Chapter 2

Putting Words and Pictures into Motion: The Film-Making Team

In This Chapter

Thinking about film as a collaborative process

Introducing the key creative players

Valuing the technical wizards who make the magic happen

If you ever stay in the cinema right to the end of the film, remaining seated as the credits roll and everyone else races to the exit, you probably gaze at the apparently endless list of names. Perhaps you wonder, ‘What do all these people actually do?’ I don’t even attempt to describe every last job involved in making a movie, but in this chapter I do acquaint you with all the major contributors to a film – and more importantly show you how what they do affects what you watch on screen.

Helming a Film: Directors and Their Collaborators

Directors win the big awards, get invited to the best parties and often date the leading actors. But most of all directors get symbolic ownership over a film through the opening credits or title sequence, which often starts out with the label ‘A film by XY’ or ‘An XY film’ immediately after the studio and production company credits. After then listing the leading actors and other major contributors, the director’s name typically appears last before the film begins.

If you ever visit a working film set, you notice quickly that directors are important, but they’re far from the all-powerful creative gods that many people presume them to be. A director’s key skill is, in fact, collaboration. They need to build instant working relationships with a lot of different ‘creative’ people, they have to keep actors happy and they must bring every element together at the exact right time when they cry ‘Action!’

The independent ‘total film-maker’ may be an appealing myth, but that’s all it is. Look carefully at the credits of all the best directors, and you find that they prefer to work with the same people over and over again. Hitchcock movies sound so distinctive thanks to the composer Bernard Herrmann, and costume designer Edith Head dressed Hitchcock’s ice maiden female leads to kill. But his most important collaborator was Alma Reville: screenwriter, editor, continuity person and occasional actress. Oh, and his wife.

Of course a few directors may have let their delusions of grandeur get the better of them. Charlie Chaplin was an amazingly talented man, but his credit list on Limelight (1952) raises an eyebrow. He was not only the star (alongside fellow veteran silent comedian Buster Keaton), but he also wrote the screenplay, produced, directed, wrote and arranged the music, and choreographed the dance routines. He probably made the sandwiches too.

But even Chaplin didn’t do everything himself. Recent histories have uncovered the importance of his ‘assistants’. For example, Charles Reisner was his (uncredited) assistant director and gag man on The Gold Rush (1925), before directing The Three Stooges and Abbot and Costello in his own right. (For a closer look at the idea of directors as the major creative force behind their films, turn to Chapter 14.)

Thickening the Plot: Screenwriters

Before every great film, there was a great screenplay. The beloved hero, the dastardly villain, the great car chase, the perfect witty put-down – they’re all in that 120 pages or so of typed text. So, as I describe in this section, a great script is a powerful document indeed.

‘Authoring’ a film

Screenwriters occupy a peculiar position in the film-making hierarchy. Although they’re absolutely essential to the creative process – without a strong central idea, interesting characters and believable dialogue, no film can succeed – after their beloved ideas go into production, they have little or no control over what happens next.

In Hollywood, the average script is redrafted many times, often by different writers brought in to tighten up particular aspects, such as bolstering a star’s character or improving the gags. Blockbusters can be written by dozens of people, despite the fact that the Writers Guild of America limits the official number of collaborators to just three. Screenwriters must therefore watch their work being fundamentally changed before it even reaches an audience. Screenwriters need skins like rhinoceroses.

So can a screenwriter be considered the ‘author’ of a film? Well, yes, but only if you’re able to see the concept of authorship as being multiple and collaborative. The problem, however, is where do you stop? For example, the character Indiana Jones (see the nearby sidebar ‘Plunging into development hell’) is derivative of 1930s and 40s serial fiction, so shouldn’t those pulp writers and comic book authors also get a mention? And what about Indy’s literary precedents such as H Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines?

If you follow this logic to its conclusion, you may decide that the concept of cinematic authorship is basically irrelevant, because the inputs to a complex creative product such as a Hollywood movie are so fractured and dispersed. French literary theorist Roland Barthes made a similar argument in his 1967 post-structuralist essay when he loudly proclaimed ‘the death of the author’. That’s all very well, M. Barthes, but somebody still has to write the script, non? Turn to Chapter 15 for much more on film theory, including post-structuralism.

Studying screenwriting

Knocking out a film or TV show feels like something that everyone with a laptop can try. If you’re good at telling hilarious stories in the bar to your friends then maybe, just maybe, the next blockbuster comedy can have your name attached to it. Of course would-be writers soon discover that defeating the blank page (or screen) is nowhere near as easy as they hoped.

