That's A Wrap! The Organizational Culture And Characteristics Of Successful Film Crews
2012; Volume: 18; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1939-4691
Autores Tópico(s)Corporate Identity and Reputation
ResumoINTRODUCTION Since Louis Le Prince made the first film with his friends and family clowning around in their garden in France, in the spring of 1888, the creation of a film has been a team effort. Just seven years later, the Lumiere brothers presented the first commercial exhibition of a projected motion picture to a paying public in the world's first movie theater in Paris. By 1910, the first Hollywood studio was opened for the sole purpose of producing commercial movies (Higgins, 2005). In less than a generation, the creation of moving images developed from the odd hobby of a few inventors to the world's favorite form of storytelling and launched a hugely successful industry that continues to thrive globally today, more than 120 years later. The films themselves have changed greatly and innovation is integral to the industry's continued success as popular entertainment. What has changed very little is the way film crews function while employed on the production. D.W. Griffith, American film director in the early 1900s, could step onto a set today and know exactly what was going on. The hierarchy, set protocols and the vocabulary itself are very much the same as they were at the very beginnings of the art form. The crew is divided into two parts, management and labor, much like any team endeavor. This hierarchy has remained constant through the years. Even the studio system did not change the on set structure of the crew, it only altered the way the crews were put together, i.e. staff year round employment versus freelance employment. The organizational make-up remained the same (Davenport, 2006). The nature of a career as a film crew member has also remained constant. There has always been a very robust freelance workforce in the film industry. Freelance in this sense is defined as a worker who is not employed full time by one entity, but rather goes from one short term job to another, seeking his/her own employment each time. During the heyday of the studio system the majors (Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal, et al.) did indeed keep crews on staff and working all year round. But the first crews in film history were freelance and they existed concurrently with the studios during the rise and fall of the studio system. The studio system collapsed in the late 1960s, but the freelance structure remained strong and is the industry standard today (Bohn, Stromgren, & Johnson, 1978). Film crews come together for one project, execute it at the top of their game and then reconfigure into completely new line-ups for the next project. ... four people who've never worked together can meet each other at nine o'clock in the morning and by ten o'clock they know what they're all doing (Relph as cited in Davenport, 2006, p.254). The crew members are specialists in their skill sets. They need no training for each individual job. They know what the job descriptions are and they know where their responsibilities begin and end for them individually, as a department and as a film crew. They work in challenging and often physically harsh conditions, attempting to create a unique and compelling form of artistic expression, while under financial constraints and tightly constructed schedules with little or no margin for error. This study arises from the author's personal experience from 1980 to 2000 as a freelance live action line producer and production manager. Work experience led the author to investigate the theoretical underpinnings of organizational culture and conduct research that could shed light on the film crew organizational structure. What makes film crews so efficient? How are they able to come together in different iterations time and again, always with a different script, different set of problems, a different artistic vision and a tight schedule, yet manage to create such items of universal wonderment? What is the profile of a film crew organizational culture? Like the military, on a film crew all members know their jobs, where the boundaries are and who the boss is, always under absurd time constraints and while solving logistical problems under adverse physical conditions. …
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