Rethinking the Filmmaking
Production Models
James Fair
Lecturer in Film Technology
Faculty of Computing, Engineering & Technology
Staffordshire University
The innovative, guerrilla attitude that has already hit
British indie-filmmaking is yet to have an impact on TV
drama. “There are accepted industry practices that
exist for no other reason than as a way of keeping
prices for services and equipment in check. Perhaps it
is time to challenge those rules”
(Joel Wilson quoted by Adrian Pennington, Broadcast, 1st May 2009)
PARADIGM
SHIFT
We are encountering new ways of living.
Innumerable confusions and profound feeling of
despair invariably emerge in periods of great
technological and cultural transitions. Our “Age of
Anxiety” is, in great part, the result of trying to do
today’s job with yesterday’s tools – with
yesterday’s concepts.
(McLuhan, 1967, 8)
THE PRODUCTION
TRIANGLE
HUMAN
BEINGS
Quality
Quality
Time
Quality
Time
CHEA
This is the
This is
What I shou
+ Quality of =
be paid
my Time
my work
Give us
Quality
All year
round
At
low cost
Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier
puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing
to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard
to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers
typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers
pay only for what is of use to them and gives them
value. Nothing else constitutes quality.
(Drucker, 2007, 206)
Qualit
Quality
Time
CHEA
Our “Age of Anxiety” is, in great part,
the result of trying to do today’s job
with yesterday’s tools –
with yesterday’s concepts.
RE-THINKING THE
PRODUCTION PROCESS
VILFREDO
PARETO
VILFREDO PARETO
An an ideal Paretan economy, jobs would be finely
subdivided to allow for the accumulation of complex
skills, which would then be traded among workers... In
a perfect society, so specialized would all jobs be, that
no one would any longer understand what anyone else
was doing.
(de Botton, 2009, 78)
US
THEM
Commissioning editor
Commissioning
editor
Producer
Commissioning
editor
Producer
Director
Commissioning
editor
Producer
Director
Writer
Commissioning
editor
Producer
Director
Writer
THAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DO
Commissioning
editor
Producer
Director
Writer
THAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DO
Camera person
Commissioning
editor
Producer
Director
Writer
THAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DO
Camera
person
Camera
person
Sound
person
Production
Designer
Costume
Editor
Runner
Gaffer
Actors
Lighting
Grip
Catering
Vision
mixer
Tape
Op
Continuity
Boom
operator
Musician
Format Transfer
Tape
Runner
Graphics
THAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DO
There is no ‘I’ in team.
THAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DO
The young today reject goals.
They want roles – R-O-L-E-S.
That is, total involvement. They do not want
fragmented, specialized goals or jobs
(McLuhan, 1967, 100)
The major incentive to
productivity and
efficiency are social
and moral rather than
financial.
(Drucker, 1993, 49)
effectiveness
effort
However powerful our technology and complex
our corporations, the most remarkable feature of
the modern working world may in the end be
internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities:
in the widely held belief that our work should make
us happy. All societies have had work at their
centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be
more than a punishment or a penance. Ours is the
first to imply that we should seek work even in the
absence of financial imperative. Our choice of
occupation is held to define our identity to the
extent that the most insistent question we ask of
new acquaintances is not where they come from
or who their parents were but what they do, the
assumption being that the route to a meaningful
existence must invariably pass through the gate of
remunerative employment.
(de Botton, 2009, 106)
VERSATILE
MULTI-SKILLED
SELF SUPPORTED
TEAM
VERSATILE
MULTI-SKILLED
SELF SUPPORTED
TEAM
No more “media” tools, no more go-betweens; the
latest industrial revolution is doing away with media,
erasing distances, focusing all of its economy in the
management of a hands-on proximity where the
technological apparatus is abandoning its specificity,
and vanishing.
(Migayrou, 2006, 37)
RUCKE
Large organizations cannot be versatile. A
large organization is effective through it’s
mass rather than its agility. Fleas can jump
many times their own height, but not
elephants. Mass enables the organization
to put to work a great many more kinds of
knowledge or skill than could possibly be
combined in any one person or small
group. But mass is also a limitation. An
organization, no matter what they would
like to do, can only do a small number of
tasks at any one time. This is not
something that better organization or
‘effective communication’ can cure. The law
of organization is concentration.
(Drucker, 2000, 192)
It’s not the size
that counts,
it’s what you do
with it
VERTICAL INTEGRATION
&
HORIZONTAL COMMUNICATION
RTL
Content
Broadcasting
FREMANTLE
Production
Enterprises
THAMES TALKBACK GRUNDY ETC…
mass enables the organization to put to
work a great many more kinds of knowledge
or skill than could possibly be combined in
any one person or small group
RTL
Content
Broadcasting
FREMANTLE
Production
Enterprises
THAMES TALKBACK GRUNDY ETC…
US
Costume
Producer
Runner
THAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DO
THEM
When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to
attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavour of the most
recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view
mirror. We march backwards into the future.
(McLuhan, 1967, 73)
McLuhan
You can trust me,
I’m a professional.
The professional tends to classify and specialize, to
accept uncritically the groundrules of the environment.
The groundrules provided by the mass response of his
colleagues serve as a pervasive environment in which
he is content and unaware. The ‘expert’ is the man who
stays put.
(McLuhan, 1967, 93)
The amateur can afford to lose.
(McLuhan, 1967, 93)