In the 1950s and ‘60s, there were three television networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC. In the 1970s, Fox became the fourth network and changed the way in which the first three networks approached their business. There was more competition.

During that whole period of time—the 1960s to the 1970s– there was a certain kind of programmatic approach to content production. The networks saw what content worked and wanted to replicate it in everything they created. That was their product.

For example, they had a certain story to tell. They would cast a couple of stars and add a few particulars. They wanted to see the exact same story week after week, so audiences knew exactly what to expect when they tune in the next week.

Moving into the 1970s, content production fell under the auspices of the financial and syndication rule, where individual studios and individual producers were able to own their own product. There was an array of product that was available. But there wasn’t a tremendous amount of competition. Only certain buyers from the four networks were seeking out content.

In 1993, the financial and syndication rule was withdrawn. Networks were able to create and own their own product. Over the next few years, the networks started acquiring or creating production companies where they could then produce their own product. The networks understood that if they were producing the content, they would then not have to pay an independent producer for their creative efforts.

It was far more financially lucrative for the networks to be able to create their own production companies. They’d be able to keep the all money in the same loop, robbing the right pocket and putting it in the left pocket.

“The 1930s and 1940s were kind of the heyday of the American studio system. It was the heyday of Japanese filmmaking—many amazing filmmakers were doing so much work; however, the studio systems were still being established. And when Alrick Brown says the system, he means these things are built to just create and crank out stories. So, filmmakers became adept in storytelling because they had to constantly kick out stories,” Brown explains.
These were the filmmakers Brown first watched—Hitchcock, Orson Welles, they all came from that system. Brown continues, “Filmmakers like Ozu and Kurosawa also started their careers. It’s when I started seeing films that came before them; it was Buster Keaton, and it was Charlie Chaplin.”
Now, this new generation of filmmakers who grew up watching Keaton and Chaplin were making films. But these filmmakers functioned more independently and had a system that supported them.
Brown explains, “Films were often made while being written in these studio systems because they were just cranking out material. They put stars under contract—you are under contract; you made a certain number of films. They put directors and producers under contract.”
“And so, it was a film studio—with filmmaking machines. And in that machine system, some people were excluded. A lot of stories were excluded, as well as a lot of people who weren’t included in that part of the journey. European filmmakers who grew up on some of these American films, and were like, that’s not about them,” says Brown.
There were formulas to filmmaking. You had to believe that the French New Wave had some filmmakers trying more innovative things, that they were looking at the formulaic approach to some of the romance films that were coming out of Hollywood.
“Film noir was another popular genre in the 1930s and 1940s. This genre focuses intensely on a particular style or look. Film noir was a genre that had certain conventions it practiced. The audience always knew who the hero and villain were. They knew who the femme fatale was. This formulaic type of filmmaking, although entertaining for the masses, bred populations of filmmakers who thought of doing something different. They forgot about the narrative in the same way,” Brown states.
Brown further explains, “The filmmakers thought to loosen up the storytelling just a bit, where they were not going have this person be the hero, but instead, make them kind of a haunted hero, particularly after the war when many men came back with ailments from the war.”

The film industry evolved significantly over the last century, from more theatrical presentations to more avant-garde Russian montages, to the advent of color, wide-screen, and now VR. The only way to move forward is to communicate thoughts or interpret those thoughts by looking to the past. From there, sometimes inspiration for something new comes.
Immersive VR Films – Emotional Journeys
Alfonso Gomez-Rejon describes an experience in which he felt like he saw something brand new. “Few years ago, I saw Carne y Arena,” Gomez-Rejon says, “which was Iñárritu’s VR short that was played at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. And for the first time in I don’t know how long, almost like you saw the future.” The highly immersive piece takes the viewer on an emotional journey far different from the movie and documentary experience. Immersive pieces like Carne y Arena and Edison’s Black Maria take viewers on a journey to feel what they’re feeling innovatively and emotionally.
For Gomez-Rejon, Carne y Asada was an eye-opener. The invigorating method of storytelling is a true testament to the future of the film industry.
Multi-Dimensional Storytelling
Many consider projecting movies as the purist way of expressing stories to the world. But then, there are also ways online or streaming where you could spider web into short films that explore other characters or subplots that didn’t make the final cut. As one can see, there are various ways to tell a story. It is this Mobius strip of infinite possibilities and shapes.
There’s something about staying current that is always humbling and invigorating instead of feeling that you’re stuck in the past. But hopefully, it makes you want to work a little harder and keep moving with it and the chance of expressing yourself and reaching more and more people.

 “World War II comes along, and they have to develop a camera. They develop a camera in World War II to be on the battlefield and capture the action. This was a revolution,” Says Janet Grillo.

It was a revolution in the way that newsreels were being made and showing people what was really happening on the front lines. If you went into a movie theater in those years, in the ’30s there’d be a newsreel because people didn’t have TV’s back then. You’d go into a movie theater, and there’d be a newsreel with footage of what was happening on the Western front, and then you’d watch your movie.

Things evolved even further. Those cameras were more lightweight. They could be carried and brought into the field. After World War II, a lot of filmmakers started to think ‘what if I took that camera and that technology. What could I do with it? Where could I go?’ They took these lighter cameras, and they went into the streets.

