever
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 . . .” pro-
gram. 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 bud-
geted production like Waiting to Exhale had heavy promotion: five separate music
videos, star visits to the Oprah Winfrey show, and promotions in thousands of book-
stores 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 po-
tential viewers with plot information, star biographies, games, screensavers, and
links to merchandising. The Net proved crucial in marketing The Blair Witch Proj-
ect to its target audience of young summer filmgoers. While cutting their $35,000
movie, directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez filled a website with fake
documents about the legend of the Blair Witch and the mysterious fate of the stu-
dents who had disappeared while investigating her. Fan sites sprang up before the
film had been screened. The small distribution firm Artisan Entertainment commit-
ted $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 prof-
itable films 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 film’s characters, title, or im-
 Bringing the Film to the Spectator 19

ages on products. Children’s films are released accompanied by toys, games, cloth-
ing, lunchboxes, schoolbags, and tie-ins with fast-food outlets. Such spin-offs can
be immensely profitable. By 1992, Star Wars merchandise had racked up sales of
$2.6 billion—more than the films themselves had earned.
Nearly all major motion pictures rely on merchandising, if only of a noveliza-
tion or a sound track CD, to lower production and distribution costs and to provide
new profit centers. A common practice is “cross-promotion,” which allows both a
film and a product line to be advertised at once. MGM arranged for the stars of the
James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies to appear in advertisements for Heineken,
Smirnoff, BMW, Visa, and Ericsson. The five companies spent nearly $100 million
on the campaign, which publicized the film around the world. As payback, the film
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 Periodon-
tology (“Don’t 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 film does not end when it starts playing theaters. Distribu-
tion executives track the box-office receipts of a film’s opening weekend and report
them to their superiors, the production company, and the press. Distribution compa-
nies also undertake exit polling to gauge whether filmgoers will recommend the pic-
ture to their friends. Most films 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-office ranking largely on the strength of word of
mouth. It eventually surpassed $210 million in North American ticket sales.

Ancillary Markets When a film 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 of-
fice.) Distribution companies carefully plan their video “windows” to widen the
film’s availability gradually. A release appears first over hotel television systems
and airline flights, 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
films usually yield slim theatrical returns, but video markets can make these items
profitable.
The ultimate extension of video distribution may be cyberspace. Major film
companies are experimenting with websites that deliver movies on demand. Al-
ready digital versions of some independent films are available on the Internet, and
hundreds of sites offer bootlegged versions of studio releases. In 2002, buccaneer-
ing fans uploaded pirated video copies of Signs and Star Wars: Episode II—Attack
of the Clones. Thanks to the enormous number of video distribution channels and
exhibition sites, movies permeate world culture as never before. Yet films now ap-
pear in so many guises that it is hard to recapture a sense of the way the original
looked. (See Box, pp. 21–23.)
A film can continue its life in other media. Star Wars spawned bestselling “Our underlying philosophy is that
paperback novels; Buffy the Vampire Slayer was spun off as a comic book and TV all media are one.”
series; Universal’s theme park offers a ride based on Back to the Future; Grease — Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp.
and The Lion King were adapted as Broadway shows; Die Hard and A Bug’s Life and Twentieth Century Fox
became video games; Beetlejuice turned into a TV cartoon. Because distribution
20 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

companies belong to multinational conglomerates, films often serve as “content”

fed to the company’s other media outlets.

