484 CHAPTER 11FILMMAKING TECHNOLOGIES AND PRODUCTION SYSTEMS
In fact, however, that equation is simple: movie -
making is, above all, a moneymaking enterprise.^2
In the movie industry, costs and profits are
measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. Today
the average Hollywood film costs about $64 million
to produce and an additional $35 million to mar-
ket. Thus, with the average movie costing about
$100 million, the individuals and financial institu-
tions that invest in the production of films, and the
producers and studios in whom they invest, care
first about money (ensuring the safety and potential
return of their investments) and second—often a
distant second—about art. They focus on movies as
commodities and, for that reason, often consider
release dates, distribution, and marketing as more
important than the products themselves. In view of
this reality, it is all the more impressive, then, that
the movie industry produces a small number of
films each year that can be appreciated, analyzed,
and interpreted as genuine works of art rather than
simply as commercial products to be consumed.
Because movie production involves a much
more complicated and costly process than do most
other artistic endeavors, very few decisions are
made lightly. Unlike some arts—painting, for
example—in which the materials and the process
are relatively inexpensive, every decision in film-
making has significant financial ramifications.
Painters may paint over pictures many times with-
out incurring steep costs, and thus their decisions
can be dictated almost entirely by artistic inspira-
tion. Movies, in contrast, involve a constant tug-of-
war between artistic vision and profitability.
A great movie generally requires two key ingre-
dients: a good script and a director’s inspiration,
vision, intelligence, and supervision (but not neces-
sarily control) of all aspects of the film’s production.
Because the director plays the paramount role in
the production process and in most cases has final
authority over the result, we ordinarily cite a film
in this way: Tamara Jenkins’s The Savages(2007).
But although movie history began with staunchly
individual filmmakers, movies have been carriedThe Whole Equation
The art of the movies—the primary concern of this
book—is inseparable from its business, methods,
filmmaking technologies, and production systems.
In his novel The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald
attempted to explain how Hollywood works:
You can take Hollywood for granted like I did, or you
can dismiss it with the contempt we reserve for
what we don’t understand. It can be understood too,
but only dimly and in flashes. Not half a dozen men
have ever been able to keep the whole equation of
pictures in their heads.^1Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be
able to
✔explain the key technological milestones
that laid the foundation for the invention of
the movies.
✔understand the basic nature of the three
filmmaking technologies: film, video, and
digital.
✔understand the challenges and benefits
involved in converting the film industry to
digital technology in the areas of produc-
tion, distribution, and exhibition.
✔make a clear distinction between the three
basic phases of making a movie: prepro-
duction, production, and postproduction.
✔explain the studio system, its organization,
and its decline.
✔explain the independent system, its current
prominence, and how it differs from the
studio system.
✔understand the varieties of financing in the
film industry.
✔understand how movies are marketed and
distributed.(^1) F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon: An Unfinished Novel(New
York: Scribner’s, 1941), p. 3.
(^2) David Thomson takes a nonfiction approach to defining the
equation in The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood(New
York: Knopf, 2005).