Screenwriting is an enticing career that requires basic skills that you must know and rules that you must follow. Many professional screenwriters, being naturally thoughtful and eloquent, have persuasive theories about what works and what doesn’t. They’re also often unemployed. This potent combination has resulted in a highly lucrative market for screenwriting teaching.

Thousands of books, blogs and taught courses are available, all offering the promise of screenwriting perfection. Therefore, picking the good advice from the bad can be difficult. But following are a few key texts that all aspiring screenwriters need to read:

• Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman: A classic insider’s account of Hollywood in the 1960s and 70s from one of its most successful screenwriters.
• johnaugust.com: A top popular Google-ranked blog from one of Tim Burton’s favourite writers, including audio podcasts and downloadable scripts.
• Screenplay by Syd Field: A bestseller since 1979, Screenplay emphasises story structure as the key element of screenwriting craft.
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell: An ambitious study of mythic storytelling in all forms, first published in 1949. It apparently inspired George Lucas to write Star Wars (1978).
• The Screenwriter’s Bible by David Trottier: A practical ‘how to’ guide with a particularly useful section on formatting a script.

Industry logic dictates that the best courses for studying screenwriting are found near the major production centres of Los Angeles (University of Southern California) and New York (Columbia University), and to a lesser extent European capitals such as London (The National Film and Television School). But Cairo, Mumbai and Sao Paolo also have well-established and lively film schools.

Whatever you read and wherever you study, a guaranteed pathway into the film industry doesn’t exist. Getting your work up on the screen depends on the same strange alchemy of talent, hard work and schmoozing as it does for everybody else.

Writing action

In essence, screenwriters can decide only what their characters say (see the next section) and what they do. Novelists can spend chapter after chapter exploring the inner worlds of their protagonists, but any script that tries to do the same is instantly dismissed. In screenwriting, to borrow from F Scott Fitzgerald (ironically, a novelist who struggled as a screenwriter), action is character.

For an example of how to create character through action alone, the opening 20 minutes of Pixar’s Wall-E (2008) is pretty hard to beat. Andrew Stanton’s script, available online through Disney Studios, has a full ten pages of wonderfully terse action directions that introduce the central figure, a waste-compacting robot (here known under his early name of Wally) alone on a completely trashed Earth:

Wally discovers a BRA in the garbage.
Unsure what it’s for.
Tries placing it over his eyes, like glasses.
Tosses it in his cooler.

The movie’s slapstick comedy is balanced against the pathos of Wall-E’s careful stewardship of his only companion, a cockroach. His routines, the items he chooses to collect and disregard, and most of all his love of the show tune ‘Put on Your Sunday Clothes’ from an old VHS of Hello Dolly! (1969) tell so much about this little robot, so economically, that you don’t need words – or even human facial expressions – to feel an instant affection for him.

Some movie aficionados refer to these powerful wordless segments as pure cinema, reflecting the notion that film developed much of its visual language before it had access to spoken dialogue through synchronised soundtracks. What makes film different from every other medium is its ability to capture movement through space: dancers, car chases, gun fights and all.

Although this passion for characterful action is particularly strong in Hollywood cinema, other traditions around the world have different rhythms and tempos. For example, the quiet stillness of classical Japanese cinema, exemplified by Yasujiro Ozu, stands in stark contrast to the crash, bang, wallop of Hollywood.

Writing dialogue

The idea of pure cinema is appealing, but a primary function of any script since the days of ‘the talkies’ is to capture, and therefore control, what actors say to each other. After all, scripts are also commonly known as screenplays. English playwright Terence Rattigan is sometimes quoted as saying that the screenplay is a child of its mother, the silent movie, and its father, the theatre drama. Clever chap, that Rattigan.

Describing what constitutes good dialogue is very difficult, but you know bad dialogue when you hear it. Some level of exposition is essential to locate events, characters and actions, but no one wants to hear a secondary character wheeled in purely to explain the background. Similarly, characterisation through dialogue can be appallingly clunky when characters try to tell the audience what they are. Viewers need to observe character in action to believe it.

The best way to get to grips with what screenwriting brings to finished films is simply to read a lot of them. Many great screenplays are available to buy or borrow from your local library. Try reading scripts for films that you haven’t seen yet, because then you can really let your imagination get to work purely based on the written word. Of course you can always watch the films afterwards to understand the connections between words on the page and images on the screen. This section gives you plenty of ideas, from Wall-E to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. So get reading those classic films!

