The Introduction

Introduction

There are three bigger operators in movie production.  Production company makes the movie, studio provides space, settings and facilities for the production company. 

After the movie is ready, the distributor handles the relationships with theaters and audiences. And when the movie is dropped from theaters, distributor handles things with BRD/DVD retailers and broadcasting companies.

The price of a single production starts from one million, and the highest production budgets are almost  $300 millions.

Lower limit comes from the minimum requirements for a full length movie. Have to hire people, rent studios, rent cameras and so on. 

The higher limit comes from the maximum grosses. $300 million movie needs over $600 million Box Office grosses, before the producers and investors get their money back. Using $400 millions to a movie, is much like a suicide, changes of big losses are over 80%. Not very likely to get your money back.

Huge budget movies, with over $100 million budgets are very big productions. Founding a brand new mid-sized factory from the scratch costs $29 to $81 millions. And it takes at least 41 months before you can start to dream about getting your money back.

Production company or unit

Production company is company or unit, which actually makes the film.  It hires the cast, staff,  studios, and does almost everything for the movie. 

The main things for the core of the production company is to select the story for production, and get financing + distribution for the production.

After the story is taken to production, company assigns and gathers/hires people for the production. Company sort of reincarnates and expands for each production.

The structures of the production companies varies a lot. Depends on who is running the business, and how big it is. And also from the current reincarnation state, of course.

Production company is a creative company. Creative companies are very different from non-creative companies. Creative companies do not have predefined forms and hierarchies. People are motivated, there aren't usually big dictators and bosses. There is no need for them. People work in teams, and do what they have to or agreed to do. Movie production companies are unique also amongst creative companies. All the other creative branches use regulars, either through payrolls or long term contracts. 

Very long time ago production companies used long term agreements with actors, directors and producers. Movie Companies had their own stars, just like record companies. Nowadays "longer-than-one-movie" agreements are very rare.

When Walt Disney is examined as a production company, it makes everything by itself. Including distribution and financing. WD is the only big movie company, which does everything with it's own staff. When we go down from complete WD / BV productions, the amount of the things, which are directly in the production company reduces all the time. The smaller production companies buy things from subcontractors, hire freelancers and make deals with distributors.

The notorious accounting department is almost always in Production Company. It is very famous amongst movie makers. Much like an invisible nightmare. Asks you to cut costs all time. 

Accounting department co-operates with producers all the time. Quite often production company acts as a leading producer, and does most of the producer's work. If the producer comes from the company, the company acts as a leading producer.

Producer

Producer is the key person in movie production. Producers are not very creative, in the word's traditional meaning , they are practical people. They handle and resolve practical things and problems.

Leading producer has very many responsibilities. 

Producer is negotiator in the money related things between accounting and production team. Another important thing is to take care, that everything is ready and present when needed.

List of things, from which producer takes care of, is very long. Producer hires behind scenes staff, rents studios, adjusts timetables, negotiates fees and wages, and so on.

If something goes wrong, producer comes and starts to work with troubles and messes.

Most of the casting is also in producers responsibility. Actors for less important roles are usually hired by producers. In leading roles producer gives the limits for maximum and minimum fees, which can be paid. In bigger projects, there are casters, who handle the casting for less important roles.

Usually producers do not work alone, they have many people, who works for them.

In the industrial like production, the producer selects scripts and books from which the movies are made. 

In the early years of the movies producers were more famous and popular than directors. First big news from the production was, who is producing it. After that news were full of stories about directors and actors, the producer selected to the production. Name was mentioned in stories.

When producer select the subject for the movie, the director is also almost always hired by producer.

Director

Director is another key person in movie production. Director visualizes the movie. Everything you see on the screen is in director's responsibility. While producer takes care that the settings are done, director says how they look.

Although being creative, behind scene talks are quite often money and budget related. Must think how much each scene cost, and how much money can be spent on each scene / clip.

Director is also an artist. Almost all directors draw a set of pictures from all clips and scenes you see in the movie. They are called storyboards. 