Beyond Hollywood: International Distribution and Exhibition The major production

and distribution companies are identified with America, but many belong to inter-
national companies. The Japanese electronics firm Sony owns Columbia Pictures,
Australia’s News Corp. owns Twentieth Century Fox, and a French firm, Vivendi,
owns Universal. In addition, many of the world’s top media companies are Euro-
pean and Asian. Asahi Broadcasting of Japan invests in film studios, as does the
newspaper chain Nippon Herald. Sylvio Berlusconi, currently prime minister of
Italy, runs a conglomerate consisting of film production and distribution compa-
nies, book and magazine publishers, and the country’s top commercial TV broad-
caster. Many regional and national distributors acquire films 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 lucra-
tive 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). West-
ern European and Asian–Pacific countries follow. Providing about 25 percent of
global box office, Western Europe (including the United Kingdom and the Nordic
countries) emerges as the most important regional market outside North America.
The less significant market regions are Latin America, Eastern Europe, main-
land 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 mil-
lion to the 2001 global total—less than Germany did. For all these reasons, film-
makers 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 first be produced. The
process of film production involves not only technology and funding but also peo-
ple working together. Most films go through three phases of production.
1. Preparation. The idea for the film is developed and committed to paper in
some form. The filmmaker also begins to acquire funds to support the film.
2. Shooting. Here the filmmaker creates images in the form of shots. A shot is a
series of frames produced by the camera in an uninterrupted operation. The
filmmaker also records sounds, consisting of dialogue, noises, or music.
3. Assembly. At this stage, which may overlap with the shooting phase, the im-
ages and sounds are combined in their final 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 film may be radically modi-
fied when the script is hammered out; the script’s presentation of the action may be
drastically changed in shooting; and the material that is shot takes on new significance
in the process of assembly. As the French director Robert Bresson puts it, “A film is
 Film and Video: Where Did the Picture Go?
ilmmakers often complain that video versions don’t look
F like their original films. Sometimes it’s a matter of tech-
nical differences between the two media. (See Box, pp. 10–
12.) But films are also deliberately altered for video exhibi-
tion. Versions for airline video projection and for broadcast
television trim sex and violence and eliminate potentially
offensive dialogue from sound tracks. Sometimes TV ver-
sions are created during production: The broadcast version
of The Silence of the Lambs contains different footage than
the theatrical release. Broadcasters also use “time compres-
sion,” a device that speeds up the film slightly so more com-
mercials can be squeezed in. Even “premium” cable
channels snip out nudity and use redubbed lines of dialogue.
What about a rental video? Doesn’t that conform to the
original theatrical release? Often not. Directors occasion-
ally revise films 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 films. And, as in broadcast and
cable exhibition, video rental copies alter the image to fit
the TV screen.
The most apparent difference between a rental video
and the original film involves the shape of the screen. Since
the mid-1950s virtually all films have been designed to be
shown on wide theater screens, not squarish TV monitors.
High-definition televisions (HDTV) with wider screens are
slowly gaining a share of the market, but these are still not
as wide as many theatrical films made since the 1950s.
One solution has been to release some video copies of
films with letterboxing, dark horizontal bands at the top and
bottom of the TV screen that approximate the film’s origi-
nal shape on theater screens. This practice became wide-
spread on home video in 1985, when Woody Allen, who
controlled the video release of his film Manhattan (1979),
insisted that the film be released letterboxed. In 1986, the
Criterion company started a series of letterboxed laser
discs, and this type of video formatting has grown in popu-
larity. Many viewers, however, find letterboxing distract-
ing, especially if their television screens are relatively
small; they often opt for the full-frame video versions of
films, where the image has no black masking. Such ver-
sions often begin with the enigmatic warning, “This film
has been modified from its original version. It has been for-
matted to fit your television.”
Today many films are released in letterboxed video ver-
sions, though the practice remains more common with DVDs
than with VHS cassettes. Some DVDs contain both the let-
terboxed and full-frame versions of the same film. Because
A Bug’s Life was made in digital animation, the filmmakers
recomposed the original widescreen shots to fit 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 films 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 pur-
chased. 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 at-
tractions of better visual quality and, in many cases, extra
features like voiceover commentaries by filmmakers and
documentaries on the making of the film.
No video version of a film wholly replicates the film
image as it appeared on the theater screen. Even letterboxed
images do not necessarily show absolutely the entire image,
since very wide films are often cropped slightly at the sides.
The changes in the pictures in full-frame versions, how-
ever, are more dramatic. There have been a number of ap-
proaches 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 film 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 computer-
controlled scanner moves across the image—hence the
name for the process, panning and scanning. Sometimes
the controller decides to make separate shots out of what
was originally a single shot (1.20–1.22). Whatever choice
is made, the original film is altered, often drastically.
As a result, nearly all videocassette copies of films made
in the past 40 years alter the compositions intended by the
filmmakers. 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 film stock. In this process, additional image area is ex-
posed above and below the widescreen composition. Those
21
 1.20 In Otto Preminger’s Advise and
Consent, a single shot in the original . . .

1.21 . . . becomes a pair of shots and . . . 1.23 Many widescreen compositions try for only one center
of interest . . .

1.22 . . . loses the sense of actors

simultaneously reacting to each other.
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 hori-
zontal composition may be lost (1.25, 1.26).
As a final example, consider a shot from Paul Thomas
Anderson’s widescreen film Magnolia (1.27–1.29). Here
two characters have been balanced at opposite sides
of the frame, and one nearly vanishes in the full-frame
video.

22
1.25 As Rose, the heroine of Titanic, feels the exhilaration of “flying” on the ship’s prow, 1.26 Nearly all sense of the horizontal
the strongly horizontal composition emphasizes her outstretched arms as “wings” against a composition has disappeared in the video
wide horizon. version, as more of the sky is visible, and
one of Rose’s 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 patient’s
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 Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

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 final life in the editing room
where the dismembered pieces are assembled into their finished form.”
These three phases include many particular jobs. Most films that we see in the-
aters culminate from dozens of specialized tasks carried out by hundreds of ex-
perts. This fine-grained division of labor has proved to be a reliable way to prepare,
shoot, and assemble large-budget movies.

The Preproduction Phase

In professional filmmaking, 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 chiefly financial and organizational. She or he
may be an “independent” producer, unearthing film projects and trying to convince
production companies or distributors to finance the film. Or the producer may work
for a distribution company and generate ideas for films. A studio may also hire a
producer to put together a particular package.
The producer nurses the project through the script process, obtains financial sup-
port, and arranges to hire the personnel who will work on the film. During shooting
and assembly, the producer usually acts as the liaison between the writer or director
and the company that is financing the film. After the film is completed, the producer
will often have the task of arranging the distribution, promotion, and marketing of
the film 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 Ameri-
can film industry the producer’s work is further subdivided. The executive pro-
ducer is often the person who arranged the financing for the project or obtained the
literary property (although many filmmakers 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 li-
aison 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 pro-
duction company. Or an experienced screenwriter meets with a producer in a “pitch
session,” where the writer can propose ideas for scripts. The first scene of Robert
Altman’s 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 film 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 film.
The screenplay will go through several stages. These stages include a treat-
ment, a synopsis of the action; then one or more full-length scripts; and a final ver-
sion, 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 Rachel’s confused feelings about Book, formed the central plot line.
But the director, Peter Weir, wanted to emphasize the clash between pacifism and
violence. So William Kelley and Earl Wallace revised their screenplay to empha-
size 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 25

1.30 A publicity still for Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, showing a scene that was eliminated
from the final film. 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 finds one writer’s 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 conflicts
about which writer or writers deserve onscreen credit for the film. In the American
film industry, these disputes are adjudicated by the Screen Writers’ Guild.
As the screenplay is being written or rewritten, the producer is planning the film’s
finances. 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-the-
line 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 film’s master
negative). In 2001, the average Hollywood negative cost ran about $50 million.
The producer must also prepare a daily schedule for shooting the film. This will
be done with an eye on the budget. The producer assumes that the separate shots will
be made out of continuity—that is, in the most convenient order for production—and
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 film were both shot at the start of produc-
tion, during the three weeks of location in Hawaii. A producer must also plan to shoot
around actors who can’t be on the set every day. Many producers try to schedule the
most difficult scenes early, before cast and crew begin to tire. For Raging Bull the
26 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

complex prizefight sequences were filmed first, 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 efficiently.