Showing Them the Money: Film Producers

Producers have the most important and the least understood job in film-making. Many people think that they know what a director, editor or cinematographer does (if the latter’s role is a mystery to you, read the later section ‘Painting with Light: Cinematographers’), but a producer? Not so much.

As I discuss in this section, understanding the film producer’s role is more of a challenge than the other key creative inputs because their influence is difficult to observe on screen. Their projects tend to be many and varied, in different styles and different genres, because they choose to make what they can sell.

Giving producers their due

The producer is often the only person who sees a film project through from the beginning to the end. The writer may originate the idea, the characters and the plot, the director has the vision and the collaborative skills to ensure that top-quality footage goes in the can, and the editor shapes and structures the finished product (check out the later section ‘Cutting and reconnecting: Editors’ for more details), but only the producer is responsible for overseeing the entire process.

For this reason, producers have as good a claim as anyone to be the overriding influence on or ‘author’ of a film.

Adding further weight to this claim is the thorny issue of final cut, or who decides when a film is ready to be released. The producer, standing in for the studio or financiers, generally holds this power rather than the editor or even the director. Commercial film-making is a business first and foremost, and great producers make the tough business decisions.

But a major flaw becomes apparent in this argument (that the producer is the sole, individual bearer of cinematic authorship) when you look at most major films’ credits. Often loads of producers are attached, with different titles signifying slightly different roles. Here are some common ones, roughly from most to least important:

• Producers: Secure finance, oversee budgets and manage the production office.
• Executive producers: Represent the studio’s interests on set, or provide a major source of finance themselves, or are sometimes prestigious ‘consultants’ on the production (often the case with major stars).
• Associate producers: Work under the main producer and are responsible for specific elements of the process, such as completing finance or overseeing post-production.
• Line producers: Directly responsible for the pre-production or planning phase of a project and attempt to ensure that shooting is completed on time and on budget.
• Co-producers: Line managers with some creative input during the development process, or producers from other companies that are co-producing the film.

Confused yet? Basically this multi-layered hierarchy attempts to share the huge responsibilities of the producer role among many individuals and ensure that each of the many stakeholders in a project feel properly valued and important. The bevy of titles certainly represents shared ownership of a project, but whether this can qualify as authorship or not is another question.

Fundamentally, producers in all their guises are businesspeople. They may make a hundred different decisions on a daily basis that affect the finished product, but effectively they farm out the more obviously creative elements of film-making to other people, notably the director.

The idea of producer as businessperson accounts for the unease auteur theorists (see Chapter 14) traditionally feel about producers. Many critics argue from political positions that are opposed to free-market economics, and as a result they often cast directors in the role of noble artists struggling against nefarious moneymen who want to stifle their visions. But who gets their sweaty hands on the ultimate accolade of industry esteem, the Best Picture Oscar? The producer, who doesn’t give a darn at that moment whether he’s an author or not.

Producing the studio goods

The producer’s role and importance were largely defined by a system of film-making that no longer exists, at least not in the United States. The Hollywood studio system was an incredibly efficient, world-conquering way to make movies that relied on tight contractual controls. Writers, stars and directors were all employees of the major studios, and their bosses were the producers (for more on the studio system, see Chapter 9).

Among the first and greatest of the studio producers was Irving Thalberg, who, in 1925, rose from humble office assistant to head of production at MGM, aged just 26. In 12 short years before he died, he produced more than 400 films, discovered stars such as Clark Gable and Joan Crawford, and helped write Hollywood’s voluntary code of moral conduct known as the Hays Code (in operation from 1930 to 1968). For an example of his work that has stood the test of time, try Grand Hotel (1932), a sumptuous, star-packed adaptation of a hit stage play.

Thalberg is credited with creating many of the film producer’s basic strategies. He tended to choose pre-existing source material, such as Broadway plays or novels, and he worked on scripts collaboratively using meetings known as story conferences. Under his management MGM became renowned for high production values: the biggest and the best of everything. Even today, pre-sold properties from a range of different media (TV shows, comic books, video games and so on) made with high production values define the Hollywood blockbuster.

Thalberg was also notorious for firing the director Erich von Stroheim, whose extravagant ways regularly exceeded budgetary restrictions. This spat became an industry legend and the model for future tussles between, for example, producer David O Selznick and director Alfred Hitchcock.

As with all movie industry gossip, however, be careful of taking these stories at face value. They’re part of the mythology that Hollywood is happy to maintain: art competes with finance to produce the best entertainment money can buy.

