On the Ontology of Filmmaking: Production authorship, hierarchy and practices

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On the Ontology of Filmmaking:

Production authorship, hierarchy and practices

Galder Sacanell Bañuelos

11683880

MA Media Studies: Film Studies

MA Thesis

Universiteit van Amsterdam

28/06/2018

Supervised by

Maryn Wilkinson

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Abstract

While the dominant approach to film production studies has centered around the notion of the 'mode of production', as born from the study of the Hollywood system, this essay critically engages the conceptualization born from this approach. In contrast to this paradigm's naturalized embracement of hierarchy and single authorships, the author conceives the field as regarding the ontology of filmmaking and, thus, proposes one of film production's most disregarded elements as, possibly, its most essential: its production practices.

Key Words

film production film studies authorship hierarchy production practices mode of production film ontology

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INTRODUCTION.

The naturalization of hierarchy.

In my first filmmaking experience with a home video camera, barely into digital, my group of friends and I needed to make a short film for a school project; its title was Star

Wars III and 1/2: The Return of Humor. Be it because nobody really wanted to

individually take on all the effort, be it because we wanted to do it as a group, or be it because we really did not know what we were doing, the result was a very horizontal, non-hierarchical, creative process; both in its organization of production and in its distribution of authorship. The only thing we worried about was what had to be done and how to do it, not on who was 'writer', 'director' or 'actor'; someone 'volunteered' to write while everyone else thought, the roles were divided among ourselves, the camera was handled by who was not performing, the editing was done by whoever had some knowledge while the others looked. There was no individual 'author' or singular 'boss' other than our deadline.

After this first experience, we move into more ambitious projects, searching for better 'quality' and a more 'professional' result. This 'transition' caused a, barely noticed, change in our production relationships: for some reason, the moment we wanted to do something more 'serious', we felt we had to introduce a production hierarchy; a clear distinction in the roles and responsibilities of each person, and a clear artistic 'head' who commandeered the project. This was, for us, "the way things are done"; at least that is what all the production studies we could find had taught us. As years passed and this experience continued to develop itself, both practically and theoretically, I wondered why that more collaborative practices had been left behind. Is it just a natural part of 'professional' film production to tend towards hierarchy? Or is it a naturalized one to be critically assessed and, perhaps, defied as contingent?

This gave way to another series of questions: why does film production, in the main film industries, seem to be organized, a priori and without question, in a hierarchical manner? How did this develop historically? What are the consequences of this uncritical hierarchical disposition of production, particularly in regards to its limited distribution of authorship? Are there any alternatives? May film production be conceptualized so as to avoid a predetermined identification of hierarchy and filmmaking? How would this be?

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6 These questions will be the articulators of this thesis, which I consider to be a reflection into the ontological properties of filmmaking; particularly in regards to the presence of 'hierarchy'. In consequence, answering these questions will demand, first, an understanding and comprehension of the current theoretical framework used by film production studies, so as to embrace it and, if needed, question it. The starting point and necessary main reference is Janet Staiger's PhD dissertation The Hollywood Mode of

Production: The Construction of Divided Labor in the Film Industry (1984), which

became the founding text regarding film production studies for all posterior works: from Staiger's posterior volume, with David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, The Classical

Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (1985), Charles

Musser's "Pre-classical American cinema: its changing modes of film production" (1996), Petr Szczepanki and Patrick Vonderau's Behind the Screen: Inside European

Production Cultures (2013) to Paul C. Sellors' Film Authorship: Auteurs and Other Myths (2008). It is interesting to note that none of these works, spanning from 1984 to

2014, directly questions or concentrates on the continuity of hierarchy within the subjects which are being studied —not only is this hierarchy ignored but it is embraced as an articulator of theories without critically questioning the place of hierarchy within these productions. Therefore, many of these scholars build theoretical frameworks that fall for the assumptions of the subject of study itself. This is what I will attempt to showcase and unveil, by comparatively bringing together their different observations and conceptualizations; the inadequacy of certain conceptions to think production processes and the (unrecognized) contingency of many of the historical manifestations being analyzed. This will allow an alteration of Staiger's conceptualization of film production, by understanding how hierarchical notions of authorship have been reified, thus opening film production studies to critical and alternative approaches to hierarchy.