The Production Phase

Although production is the term for the entire process of making a film, Holly-
wood filmmakers also use it to refer to the shooting phase (as in, “Now that we’ve
got a finished 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 film industries, the director is considered the single person most responsible
for the look and sound of the finished film.
Because of the specialized division of labor in large-scale production, the di-
rector orchestrates the contributions of several units.
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 pro-
duction designer is in charge of visualizing the film’s settings. This unit cre-
ates drawings and plans that determine the architecture and the color schemes
of the sets. Under the production designer’s supervision, an art director super-
1.31 A page from the storyboard for vises the construction and painting of the sets. The set decorator, often some-
Hitchcock’s The Birds. one with experience in interior decoration, modifies the sets for specific
filming purposes, supervising a staff who find 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 se-
quences 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 finished shots should look like.
2. During the shooting, the director will rely on what is called the director’s
crew. This includes
a. The script supervisor, known in the classic studio era as a “script girl.”
(Today one-fifth of Hollywood script supervisors are male.) The script
supervisor is in charge of all details of continuity from shot to shot, such
“If you wander unbidden onto a set, as details of performers’ appearances (in the last scene, was the carnation in
you’ll always know the AD because the left or right buttonhole?), props, lighting, movement, camera position,
he or she is the one who’ll probably and the running time of each shot.
throw you off. That’s the AD b. The first assistant director, a jack-of-all-trades who, with the director, plans
yelling, ‘Places!’ ‘Quiet on the set!’ out each day’s shooting schedule and sets up each shot for the director’s
‘Lunch— one-half hour!’ and approval, while keeping track of the actors, monitoring safety conditions,
‘That’s a wrap, people!’ It’s all very and keeping the energy level high.
ritualistic, like reveille and taps on a
c. The second assistant director, who is the liaison among the first assistant
military base, at once grating and
director, the camera crew, and the electricians’ crew.
oddly comforting.”
d. The third assistant director, who serves as messenger for director and staff.
— Christine Vachon, independent
producer, on assistant directors e. The dialogue coach, who feeds performers their lines and speaks the lines
of offscreen characters during shots of other performers.
 Making the Film: Film Production 27

f. The second unit director, who films 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 fill distant desks in large office
sets. One of the director’s major jobs is to shape the performances of the cast.
Most directors will spend a good deal of time explaining how a line or ges-
ture should be rendered, reminding the actor of the place of this scene in the
overall film, and helping the actor create a coherent performance. The first
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 cine-
matographer is an expert on photographic processes, lighting, and camera
technique. The cinematographer consults with the director on how each scene
will be lit and filmed (1.32). The cinematographer supervises
a. The camera operator, who runs the machine and who may also have assis-
tants 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.
28 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

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 gaffer’s 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 recordist’s 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 fill pauses in the dialogue. The recordist’s 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 film.
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 de-
signer will have determined what effects will be needed, and the special-
effects unit consults with the director and the cinematographer on an ongoing
basis. On a contemporary production, the special-effects unit can number hun-
dreds 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.
 Making the Film: Film Production 29

8. During shooting, the producer is represented by a unit often called the pro-
ducer’s 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 accommo-
dations. A production accountant (or production auditor) monitors expen-
ditures, a production secretary coordinates telephone communications
among units and with the producer, and production assistants (or PAs) run
errands. Newcomers to the film industry often start out working as produc-
tion assistants.

All this coordinated effort, involving perhaps hundreds of workers, results in

many thousands of feet of exposed film 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 finished film 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 finished film. 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
cinematographer’s 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 identified for future refer-
ence. There are also electronic slates which keep track of each take automatically
1.34 A slate shown at the beginning of a
and provide digital readouts.
shot in Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise.
In filming a scene, most directors and technicians follow an organized proce-
dure. While crews set up the lighting and test the sound recording, the director re-
hearses the actors and instructs the cinematographer. The director then supervises
the filming 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 direc-
tors shoot a great deal of coverage, often by using two or more cameras filming at
the same time. The script supervisor checks to ensure that continuity details are
consistent within all these shots.
For most of film history, scenes were filmed with a single camera, which was
moved to different points for different setups. More recently, with pressures to fin-
ish 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 simulta-
neously because chases, crashes, and explosions are difficult to repeat for retakes.
The battles in Gladiator were filmed by 7 cameras, while 13 cameras were used
for stunts in XXX. For dialogue scenes, a common tactic is to film with an A cam-
era 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 unex-
pected spontaneity in the performance. Scenes in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled were
filmed 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 filmed against neutral blue or green backgrounds so
30 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

1.35 For the climax of Jurassic Park, the

actors were shot in the set of the visitor’s
center, but the velociraptors and the
Tyrannosaurus rex were computer-
generated images added later.