Of course, Hollywood wasn’t the only town with a studio system and therefore studio producers. For as long as cinema audiences were large enough to support large-scale local production (basically pre-1960), Britain had the Rank Organisation, Italy had Cinecittà and Germany had UFA (see Chapters 10 and 11). The political turmoil of Europe during this period also meant that many of the most successful producers ended up working for Hollywood in exile, such as UFA’s Erich Pommer.

In the modern film industry, the closest equivalent to the classical Hollywood studio system is in India. The Indian film industry is very large and very diverse, with major production centres in Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad (see Chapter 12). The biggest Indian film producers, such as Aditya Chopra, are celebrities in their own right, and many popular stars also become producers. This level of self-promotion may have horrified the quietly spoken Thalberg, but the chutzpah of these producers is infectious and undeniable.

Going it alone: Independent producers

These days, the dividing line between studio and independent producers is increasingly blurry. Most producers work as freelancers, while the people doing their former jobs within what’s left of the Hollywood major studios are called executives. Even the clear separation between mainstream and independent film-making that existed in the 1970s and 80s has become difficult to maintain, with companies such as Miramax providing real marketing muscle for smaller, quirkier films.

So what was the difference between studio and independent producing, if it ever really existed? In the Golden Age of Hollywood, if Irving Thalberg of MGM represented studio professionalism and reliability then the risk-taking, no-holds-barred independent approach was defined by David O Selznick. Selznick started as a studio guy at RKO but soon ventured out on his own forming his own production company and striking a distribution deal with United Artists. His biggest success? Oh, only Gone with the Wind (1939), still the highest grossing film of all time after adjusting for inflation.

After the breakdown of the Hollywood studio system in the 1950s and 60s, the independent producer really came to the fore. With all creative talent freed from restrictive contracts, the producer’s challenge was to pull together an attractive ‘package’ for the studios, which were now essentially financiers and distributors. This shift in roles gave increased power to talent agents, who began to assume duties previously assigned to producers. The rise of agencies also led to inflated production costs as star and director salaries rocketed.

Ever since Steven Soderbergh’s microbudget Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) crossed over from the niche independent market into the mainstream, Hollywood has increasingly courted leftfield, up-and-coming film-makers. Nobody was more central to this trend than Harvey Weinstein of Miramax, known for his tough approach to acquisitions (including cutting them if needed) and his incredible ability to garner Academy Award nominations for his films.

Film producers tend to be natural storytellers, and so you can read plenty of fantastic warts-and-all autobiographies. The documentary film about Robert Evans, The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002), is practically required viewing.

Bizarre coincidence alert! In James Cagney’s biopic of horror actor Lon Chaney, Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), legendary studio producer Irving Thalberg is played by none other than Robert J Evans in his pre-head of Paramount Pictures days. Hollywood is a small town after all.

Painting with Light: Cinematographers

Yes, I’m shamelessly borrowing this section’s heading from one of the best books ever written about film-making, by cinematographer John Alton. ‘Painting with light’ is a lovely phrase, and it expresses the visual artistry and ambition of many cinematographers. First published in 1949 and recently republished (University of California Press, 2013), Alton’s book remains so useful because it’s filled with diagrams and technical illustrations that still inform today’s cinematography practice.

Directing the photography

No other role in film-making so perfectly balances creativity and technology as that of the cinematographer, whose importance within the film-making process is probably best signalled by the descriptive alternative title of director of photography (or DP). Being labelled as a ‘director’ elevates cinematographers above the other technicians, and indeed many directors rely heavily on their DPs to achieve the visuals that they desire. The label also reflects the managerial aspect of the role, however, because cinematographers generally oversee and lead a team of camera operators, electricians and lighting crew. (Check out ‘Making it happen: Technical crew’ later in this chapter for more details.)

The cinematographer is so vital to the success of a film that this professional is usually among the first to be hired, either by the producer or director, who may have their favourite DP. During the development or pre-production stages, the cinematographer and the director collaborate closely to find a shared visual style. This collaboration often involves research, such as searching out particular paintings, photographs or buildings that serve as inspiration. Cinematographers then make a series of technical decisions each of which has a significant effect upon the finished film.

During principal photography (the physical shooting of the film), cinematographers handle the following tasks:

• Checking and testing all camera equipment and lighting.
• Setting up each scene, placing the cameras and lights.
• Blocking the set, which involves marking out the movement of actors and any camera equipment.
• Working with actors to ensure that their performances are recorded accurately by the cameras.
• Watching and approving the rushes or dailies, the shots recorded each day in their raw, unedited state.

