Back-to-back film production
Back-to-back filming is the practice of shooting two or more films as one production, thus reducing costs and time.
Rationale
In modern filmmaking, employment is now project-based, transitory, and "based on a film not a firm."[1] Almost all participants in the industry are freelancers, who move easily from one project to the next and do not have much loyalty to any particular studio, as long as they get paid.
This differs from the old studio system, a form of mass production in which a studio owned all the means of production (that is, reusable physical assets like sound stages, costumes, sets, and props)[1] and carried large numbers of cast and crew on its payroll under long-term contracts. Under the old system, "a producer had a commitment to make six to eight films per year with a fairly identifiable staff."[1] Under the new system which replaced it after 1955, filmmaking became a "short-term film-by-film arrangement" in which a producer is expected to assemble an entirely new cast and crew for each project, and rent the means of production from contractors only as needed.[1]
The advantage of the current system is that film studios no longer have to bother either with paying people who are not involved in a current film production, or with green-lighting films very frequently so as to efficiently exploit
Therefore, if a film does well at the box office and appears to have established a winning formula with a particular cast, crew and storyline, one way to minimize these transaction costs on sequels is to reassemble as much of the team as soon as possible (before anyone dies, retires, or commits to other possible scheduling conflicts) and sign them to a single production that will be edited, released, and promoted as multiple films.
Filming back-to-back also minimizes the problem of actors visibly aging between sequels which do not have significant time gaps written in between them. James Cameron referred to this problem as the "Stranger Things effect"—where characters who are supposed to be in high school are played by actors who appear to be a decade older—in order to explain why he filmed the second, third, and part of the fourth sequels to Avatar back to back.[3]
The pioneer of modern back-to-back filmmaking was producer Alexander Salkind,[4] who decided during the filming of The Three Musketeers (1973) to split the project in two; the second film was released as The Four Musketeers (1974).[5][6] The cast was quite unhappy to be informed after the fact they had been working on two films, not one.[5][6] As a result, the Screen Actors Guild introduced the "Salkind clause," which specifies that actors will be paid for each film they make.[5][6] Salkind and his son Ilya went on to produce Superman and Superman II back to back.[5]
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 9780231060554.
- ^ ISBN 9780231060554.
- ^ Wang, Jessica (December 20, 2022). "James Cameron says he shot the Avatar sequels at the same time to avoid the 'Stranger Things effect'". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
- ^ Jackson, Gordon; Anders, Charlie Jane (31 July 2015). "Has Filming A Movie And Its Sequel Back-to-Back Ever Had a Good Result?". Gizmodo. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
- ^ a b c d Salmans, Sandra (17 July 1983). "Film View: The Salkind Heroes Wear Red and Fly High". The New York Times. p. 15. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
- ^ ISBN 9780786431663.