that their figures may be inserted into computer-created settings. Or the director will
film 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 “fix it in post.”) Yet this phase does not begin simply after
the shooting is finished. 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 assem-
bles 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 film is shot out
of continuity, and because the master-shot/coverage approach yields so much
footage, the editor’s job can be a vast one. A 100-minute feature, which amounts to
about 9000 feet of 35mm film, may have been carved out of 500,000 feet of film.
For this reason, postproduction on major Hollywood pictures often takes five 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 ex-
amine the dailies, or if the production is filming far away, the editor will call to in-
form the director of how the footage looks. Since retaking shots is costly and
troublesome, constant checking of the dailies is important for spotting any prob-
lems with focus, exposure, framing, or other visual factors. From the dailies the di-
rector 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 film.
As the footage accumulates, the editor assembles it into a rough cut—the 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 ed-
itor, in consultation with the director, builds toward a fine cut or final cut. The un-
used shots constitute the outtakes. While the final cut is being prepared, a second
unit may be shooting inserts, footage to fill in at certain places. These are typically
 Some Terms and Roles in Film Production
The rise of packaged productions, pressures from union-
ized workers, and other factors have led producers to credit
everyone who worked on a film. Meanwhile, the special-
ization of large-scale filmmaking has created its own jar-
gon. 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 film’s 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 Cinematog-
raphers, a professional association. The British equiva-
lent 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 perform-
ers for the film. 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 identifies 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 main-
tains trees, shrubs, and grass in settings.
Lead man: Member of set crew responsible for track-
ing 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 film to the laboratory.
Matte artist: Member of special-effects unit who
paints backdrops that are then photographically in-
corporated 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
filmed 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 film.
Publicist, Unit publicist: Member of producer’s crew
who creates and distributes promotional material regard-
ing 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 pho-
tographs 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 film.
Timer, Color timer: Laboratory worker who inspects
the negative film and who adjusts the printer light
to achieve consistency of color across the finished
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 film.
31
32 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition
“[ADR for Apocalypse Now] was
tremendously wearing on the actors
because the entire film 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 they’re shouting over the
noise of the helicopter, or they’re
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 pre-
pared 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 re-
arrange the shots physically. Now virtually all commercial films are edited elec-
tronically. 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 final 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 film and agree on where music and ef-
fects 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 filming winds up in the fin-
ished 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 film were recorded during film-
ing. A sound editor adds sound effects, drawing on the library of stock sounds or
creating particular effects for this film. Sound editors routinely manufacture foot-
steps, cars crashing, pistol shots, a fist thudding into flesh (often produced by
whacking a watermelon with an axe). In Terminator 2 the sound of the T-1000 cy-
borg 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. . . . Don’t just
put in any door, make sure it’s 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 sound’s qualities can be modified digitally—clipping 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 swim-
ming pool, water bubbling from a garden hose, and the hum of Disneyland’s air-
conditioning plant. One technician on the film calls digital sound editing “sound
sculpting.”
During the spotting of the sound track the film’s composer has entered the as-
sembly 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, al-
though 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
final cut.
 Modes of Production 33

Dialogue, effects, and music are recorded on different magnetic tapes, and
each bit of sound may occupy a separate track. At a final mixing session, the direc-
tor, 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 first, then sound effects are balanced with
that, and finally music is added to create the final mix. Often there will need to be
equalization, filtering, and other adjustments to the track. Once fully mixed, the
master track is transferred onto sound recording film, which encodes the magnetic
sound as optical or digital information on 35mm film.
The film’s camera negative, which was used to make the dailies and the work
print, is normally too precious to serve as the source for final 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 final cut,
and it will be the primary source for future prints. Then the master sound track is
synchronized with it. The first positive print, complete with picture and sound, is
called the answer print. After the director, producer, and cinematographer have ap-
proved 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 final 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 Leone’s Once upon a
Time in America were completely rearranged for its American release. European
prints of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut featured more nudity than American
ones, in which some naked couples were blocked by digital figures 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 fictional films have been made about the process of film production.
Federico Fellini’s 81⁄2 concerns itself with the preproduction stage of a film that is
abandoned before shooting starts. François Truffaut’s 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 Palma’s Blow Out occurs while a low-budget thriller is in
sound editing. Singin’ in the Rain follows a single film through the entire process,
with a gigantic publicity billboard filling the final shot.

MODES OF PRODUCTION
Large-Scale Production
The fine-grained division of labor we’ve been describing is characteristic of studio
filmmaking. A studio is a company in the business of manufacturing films. The
most famous studios flourished in Hollywood between the 1920s and the 1960s—
Paramount, Warner Bros., Columbia, and so on. These companies owned equip-
ment and extensive physical plants, and they retained most of their workers on
long-term contracts (1.38, p. 36). Each studio’s central management planned all
projects, then delegated authority to individual supervisors, who in turn assembled
casts and crews from the studio’s pool of workers. Organized as efficient 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
 Making Movies in the Digital Era
ver the past 20 years, all phases of film production have
O been changed by computer technology. There is soft-
ware to help draft screenplays, prepare budgets and sched-
ules, draw storyboards, prepare set designs, test makeup,
and diagram camera placement. Composers can prepare
first drafts of scores directly on digital synthesizers and
send the results to the director for fast synchronization with
edited sequences. Cinematographers can previsualize com-
plicated camera movements in “virtual sets.” Filmmakers
speak of the “digital backlot,” software programs that can
put performers into artificially composed settings that auto-
matically change the angle of sunlight or the texture of rain
or fog. For the final storm in The Truman Show, shots of the
hero’s sailboat in a studio tank were blended with a vast
seascape created digitally.
The arrival of digital, or nonlinear, editing has drasti-
cally changed the assembly process. Databases enable edi-
tors to keep track of every take and bit of sound. In the days
when editors cut directly on film, they had to splice and re-
splice 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 For The Matrix a ring of still cameras captured all aspects of figures in flight . . .
34
watches in horror as a satellite transmits infrared images of
a commando raid on a terrorist camp. With the aid of digi-
tal editing, Travis began trimming two frames off every
shot, again and again, until he pared the shots down to mere
flashes. To do all this by hand would have been discourag-
ingly slow, because Travis would have had to order many
reprints of the shots and to keep track of dozens of bits of
film. Now that fast cutting is easy, the pace of movie edit-
ing 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 film to a digital format, it is now easy to
delete distracting background elements, to clone a charac-
ter (as in Multiplicity), or to build crowds out of only a few
spectators (in several scenes of Forrest Gump). Flying char-
acters are filmed 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 Ryan’s
Omaha beach assault.
The natural home for CGI is fantasy and science fiction.
For The Matrix, still photographs were digitized to create
virtual sets seen in smoothly changing three-dimensional
perspectives, as if filmed by a moving camera. Software
added lens distortions, color shifts, light flare, and even film
grain. Directors Larry and Andy Wachowski wanted midair
combats in which the camera could glide rapidly around
gunmen who are frozen in place or floating in slow motion.
The effect was achieved through surrounding the wire-
suspended actors with 120 still cameras and feeding the sep-
1.37 . . . permitting the final shot to move around characters hovering in space.
arate images to a high-speed computer’s motion-capture
system. The filmmakers had already previsualized the fight-
ers’ 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).
35
36 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