Important Italian filmmakers started the birth of Italian cinema in the 40s and 50s right after the war. They were telling very authentic, true stories about their experiences. Vittorio De Sica, the Bicycle Thieves. Open City, Rossellini. Really important, beautiful movies. Umberto D., Vittorio De Sica. They’re taking these lightweight cameras, and they’re moving into the world and the post-World War wreck that was Italy. They’re poignant, human stories, and oftentimes they’re not using actors. They’re using real people.

This knocks the film-going audience off its feet. This is a revolution in terms of what cinema is. What it can be. The French picked up on this right away, and they created the whole Cinéma Vérité. The truth. The truth of cinema. It has related to documentation and documentary film. The kinds of ways that cameras can move fleetingly, fluidly, naturalistically to capture moments and do weird things in weird places.

Then you have Auteur theory coming up, with this whole birth in the ’50s and ’60s that the French filmmakers were enthralled and respectful of the films that are made in the studio by Alfred Hitchcock. They respected what he was doing, but they were also very excited with how they could change things. The Auteur film is the author. Auteur means author. The camera is the pen, and they can use that fleetingly and quickly.

“Casting a film is extremely important, as is casting the crew for a film,” explains David K. Irving. “The people you surround yourself with are the people that are going to help you make the film. So you’re only as good as the people that you surround yourself with.”
Casting a film has its good sides and its bad sides. The good sides are that if you have a good script, you’re going to attract a lot of wonderful actors. Actors love to act. They really want a good script. So finding a good script becomes your first job because that’s what will get you the best actors.
The downside is when you go through the casting process, you can really only cast people who’ve actually come into your office to audition for the film. So there are several ways you can get actors. One is, of course, if it’s a known actor. If you want Robert Duvall to be in your film, you don’t have to audition him. You know what he does. And you can cast him as a celebrity.
The audition process is a much more grueling process, where actors respond to an advertisement or to a casting call, or agents send them in for you to look at. You read these people. You give them sides, which is a piece of the script, and you try to understand in your gut, are these people going to work and be the best people for the film?
Once you start getting a sense of who your cast is, you’ll bring two cast members in together to see if there’s chemistry between those two people, which may indeed influence how you’re actually going to cast somebody in the role. One of the great taboos in our business is firing an actor on set. So you really want to make sure that the casting process goes well and that you feel very comfortable about the people that you’re putting in front of the lens.

 “One reason that I love costume design in film, television, theater, opera, et cetera, is the collaboration,” Explains Durinda Wood. “I love to collaborate with the other department heads, and that’s what the medium is all about. You’re not doing your own work in your own room like an artist. You’re collaborating with other people constantly.”

The script supervisor is really important for the costume designer because she or he is the person that breaks down the script and tells you how many script days there are. That’s really important for a costume designer because then you know how many changes there are for a character. We know what the time passage is. How many years pass? Things like that are very important for the logistics that have to go into your design.

“Then there’s costume department. That would be my costume supervisor. The costume supervisor is the second person in the hierarchy of the costume design department, and that person is all-important. The next would be hair and makeup. Hari and makeup in film are separate departments. There’s a hair department, there is a makeup department, and then there’s the costume department. Good communication with hair and makeup is so important,” Says Wood.

“Then there is the production designer, and within production design would be set decoration, and I would throw in locations, although they have their own department. Locations, production design, set decoration is so important to costume design because that’s the background to your costume. You don’t have a costume and an actor in your costume floating in space. It’s in front of something. You need to know what that wall or what that space is because sometimes you want the costume to fade into the background. Sometimes you want it to be incredibly showing away from the background.”

In film, it’s much harder than theater because in film, at the last minute, they often change what the background is. They’ll come to the set, and they’ll realize they don’t want to do it on that wall. They’re going to do it in that corner instead. Sometimes you have to go to the trailer and see if you have something else that will be better with that background. It’s a little bit instinct that you have to rely on when you’re a costume designer.

“I’m always on the set when a new costume comes up because there might have to be a change at the last minute. Finally, there is the director of photography. I want to know how it’s being shot. I want to know the lens. I want to know HD. I want to know video. I want to know if it’s film.”

Production design, also known as art direction, is critical to the success and look of any film. No arbitrary decisions are made. Careful thought is taken into consideration to ensure the film has a consistent look and style. During the pre-production and production design process, you work hand in glove with the director, cinematographer, and often the actors to ensure that the location, set, and whatever else you are shooting on reflects the characters and the story.
The Key to Production Design in the Film Industry
The production designer manages a lot of responsibility for each film frame, possibly more than anyone else. The director is responsible for the performances by the actor. The cinematographer is responsible for the light. Everything else in the frame is the responsibility of the production designer. That means that person has a tremendous job.
Production design does not just refer to the set, set dressing, and color. It also includes hair, makeup, wardrobe, vehicles, special effects, special greenery and plants, and props. It is a huge department.
One of the most exciting things that production designers do is “cheating.” In this business, cheating means fooling the camera. “For instance,” David K. Irving says, “if I’m wearing a big diamond ring, I don’t have to go to Tiffany’s and get a ring and rent it and bring it to the set with security guards and put it on so I can show it to the camera, because that’s very expensive. I can use a piece of glass. The camera will see it as a diamond.” The audience will also see it as a diamond.
Bottom Line
A production designer is an essential person in terms of the entire look of the film, the color, and how you will present your film. They will get involved in location scouting to find you the best locations for the film itself.

