Introduction to Television: The Networks

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In 1993, the financial and syndication rule was withdrawn.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.

Looking to the Future of Film: Multi-Platform Storytelling

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.

Pre-production: Setting up the Set: Casting

“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.

Pre-production: Setting up the Set: Collaboration Among Departments

 “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.”

Pre-production: Setting up the Set: Production Design

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.

Principal Photography: The Shoot: Storyboarding

“Storyboarding occurs during pre-visualization (pre-vis), which is part of the pre-production stage. Filmmakers do pre-vis to see their movie, to plan it out. I do pre-vis because I want to lay out the movie as much as I can before I start production, so every day I’m shooting will be productive,” says David K. Irving.
“Storyboards are a terrific way for the director, the cinematographer, the art director, and any other key people in the crew to pre-visualize and see the movie ahead of time.”
“It’s like saying, ‘this is where we’re going to go for an extreme close-up, here’s the swish pan, this is the car chase. We need these 10 elements to have the car go around the corner. Maybe we need a shot here on two wheels with a little bit of dust kicking up.’ You pick and choose, then sketch out the shots and scenes you want. And when you put them together, that makes the film.”
What is pre-vis anyway
The storyboard is a key element, but there are many other elements found in pre-vis that can be helpful. Some are just basic, simple sketches of certain concepts for the film. “There’s also other drawings, that I like to use, they’re called floor plans,” Irving explains.
“The floor plans, these are bird’s eye views of your set or your location, with little V’s and circled letters indicating where the camera is going to be. I use them so I can see a bird’s eye view of what I’m shooting. ‘I’m going to move the camera here, here, and here.’ Because a lot of time, what we do in pre-production determines how the day will be, if it’s going to go well.”
Often, we have to switch the lights, so we want to make sure that the camera is pointing in one direction where we can use all the lights.
By doing a floor plan, we can pre-visualize what all those elements are.
“Pre-visualization techniques like storyboards, floor plans, these are all wonderful film industry tools to help us come up with our shot list. But I want you to keep in mind that once you get on set, you might end up throwing all of that away. You may decide you just want to film the shot currently in front of the camera. That’s what makes filmmaking so exciting,” ends Irving.
###

Sound & Score: Sound

When thinking about filmmaking, you can’t ever forget the importance of sound, Sam Pollard says. Dialogue, sound effects, and music all help enhance the storytelling. As a young editor working on Steinbeck’s, he would do all his sound editing himself because he didn’t have money to pay for a sound editor.
As Sam became more experienced, he worked on bigger films with bigger budgets. He was able to get sound editors and sound designers who could bring their professional style and technique to enhance the drama or the emotion of the film.
The sound design and sound arc of every film are different, in Sam’s view. Some films need lots of sound effects and sound design. Some films need less.
Caran Hartsfield agrees that sound design and sound effects add to the storytelling within the scenes. Ask yourself, what does it sound like in a scene where a boy meets a girl and it’s raining? She thinks it feels different than the sound design of firecrackers going off outside a room, right?
It completely changes the scene, Caran says. She thinks that sound design is a fun part of the filmmaking process because you can dramatically alter a scene with the sound effects that you choose.
She encourages any filmmaker to really play with sound because it’s so much fun. Just start pulling sounds that are interesting and have a good texture for you.
It could be the sound of a fan or the sound of a river going downstream. These sounds have very visceral effects and it’s subliminal. The audience isn’t thinking, “oh, that was a great river flowing down in that scene.” But Caran thinks that you’re ushering the audience in a particular direction in an undercover way.
[Please embed: https://unsplash.com/photos/1zwJqd5cNys]

Sound & Score: The Score

The score plays an integral role in the music in the movies we love. Let’s take a look at the importance the score plays in the film industry and TV industry.

“A movie score makes or breaks a movie. Let me start by saying that one of the great composers, Nino Rota, was an Italian composer who did a lot of Fellini films when Danny Elfman wrote the score for Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” says David K. Irving. “It was Danny Elfman’s first score, but it was a full-blown Philharmonic. Nino wrote the score. I’ve always been amazed at the work that Danny Elfman did on that film”

Danny Elfman went on to do the Batman films. He’s an amazing composer. I think it’s worth your while to study composition, to study composers, to see what music can do on a film. Some films use a lot of music.

Star Wars is what we call wall-to-wall, where John Williams scored, basically, the whole movie. Other movies have fewer scores in them. It’s important to know how much score you might want to have in a movie, says David. At the end of a film, in the editing process, you do what’s called spot a film, where you sit with the composer and you say, in this scene, I want this kind of music, I want this kind of music.

It’s all done mathematically from this footage point to that footage point, fade out, fade in. It seems like a very natural transition.

Make sure you’re not having the music blare over somebody’s line. Make that underscore. All of that work that you do with the composer is done drastically in post-production. But the score is going to add a tremendous element to the film because, as I said, it bypasses the brain and goes right to the stomach, explains David.