1.38 In a World War II–era 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 labora-
tory 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 filmmaking, though now it is
done for the most part on computer.
Although studio production might seem to resemble a factory’s assembly line,
it was always more creative, collaborative, and chaotic than turning out cars or TV
sets. Each film is a unique product, not a replica of a basic design. In studio film-
making, skilled specialists collaborated to create such a product while still adher-
ing to a blueprint prepared by management.
The centralized studio production system has virtually disappeared. The giants
of Hollywood’s golden age have become distribution companies, although they
often initiate, fund, and oversee the making of the films they distribute. The old
studios had stars and staff under long-term contracts, so the same group of people
might work together on film after film. Now each film is planned as a distinct pack-
age, with director, actors, staff, and technicians brought together for this project
alone. The studio may provide its own soundstages, sets, and offices for the proj-
ect, but in most cases the producer arranges with outside firms 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, filmmaking has become vastly more compli-
cated 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
final credits.
 Modes of Production 37

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 firing of a producer or a cinematog-
rapher. Last-minute script changes or poor reactions in a test screening may require
that some scenes be reshot. Weary filmmakers admit that at any moment the whole
enterprise could run out of control. Every major film that is released, good or bad,
is remarkable to the extent that it got finished at all, and the precise division of
labor created by the studio tradition is largely responsible.

Exploitation and Independent Production

Not all films using the division of labor we have outlined are big-budget projects
financed by major companies. There are also low-budget exploitation products tai- “Deep down inside, everybody in
lored to a particular market—in earlier decades, fringe theatres and drive-ins; now, the United States has a desperate
videocassette rentals. Troma Films, maker of The Toxic Avenger, is probably the most need to believe that some day, if
famous exploitation company, turning out horror movies and teen sex comedies for the breaks fall their way, they can
$100,000 or even less. Nonetheless, exploitation filmmakers usually divide the quit their jobs as claims adjusters,
labor along studio lines. There is the producer’s role, the director’s role, and so on, legal secretaries, certified public
and the production tasks are parceled out in ways which roughly conform to mass- accountants, or mobsters, and go
production practices. True, in such circumstances people often double up on jobs: out and make their own low-budget
The director might produce the film and write the script; the picture editor might movie. Otherwise, the future is just
cut sound as well. too bleak.”
To take an extreme example, Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi as an ex- — Joe Queenan, critic and independent
ploitation film for the Spanish-language video market. The 21-year-old director filmmaker
also functioned as producer, scriptwriter, cinematographer, camera operator, still
photographer, and sound recordist and mixer. Rodriguez’s friend Carlos Gallardo
starred, coproduced, and coscripted; he also served as unit production manager and
grip. Gallardo’s mother fed the cast and crew. El Mariachi wound up costing only
about $7000.
Unlike El Mariachi, most exploitation films don’t enter the theatrical market,
but other low-budget productions, loosely known as “independent” films, do. Inde-
pendent films are made for the theatrical market but without major distributor fi-
nancing. Sometimes the independent filmmaker is a well-known director, such as
Jane Campion, David Cronenberg, or Alan Rudolph, who prefers to work with bud-
gets significantly below the industry norm. The lower scale of investment allows
the filmmaker more freedom in choosing stories and performers. The director usu-
ally initiates the project and partners with a producer to get it realized. Financing
often comes from European television firms, with major U.S. distributors buying
the rights if the project seems to have good prospects. For example, David Lynch’s
low-budget The Straight Story was financed by French and British television be-
fore it was bought for distribution by Disney.
As we would expect, these industry-based independents organize production
in ways very close to the full-fledged studio mode. Nonetheless, because these
projects require less financing, the directors can demand more control over the pro-
duction process. Woody Allen, for instance, is allowed by his contract to rewrite and
reshoot extensive portions of his film 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 filmmakers. Examples would be Edward
Burns’s The Brothers McMullen and Victor Nuñez’s Ulee’s Gold. Even though
their budgets are much smaller than for most commercial films, independent pro-
ductions face many obstacles (1.39). Filmmakers may have to finance the project
38 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition
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 finished filming
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
filmmaker, Maya Deren.
themselves, with the help of relatives and friendly investors; they must also find a
distributor specializing in independent and low-budget films. But many filmmakers
believe the advantages of independence outweigh the drawbacks. Independent pro-
duction can treat subjects that large-scale studio production ignores. No film stu-
dios would have supported Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise or Kevin
Smith’s Clerks. Because the independent film 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 estab-
lished in the studio tradition.
Small-Scale Production
In large-scale and independent production, many people work on the film, each
one a specialist in a particular task. But it is also possible for one person to do
everything: plan the film, finance it, perform in it, run the camera, record the sound,
and put it all together. Such films are seldom seen in commercial theatres, but they
are central to experimental and documentary traditions.
Consider Stan Brakhage, whose films 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 finances, Brakhage prepares, shoots, and
edits his films virtually unaided. While he was working in a film laboratory, he also
developed and printed his footage. With over 150 films to his credit, Brakhage has
proved that the individual filmmaker 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 filmmaker, from grants, and perhaps oblig-
ing friends and relatives. There is very little division of labor: The filmmaker over-
sees every production task and will perform many of them. Although technicians
or performers may help out, the creative decisions rest with the filmmaker. Experi-
mentalist Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, was shot by her husband, Alexan-
der 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 filmmaking. Jean
Rouch, a French anthropologist, has made several films 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 Maîtres fous (1955), his first widely seen
film. 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 identifies 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 filming Kop-
pel acted as sound recordist, working with cameraman Hart Perry and sometimes
also a lighting person. A large crew was ruled out not only by Koppel’s budget but
also by the need to fit naturally into the community. Like the miners, the filmmak-
ers were constantly threatened with violence from strikebreakers (1.42).
Sometimes small-scale production becomes collective production. Here in-
stead of a single filmmaker shaping the project, several film workers participate
 Modes of Production 39

