exterior location or a crowded city street, camera
and lighting setups, and the extent of movement
by the camera and the actors. For example, a scene
that involves two people in a simple interior set-
ting, with a basic camera and lighting setup, may
require a minimal crew, while a scene involving
many people in an exterior setting, with several
camera positions and carefully choreographed
movement, normally requires a large crew. The
creation of artificial weather (rain, wind, or snow)
and the use of animals or crowds—all expensive
factors—require additional personnel. Shooting on
exterior locations is usually more expensive than
shooting in a studio because it involves transporta-
tion and food, sometimes requires hotel accommo-
dations, and depends to a considerable extent on
the weather.
To better understand what’s involved in shooting,
we’ll look briefly at the production of Robert
Zemeckis’s Cast Away(2000). The movie features
Tom Hanks as Chuck Noland, a FedEx systems
engineer based in Memphis, Tennessee. While he
is en route from Moscow to the Far East, his plane
crashes in the ocean, and Chuck, the only survivor,
washes ashore on a desert island. After sustaining
himself physically, emotionally, and spiritually for
four years, Chuck builds a raft and attempts to
return to civilization. Overwhelmed by the elements
and near death, he is picked up by a freighter and
returned to Memphis, where he faces yet another
emotional challenge.
In making Cast Away, the production crew faced
daunting physical and logistical problems. Their
largest challenge was to make the most efficient
use of human, financial, and physical resources. The
film, which cost $85 million to produce, was shot on
soundstages in Hollywood as well as on actual loca-
tions in Texas, Tennessee, Russia, and the Fiji island
of Monuriki in the South Pacific; the task of planning
the overall production schedule was relatively rou-
tine, however. Although the largest part of the film’s
three-part structure is set on Monuriki and features
only one actor (Hanks), the cast actually includes
nearly sixty other actors. The credits list another
123 members of the production crew, most involved
in the creation of the visual and special effects.
When shooting on Monuriki, the crew had to
endure real winds, storms, and floods, and when
nature would not cooperate with their shooting
schedule, they had to create their own bad weather.
Furthermore, their work depended on the tides
and available sunlight (Chuck would not have had
artificial light on the island). The airplane crash
was simulated in Hollywood, where considerable
shooting was done underwater, and the scenes of
Chuck’s attempted escape by raft were shot on the
ocean as well as in the perilous surf off another Fiji
island. After one month’s shooting on Monuriki,
capturing footage that established Chuck’s overall
challenge, the crew took a yearlong hiatus while
Hanks lost the fifty pounds he had gained to por-
tray Chuck in the early part of the film. This change
helped create the illusion that Chuck had spent
four years on the island. Meeting these challenges
as successfully as the filmmakers did (while main-
taining visual consistency within the footage) was
central to maintaining the film’s verisimilitude.Postproduction
When the shooting on a film has been completed,
postproductionbegins. Postproduction consists of
three phases: editing, preparing the final print, and
bringing the film to the public (marketing and dis-
tribution). In brief, editing consists of assembling
the visual images and sound recordings, adding the
musical score and sound effects, adding the special
effects, assembling the sound tracks, and doing any
necessary dubbing. Preparing the final print consists
of timing the color print, a process of inspecting
each shot of a film and assigning color corrections
and printer light values to maintain consistency of
brightness and color from shot to shot; completing
the first combined picture and sound print, in
release form, of a finished film; possibly previewing
the film; then possibly making changes in response
to the comments of preview audiences. Bringing the
film to the public consists of determining the market-
ing and advertising strategies and budgets, setting
the release date and number of theaters, finalizing
distribution rights and ancillary rights, and finally
exhibiting the film.494 CHAPTER 11FILMMAKING TECHNOLOGIES AND PRODUCTION SYSTEMS