medium, proceeds through three basic phases: pre-
production, production, and postproduction.
Preproduction
The first stage, preproduction, consists of plan-
ning and preparation. It takes as long as necessary
to get the job done—on average, a year or two. Ini-
tially, filmmakers develop an idea or obtain a script
they wish to produce. They may secure from a pub-
lisher the rights to a successful novel or buy a
writer’s “pitch” for a story. The opening segment of
the late Robert Altman’s The Player(1992) provides
a comic view of the start of a studio executive’s typ-
ical day. The executive, Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins),
has the responsibility of listening to initial pitches
from writers and recommending to his boss the
ones he likes. Moving blithely through a world of
business politics, intrigue, and power games, he
hears from people with and without appointments,
losers, hangers-on, hacks, and even experienced
authors. Everyone he meets wants to be a screen-
writer, and everyone wants to cast Julia Roberts.
The pitches are, for the most part, desperate
attempts to make a new movie out of two previ-
ously successful ones, as when one scriptwriter—
who cannot even agree with her partner on what
they’re talking about—summarizes a proposal as
“Out of Africameets Pretty Woman.” The final pitch
before the credits end, about a “political thriller,”
serves as a transition to the thriller at the heart of
Altman’s film. One of Hollywood’s most inventive
and successful independent directors, Altman
clearly knew the territory well enough to satirize it.
Once the rights to producing a story have been
contracted and purchased, the producers can
spend months arranging the financing for a pro-
duction. The ease with which they accomplish this,
and the funds that they secure, will largely depend
on the film they offer to their backers and its pro-
jected financial returns. As we’ll see, a director
may spend another month or more discussing the
script with the screenwriter and the key people
responsible for design, photography, music, and
sound. Another two or three months may be spent
rewriting the script. Throughout the preproduc-
tion period, the producers continually estimate and
reestimate the budget. The final budget, which
should cover all foreseeable expenses, also reflects
their marketing strategy. As one example, the pro-
ducers of Inception(2010) allocated a production
budget of $160 million and an advertising budget of
$100 million, a shrewd calculation considering the
movie was not only a major box-office success but
was also nominated for an Academy Award for best
picture. During this process of previsualization,
before the cameras start to roll, the director and
the chief collaborators decide how they want the
film to look, sound, and move. At least two to three
weeks more can be devoted to organizational issues
and details such as scheduling studio space and
scouting locations, obtaining permissions to use
those locations, and arranging for the design and
construction of sets, costumes, and properties. Just
before shooting begins, another two weeks will prob-
ably be devoted to rehearsals with the cast and crew.
Up to this point, almost a year has elapsed—
assuming that all has gone smoothly. Though the
entire process of making a movie may seem
straightforward, this description does not take into
account the inevitable delays, the continuing diffi-
culties in pulling together the financial package,
and the countless details that must be attended to.
For example, a film made at the peak of the Holly-
wood studio system would have been carefully
planned, budgeted, and supervised by the producer
in the front office, whether it was shot in a studio or
on location. Daily reports to and from the set
ensured that everyone knew, to the minute and to
the dollar, the progress and the cost.
Orson Welles extensively composed and planned
the shots of his first film, Citizen Kane(1941), which
was photographed entirely in the RKO studio and
miraculously (considering Welles’s later reputation
as a spendthrift independent director) was com-
pleted in less than a year, almost within the allotted
budget. By contrast, Francis Ford Coppola, already
a highly experienced director by the time he made
Apocalypse Now(1979), began without a clear plan
of what he wanted to achieve, worked as an independ-
ent producer with financing from United Artists, and
shot the film in a foreign country under very difficult
conditions, ultimately exposing 115 hours of film for
every hour actually used. During the four years it492 CHAPTER 11FILMMAKING TECHNOLOGIES AND PRODUCTION SYSTEMS