In addition, developments in digital grading and image manipulation (that is, changing the colours or other elements of the image via computer) mean that the cinematographer now even has a key role to play during post-production.

Although guiding the actors is still primarily the responsibility of the director, the cinematographer often makes them look so remarkable. For this reason, the most powerful stars often insist that the best available cinematographers light and shoot them.

In 1957, at the height of her success, Marilyn Monroe demanded that Jack Cardiff be hired as cinematographer on The Prince and the Showgirl. As the director was her co-star, the notorious control freak Laurence Olivier, you can imagine how well this request was received. In the end, Monroe was right, because the film’s rich, saturated colours (provided by shooting in Technicolor, Cardiff’s speciality) are perfect for the film’s frothy fairy-tale tone.

Achieving ‘the look’

When creating a specific visual style or look for a film, cinematographers can call on the long tradition of aesthetic practices inherited from other art forms, particularly painting and still photography (see Chapter 1). Many cinematographers are open and passionate about their chosen influences. For example, Jack Cardiff loved the Dutch old masters Rembrandt and Vermeer and often set up his lighting to emulate the highlights and shadows of their paintings.

Other vital influences on mainstream cinematography have come from national traditions. For instance, the early silent films known collectively as German expressionism cast a long shadow (often quite literally) over international cinema in general – and over film noir in particular (see Chapter 5). This influence is partly due to expressionism’s striking use of diagonal lines and extreme light and shade, but also because many of the best German directors and cameramen ended up working in America due to the two world wars. Check out Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953) for a perfect example of how expressionism mingled with the American gangster film.

Avant-garde or experimental films have also been a rich source of visual inspiration for cinematography. For example, American artist and film-maker Stan Brakhage, known for scratching celluloid or sticking translucent items to it, is cited as a key influence by (among others) Jeff Cronenweth, who shot David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999). This connection makes perfect sense when you watch Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) cutting shots from pornographic films into Disney cartoons. (See Chapter 7 for more on Stan Brakhage’s unusual vision.)

Of course influences extend well beyond intellectual and respectable art forms. The high-gloss, high-impact style of 1980s advertising found its way into films such as Top Gun (1986) through directors and cinematographers who worked across both media. The signature style of this and other so-called high-concept films is bold backlighting and high-contrast images reminiscent of posters or adverts. The sex scene between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis in Top Gun is a perfect example: their bodies become silhouettes against a strong blue backlight.

Comics and graphic novels have also had a significant influence over blockbuster cinematography in recent decades. The bright hyper-real colours of Dick Tracy (1990) and Batman and Robin (1997) may have been superceded by the darker, noir-ish style of Sin City (2005) and the Dark Knight franchise, but in both cases cinematographers get to strut their stuff. These cinematographers may not be Rembrandt, but the films certainly look impressive.

Harnessing technology

Cinematographers may consider themselves artists, but unlike painters and sculptors their medium is inherently technological. Even shooting on location using entirely natural light, their decisions about camera lenses, film stocks and screen ratios can completely change the quality of the final image. All these choices require advanced (and constantly advancing) technical know-how. Check out the nearby sidebar ‘Shooting Brokeback Mountain (2005)’ for a great example of how technical choices impact a final film.

Modern film audiences expect realism, which demands that exteriors are shot on location, or someplace that appears so. Most interior footage, however, can be achieved in a controlled studio setting, which allows the cinematographer full control over the lighting in ways that are impossible outside in daylight or confining real-world rooms. Multiple light sources are often combined to create a wide range of possible effects.

If you’ve seen Casablanca (1942) – and if you haven’t, why not? – you likely noticed that its female star, Ingrid Bergman, often appears to glow from within. Of course, Bergman was extraordinarily beautiful, but expert lighting produces that glow. Classical studio lighting creates a bright, even image and favours the human figures in the frame. At least three lights are essential for this effect, but often many more were used to highlight clothing or eyes moist with romantic longing.

The origins of this style of three-point lighting are technological, having to do with cameras and film stocks of the period that required bright illumination. But the reasons for its continued dominance are more complex and interesting. The visual treatment of female stars was (and is) clearly an important issue for feminist film theory (see Chapter 13). But more broadly, the clarity and perfect focus of classical Hollywood implies a way of looking at the world that’s controllable and contained.

