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Sometimes small-scale production becomes
collective
production. Here, instead of a single filmmaker shaping the project, several film workers participate equally. The group shares common goals and makes production decisions democratically. Roles may also be rotated: the sound recordist on one day may serve as cinematographer on the next. A recent instance is the Canadian film
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner.
Three Inuits (Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirq, and Paul Qulitalik) and one New Yorker (Norman Cohn) formed Igloolik Isuma Productions in 1990. After making several video shorts and a television series, the group composed a screenplay based on an oral tale about love, murder, and revenge. With funding from television and the National Film Board, cast and crew spent six months shooting in the Arctic, camping in tents and eating seal meat. “We don’t have a hierarchy,” Cohn explained. “There’s no director, second, third or fourth assistant director. We have a team of people trying to figure out how to make this work.” Because of the communal nature of Inuit life, the Igloolik team expanded the collective effort by bringing local people into the project. Some had to relearn traditional skills for making tools and clothes from bone, stone, and animal skins. “The Inuit process is very horizontal,” Cohn explained. “We made our film in an Inuit way, through consensus and collaboration.” Showcasing the strengths of digital Beta video
(
1.39
),
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
won the prize for best first film at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. That, said Cohn, convinced people “that a bunch of Eskimos from the end of the world could be sophisticated enough to make a movie.”

Small-scale production allows the filmmakers to retain tight control of the project. The rise of digital video formats has made small-scale production more visible.
The Gleaners and I
(see
5.42
),
The Yes Men, Encounters at the End of the World,
and other recent releases indicate that the theatrical market and festival circuit have room for works made by single filmmakers or tiny production units.

The introduction of consumer and prosumer digital cameras and affordable software for computer post-production has led to the rise of “do it yourself” (DIY) filmmaking. Individuals or small groups of amateurs can make their own films and share them over the Internet via YouTube and other websites. Perhaps the most prominent DIY film is Arin Crumley and Susan Buice’s
Four Eyed Monsters,
a filmed reenactment of the couple’s unconventional romance. Although it was shown in a few theaters and at some festivals, the film’s main distribution was via a selfpublished DVD. The filmmakers promoted it in Second Life, on YouTube, and on their own website.
Four Eyed Monsters
ultimately receiving screenings on the Independent Film Channel, which also published a new edition of the DVD.

We categorize films on the basis of how they were made. We can distinguish a
documentary
film from a
fiction
film on the basis of production phases. Usually, the documentary filmmaker controls only certain variables of preparation, shooting, and assembly. Some variables (such as script and rehearsal) may be omitted, whereas others (such as setting, lighting, and behavior of the figures) are present but often uncontrolled. In interviewing an eyewitness to an event, the filmmaker typically controls camera work and editing but does not tell the witness what to say or how to act. For example, there was no script for the documentary
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media.
Filmmakers Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick instead shot long interviews in which Chomsky explained his ideas. The fiction film, in contrast, is characterized by much more control over the preparation and shooting phases.

Similarly, a
compilation
film assembles existing images and sounds that provide historical evidence on a topic. The compilation filmmaker may minimize the shooting stage and create a story from archival footage. For
The Power of Nightmares,
Adam Curtis gathered newsreel and television footage, television commercials, and clips from fiction films to track the rise of fundamentalist politics and religion after World War II.

One more kind of film is distinguished by the way it’s produced. The
animated
film is created frame by frame. Images may be drawn directly on the film strip, or the camera may photograph drawings or three-dimensional models, as in the
Wallace and Grommit
movies.
Corpse Bride
was created without using motion picture cameras; instead, each frame was registered by a digital still camera and transferred to film. Today most animated films, both on theater screens and on the Internet, are created directly on computer with imaging software.

Production practices have another implication for film as an art form. Who, it is often asked, is the “author,” the person responsible for the film? In individual production, the author must be the solitary filmmaker—Stan Brakhage, Louis Lumière, you. Collective film production creates collective authorship: the author is the entire group. The question of authorship becomes difficult to answer only when asked about large-scale production, particularly in the studio mode.