This critical approach to hierarchy will be, in turn, brought by anarchist theory, which (re)claims that production be considered as part of broader social context and who point to the negative consequences, socio-cultural and political, to hierarchical organizations of society and production. These arguments will be brought by contemporary anarchist thinkers such as Murray Bookchin and Jesse Cohn, or B. W. Barchfield's (2003) and Francisco Jose Cuevas Noa's (2014) compilations on classical anarchist thought. A critical approach to hierarchy which will be brought into film

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7 production by the 'spokesperson' of the film collective 'CineSinAutor'1, Gerardo Tudurí, who proposes a non-hierarchical organization of filmmaking and distribution of authorship in the manifests Manifiesto del Cine sin Autor 1.0. Realismo social extremo

en el siglo XXI, Cine XXI. (2008) and La política de la colectividad. Manifiesto de Cine Sin Autor 2.0 (2013). Such types of alternative approaches to film production are also

described by scholars Virginia Villaplana in "Cine colaborativo. Discursos, prácticas y multiplataformas digitales" (2015) and Ana Sedeño "Prácticas de activismo audiovisual con objetivo de integración social" (2015) and "Artivismo, activismo y sinautoría audiovisual" (2017). Though these approaches are valuable to highlight the contingency of those hierarchical modes of production and, more importantly, of the hierarchical conceptions of film production dominant in academia, I argue that they are not enough to alter these hierarchical tendencies. Even if they do propose alternative modes of production for an alternative type of filmmaking, it does not challenge directly the adequacy of how, in general, we are conceiving film production. Therefore, their critique of hierarchy must be taken further and the key to do so resides in their places the emphasis on the creative acts rather than on top-down authorship structures: what Staiger calls, in a very much imprecise and disregarded manner, "production practices". Through Antoni Roig Telo's study of "practice theory" in "Participatory Film Production as Media Practice" (2013) we can find a precise definition of 'production practices' which distinguishes it from Staiger's 'mode of production', a central notion in hierarchical conceptions of film production. Therefore, this definition by Roig Telo offers an alternative axis around which to think film production which escapes — through an expansion— the limits of Staiger's theoretical framework. This alternative center for conceptualization was already defended in sociology by James C. Scott in his

Seeing Like a State and by anarchism as Jesse Cohn states in "What is Anarchist

Cultural Studies?" (2009) but has also been applied to spectatorship studies by the "New Cinema Histories" approach as described by Robert C. Allen in "Getting to Going to the Show" (2010) and Richard Maltby in "New Cinema Histories" (2011); all these will be delved into. More relevantly even, this approach has already been strongly present within a certain tendency of theatre production studies; particularly explicit in Fabrizio

1_{Presently active and based in the cities of Madrid, Spain, and Toulouse, France; with previous projects}

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8 Cruciani's work Registi pedagoghi e communità teatrali nel Novecento (2006)2. Such approximations offer a model that can serve to apply to film production an alternative conceptualization of itself by concentrating on "production practices" and not on the hierarchies of its 'modes of production'. It presents a new center-origin-essence, a new

arche, for film production practices and studies: a new ontology; one which is not

unheard of within existing film production studies, though not explicitly recognized as a change in approach, particularly within works that attempt to highlight alternative traditions of filmmaking which have been overlooked by the industry and by academia. This includes the case of Gilles Mouëllic's study of a improvisation-based film production in Improvising Cinema (2013) or of feminist reclaims of women filmmakers and non-patriarchal productions such as found in Indie Reframed: Women's Filmmaking

and Contemporary American Independent Cinema (2016) edited by Linda Badley,

Claire Perkins and Michele Schreiber. This correlations connect these approaches as examples of alternative conceptualizations of film production, that search for different models and values, and lead to other histories of cinema and to potentially 'truer' and 'healthier models' of production; both in artistic, social and academic terms.