Although a much broader palate of visual textures and technologies are available to the modern cinematographer, the choices go beyond artistic and venture into the ideological. Each new technological development leaves its mark on the cinematography of the era, particularly if it resonates with dominant themes of the day. For example, the extreme zoom in or out of a scene is characteristic of 1970s American cinema; it was a good fit for the paranoid political thrillers of that era and later.

Digital video has caused seismic changes in recent cinematographic practice, because many of the techniques required for shooting on celluloid film no longer apply. Although a high-gloss, perfect Hollywood look is still entirely possible, and indeed often used for romantic comedies and family films, digital video has shifted audience expectations of realism in fascinating ways. The lo-fi, handheld feel of the first films shot with digital video, such as Mike Figgis’s Timecode (2000), have subsequently infiltrated mainstream action films thanks to documentary film-maker Paul Greengrass’s Bourne trilogy (see Chapter 16).

Getting the Film in the Can: Production

Of all the phases of film-making, from initial pitching to the final post-production touches, the shooting or production stage is certainly the busiest, and probably the most documented and discussed. People pay attention to production because it often takes place in the public eye: either literally, if shot on location, or metaphorically, via extensive coverage in film magazines and DVD extras.

Despite all the attention that production receives, the coverage still tends to focus mainly on directors and stars, along with the occasional attention-grabbing special-effects technique (for example, the use of motion-capture technology in The Lord of the Rings trilogy). So in this section I draw your attention to a few unsung heroes of the film-making team.

Setting the scene: Art directors

The French phrase mise-en-scène, meaning literally ‘put in the scene’, holds an important place in film studies terminology and therefore theory (see Chapter 4). Fundamentally, the term brings attention to the physical material of film-making: the sets, the props, the costumes and so on. And the person in charge of finding, designing or making all this stuff is the art director.

Like the cinematographer (see the earlier section ‘Directing the photography’), the art director leads a large team of specialists who work together to provide the perfect environment for the actors, vehicles for them to drive and objects for them to interact with. Unlike the cinematographer, however, the role of art director also exists in the theatre, and many art directors gain valuable experience behind the stage before moving behind the camera.

Art directors may need to be ‘arty’ in the sense of producing drawings, designs or even painting backdrops for use on set, but their art is better understood in the sense of craftsmanship and design. For films involving artificial sets, a thorough understanding of construction and architectural methods is required, as is a responsibility for the health and safety of the crew.

The art director has a key influence on a film’s level of visual spectacle. Having long placed emphasis on storytelling and narrative, film studies now generally acknowledges that this spectacle is one of the key pleasures of cinema-going (for an example, see the section on Tom Gunning in Chapter 17). Audiences love the antique sets and ornate costumes of period drama, the outlandish and surreal environments of science fiction and the machinery of action cinema, particularly cars and guns, even when they don’t especially connect with the story.

Partly for these reasons, the most spectacular art direction tends to receive the most attention and acclaim – including Oscars. In fact one of Hollywood’s most prolific art directors, MGM’s Cedric Gibbons, created the iconic golden statuette. Here’s a little more about Gibbons and a few other legendary art directors:

• Cedric Gibbons (1892–1960): Won 11 Oscars and worked on more than 1,000 films during Hollywood’s studio era. He was largely responsible for the MGM style of high production values and lavish spectacle. Take a look at The Wizard of Oz (1939) and An American in Paris (1951).
• John Box (1920–2005): Started out as an architect and stage designer before becoming the pre-eminent art director for epics such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). He was renowned for his ability to recreate enormous exotic sets in unlikely locations, including building the Great Wall of China in Wales.
• Richard Sylbert (1928–2002): A master of creating heightened reality in films such as Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Cotton Club (1984) and particularly Dick Tracy (1990), Warren Beatty’s heavily stylised comic-strip misfire. He even got to be head of production at Paramount briefly in the late 1970s.

As hard-working freelancers, art designers naturally need to sell their skills and experience in order to secure future contracts, which means that many upload promotional showreels to websites such as YouTube and Vimeo. Watch a couple and you quickly get a sense of the results that get them hired. Search for British art director Simon Bowles, whose showreel displays the lush period detail of Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) and impressive Roman interiors of Centurion (2010).

Turning the creative vision into a reality: Technical crew

Economists call films ‘complex creative products’, meaning that they require a great deal of effort, time and people to achieve. Nowhere are these characteristics more apparent than in the bustling catering areas on a large film set, where hundreds of burgers and cups of coffee are regularly doled out to the hungry workers. All good producers know that an army of film crew marches on its stomach.

