CONTEXTUAL: 2/2

PRODUCTION HIERARCHY:
EXEC PROD:
financial control
Some creative input (usually during post)
PROD:
Production logistics
may originate project and hire writers/directors
DIRECTORS:
creative vision
collaborating w/ creative team
WRITER:
authorising original script and adapting existing literary material

Classic model but not set in stone

changing dace of creative control:
cinema:
silent era (1900-1927)
the director (DW Griffiths, Charlie Chaplin)

production companies take over when sound comes in
each studio had signature movie genres EG MGM - musicals

Studio Era (1930s -60s)
The Producer (Arthur Freed, David Selznick)
First credit is often the producer, audiences focus more on producers than directors

New Wave (60s - 80s)
Directors and writer-director (Spielberg)
distinct styles and stories
birth of indie
Audience focus shifts to directors

TELEVISION:
'Golden Age' (50s-60s)
Producers and writers
lots of directors from theatre and film

New Wave (60s-70s)
producers and directors
more experimental form
lightweight cameras, more mobile

Writers (80s - present)
Producer-writers showrunners
TV almost come full circle
Serial TV promotes writer-led programming

SELF NOTE: Is next stage for TV 'cinematic tv'

ORIGINS OF AUTEUR THEORY
Chaiers du cinema, 54 critic Francois Truffaut writes polemic and coins phrase 'la politique des auteurs' (the authors policy)
Reaction against production company led, 'bland' commercial drama where directors just shoot the script
Truffaut and critics wanted a cinema d'auteurs: directors who express individualistic world views and use of mise-en-scene.
introduction of lightweight cameras promotes improvised, less limited shooting
Auteur cinema expressed in ground-breaking French New Wave films of late 50s-early 60s

Definition of Auteur:
Auteur theory championed by US critic Andrew Sarris in essay 'Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962'
Slates three key critera:
-technical competence - able to organise a film with clarity and coherence
-distinguishable personality - recurring signature styles
-interior meaning- cinematic art created from tension between director's personality and their material

No bad films - only bad directors
even the worst films of an auteur directors can be rescued from anonymity

HOWEVER:
doesn't recognise creative collaboration
what directors were attempting to portray could become secondary to actual on-screen visualisation
very few directors have final cut
genre theory as alternative - films are product of genre

Genre theory vs Auteur
Genre:
generic similarities
how texts determined by historical/social/political contexts
how texts emerge as commerical products
Auteur:
individual stylistic features
how texts are detemrined by director's creativity
how texts emerge as part of director's body of work

How do theories of auteurship relate to tv?
who is the author of auteur in TV?

TV AUTEURS:
Stephen Poliakoff:
began writing career in theatre, award-winning ploaywright
comissioned by BBC and others to write several TV films, workinfg with established directors and producers
Made dirceting debut with HIDDEN CITY (1988, Film 4)
SINCE 88, writter and dirceted over a dozen features, tv movies and mini-series, mostly for BBC
considered pre-emionent BBC writers/director allowing him to exercise control over casting and final cut
although not a trained director, widely considered to have evolved technical competence
Personal Style:
(recurring motifs include)
Long tracking shots
Deep focus
Clash between modernity and traditional
slow-pace
(interior meaning)
History, memory, ghosts of past
Secrets
Social class
Themes of power and control

technical competence defined as
Farming (shot)
Camera movement
Editing
in order to convey narrative