Usually How Many People Are Involved

**zhelynd** · 11-25-2003, 07:10 AM

usually how many people are directly involved in making a CLASS-A movie?

when i ask this question i meant for direct involvement, that is:
- people who directly contribute and work towards the success of the movie
- actors, directors, screen writers, camera man, and marketing consultants

we have to exclude people who are indirectly involve in the movie
- for example, the mexican worker who help built the BMW for the 007 movie is not considered to be a direct involvement in the movie even his/her work is seen in the movie

further more, size is also an important factor, lets narrow our discussion to big ass productions like

- titanic
- peral harbor
- saving private ryan

how much people do you think are involved directly in making these films?

**Jay** · 11-25-2003, 07:18 AM

hundreds if not thousands

**zhelynd** · 11-25-2003, 07:20 AM

oh, can you give a more specific answer, like, how many hundreds or how many thousands, take titanic as an example

**3RA1N1AC** · 11-25-2003, 07:53 AM

prolly a lot more than are really necessary. it depends from one movie to the next-- some producers/directors go overboard with hiring way more people than they really need, and some of them use their budget more wisely. i'm sure the equipment (what kind of cameras are used? handheld cameras or massive pieces of machinery?), special effects (mechanical, makeup, or computerized? are the sets even real, or are they computer-generated/bluescreen effects?), the number of extras required (even extras can be computer-generated nowadays, for instance consider how many of the robots and aliens in "attack of the clones" were computer-generated), etc have a huge effect on the number of employees.

there really is no standard number of people. there are plenty of movies that i would say are first class, that only feature twenty actors or less, with no extras. but the number of people on the set can be a detriment-- it's not hard to find stories about movies exceeding their budget and going down in flames because they hire too many people (hiring 3 or 4 people to do a job that one person could do), waste too much film, and miss their deadlines (whether or not you accomplish anything on a given day, the employees still have to be paid). during the production of Gangs Of New York, rumors were flying about how the production had spun out of control because of schedule & budget problems and people claimed the movie was going to either be cancelled or released as an incomprehensible mess... but thankfully that turned out to be untrue.

even the marketing/advertising end can vary wildly. some movies are successful on the basis of massive amounts of hype generated by the publicity department, and some receive very little publicity at all and end up making lots of money based on word-of-mouth support from fans.