The Project Management Aspect Of Film

In the world of film making the art of team management is a skill that is necessary in order to be successful. At the movie theaters the general public sees a polished and finished product. Let’s delve deeper behind the scenes and take a look at what it takes to assemble a production team to produce a film.  To produce a film means not only financing the film but also finding a scriptwriter with a good screenplay, a director to bring the script to life, a director of photography to create the shots that creates a compelling story through the camera lens, a sound engineer to oversee the sound, a casting director to cast actors for the script and an editor to “fully lock“ in the finish product.  

When a production is placed into the project management process, the breakdown of making a movie will fall into the same project management workflow.  The project breakdown will have an initiation phase, a planning phase, a budgeting phase, execution phase, and the closing phase.  The process in the film industry is similar but the terminology is different. The initial phase in called the development stage, the planning stage and budgeting stage is called the pre-production stage, the execution stage is called the production stage, and the closing stage is called the post production stage.  “Keep in mind that a film is a form of project that needs to meet stated deadlines and should not exceed expected costs, while not compromising any of its content. But as each film is not the exact same, the steps in production are performed differently every time a film is made. The basic processes of any project are initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. So, they can be used to manage the production of a film (http://knol.google.com).” 

Now that a foundation is laid to the processes of project management as it related to the production of films.  We will now look at the process of forming an actual production team. In the development stage the producer (the person who finances the film) looks for a script that would be worthy of becoming a film. The producer will then seek out a director that will be able to bring the script to fruition.  The director and the producer will then coordinate the hiring of all the technical production staff (ex. Grips, gaffer, sound, etc.).  The producer will then hire casting agents that will hire actors for the film. The way a producer picks his production team can vary from a professional standpoint or by a relationship formed with an old classmate in college. The producer forms a team with supervisors over each department of the film making process. These supervisors, depending of area of expertise will report to the director and the producer.

Project management is a discipline that is applicable to every aspect of business. Anyone looking to be successful in film industry would be wise to learn to become efficient in project management. Making a film is comprised on many departments that are all being coordinated at various times to complete a deliverable, in this case a blockbuster movie.