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Film and Film-Making Gifted

The art and science of film and film-making could, arguably, be called the most creative among domains. As such, these occupations appeal to creatively gifted young people. Most people stand up to leave a movie when the actors leave the screen and the credits begin to roll. Few stay for the 5 minutes or so it takes to acknowledge the many people it takes to make even small-budget, independent films. The credits include the executive producer, the director and the assistant directors, the camera operator and assistants, the sound mixer, the boom operator, the producers, the cinematographer, the costume designer, the set designer, the art director, the writer, the production manager, the unit production manager, the line producer, the assistants for all of these, the sound mixer, the gaffer, the key grip, the best boy, the Foley artist, the visual effects director, the stunt coordinator, the music mixer, the boom operator. Each of these is a subdomain within the domain of film. Many take special training and schooling, and have apprenticeship levels on the way to expertise. This entry describes some of these positions.

The Producer

Producers acquire the film script and work to get the film made, including hiring the director, seeking or providing financial backing, supervising the various versions of the script, and working to keep the film within budget while filming. Louis B. Mayer, a native of New Brunswick, and the child of Russian Jewish immigrants, who became the head of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), started as a theater owner in Massachusetts, and then became a producer, seeking to create films that had a certain appeal to the general public.

The Director

The director is hired by the producer. The director is in charge of hiring the actors, deciding on the locations of the scenes, keeping the film within its budget, and managing the shots. A director is called an auteur (French for author) if he has a recognizable style that is much admired by critics. Examples of auteurs are Woody Allen, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Altman, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Cocteau, Francis Ford Coppola, Federico Fellini, John Ford, D. W. Griffith, JeanLuc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and François Truffaut. Critics such as Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris have criticized the auteur theory of directing, noting that the art of film requires many other master creators, and that the “look” of a film is often the province of the cinematographer and the art directors. However, the director is the one who is responsible overall for the approval of the look.

The Writer

The film writer is often undervalued, according to film writers, who argue that the film would not even exist if the writer had not created it. Film writers may write original screenplays, or write adaptations from other media, such as books or plays. The Writers' Guild of America determines who gets the writing credit for a film because many writers might work on one script. Often, literary writers are asked to write on films, and several literary works have come out of the experience, for example, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon.

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