Again, the theoretical framework that function as a point of departure for this thesis is Janet Staiger's work, and subsequent discussions of this work. This conceptualization is strongly based around the notions common to film production studies such as 'mode of production', 'production practices', 'division of labor', 'structure' and 'group style'. Yet, these notions will constantly be put into question and discussed within the text by bringing in other approaches and conceptualizations, such as the introduction of the notion of "authorship" by Paul C. Sellors (if also found Gerardo Tudurí's or Charles Musser's texts) or the expansion of the terms of 'hierarchy' and 'production practices', both used by Staiger but only explored in depth by anarchist theorists and Antoni Roig Telo's work, respectively. In consequence, both the method and aim of this thesis will be a discussion of the theoretical framework afforded to film production studies, through a conceptual critical analysis and a comparative approach of it; as allowed by a recurrent historical review of the production models which have led to those conceptualizations.

2_{This approach is also present in his others works Lo spazio del teatro and Promemoria del teatro di}

strada. Though it can also be found in the works of scholars Arthur Sainer in The Radical Theatre Notebook or Elie Konigson in L'espace théâtral médiéval or of directors Peter Brook in The Empty Space

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9 In conclusion, the corpus central to my thesis will thus be composed, mainly, of film production theorists and of the historical practitioners that are studied by them, the which guided the development of their theoretical frameworks and conclusions. In turn, this corpus is divided into three subjects of study, each corresponding to one of this thesis' chapters and research questions:

The first chapter and first part of the corpus concerns the question of why and how is film production organized hierarchically. It will concentrate on Hollywood film production studies, as this has been the most important film industry in regards to its influence on other models of production and is also the origin of the most common film production study's notions. Such is the case of Staiger's the study of Hollywood film production, which will be in turn challenged through her own historical analyses or through the contrasting studies of other scholars. All this will point towards how hierarchy has often been overlooked by these conceptualizations of filmmaking and, then, legitimized through inadequate or incomplete analyses of these historical manifestations. By placing the insistence on hierarchy and authorship at the center of the discussion, the 'single author' paradigm will be critiqued and the film industry will be exposed as primarily articulated around the desire to hierarchically control production; something which has been overlooked by this conceptualization of film production, dominant both in the industry and in academia. On the other hand, and in consequence, the corpus will lack non-Hollywood-based studies of film production such as Bollywood, Nollywood, Hong Kong and Soviet Russia. This Hollywod-centrism and (North)Western-centrism, leaves open the question of how valid these notions of film production are in other contexts and of what concepts and understandings these other industries would offer to the discussion and conceptualization of film production.

The second chapter and second section of the corpus regards the consequences of hierarchical authorships and of alternative conceptions. Firstly, this will involve anarchist theorists as these have traditionally placed hierarchy as a central sociopolitical issue. This allows not only to argue the consequences and contingency of Hollywood's hierarchical continuity, but also places film production within a broader social, anthropological and political context, denying it as an isolated process with no effects on society as a whole. This will be done through three contemporary anarchist theorists, Bookchin, Janet Biehl and Cohn, and through two reviews of historical anarchist, by Barchfield and Cuevas Noa, which include more 'classical' anarchist thought. Furthermore, it will present and analyze alternative organizations of production and

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10 authorship that consciously avoid hierarchy, such as the anonymous 'CineSinAutor' collective, as proposed and described by Tudurí, Sedeño and Villaplana. Finally, it will question the sufficiency of these approaches which satisfy themselves with being an alternative niche to Hollywood, instead of attempting to change the conception of film production itself. In contrast, it would have been interesting to compare these arguments further with those of whom have defended hierarchy as socio-politically positive and necessary, such as liberal (e.g. Thomas Hobbes3), communist (e.g. Vladimir Lenin4), or fascist (e.g. Joseph Goebbels5) theorists. In regards to film production, this thesis could be expanded by tracing these same ideas within the different models for film production such as that of capitalist Hollywood (and its sphere of influence), of the soviet nations and communist China, or of fascist Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany, among many other possibilities.

