nvestor agrees to finance a movie production. Investors are not charitable donors; they expect a return. And to lessen the risk of a bad investment, most investors must be convinced that a movie will meet with box-office success. Because there can never be a guarantee of box-office success, investors rely on the past history of the filmmakers to determine the likelihood of success, just as they would in any other business. Thus, a successful filmmaker is usually a filmmaker who has a demonstrated record of financial success.
Thus, in the United States, which is the single largest movie-producing and movie-consuming market in the world, most producers are limited to a choice between studio-backed financing or independent financing. Once that decision is made, the producer must survive the four basic stages in the creation of a feature film: development, pre-production, production, and post-production. This paper will deal with the first two stages, in which the movie is prepared for production.
The first step toward the creation of any featur
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