Rethinking the FilmmakingProduction Models

James FairLecturer 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 CHEAP

This is the Quality ofmy work

This is my Time

What I shouldbe paid+ =

Give us Quality

All year round

Atlow 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)

Quality

Quality

Time CHEAP

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 THEPRODUCTION PROCESS

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)

VILFREDO PARETO

US

THEM

Commissioning editor

Commissioning editorProducer

Commissioning editorProducerDirector

Commissioning editorProducerDirectorWriter

Commissioning editorProducerDirectorWriterTHAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DO

Commissioning editorProducerDirectorWriterTHAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DOCamera person

Commissioning editorProducerDirectorWriterTHAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DOCamera personCamera personSound personProduction DesignerCostumeEditorRunnerGafferActorsLightingGripCateringVision mixerTape OpContinuityBoom operatorMusicianFormat TransferTape RunnerGraphics

THAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DO

THAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DO

There is no ‘I’ in team.

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)

VERSATILEMULTI-SKILLEDSELF SUPPORTEDTEAM

VERSATILEMULTI-SKILLEDSELF SUPPORTEDTEAM

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)

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)

DRUCKER

It’s not the size that counts,

it’s what you do with it

VERTICAL INTEGRATION&

HORIZONTAL COMMUNICATION

RTLFREMANTLE

BroadcastingContent

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

RTLFREMANTLE

BroadcastingContent

Production Enterprises

THAMES TALKBACK GRUNDY ETC…

US

THEM

Producer

Costume

Runner

THAT REALLY IMPORTANT THING I DO

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)