The third chapter and final part of the corpus approaches the discussion around hierarchy as an ontological question regarding the essence and origin of film production, therefore asking how film production may be conceptualized in a manner which does not inherently embrace hierarchy. The search for this alternative arche will concentrate the corpus on film scholars who have centered not on the traditional center of film production studies, the 'mode of production', but on the 'production studies'. This will lead the notions until here developed into other areas which have already proposed equivalent transitions in perspective: Scott in sociology, Jane Jacobs in urbanism, Allen and Maltby in film spectatorship and film history, or Cruciani in theatre production studies. A change in conception that is based on a different conception of the essence of filmmaking, one that rejects hierarchy as one of its essential characteristics and which pursues an alternative tradition of filmmaking and film studies. One which already finds its foundations in Mouëllic's study of improvisation methods in film production and in Chris Holmlund, Corinn Columpar and John Alberti's analyses on feminist models for film production. That which is missing is all that towards which this model could be expanded or where this alternative approach has already been taken in the past; in those

3_{Writer of Leviathan (1651) and one of the theoretical fathers of the modern nation-State, Hobbes is one}

of the most clear defenders of hierarchy as a sociopolitical model, so as to avoid the ever-present threat and chaos of civil war (which he experienced, in the English Civil War and was deeply impacted by).

4_{First head of the USSR and who, in contrast to other communists such as Rosa Luxemburg, vouched for}

a hierarchical system topped by the 'Party' (Scott 147-195) and who tackled cinema in his "Directives on the Film Business", dictated in 1922 and published in 1925 after his death. [found in Lenin Collected

Works. Volume 42. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971. 388-389]

5_{Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany who defended a State-controlled film production in his 1935}

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11 unnoticed and disregarded production traditions, forgotten and buried, while attention was placed elsewhere by film scholars and filmmakers alike, waiting to be (re)found: be it improvisation, feminism, the connection to theatre and other arts, or non-Western or dominant productions.

Therefore, my thesis is that film production studies has mainly conceptualized itself around the elements which have imposed and articulated hierarchy in the first place: the 'mode of production'. Thus, this has led to an uncritical acceptance of hierarchy in film production and to ignoring those elements which instead are essential to the origin of film production itself, without which a film cannot be made: the 'production practices', around which all the success and process of a production depends. These production practices form the new arche I would like to propose as the articulators for our thinking and conceptualizing of film production; as a conception closer to the ontological essence of what filmmaking is, allowing for a more precise understanding of the filmmaking processes. One closer to that which in filmmaking is

natural and necessary, and further from that which is naturalized and circumstantial.

1. THE CODE OF PRODUCTION.

1.1 Authorship in Film Production

One remembers a remark of Ingmar Bergman’s, likening the making of movies to the construction of a medieval cathedral: a mass of craftsmen each perfect at his work, together mounting an aspiration no man could achieve alone. But he was pretty clearly thinking of himself as the unknown master builder. (Stanley Cavell 8)

Most people would agree with Bergman that film production is a highly collaborative process, like the tedious and complex process of building a cathedral. In the first place, because we are conscious of the amount of people needed to make a film; the eternal credits of a blockbuster are its proof. Secondly, because we recognize that each of the multiple ‘departments’ needed to make a film hold distinct creative roles and responsibilities and can thus receive individual praise or criticism; the different categories of the Academy Awards are its institutional confirmation. And yet, much of our conception of film production, film studies and film practice seems centered around

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12 the idea of this "master builder". Just like Cavell points of Bergman, we do not find it strange to bestow upon a single individual the crown of authorship —a well identified and world known master builder to whom all the others’ achievements are indebted, such as the likes of Bergman, Orson Welles, Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick, or many others. Why? If it is so clear, from the start, that filmmaking is a group effort, why would we praise an individual as the single author of a film production, branding all other producers as mere subsidiaries of his (or, sometimes, her) capacity?