A film’s technical crew takes the artistic ideas and technological innovations of the senior creative players, such as the production designer, and makes them happen. You need a particular style of Bakelite telephone commonly used in 1920s Paris? Call the props guy. Fuse blown on that lighting rig? You need to speak to one of the grips. Star can’t quite squeeze into that figure-hugging costume? That’s a job for the cutter (or costume fitter).

The job titles of these vital members of staff can be rather obscure, and so here’s a quick breakdown of the strangest:

• Best boy: First assistant to the gaffer or key grip – and, of course, is sometimes a woman.
• Dolly grip: Operates camera dollies (moveable rigs laid on tracks) and cranes (machines that lift the camera high into the air).
• Gaffer: Chief electrician on set with responsibility for keeping the lights on, laying cables and following safety regulations.
• Key grip: Works closely with the cinematographer to design and maintain the lighting set-ups.

Although many of these roles are by definition invisible on screen (no one’s going to hire boom operators who allow their furry sound-recording equipment to fall into frame), others, such as costume designers, provide vital elements of visual spectacle for all the world to see. For this reason many of the world’s top fashion names have dabbled in film, including Hubert de Givenchy (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961), Giorgio Armani (American Gigolo, 1980) and Jean Paul Gaultier (The Fifth Element, 1997).

Whether you’re an internationally renowned fashion designer or an apprentice electrician who nobody has ever heard of, the nature of film production demands that all staff members pull their weight – or the whole edifice can crumble. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and one substandard element has let down many a film, negating the great work done elsewhere.

The ‘weakest link’ organisation of film-making, combined with the fact that everybody works on short-term contracts, means that word-of-mouth reputation (and gossip) is a vital force in the film industry. Why risk hiring the gaffer who, according to your sources, fell off the wagon last month and turned up on set stinking of booze and knocking rigs over? News of failures gets round fast, and job security is basically an illusion.

Putting the Footage on the Screen: Post-Production

Post-production is the bit after production (the clue’s in the title!). This section focuses on the work that comes after the cameras stop rolling.

Cutting and constructing: Editors

Editing is vital for telling a story while using the conventions of film (see Chapter 4), but editors themselves are rarely dragged from their darkened edit suites and thrust into the spotlight.

The principal task of the editor is reducing the hours and hours of footage shot for a typical film down to something around typical feature film length. Selecting the best take from the many available is a key skill, as is varying the length of shot used to create the right rhythm of a scene and a sequence. Classical continuity editing relies on long-standing conventions to appear seamless, but editors can choose to stretch or break these rules to achieve particular effects.

Editing was one of the first areas of film-making to benefit from the digital revolution, because editing software, such as Final Cut Pro, is now industry standard. Cutting films on celluloid was a masterful skill but extremely labour-intensive and difficult to change after editors made decisions. Digital editing allows much greater flexibility, but some more experienced editors miss the discipline and precision of editing on film.

Good editing is often designed to go unnoticed, but training your brain to start noticing the cuts is relatively easy. Find a film renowned for its cutting, such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) or Saving Private Ryan (1998), and watch sequences with the sound on mute. Without sound to act as a psychological bridge between shots, the transitions seem much more jarring. You may well be surprised at how many shots make up a typical sequence, even in slower-paced movies.

Of course these days you can also try a bit of editing yourself without much expense. iMovie (on all Mac computers and even iPhones) is a great, user-friendly mini version of Final Cut Pro.

Amplifying the images: Sound designers and composers

Cheap high-definition video cameras bring decent image quality within the reach of amateur film-makers, and editing is easy to do on a laptop. But watch a few homemade films, even student films on YouTube, and you quickly realise that they don’t sound half as good as they look. Dialogue often drops in and out under over-prominent music, key sound effects are missing entirely and mumbling non-professional actors fluff key lines of dialogue. Good sound design is difficult.

Although some of the sound for films is recorded during principal photography, a surprising amount is added later, in post-production. Dialogue is a good example. Many of the words you hear in the final cut of a film are overdubbed onto the action through a process known as automated dialogue replacement (ADR). In addition, technicians known as Foley artists record sound effects, such as opening doors, crunching footsteps or fist punches, in studios. Even after all the required sounds and music are recorded, mixing and arranging layers of sound to fit into the modern surround-sound landscape is an extremely complex next step.

The great irony here is that everyone thinks of sound as a natural accompaniment to images, in that pre-sound or ‘silent’ cinema feels fundamentally lacking to modern audiences. However the reality is that film sound is much more artificial and unnatural than many cinematic images.