 “Lovebirds came together because I had read this really funny script. It was originally a little bit darker and a little bit edgier, but it was just a really fun script about a couple that could be anybody who was breaking up. They got involved in what they thought was a murder while they were breaking up, and had to deal with their relationship while they had to stay together,” says Tom Lassally. “It was a very funny script and maybe more on the independent side when we first started it. When you’re going for a pairing like this, you’re trying to think, what is a fresh way to pair two great people?”

“I worked with Kumail before on Silicon Valley, and he’s such a gifted comedian and actor,” Lassally continues. “At that point, you would not see him do something like this. Then looking at Issa Rae, who at that point had not done a role like this, and to pair them as a really interesting couple. It was a really special dynamic that made the whole thing come together in a very different way. It was an example of one and one making three. The approach to do a romantic comedy with a African-American woman and a Pakistani lead and not necessarily have to make it about that seemed like a really fresh way to do a movie.”

“We financed it with a terrific company called MRC, and then Paramount stepped in to become our partner to release it. We did a lot of development with them, we worked on it with them, and we went and shot the film in New Orleans. Netflix came in because they liked the movie, but, on a practical level, they had a movie that already had Paramount and MRC spending money on marketing to create awareness for something, and that would be a good thing for Netflix.”

“All of these movies are sitting there. One of the first to be bought by a streamer, maybe even the first, was Lovebirds because they really liked the movie. They loved the cast, but they also knew they had some awareness going into them doing their job, which helped. The movie seemed to have performed well for them. At least people got to see it even though we were disappointed that we didn’t get to see it in theaters.”

How the streaming wars brought new narratives to the marketplace
“I think one of the things audiences we work with look for is a story that hasn’t been told before,” says David Ninh. “I think with everything going on in the film industry, we know that we see a lot of white perspectives. We know we see works from a lot of white male directors. What’s exciting right now is a definite groundswell of support and resources for people of color, for minorities.”
“What’s interesting for producers now is there is a real interest in specificity,” says Tom Lassally. “There’s a real interest in different stories in film and TV. One upside to having so many shows is that to stand out, you’ve got to be really different.
I think that’s been great for business. The industry is now actively looking for unique points of view, quirky characters, different takes on the world, new voices. The TV and film industry is looking for people who have a point of view.
There’s only so many ideas to write about so execution is key. There’s so much interest in all areas.
It’s an exciting time to be a creator
“There’ll be an adjustment at some point in terms of the streaming wars and the film and TV industry. There’s so much,” Lassally notes. “Now that these services are becoming a la carte, requiring subscriptions to multiple streamers, most of America and the rest of the world can’t afford to buy everything they want.”
“So, I do think there will be consolidation. What’s still exciting though is that some uniquely singular stories have been found by massive audiences. I think it’s a very encouraging time for young creators to say, ‘I have a point of view and it might be really different. It might even feel really niche. But if I can execute it well, I can create something.’ There’re many examples of that. So, I look at that as the big positive.”
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 “People love to make movies. People love to watch movies. But how would you start with making a movie? A lot of my students make movies about some emotional experience that happened to them-the first time they fell in love, the first time they broke up with someone, their parents’ divorce, their parents getting remarried for a second time, them discovering something emotionally about themselves, a big event in someone’s life, which is great for the person that it happened to,” Says Thomas Mangan. “But why do I want to watch a story about someone’s first girlfriend or first boyfriend unless, it somehow relates to me?”

“When I encourage my students to pitch, or when you’re pitching any type of project, you have to have a nice hook. It’s really the telling of a joke. It’s a setup of a story.”

“I’m going to tell you something that happened to me,” Mangan continues. ” I didn’t know it at the time, but my first girlfriend was the princess of Monaco. It just so happened she was at camp. I went there, and I met her there. I didn’t know any of this at the time. To my surprise, when her parents came, they were Prince Rainier and Princess Grace.”

That’s how you tell a story about someone falling in love and make it much bigger but somehow relate it to you as a person. To say, you’re not going to believe what happened to me today. I was riding the subway and so-and-so did this and so-and-so did this. If you remember, the big bank robbery that happened, the guy tried to escape by the subway. That’s where I ran into him. If you take a big event story and then somehow make it personal, that’s where the story has resonance as a pitch.

In the independent world, if you’re going to make your first film, your first film should be one of three films. It should be either a quirky comedy, a real relationship movie, not a romantic comedy, or a horror film, slash, thriller film. If you concentrate on one of those, you have the best ability to break out and connect with audiences.

Most audiences want to go to see a movie that they have a human connection with emotionally. If you go to see a movie that scares you, it’s worth the $10 or $20 you paid for it or $7. If you see a movie that makes you laugh and you laugh at that movie, then you feel that the money’s been well spent.