ABSTRACT
That process of production understood in broad terms, moreover, generally shakes out into three, whatever the context: pre-production, production, and post-production The chapter’s first section, “Making movies,” explains who does what in each of these, where you might learn to do various tasks, what it takes to make a 16mm film or digital film, and how film production is organized technically and economically. The second section, “Studying film production,” then introduces the reader to some of the many issues tackled by film studies scholars who focus on production: industrial modes and centers of production and their ideological effects, labor issues, the institution of stardom, genre studies (focusing on those genres you
have already encountered, including westerns, melodramas, musicals, horror films, and crime films), film censorship, authorship, technological innovation, the role of the state in film production, and the realm of art film (schools, festivals, museum exhibitions). The third section, “Contexts for studying production,” takes three examples to illustrate how scholars generate and treat the problematics that emerge from production. In that section I look at cinema practices marginalized by academia such as gay porn; analyses of genre and ways of thinking beyond genre; and, third, the ways in which distribution can function as authorship. A brief and final note, “Studying film exhibition,” links the practices of film production to the practices of film exhibition, examining in particular the building of a mass audience. From film trains and Hale’s tours, through vaudeville and nickelodeons, to movie palaces and suburban multiplexes, exhibition practices shape audiences and our conceptions of how spectators engage with films produced under many different models.