Similarly, film music only seems natural and ‘right’ because that’s what you expect to hear (see Chapter 4). If you think about it, having an invisible orchestra strike up a mournful tune out of nowhere is a pretty bizarre way to enhance moving pictures. But it works.

Much of the work of film composers is by necessity done after the film is reaching completion, largely because they can’t finalise their musical timings until the edit is nearly locked down. Therefore they have to compose very quickly, and often rely on a team of copyists and orchestras to speed things up. However some prominent composers prefer to get involved much earlier in the process, discussing themes with directors, and occasionally providing temporary music to play during shooting.

The great strength of film music lies in its magpie ability to combine a wide variety of styles, influences and instrumentation:

• The traditional orchestral film score, such as John Williams’s soaring themes for Superman (1978) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), are by far the most popular and widely heard examples of contemporary ‘classical music’.
• Many intellectual avant-garde composers produce strange, atonal scores for populist genre pictures, including horror and sci-fi. Just try listening to Leonard Rosenman’s score for Fantastic Voyage (1966) or Elisabeth Lutyens’s work on The Skull (1965) out of context. They’re seriously weird.
• Film composers are also great innovators in electronic music, introducing an unsuspecting movie audience to instruments such as the eerie theremin in Miklos Rozsa’s score for Spellbound (1945) and the robotic vocoder in Wendy (then Walter) Carlos’s music for A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Visualising the impossible: Special-effects artists

Clever French critic Andre Bazin argued that cinema is inherently ‘realistic’ due to its status as a mechanical reproduction of reality (see Chapter 13). But ever since the earliest days of film, camera operators, directors and effects artists have been playing around with showing the impossible on screen. Georges Méliès, Buster Keaton and Fritz Lang were all special-effects supremos even before the coming of sound.

Optical effects, such as superimposing one image over another, exploit the photographic properties of celluloid, whereas physical effects (including simple painted backdrops) alter the filmed event to create fantastical images. Innovation in these areas (and more recently in digital effects) has always been a significant draw for audiences. Cinema began as a novelty fairground sideshow, and in many ways it continues to offer similar pleasures (see Chapter 17 on Tom Gunning’s ‘cinema of attractions’).

This drive for innovation means that the jobs that make up a special-effects team have changed more radically than any other area of film-making. Following are a few credits that are rarely seen today:

• Animatronics: The art of creating mechanical creatures and aliens is perhaps most famously exhibited in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). But Jim Henson’s work in this field in the 1980s and 90s is unlikely to ever be surpassed: just check out the stunning creations in his bizarre children’s fable The Dark Crystal (1982).
• Matte artists: Paint spectacular and elaborate backdrops onto glass that are combined with live action elements. The effect can be whimsical and cartoon-like, such as the emerald city in The Wizard of Oz (1939), or relatively low key and realistic, as with the enormous warehouse shot from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
• Model builders: Construct intricate miniature sets that appear huge on screen. See Metropolis (1927) and Blade Runner (1982) for two examples six decades apart but alike in spirit. Miniatures are still regularly combined with digital effects in today’s blockbusters, for example the walled city of Minis Tirith in The Return of the King (2003).

Computer imagery was first used in the mid-1970s to enhance traditional special-effects work. Digital composition was an excellent solution for the problems of superimposing real actors over artificial environments. The technology really took off, however, when creating unreal creatures, animals and sets entirely out of computer data became possible, whether a huge lumbering diplodocus in Jurassic Park (1993) or the sinking ship of Titanic (1997).

The importance of computer-generated imagery (CGI) – which creates moving images from computer software – in modern blockbuster cinema means that a whole wave of technology experts have become unlikely movie moguls. John Lasseter of Pixar is the foremost example, overseeing the birth of the truly ground-breaking and entirely digital Toy Story (1995). Pixar in Silicon Valley, Northern California, also famously offers a working environment that minimises hierarchy and maximises play, which is the antithesis of the old Hollywood studio mentality. Truly, the geeks shall inherit the Earth, or at least the entertainment industry.

You can read all the scandalous biographies, watch every single minute of the DVD extras and scour the trade journals endlessly to get some idea of what film-making is kind of about. But nothing beats having a go at it yourself. Start small – a five-minute short is plenty – and don’t overreach on the spectacle front. Develop an idea into a script, assemble a team of willing volunteers, assign them roles in front of and behind the camera, and get on with it. Before you know it you’re feeling the bitterness of creative differences, the joy of the happy accident and most of all the absolute truth that film-making is collaboration, pure and simple.