Studio film production assigns tasks to so many individuals that it is often difficult to determine who controls or decides what. Is the producer the author? In the prime years of the Hollywood system, the producer might have had nothing to do with shooting. The writer? The writer’s script might be completely transformed in shooting and editing. So is this situation like collective production, with group authorship? No, because there is a hierarchy in which a few main players make the key decisions.

Moreover, if we consider not only control and decision making but also individual style, it seems certain that some studio workers leave recognizable and unique traces on the films they make. Cinematographers such as Gregg Toland, set designers such as Hermann Warm, costumers such as Edith Head, choreographers such as Gene Kelly—the contributions of these people stand out within the films they made. So where does the studio-produced film leave the idea of authorship?

Most people who study cinema regard the director as the film’s primary “author.” Although the writer prepares a screenplay, later phases of production can modify it beyond recognition. And although the producer monitors the entire process, he or she seldom controls moment-by-moment activity on the set. It is the director who makes the crucial decisions about performance, staging, lighting, framing, cutting, and sound. On the whole, the director usually has most control over how a movie looks and sounds.

This doesn’t mean that the director is an expert at every job or dictates every detail. The director can delegate tasks to trusted personnel, and directors often work habitually with certain actors, cinematographers, composers, and editors. In the days of studio filmmaking, directors learned how to blend the distinctive talents of cast and crew into the overall movie. Humphrey Bogart’s unique talents were used very differently by Michael Curtiz in
Casablanca,
John Huston in
The Maltese Falcon,
and Howard Hawks in
The Big Sleep.
Gregg Toland’s cinematography was pushed in different directions by Orson Welles (
Citizen Kane
) and William Wyler (
The Best Years of Our Lives
).

During the 1950s, young French critics applied the word
auteur
(author) to Hollywood directors whom they felt had created a distinctive approach to filmmaking while working within the Hollywood studio system. Soon American critics picked up the “auteur theory,” which remained a central idea for film academics and students. Now you will occasionally read reviews or see spots on television that use the term, which has become a common term for a well-respected director.

Today well-established directors can control large-scale production to a remarkable degree. Steven Spielberg and Ethan and Joel Coen can insist on editing manually, not digitally. The late Robert Altman disliked ADR and used much of the on-set dialogue in the finished film (Martin Scorsese does as well). In the days of Hollywood’s studio system, some directors exercised power more indirectly. Most studios did not permit the director to supervise editing, but John Ford often did only one take of each shot. Precutting the film “in his head,” Ford virtually forced the editor to put the shots together as he had planned.

Around the world, the director is generally recognized as the key player. In Europe, Asia, and South America, directors frequently initiate the film and work closely with scriptwriters. In Hollywood, directors usually operate on a freelance basis, and the top ones select their own projects. For the most part, it is the director who shapes the film’s unique form and style, and these two components are central to cinema as an art.

We’ve spent some time considering film production because that is where film art begins. What of the other two phases of filmmaking? As in production, money plays a significant role in both distribution and exhibition. We’ll see as well that these phases have effects on film art and viewers’ experiences of particular films.

Distribution companies form the core of economic power in the commercial film industry. Filmmakers need them to circulate their work; exhibitors need them to supply their screens. Europe and Asia are home to some significant media companies, but six Hollywood firms remain the world’s major distributors. The names are familiar: Warner Bros., Paramount, Walt Disney/Buena Vista, Sony/Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, and Universal.

These firms provide mainstream entertainment to theaters around the world. The films they release account for 95 percent of ticket sales in the United States and Canada, and about half of the international market. In world capitals, the majors maintain branch offices that advertise films, schedule releases, and arrange for prints to be made in local languages (either dubbing in the dialogue or adding subtitling). With vigorous marketing units in every region, the majors can distribute non-U.S. films as well as Hollywood titles. For example, Hayao Miyazaki’s popular animated films (
Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle
) are distributed on video by Disney’s Buena Vista arm—even in Miyazaki’s homeland of Japan.

The major distributors have won such power because large companies can best endure the risks of theatrical moviemaking. Filmmaking is costly, and most films don’t earn profits in theatrical release. Worldwide, the top 10 percent of all films released garner 50 percent of all box office receipts. The most popular 30 percent of films account for 80 percent of receipts. Typically, a film breaks even or shows a profit only after it has been released on cable, satellite, and home video.