In fact, many directors have become increasingly important. Directors are the most frequent targets for “reduction” – cuts to films, TV shows, or musicals which take creative risks and might not have worked commercially if the director had not been there.
There is also a tendency in studios to pay their chief execs much more than their underlings for work that is seen to contribute less to the overall profit. This is the case in some cases with Hollywood.
We’re talking about a major industry with revenues of more than $5bn – and which employs over 200,000 people. It’s not hard to imagine that any kind of cut would be felt.
The question, therefore, is how much will studios be tempted to reduce budgets in an effort to save some cash?
And what’s with the sudden emergence of directors in the midst of huge budget challenges?
It’s not that the director is always right.
And it’s not that studios are simply using them as a way of saving money by not being over-paid their chiefs.
Certainly, they often get paid an awful lot less than their underlings, because they have more power and are usually at last given a say in what a film will be.
But director are typically not considered artists by people in the production industry as the result of their decision-making, so the question arises: how important is a director?
If the studio is looking for a big profit when a production is in production, they’ll give the director a large amount of money without being asked first. For that they often get a lot of flack for taking such a risk.
For film buffs and film fans of the past 30 years, it’s a question of prestige.
The director – or many of them – is usually a master of the medium – or the creative force behind the film.
If a filmmaker is lucky enough to have a huge global reputation for an entire director’s work – and if some big studios are willing to pay them more than a production house – then the studio is unlikely to make a fuss.
It is in Hollywood studios that directors tend to find their first “actors”.
If you’ve seen the films of George Lucas, for instance, you’ll know that he took over the Skywalker family brand from his father and spent much of his childhood, especially in later years, building upon the success of the original films.
So it wasn’t until Lucas
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