Director's job is very complicated. 

Director places cameras and people on the scene. Besides that director thinks about the mood of each scene. After the mood is decided, you have to find a way to create it.

Director decides how costumes, make-ups, hair dressings are done. Looks of settings, background activities and lighting conditions are also part of directors work. Besides the visualization, the voice, music and sound effects are also in directors responsibility.

First the director gives general guidelines for the creative team about each scene. Then the creative people makes propositions and sketches from these things, and director selects the one, which suits best to the movie and scene.

Quite a many director just gives the guide lines to the team, and let the people do what they do. Depends on director. As being the head of the creative team, the directors can orient themselves to the different things. And delegate things to other people.

Some directors are oriented in guiding the actors, but director's job is to control the whole screen.

Directors do not usually give very many orders to the actors. Just the places where they stand and where they move. About acting they usually give some general notes about the mood actor is expected to have.

Actors

Actors are the third important thing in the movie production. When people watch the movie, they concentrate on actors almost all the time. How they look, and things they do and say 

After the actress gets the script, and takes the role, she starts to think how do I spell and perform my role. 

First she makes the general characteristic definition about the role. Thinks about the nature, behavior and the way the character talks. Sometimes she does background studies. From history and books. Have talks with people, who are similar to her character in real life.

Then she starts the detailed scene-by-scene work with the script. Thinks about looks on face, how hands & feet are moved and how the dialogue is spelled. 

After making decisions about these things, she starts to practice the scene and dialogues in it.

It does not usually matter how big role the actress / actor has in the movie. 

When you have a bigger role in the movie, you must work longer and harder. Responsibilities in the movie's success increases by the significance of the role. The bigger role you have, more time you have to spend with each scene.

Directors and other people do not usually interfere very much to the actresses / actors work. If the clip or scene does not work with the rehearsed acting, director gives new orders, and tries to help actress to perform it correctly as quickly as possible.

In most cases the reason for the non-functional scene is in the script. The idea doesn't work, when it is visualized. Looks good on paper, but not on film.

Script

The script is the heart of the movie. By the time movie is taken to production, the script is already written. 

When script writer is in production, it is possible that the story changes a little by the time the movie is made. Because scenes are shot in random order, it is not possible to make big changes to the story after the movie is taken to production. Producer's team makes the shooting schedules for the Director's team. Shooting times are based on practical things, when studios and actors are available, when settings for the scene are in studio, and so on.*

All people in movie production read the script. People, who design settings, read how the settings look and what kind of items there is on the set. Actors read dialogues and mood descriptions. Make Up and Dressing division read notes about clothing and make-ups. And so on.

If the script misses the description for the team, team has free hands to do what they want. Quite often script concentrates on actors work only.

Script writers

Script writer thinks the movie / story as a whole. First he has an idea for the story. Then he starts to develop it into a plot, and sequence of events. The way the script is written and created varies from person to person. 

Writing a screen play for a movie is very different from traditional book writing. There are many things, which can take place only in books, and on the other hand there are things which can take place only movies.

The most difficult thing in script writing is, that there are many things which are good in thoughts and paper, but which do not work / look good, when they are visualized. Director is very important person for script. Talented director can make almost impossible ideas work on screen, and an inexperienced director fails and makes a mess from almost all scenes in the movie.

Besides the story, the script writer's job is to keep the story coherent and understandable. The chain of events / scenes must be made so, that the people who comes to see the movie, understands, what is going on, on the screen. The base speed of the movie comes from the script. Directors possibilities to shorten and lengthen the scenes is limited.

Movie Maker

The word Movie Makers is often used in publicity. Movie Maker is not a profession.

Typically movie maker is a person who writes scripts and directs the movie ( Writer-Director ). Some times movie maker owns a production company, but not necessarily.

Sometimes Movie Maker is not a living person. There can be more than one person behind the word Movie Maker. When Movie Maker is not a living person, it is a group of people, who always do their movies together. Non-living Movie Maker goes up to the production company level. Rather small production companies are sometimes called movie makers.

