Q#1: What are the challenges and benefits involved in converting the film industry to digital technology in the areas of production, distribution, and exhibition?
In the area of exhibition, and partially, distribution, digital cinema creates an opportunity to build theaters more economically, as well as to exploit the satellite, cable distribution and digital video projection for more than just motion pictures. The multifunctionality of the digital age products and services provides a wide variety of exploitation areas, bringing cinematography closer to people. The film industry becomes more accessible, as well as more competitive. At the same time, a shift to digital film production inevitably leads to the challenges in the communication area. Films created digitally require huge changes that ought to be made, for instance, in the area of TV broadcasting, creating new expenses, whose necessity can be questioned.
Q#2: How was the studio system organized in the golden age, and what factors contributed to its decline?
The studio system is the means of film production, as well as film distribution during the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood. Studio systems can be roughly characterized as monopolies, who kept directors, writers, actors and the rest of the personnel on a short leash, controlling both production and terms of distribution. The decline of the studio system can be attributed, first of all, to the establishment of the federal antitrust action (the United States of America vs. Paramount Pictures Inc. case ), which led to the separation of the film production from film distribution and exhibition, and second of all, to the arrival of the epoch of television.
Q#3: In what major ways does the independent system differ from the studio system?
The film production is conducted separately from its distribution and exhibition. Directors, writers, actors and other personnel involved in movie making are not tied up by unpleasant long-term contracts; the manipulative techniques of the studio representatives are minimized.
Q#4: How is a movie financed and why are movies so expensive to make?
The film financing is a stage that occurs prior to the pre-production stage of film making, namely, during the development stage. Ordinarily, there are five common methods of film financing, which include: (1) government grants and subsidies; (2) tax schemes, namely tax deductions for film producers; (3) private equity and largely unregulated speculative funds based on return from high-risk investments, known as hedge funds; (4) debt finance; (5) equity finance. Movies are so expensive to make, because movie creation requires and involves a lot of people and technology. The viewers are interested in a big and impressive show; in order to make one and make it look unbelievably real and entertaining, money must be spent; after all, filmmaking is a form of art, and the filmmakers are rather ambitious artists, who aim at creating something that “has never been done before”, and usually, such project is rarely based on a beautiful idea, it is based on costly attributes.
Q#5: How are movies marketed and distributed? Have these aspects changed between the studio and independent systems?
The studio systems …