The Film Industry - Lewis Todesco

Researching into the film industry

Filmmaking is the word used to describe the process of making a film in its entirety. This however involves many different smaller jobs underneath three main stages.

The first stage of the filmmaking process is Development/Pre-production.

‘Development’ is when the producer selects the story that he/she wants to make a film on. After the story has been chosen the producer will then hand the story over to story writers who take the current story and adjust it so that it becomes commercial and will be easier to sell and be more pleasing to the audience.

Next, a screenwriter will then take the altered story and then will produce, after several months, the screenplay for the film. Most of the time, once the story has been established and the screenplay has been written, they will make a pitch to other companies to help with the financial side of the film.

Now it moves into the ‘Pre-production’ stage which is still part of the first main stage of filmmaking. ‘Pre-production’ is when the budget of the film is established and the producer hires its crew for the film. The size of the crew and the nature of the film are all decided by the budget of the film, so for many Hollywood Blockbusters they will have a crew of a few hundred, but for a small independent film it will have a crew of around ten people.

The second stage of the filmmaking process is Production.

This is the stage where the film is actually filmed and depending on how smoothly the Pre-production and the Development stages this stage should go just as well as the shots, locations, cast and crew and script should all be established already.  More crew will be recruited at this stage, such as the property master, script supervisor, assistant directors, stills photographer, picture editor, and sound editors.

Some examples of production companies are; Universal Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures and Columbia Pictures.

The final stage of the filmmaking process is Marketing or Post-production.

This is where the film is edited and made into the final product. It is also the stage where the film is advertised by posters, trailer etc. And is distributed to the cinemas, theatres, DVD, the internet etc. A lot of film marketing is done over the internet as this is easily accessible to many people ad can spread very easily. It is also very cheap and easy to do.

Examples of Production companies

Legendary Pictures, Inc. is an American film production company based in Burbank, California. The company was founded by Thomas Tull in 2000 and in 2005 the company concluded an agreement to co-produce and co-finance 40 films with Warner Bros.

All of the films they have produced have been co produced by another smaller company for example ‘Syncopy films’ and have been distributed by ‘Warner Bros.’ Legendary Pictures have been responsible for films such as ‘300’, ‘The Hangover’ and the Batman trilogy.

 

Syncopy Films is an American-British motion picture production company founded by director, writer and producer Christopher Nolan and producer Emma Thomas (husband and wife, respectively).

In 2005, Syncopy Films partnered with Legendary Pictures to produce Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), and The Dark Knight Rises(2012) for Warner Bros. Pictures.

They are a private production company and have not made any films by themselves but have joined with other production companies. The main company that Syncopy groups up with is Warner Bros.