Studios

Studio is a place where most of the movie is shot. Big distributors and production companies have studios of their own. Besides integrated studios, there are many independent studios, which are used in various productions.

Usually most of the movie is taken in studio. Lightning and camera positioning demands make studios much better places, than real environment.

Studios build the settings. They provide carpenters and engineers, which build the settings and apparels for the production. They build these things from blue prints or pictures. The amount of available services varies on studio basis. And also within studio. The more services / staff you use, the more you have to pay.

Subcontractors

Besides studios, stunt services, plus special and digital effects are quite often bought from the subcontractors. They all need expensive special equipment.

Costume makers and designers have also subcontractor like systems. Quite a many are freelancers. ( One woman / man company ). Architects and artistic people work also quite often as freelancer. 

Rentals

Rental business around the movie production is quite big. There are costumes, cameras, lights, wind machines, snow machines, cranes, trailers, and so on.

Distribution company

Distributor in it's traditional meaning, was a person, who handled the delivery from production company to theaters.

After the movie was ready, theaters, which were interested in showing the movie, ordered movie from production company. 

After the order arrived, the distributor read the order. After getting the order, distributor made copies from the footage. And winded the film on reels. After the reels were ready, he packed them and wrote the theater name on the package. After that distributor walked to the nearest post office, and sent the reel package to the theater.

Distribution companies are still doing this job for production companies. Although they are nowadays very big companies. And they do all kind of things. 

Biggest distributors are said to be the movie companies. Besides distribution, they finance and produce movies. Quite often distributor also makes advertising and promotion work for the movie.

The biggest distributors are 20th Century Fox, , Columbia / Sony, Paramount, Universal, Walt Disney and Warner Bros. These six companies dominate the movie business. Sizes and market shares varies a lot. Depends how the huge budget movies reaches the audiences.

Seventh big company Metro-Golden-Mayer ( MGM-UA ) went to bankruptcy in the year 2010.

Usually when people talk about Studios and Movie Companies, they talk about distributors.

Big distributors are still doing their base job, and distributing movies, which are not made by the company itself. When movie is only distributed by a big company, right after the company's logo there is "Produced by" text, and it is followed by a production company name or a list of the production company names.

Network series

Drama, Comedy,  Detective and Thriller Series for cables and satellites are made with the same system than movies. There are production units / companies and distributors. The biggest difference is in time and money which is spent on shooting a single episode. The settings are fixed, actors are in payrolls, etc. 

They miss stunts, special and digital effects, background music, and so on. The quality is not as good as it is in movies.

Series could be described as very cost effective movie sequels.

Movie with an unlimited budget

Some movies are made without budget at all. When the movie is done with unlimited budget, the Creative Team ( led by a Director ), can use as much money in the movie as they need and want. 

The movie maker's dream haven't been very costly in the past. When people are given free hands and financing, they start to think about the money, and use them wisely. There are examples from the movies, which were estimated to cost over $100 millions, and the actual cost was about $70 millions.

Before movie can get an unlimited budget, it have to convince the people, who decides about the amounts of money, which is used to production.

The movie must have something special and good in it. Good screenplay, excellent leading actresses or actors, or something like that.

When the movie has an unlimited budget, the budget is balanced with theater counts and money, which is spent in marketing.

Currently overall grosses are having troubles, and individual movies are performing well. Possible that in the year 2011 it is quite easy to get unlimited budgets for the movie productions. 

It is not possible to say, that spend more money on your movies. Must get better quality and more audiences too. Unlimited budgets are handy way put to more money into things, which could lead to better quality and bigger admissions too.

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* Sheet system makes it possible to write the script at the same time the movie is in production. It reduces the time which is used in the overall production. As an example from the benefit, movies which talked about war in Iraq, can be mentioned. Movies came to theaters 2 - 4 years after the war began. With the sheet they would have been in theaters earlier.