Beyond the Bottom Line: The Producer in Film and Television Studies
Edited by Andrew Spicer, Anthony McKenna & Christopher Meir
Bloomsbury Academic
This is the first collection of original critical essays devoted to exploring the misunderstood, neglected and frequently caricatured role played by the film producer. The editors’ introduction provides a conceptual and methodological overview, arguing that the producer’s complex and multifaceted role is crucial to a film’s success or failure.
The collection is divided into three sections where detailed individual essays explore a broad range of contrasting producers working in different historical, geographical, generic and industrial contexts. Rather than suggest there is a single type of producer, the collection analyses the rich variety of roles producers play, providing fascinating and informative insights into how the film industry actually works. This groundbreaking collection challenges several of the conventional orthodoxies of film studies, providing a new approach that will become required reading for scholars and students.
Contents
1 Introduction; Andrew Spicer, A.T. McKenna and Christopher Meir
Part One Theoretical and Historical Contexts
2 ‘A Judge of Anything and Everything’: Charles Urban and the Role of the ‘Producer-Collaborator’in Early British Film; Joe Kember
3 Mapping a Typology of the Film Producer – Or, Six Producers in Search of an Author;
Audun Engelstad and Jo Sondre Moseng
4 The Independent Producer and the State: Simon Relph, Government Policy and the British Film Industry, 1980–2005; Andrew Spicer
5 Producing the Self: The Film Producer’s Labour and Professional Identity in the UK Creative Economy; Paul Long and Simon Spink
6 Producer and Director? Or, ‘Authorship’ in 1950s Italian Cinema; Pauline Small
7 The Australian Screen Producer in Transition; Mark David Ryan, Ben Goldsmith,
Stuart Cunningham and Deb Verhoeven
Part Two Media and Genre Contexts
8 The Producer in Animation: Creativity and Commerce from Bray Studios to Pixar; Donna Kornhaber
9 ‘Trying to Ride a Naughty Horse’: British Television Comedy Producers; Brett Mills and Sarah Ralph
10 Keith Griffiths’ Poetics of Production; Sonia Friel
11 The American Independent Producer and the Film Value Chain; James Lyons
Part Three National and Transnational Contexts
12 Lita Stantic: Auteur Producer/Producer of Auteurs; Constanza Burucúa
13 Beyond National Humiliation: Han Sanping and China’s Post-Olympics Historical Event Blockbusters; A. T. McKenna
14 The Producer and Belgian Cinema(s): The Case of Jean (and Jan) Van Raemdonck
Gertjan Willems
15 Post-Imperial Co-Producers: Emile Sherman, Iain Canning and Contemporary Anglo-Australian Cinema; Christopher Meir