equally. The group shares common goals and makes production decisions demo-
cratically. 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 ef-
forts toward collective film production. In the United States, the Newsreel group
was founded in 1967 as an effort to document the student protest movement. News-
reel attempted to create not only a collective production situation, with a central
coordinating committee answerable to the complete membership, but also a com-
1.42 Harlan County, U.S.A.: The driver
munity distribution network that would make Newsreel films available for local ac-
of a passing truck fires at the crew.
tivists around the country. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the collective
produced dozens of works, including Finally Got the News and The Woman’s Film.
After the mid-1970s, Newsreel moved somewhat away from purely collective pro-
duction, but it retained certain policies characteristic of the collective mode, such
as equal pay for all participants in a film. 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 film 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 don’t have a hierarchy,” Cohn
explained. “There’s no director, second, third or fourth assistant director. We have a
team of people trying to figure 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 film 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 first film at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. That, said Cohn, con-
vinced people “that a bunch of Eskimos from the end of the world could be sophisti-
cated enough to make a movie.”
Small-scale production allows the filmmakers to retain tight control of the
project. Now that video, particularly the digital format, is easily transferred to film,
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
flight across the ice.
40 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

recent releases indicate that the theatrical market has room for works made by
single filmmakers or tiny production units.

Implications of Different Modes of Production

We often categorize films on the basis of how they were made. For example, we
often distinguish a documentary film from a fiction film on the basis of production
phases. Usually the documentary filmmaker 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 figures)
are present but often uncontrolled. In interviewing an eyewitness to an event, the
filmmaker 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; filmmakers Mark Achbar
and Peter Wintonick instead shot long interviews in which Chomsky explained his
ideas. The fiction film, on the other hand, is characterized by much more control
over script and other aspects of the preparation and shooting phases.
Similarly, a compilation film assembles images and sounds that provide histor-
ical evidence on a topic. The compilation filmmaker may skip the shooting stage
and create a story from archive footage, as in the television series The World at War
and Biography. David Wolper’s biography of John Lennon, Imagine, was one of
the rare compilation films to be released theatrically.
One more kind of film is distinguished by the way it’s produced: the animated
film, which is created frame by frame. Either images are drawn on the film 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 film? In
individual production the author must be the solitary filmmaker—Stan Brakhage,
Louis Lumière, yourself. Collective film production creates collective authorship:
The author is the entire group. The question of authorship becomes difficult to an-
swer only when asked about large-scale production, particularly in the studio mode.
Studio film production assigns tasks to so many individuals that it is often dif-
ficult 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 writer’s script might be completely transformed in
shooting and editing. So is this situation like collective production, with group au-
thorship? 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 indi-
vidual style, it seems certain that some studio workers leave recognizable and
unique traces on the films they make. Cinematographers such as Gregg Toland, set
designers such as Hermann Warm, costumers such as Edith Head, choreographers
such as Gene Kelly—the contributions of these people stand out within the films
they made. So where does the studio-produced film leave the idea of authorship?
Most people who study cinema regard the director as the film’s “author.” Al-
though 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 doesn’t 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 tal-
ents of cast and crew into the overall movie. Humphrey Bogart’s 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 Toland’s cinematog-
raphy 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 re-
markable 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 finished film. In the days of Hollywood’s
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 film “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 film 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 fire the director; more often, the producer will
get the blame. For the most part, it is the director who shapes the film’s 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 il-
lusion of movement in film is offered in Julian E. Hochberg,
“Representation of Motion and Space in Video and Cine-
matic Displays,” in Kenneth R. Boff, Lloyd Kaufman, and
James P. Thomas, eds., Handbook of Perception and
Human Performance, vol. 1, “Sensory Processes and Per-
ception” (New York: Wiley, 1986), chap. 22. Stuart Lieb-
man uses the perceptual mechanisms of illusion to analyze
an experimental film in “Apparent Motion and Film Struc-
ture: Paul Sharit’s Shutter Interface,” Millennium Film
Journal 1, 2 (Spring–Summer 1978): 101–109.
The Technical Basis of Cinema
André 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, what-
ever its antecedents in Greece and the Renaissance, the cin-
ema became technically feasible only in the 19th century.
Motion pictures depended on many discoveries in various
scientific and industrial fields: optics and lens making, the con-
trol of light (especially by means of arc lamps), chemistry
(involving particularly the production of cellulose), steel pro-
duction, precision machining, and other areas. The cinema ma-
chine 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 develop-
ment of a technology that had already made feasible the
sewing machine, the telegraph tape, and the machine gun. The
19-century origins of film, based on mechanical and chemical
processes, are particularly evident today, since we’ve become
accustomed to electronic and digital media.
On the history of film technology, see Barry Salt’s
Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis (London:
42 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition
Starword, 1983); David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and
Kristin Thompson’s The Classical Hollywood Cinema:
Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1985), parts 4 and 6; many es-
says in Elisabeth Weis and John Belton, eds., Film Sound:
Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1985); and Michael Allen’s “From Bwana Devil to
Batman Forever: Technology in Contemporary Hollywood
Cinema,” in Steve Neale and Murray Smith, eds., Contem-
porary Hollywood Cinema (London: Routledge, 1998),
pp. 109–129. Primary sources of technological informa-
tion are included in Raymond Fielding, ed., A Technologi-
cal History of Motion Pictures and Television (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1967). Douglas Gomery
has pioneered the economic history of film 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 film tech-
nology is Nicholson Baker’s “The Projector,” in his The
Size of Thoughts (New York: Vintage, 1994), pp. 36–50.
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 Mis-
sionaries of Global Capitalism (London: Cassell, 1997).
Tiiu Lukk examines how Pulp Fiction, Hoop Dreams, Wel-
come to the Dollhouse, and other films were distributed in
Movie Marketing: Opening the Picture and Giving It Legs
(Beverly Hills, Calif.: Silman-James, 1997). Douglas Gomery’s
The Hollywood Studio System (London: Macmillan, 1985)
traces the history of today’s major distribution companies,
showing their roots in vertically integrated studios, which
controlled both production and exhibition.
On moviegoing see Bruce A. Austin’s Immediate Seat-
ing: A Look at Movie Audiences (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth,
1988). Douglas Gomery’s 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 film production. Especially good are Kris Malkiewicz,
Cinematography, 2d ed. (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1989);
Steven Ascher and Edward Pincus, The Filmmaker’s Hand-
book (New York: Plume, 1999); and Ken Dancyger, The
World of Film and Video Production: Aesthetics and Prac-
tices (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. Martin’s, 1987); Paul N. Lazarus III, Work-
ing in Film: The Marketplace in the ’90s (New York:
St. Martin’s, 1993); and John Morgan Wilson, Inside Holly-
wood: A Writer’s Guide to Researching the World of Movies
and TV (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest, 1998). More detailed
accounts can be found in Jason E. Squire’s The Movie Busi-
ness Book, 2d ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). A
useful reference work is Harvey Rachlin’s 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 vari-
ous 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, Mo-
tion Picture Film Processing (1985). For the producer,
see Paul N. Lazarus III, The Film Producer (New York:
St. Martin’s, 1991) and Lynda Obst’s acerbic memoir, Hello,
He Lied (New York: Broadway, 1996). Art Linson, producer
of The Untouchables and Fight Club, has written two en-
tertaining 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 ex-
plained in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward’s The Film Di-
rector’s 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 Hollyn’s 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

techniques of special effects receive detailed discussion in
a richly designed magazine, Cinefex.
Several books explain how independent films are fi-
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, Indepen-
dent Feature Film Production: A Complete Guide from
Concept through Distribution, 2d ed. (New York: St. Mar-
tin’s, 1998). Billy Frolick’s What I Really Want to Do Is Di-
rect (New York: Plume, 1997) follows seven film-school
graduates trying to make low-budget features. Christine Va-
chon, producer of Boys Don’t 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 first 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 introduc-
tion to Lloyd Kaufman’s All I Needed to Know about Film-
making 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 Zombie-
town. 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; She’s Gotta Have It; sex, lies, and video-
tape; and other low-budget films found success in Spike,
Mike, Slackers, and Dykes (New York: Hyperion, 1995).
Emanuel Levy’s Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of Ameri-
can Independent Film (New York: New York University
Press, 1999) provides a historical survey. The early history
of an important distributor of independent films, Miramax,
is examined in Alissa Perren, “sex, lies and marketing:
Miramax and the Development of the Quality Indie Block-
buster,” Film Quarterly 55 2 (Winter 2001–2002): 30–39.
We can learn a great deal about production from care-
ful case studies. See Rudy Behlmer, America’s Favorite
Movies: Behind the Scenes (New York: Ungar, 1982); Al-
jean 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
Mifflin, 1987); Ronald Haver, “A Star Is Born”: The Mak-
Notes and Queries 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, “Ver-
tigo”: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic (New York:
St. Martin’s, 1998). John Gregory Dunne’s Monster: Liv-
ing Off the Big Screen (New York: Vintage, 1997) is a mem-
oir of eight years spent rewriting the script that became Up
Close and Personal. Many of Spike Lee’s 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 inde-
pendent scene, Vachon’s Shooting to Kill, mentioned above,
documents the making of Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine.
Directors Speak
Collections of interviews with filmmakers have become
common in recent decades. We will mention interviews
with designers, cinematographers, editors, sound techni-
cians, and others in the chapters on individual film tech-
niques. The director, however, supervises the entire process
of filmmaking, so we list here some of the best interview
books: Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It (New
York: Knopf, 1997); Mike Goodrich, Directing (Crans-
Prés-Céligny, 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, Movie-
makers’ Master Class: Private Lessons from the World’s
Foremost Directors (New York: Faber and Faber, 2002).
Since 1992, Faber and Faber (London) has published an an-
nual collection of interviews called Projections. Two im-
portant Hollywood directors have written books on their
craft: Edward Dmytryk’s On Screen Directing (Boston:
Focal Press, 1984) and Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies
(New York: Knopf, 1995).
Screenwriting and Rules
In mass-production filmmaking the screenwriter is ex-
pected to follow traditional storytelling patterns. For sev-
eral decades, Hollywood has called for scripts about strong
central characters who struggle to achieve well-defined
goals. According to most experts, a script ought to have a
three-act structure, with the first-act climax coming about a
quarter of the way into the film, the second-act climax ap-
pearing about three-quarters of the way through, and the
climax of the final act resolving the protagonist’s problem.
44 CHAPTER ONE Film Production, Distribution, and Exhibition