In Film Authorship: Auteurs and Other Myths, Peter Sellors argues that this ‘divinization’ of one individual is, in fact, an incorrect and unjust notion of film production authorship; and one still deeply enrooted in film studies and criticism (16, 111). Yet his argumentation fails to explain why such an understanding ever came to be or why it has become so accepted. My claim is that this is because, though the notion of single authorship is insufficient and unnatural to film production (being imported, instead, from literature studies [Sellors 11]), it, on the other hand, does correctly reflect the power structures under which film production is realized. In other words: ‘single authorship’ does not help us understand the essence of film production, but it does point towards its historical conditions. For these historical conditions are what legitimize the erroneous notion of ‘single authorship'6

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As such, Sellors is both precise and misleading when he states that “[D.W.] Griffith certainly is an author of the films he directed, but not solely” (10). Strictly speaking, Griffith was clearly not the only 'author'7 of the film; Griffith would have never made his film without the collaboration of his cast and coworkers. Yet this statement also completely misses the point: the issue is not in recognizing the presence of multiple ‘authors’; the film industry itself already recognizes them as such in the films’ credits. The issue is that, in fact, Griffith was placed in a position where he held

the authority and control over authorship. This is what makes it so hard to name all

6_{This notion of the 'single authorship' gained dominance in film studies through the film journal Cahiers}

du Cinéma and its theory of the auteur, which saw the director as the author of a film, par en par to the

author of a work of literature, with its consequence artistic and stylistic recognitions. This theory, which advanced the consideration of cinema as an art, was most famously put forward by François Truffaut's 1954 "A Certain Tendency in French Cinema" (MacKenzie 133-144) and then subscribed, if with reservations, by André Bazin in "La politique des auteurs", published in 'Cahiers du Cinéma no. 70' in 1957. This approach was made popular in the USA by film critic Andrew Sarris with his 1962 "Notes on Author Theory in 1962" (which was then heavily criticized by film critic Pauline Kael in her 1963 "Circles and Squares", published in Film Quarterly, 16:3, 1963, pages 12-26).

7_{As defined by Sellors, 'author' refers to the "people responsible for structuring a film so that it has the}

properties and meanings that it does … The question of authorship targets the people who conceive, develop and realize the coherent narrative, aesthetic and thematic unity of a film." (74-75)

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13 those involved 'authors', or to speak of collective authorship in multitudinous Hollywood. Because while Griffith often consulted his staff for ideas (and depended on their work), the project’s conception and design remained within his control, as he worked it out, by himself, over the course of making the film (Staiger Hollywood 159).

The case of Griffith is not an isolated one, but an example of a phenomenon that impregnates the whole industry as pointed to (indirectly) by Janet Staiger’s studies of Hollywood’s modes of production. As such, the notion of ‘single authorship’ is not merely a misconception of film criticism, but a misconception articulated by the industry itself through placing authorship in the control of a few authoritative hands. “Authorship is a fact of production” (Sellors 104), and if production is hierarchical, so will its authorship. Thus Sellors’ denunciation, that other production members are discounted as “only serving the needs of the director” (16), becomes, instead, a precise description of the industry's management and distribution of authorship. Therefore, if Sellors describes how, for the Cahiers du Cinèma, the Hollywood director could become an auteur despite the industry (19), I will attempt to demonstrate in this chapter that, instead, the Hollywood director would do so precisely thanks to it.

1.2 The Mode of Production8

In her PhD dissertation The Hollywood Mode of Production: The Construction of

Divided Labor in the Film Industry, Janet Staiger delineates and describes five different

modes of production which succeeded themselves within the Hollywood film industry. They are, in chronological order: the

‘cameraman system’ (dominant until 1906), the ‘director system’ (appearing in 1907 and dominant until 1909), the ‘director-unit system’ (same from 1909 to 1914), the ‘central producer system’ (dominant from 1914 to the early 1930's), the ‘producer-unit system’ (dominant until the 1940's), and the current ‘package-unit system’ (appeared in 1940's and dominant from the 1950's) (Staiger Hollywood 19-20).

