Future of Creative Industries - Implications for Research ... - Europa

Annex I. Specific organisation patternsAnnexesAfter the artist starts to get known to the producers of creative goods (film producers, artgalleries, etc.), they are likely to start to sign contracts with the producer, sometime directly,other time mediated by their agents. The royalty contracts differ from one field of culture toanother, as do the general organization patterns of the creative goods production anddistribution. We will describe further the specific organization models for several fields of thecreative industries: film industry, books and records, and toys and games.1. Film industryAccording to Caves (2000), during the first half of the 20s century the big studios resembled astable oligopoly (MGM, Paramount, RKO, Twentieth Century-Fox, United Artists, WarnerBross etc.). In contrast with this pattern the todays system is based on specialized servicefirms, the functions performed previously by the many departments of a studio now beingcarried out by independent service companies.The first stage in producing a movie is the screenplay writing. For this step, a contractbetween the dealmaker (independent producer or agent) and writer is signed or an externalliterary form can be used as well as the story source. After that, the producer recruits thedirector and the principal actors and many other specialists are hired. The flexiblespecialization system requires numerous inputs to product a film. The inputs are selected bythe coordinator (usual the producer) and come together in a one-off deal (table 5).Table 5: Specialized service firms in Hollywood film production1966 1974 1981Production companies 563 709 1473Rental studios 13 24 67Properties firms 66 33 184Editing 4 31 113Lighting 2 16 23Recording/sound 20 33 187Film processing 43 76 55Market research 3 5 24Artists’ representatives 242 359 344Source: Caves, 2000, p. 97Currently the main functions still retained by the studios are the film financing anddistributing. A producer might choose between studio and independent financing. In the firstcase, they put up the cost of producing the film and to distribute it using its own distributionchannels. A common share is 50 percent to the studio and 50 percent to the producer (Caves,2000, p. 112). At the end of the production process, a composer records a musical score whichis added to the soundtrack.The film distribution starts in cinemas, followed by the sale on video cassette (replaced moreand more by DVDs), showing on pay TV, then cable and network TV.34