The Return of the Studio System

As regular readers of this blog know, I am sanguine about the state of feature film production. The studios produce less and less product while more and more independent projects never see the light of distribution day. Television also looks increasingly bleak.

These thoughts were on my mind when I took a quick trip to Los Angeles in December. The ostensible reason was to direct a couple of episodes for a cooking show web series; they are now in post, I'll talk about that exprience another time.

A trip to LA for me is always a trip "back" to LA: I was born there, my parents were in the movie business there and I spent quite a few years working in the industry myself. As a result, my LA trips always involve comparisons with the pasts, both recent and distant.

Times are very tough for most of my friends in the business. Feature film production has permanently fled, television series work has shrivelled, television movies and miniseries have gone extinct. They don't need many writers or story editors or costume designers for reality tv and they don't need actors at all.

But show folk are resourceful and persistent. As a result, new models of production are cropping up. Writers and producers are creating their own web series, shooting them without needing network permissions and without network advance money, then posting them on YouTube to generate audience support. These projects range from the well funded to the shoestring, with a few talented friends shooting projects in someone's garage.

Guess what? This is the return of the studio system.

I don't mean we will see the Warner's lot returning to its heyday. Centralized, unionized studio hierarchies are as passe as Stalinist government (and from the same era). But we are seeing the birth of the mini studio system, where projects are developed, written, shot, posted and released by a close knit team of collaborators, working at a central location, usually with few location shoots or outside assistance.

This trend foresakes the recent "pitch and deal" system, wherein a producer or a writer had to convince other producers and financiers and directors and stars and studios to come in on a project. Pitch and Deal was a cumbersome glacial process, itself a serindipidous system that emerged when the Old Studio system collapsed in the 1960s. Pitch and Deal favored agents and wheeler-dealers. The new mini studio movement favors producers and production.

Mini studio models are also showing up on the big studio lots themselves. While in LA, I engaged in more than a few discussions about this trend, as studios invite production companies to make a series of projects using studio facilities and resources, in effect creating studios within studios.

What this trend means for the industry is yet unclear. Certainly production costs will plummet for lower end features and television of all kinds. To me, the singular prospect is the likely demise of the Freelancer, the for-hire independent contractor who works on one big project after another. If mini-studios take hold, workers will return to the old studio model, working straight weeks for one company that assigns them to whatever project needs support. Wages won't be very good, I reckon, but they will be steady. The good old bad old days when a spec script could generate a bidding war and a $1.5 million price tag are also likely gone. Workaday Hollywood may find itself back to the days of 40 weeks and modest careers. The flash and glitter will likely dim but that kind of normalcy might actually be welcomed by many.

I have one more thought about this subject but it's somewhat involved so I'll save it for a stand alone post. As a teaser, let me just say that the mini studio movement might develop some unintended consequences, one of which could possibly reinvigorate the live theatre scene and herald a new burst of creativity in the arts. Really. I will discuss this in a new post.