8_{All of the diagrams included in this text have been conceived and realized by the author, based upon the}

author's own understanding of the works being discussed.

Staiger's 'mode of production'

group style

style mode of

production

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14 Yet, before we delve into the particularities of these systems, we must examine more closely what is meant by 'mode of production'. For, within this term, I would like to make two subdivisions that are not explicitly recognized by Staiger: the mode of production as an organizational structure and as an organization of authorship. This differentiation points to two distinct types of relationships taking place within the process of film production: a structural one, an organization regarding the 'material' or 'professional' authority during production, and an already mentioned authorial one, regarding the specification of who has creative authority within a production. In other words: the first regards the person with the

capacity to fire people, decide other people's positions or in general with a say (or ownership) over the whole of production (the 'boss') while the second regards the person with the artistic capacity (and responsibility) over the process in relation to the product being created (the 'author'). These two 'branches' of the mode of production may go together, and many times do, but not necessarily; a change in authorship (from a director to another director, or a producer) may take place

without there being a change in structure (the producer still being its head) or one may be the head of authorship and have the last word regarding the film's creative decisions (as a director) but not be the head of structure (who is a producer or an investor) and thus not have the last word regarding their own work position. Or, as Sellors words it (without explicitly recognizing this distinction either):

A director's job is to control a production, while an author's job is to compose and convey meaning. Only if, in the process of controlling a film's production, a director also composes its expressions will that director be an author. (Sellors 113)

This distinction is important because only through it may we concretely analyze the organization of authorship within a mode of production, without confusing it with the persons who are heads of structure within that same production; a distinction that is

Proposed 'mode of production'

group style style mode of production production practices authorship structure

Staiger's mode of production

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15 rarely made or recognized, not allowing for a precise analysis of authorial distribution. This may seem as an obvious distinction within the classical clash between the director's 'creativity' and the producer's 'economics', but it is one not contemplated in the definition of 'mode of production' given by Staiger, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, "a characteristic ensemble of economic aims, a specific division of labor, and particular ways of conceiving and executing the work of filmmaking" (xiv), nor of any other.

Authorship, which in this work will have a primordial role, is mostly brought forward in regards to a film's "film style", and in how this, in conjunction with the mode of production, sustains a "group style" (Staiger Hollywood 200)9. But rarely is it considered as inserted within the actual mode of production or its organizational structuring. Instead, the mode of production seems to primarily affect and condition authorship, in its attempt to control and affect the film style while within a certain and desired structure. Therefore, the mode of production establishes who has control over the "expressions of meaning" (Sellors 114) through a distribution of authorship which is controlled and supervised by the production's structure. Thus, my focus will be around the relationships established, within film production, by concrete organizations and distributions, as specified by a particular mode of production, of authorship; "the people who conceive develop and realize the coherent narrative, aesthetic and thematic unity of a film" (Sellors 74-75).

An interest articulated and directed by one observation regarding the modes of production studied and articulated by Staiger:

Through time, both the norms and the mode of production will change, as will they technology they employ, but certain fundamental aspects will remain constant (Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson xiv),

9_{Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, in their work posterior to Staiger's thesis, will call this "group style" a}

"mode of film practice" (xiv) instead. Which is a term I find awfully confusing as it inserts the word 'practice' without a clear reason, in a field which already speaks of "production practices" and "filmic practices" which are completely separated from this "mode of film practice"; a merging of a concrete mode of production with a concrete film style (leading, for example, to the mode of 'classical cinema'). I, personally, would vouch for the term "mode of cinema" as it suggests its transcendence to the "mode of production" while still suggesting that inclusion of "style" which Staiger's term suggests and Bordwell's 'practice' attempts to maintain; though as it is not that relevant for my discourse, I will keep to Staiger's term for the sake of clarity and simplicity.