Writers will also be expected to include plot points, twists Radical Media: The Political Experience of Alternative Com-
that turn the action in new directions. munication (Boston: South End Press, 1984).
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:
Production Stills versus Frame Enlargements
Dodd, Mead, 1987); and Michael Hauge, Writing Screen- A film may live in our memory as much through photo-
plays That Sell (New York: HarperCollins, 1988). Kristin graphs as through our experiences of the movie. The photo-
Thompson has argued that many finished films have not graph may be a copy of a single frame taken from the
three but four major parts, depending on how the protago- finished film; this is usually called a frame enlargement.
nist defines and changes important goals. See her Story- Most movie photographs we see in books and magazines,
telling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical however, are production stills, images shot by a still photo-
Narrative Technique (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer- grapher on the set.
sity Press, 1999). Older but still useful books on screen- Production stills are usually photographically clearer
writing are Eugene Vale, The Technique of Screenplay than frame enlargements, and they can be useful for study-
Writing (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1972) and Lewis ing details of setting or costume. But they differ from the
Herman, A Practical Manual of Screen Playwriting for image on the film strip. Usually the still photographer re-
Theater and Television Films (New York: New American arranges and relights the actors and takes the shot from an
Library, 1974). Pat McGilligan has collected reminis- angle and distance not comparable to that shown in the fin-
cences of screenwriters in a series of interview books ished film. Frame enlargements therefore offer a much
called Backstory, from the University of California Press. more faithful record of the finished film.
A historical overview is Tom Stempel, FrameWork: A His- For example, both 1.44 and 1.45 have been used to il-
tory of Screenwriting in the American Film (New York: lustrate discussion of Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game. In
Continuum, 1988). 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 finished film. The
Small-Scale Production
There are few studies of artisanal and collective film produc-
tion, but here are some informative works. On Jean Rouch,
see Mick Eaton, ed., Anthropology—Reality—Cinema: The
Films of Jean Rouch (London: British Film Institute, 1979).
The makers of Harlan County, U.S.A. and other indepen-
dent documentaries discuss their production methods in
Alan Rosenthal, The Documentary Conscience: A Case-
book in Film Making (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1980). Maya Deren’s 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 filmmaking in 1.44 A production still from Renoir’s
Brakhage Scrapbook: Collected Writings (New Paltz, N.Y.: The Rules of the Game.
Documentext, 1982). For information on other experimen-
talists, see Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema: Interviews
with Independent Filmmakers (Berkeley: University of Cal-
ifornia Press, 1988) and David E. James, Allegories of Cin-
ema: American Film in the Sixties (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1989).
Collective film production is the subject of Bill
Nichols, Newsreel: Documentary Filmmaking on the Amer-
ican Left (New York: Arno, 1980) and Michael Renov,
“Newsreel: Old and New—Towards an Historical Profile,”
Film Quarterly 41 1 (Fall 1987): 20–33. Collective produc-
tion in film and other media is discussed in John Downing, 1.45 A frame from The Rules of the Game.

actual shot from the film is shown in 1.45. The frame en-
largement 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 director’s visual style.
Virtually all of the photographs in this book are frame
enlargements.
Film and Video
Detailed comparisons of film and digital video as media can
be found in Scott Billups, Digital Moviemaking: The Film-
maker’s Guide to the 21st Century (Studio City, Calif.: Wiese,
2000); Maxie D. Collier, The ifilm Digital Video Filmmaker’s
Handbook, ed. Scott Smith (Hollywood: Lone Eagle, 2001);
Ben Long and Sonja Schenk, The Digital Filmmaking Hand-
book, 2nd ed. (Hingham, Mass.: Charles River Media, 2002);
and Drew Campbell, Technical Film and TV for Nontechnical
People (NewYork: Allworth, 2002). Three contemporary
filmmakers 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).
Notes and Queries 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 film, video is a
technique that offers no resistance. The lighting is always
sufficient, the camera movement incredibly light and
facile—too facile—and what is more, if you don’t 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
film” [Wajda, Double Vision: My Life in Film, trans. Rose
Medina (New York: Holt, 1989), pp. 43–44].
The boundaries between cinema and video have long
been blurred. Steven Spielberg began his career directing
for television and returned years later with Amazing Sto-
ries. 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 re-
lation between the U.S. film industry and television, see
Tino Balio, ed., Hollywood in the Age of Television (Boston:
Unwin Hyman, 1990).