There are a lot of terms that, even if you’re not musically inclined, you should know about: beats, how many bars, major keys, minor keys, crescendos-these are all languages you want to share with a composer.

Now, you do have the opportunity, as you would with a cinematographer, to show work that you think would be effective. So you can show your cinematographer photographs, other movies, say, “this is the kind of look that I want,” and it helps the cinematographer understand the look you’re going for.

The same is true for the composer. You can play different compositions, like, Philip Glass or Bernard Herrmann. This helps the composer understand what you want.

“Now, some composers will say, don’t play me any music. Just let me come up with the score because I want it to come full-blown from my head,” says David. “My favorite composer is Bernard Herrmann, who did most of Hitchcock’s movies.”

The Director's Eye: Developing a Color Vocabulary

Color theory is one of the things that a film director would do when they’re about to tell a story, whether it’s a pilot or a film. It sounds pretentious, but then again, there’s no way to say this without sounding pretentious.
But basically, you get together with your partners on the film, such as your cinematographer, production designer, costume designer, and discuss color with them. Sometimes, with one department, it could go into textures of clothing, the sheen of wallpapers, and lens selection.
Alfonso Gomez-Rejob explains, “It’s always nice to assign colors. At least, I like to do that to certain characters. For instance, Rachel in Me and Earl was yellow. And there was always a little something of that around her space. And sometimes you see it, and sometimes you feel it. And by the end, when she passes away in the hospital, my idea was always to hold on to the color yellow on-screen for five, six, or seven seconds — I forget how much it was. Hopefully, by the time you got to that point in the story, you felt her presence because you associate it, maybe subconsciously, along the way. Maybe, maybe not. That’s just how I think.”
In Hunter, Gomez-Rejob assigned colors to every world. But the colors were not assigned to characters but to feelings or ideas, like revenge, or blood, the Fourth Reich, honesty, or militancy. And the film creators would then avoid specific colors in some scenes and really saturate them sometimes in others.
Gomez-Rejob further emphasizes, “I think it helps the overall design of a picture. But it also helps make decisions along the way. For instance, if you’re choosing the right tie for a character, you may be presented with five ties. Only one is right because this is who the character is. Or you find a certain wallpaper that has color in it that is just right for this scene or the color carpet.”
Color vocabulary helps in decision-making for every department. It tells them what to avoid and what not to avoid. It also explains how to be a little bit more nuanced if you’re trying to keep someone from knowing that a certain person is a Nazi, which was always assigned red. Maybe the actor’s pocket square would have purple in it.
And it’s just a little something that also helps actors, depending on who the actor is. But it is an actor’s secret sometimes that they have a lining that no one else will see. But it means something to them.
Gomez-Rejob feels joy in using color vocabulary. He says, “And it’s just something that I truly enjoy in a fine arts way. You are never alone to do something because some of the best ideas are going to come from somebody else. And then see everyone take ownership of those decisions along the way and have a feeling almost of an arts and crafts camp that you’re the leader of. I mean, I own my title, but I also love the collaborative nature of making the film.”
For people entering the film industry or TV industry, it’s important to know that directing starts with these decisions way before you ever get to set.

The Director's Eye: Style

“How do you communicate to people? How do you put that in celluloid? How do you do it? It must have style, unity, just something about it. You’ve got to wave away what’s not useful to that theme you’re focused on,” says Ang Lee.
“People look at film not like real life, but an escape from life. They go to that abstract world, where you can have a heart-to-heart with each other.”
I think filmmaking without heartfelt style and language skills—that’s pretty vain to me. I think you should have something to say, because you feel you have a need to express something.
“You don’t know why. But that’s the most precious thing,” Lee continues.
“Without communication, I cannot explain to my crew or the investors, test screen audiences, even friends and family. People will say, ‘I don’t get this. I don’t get that.’ So, you have to talk. And while you’re talking, you lose that artificiality. You must.”
“And somehow it all becomes a common thing. You just secretly hope to keep as much as yourself in there as possible. That’s my experience,” says Lee.
How Lee’s shot choices convey mood
“Then you have the key shots. Sometimes I can visualize a shot or scene, very vividly in my dream, or in my daydream. Or when I see something, I must have that shot, no matter what. So, from there, you just fill in the gaps,” explains Lee.
“Most of the shots in the movie, there are actors talking. I just find the best way to portray them. If it’s emotional, if it’s warm, usually, I place the camera a little lower. If the camera’s high, it looks more like they’re thinking. Shot that’s more face on, that’s more direct. And of course, more sideways, it’s more objective.”
Many times, I would like to take the audience out of the movie, and have them just think about it, instead of just engage in the storytelling, the emotional ride. I want them to think about it. So, at these times I’ll do a high angle also.
“You mentioned big establishing shot. That’s when it’s not emotional. Then, I want to reset before I get engaged into the next paragraph or statement or what have you. But sometimes, I think it’s good to have an audience think about it objectively and engage subjectively, emotionally. I like to combine both,” Lee ends.
###