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16 Therefore, if certain "fundamental aspects" remain constant, there is one particular unchanging quality of these modes of production on which I would like to focus, one which defines film production's organization of authorship: hierarchy.

1.3 Hierarchy in Authorship and Structure

This continuous quality means that the historical changes in Hollywood film production which Staiger analyzes, in truth, only affected the middle- and upper-levels of the workforce (Staiger Hollywood 323), while all the rest were left following the same “standard structures and work practices” (Staiger Hollywood 278). In other words, that alterations to the distribution of authorship brought around by 'new' modes of production only resulted in a tighter and firmer control over it by a reduced (if changing) number of people. Returning to our opening argument, it could be said that the modes of production, to allow the birth of those individual and imposed 'single authorships', were conceived and applied as modes of control over authorship; particularly over the authorship exercised by the lower levels of production.

There is one single historical exception to this, and it is in that which Staiger names the first mode of production: the cameraman system, where one or several cameramen had control over an entire work process, from its conception and execution, even if working for a production

company10 (Staiger Hollywood 92). In this system, even if these cameramen very clearly worked for someone (e.g. the Lumière Brothers, Gaumont Film Company,

Pathè or Thomas Edison), production itself was left in their hands, from conception to execution; deadlines (and budget possibilities) where the only impositions. Following Charles Musser's "Pre-classical American cinema" study of early film production in USA, it is this the only system in which we can find industry-wide examples and analyses of that "authorial collective" Sellors reclaims (74); a "collaborative system", where all authorial authority remains with the makers, in contrast to the hierarchical

10_{Some examples of these workers are: the cameramen of the (Thomas) Edison Manufacturing Company}

William Kennedy Dickson (who also invented the Kinetograph and Biograph cameras) and Edwin S. Porter (who is credited as the director, producer, writer, cinematographer, and editor of The Great Train

Robbery [1903], widely considered as the first Western) (Musser). Or Segundo de Chomón, cameraman

of the Pathé Frères production company, who is credited with realizing the first camera dolly, the first step-crank process and pioneering hand-coloring (Patrimoni Cultural; Minguet Battlori).

Cameraman system

structure authorship

- cameraman - - production company -

conception & execution boundaries

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17 ones that would follow. It is for this reason that I would argue that the cameraman system may only be categorized as a mode of production in negative terms, as previous phase to them, making, instead, the director's system as the first true mode of production. Musser himself supports this claim when he states that the cameraman system's of "collaborative, comparatively nonhierarchic system of organization was not a simpler version of later film production but fundamentally different" (104); something indirectly endorsed by Staiger herself when she distinguishes the cameraman mode of production (the one she dedicates less space to) from all posterior ones as the only one to conserve a "unified craft" (Hollywood 92, 19-20); that is: only with the introduction of the director system is the craft 'divided' and, thus, authorship organized hierarchically through divisions of labor.

Staiger and Musser find discrepancies in regards to this introduction of the 'director system', and I will argue that their clash is due to, precisely, the aforementioned lack of distinction between authorship and structure within the modes of production: while Staiger defends the transition to the director system (Hollywood 100), Musser claims there is no producer system but a direct 'jump' into that of the central producer (90-91). It would seem this difference is not due to contradictory facts, but instead due to Staiger thinking the mode of productions in terms of structure, while Musser does so in terms of authorship. Therefore what for Staiger is a transition in the mode of production, for Musser it is just a change in the size of the team (92). It is correct, and Staiger supports this, that it is only with the introduction of the central producer system that authorship changes hands from the cameraman/directors' to the producers' (Hollywood 174-175). Yet there was a change in structure already with the director

Director system authorship structure conception execution external script-outline - director- - specialized workers - Figure 4.

