Chapter 8 The Production Process 289(continued)Organizational Challenges
Stanley Kubrick, the director of such classic groundbreaking fi lms as Paths of
Glory, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and many others, also served
as producer for the majority of his fi lms. He observed:
I am deeply involved in the administration, because it is in this
area that many creative and artistic battles are lost. You’ve got
to have what you want, where you want it, and at the right time,
and you have got to use your resources (money and people) in the
most eff ective way possible because they are limited, and when they
are seriously stretched it always shows on the screen... and the
conclusion that I have come to is that the making of a fi lm is one
of the most diffi cult organizational and administrative problems to
exist outside of a military operation.
You have also witnessed that moviemaking conditions can involve
anything from a single creator to personnel that number in the hundreds
or thousands (and it can seem limitless when watching the credits of some
movies). At the outset of projects, fi lmmakers organize the tasks that need
to be done to make the movie. How can the work be organized? How many
people are needed? Who is responsible for each decision or confi rming that
an assignment is completed?
Th e necessary steps to complete a project will guide your investigation of
motion picture production from conception to completion. At the outset of
a production, fi lmmakers must fully analyze their project to determine what
is needed to make the motion picture. Th ese needs dictate the organization
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