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18 system, for other groups of workers were placed, in a subservient manner, under the artistic (authorial) supervision and discretion of the now (before cameramen) 'directors', who "topped a pyramid of workers" (Staiger Hollywood 99); even if the directors kept, among and for themselves, 'collaborative' authorship, until the arrival of the producer systems. It would seem that it is already with the director system that the modes of production, as modes of control over authorship, were introduced; for the directors (who previously had merely been cameraman) became heads of a hierarchical structure which served to impose and allow their authorial visions.

Actually, Musser already indirectly recognizes the existence of the director systems when he recognizes their utility when applied to for example, Griffith and his tendency to "auterist" works (96-97); where the impact, in regards to authorship, of his control over structure is more blatant. Or when he states that there are two extremes within the central producer system: the first, the complete dominance of the producer over the director —a producer who holds both authorship and structure, corresponding to the authorship-structure relationship Staiger names 'central producer system'— and, the second, the state of "virtual autonomy of the director", assuming he stayed within certain guidelines (Musser 95), of what Staiger names 'director-unit system' —a director holding authorship but not the structure. Therefore, it is with the institution of the director system in 1907 —propelled by the desire to produce "predictably, rapidly, and inexpensively" (Staiger Hollywood 93) to answer to the demand of the "nickelodeon boom" (Musser 92)— that the previous 'collaborative authorship' is terminated in favor of a hierarchical relationship with the introduction of the modes of production. It is already from the director system onwards that all the characteristics for single and centralized control over authorship are in place —without having to wait for the central producer—: a hierarchy of

authorship and a division of labor. It is upon these foundations that all posterior modes of production will be constructed (Staiger Hollywood 100), continuing their roles as modes of control over authorship, and upon which the claims and recognitions over single authorship

in film production, such as Griffith's, were justified and enforced.

Director-unit system structure authorship conception scenario - director- - firm/company - boundaries - specialized units - Figure 5. execution

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19 This system of production was expanded upon by the director-unit system, which, by increasing "the number of directors hired as production agents for the firm" (Staiger Hollywood 107) separated once again authorship and structure —as in the cameraman system and in contrast to its unification in the director system— leaving the directors to produce, rewrite, direct, and edit (Staiger Hollywood 110), yet placing it all, once again, within an external "structural hierarchy" (Staiger Hollywood 113) headed by the producers11.

The irretraceable difference in regards to the previous camera system introduced by this director systems is that hierarchy, with its division of labor, was irremediably established within production; structure may have returned to the producers as in the cameraman model but the "workers in each unit only participated in the work for the product of their unit … rather than in the production of all the product (Staiger

Hollywood 111). The director may still have been the authorial head of his or her own

team but this one followed a hierarchical structure, not a collaborative one; particularly as the firm entered (again) the production process by coordinating and assigning the different directors to distinct projects (Staiger Hollywood 112), as, for example, the Lumière brothers or Gaumont had done during early film production (Musser 85-90).

With the introduction of the central producer system, the change in denomination (from 'director'-based systems to 'producer'-based systems) answers, precisely, to a change in authorship control as the 'studio system' par excellence is introduced; it is here that producers such as Thomas Ince, Cecil B. DeMille, or David O.

11_{It is this 'director-unit' system which led to a fiery discussion between Staiger and Matthew Bernstein in}

Cinema Journal, in regards to whether independent productions would fall in this category or would

require of a different one to those proposed by Staiger (Bernstein; Staiger, "Janet Staiger Responds").

Central producer system

practices structure authorship continuity script execution authority execution conception 2nd_conception - producer - - director-

- specialized technicians - - departments / experts -

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20 Selznick come to the foreground as 'single authors' of films. Now instead of the director hiring his own staff, choosing the scenario, etc., this was planned by the producer and established through a 'continuity script' that controlled the design of the product (Staiger

Hollywood 145-146). Therefore, the producer's approval superseded the director's

choices (Staiger Hollywood 148) and the latter become just one more specialized department which the former assembled (Staiger Hollywood 148-149); even if the director always topped the hierarchy of workers (Staiger Hollywood 149), the resulting product was not in his or her hands anymore. The producer-unit system expanded this, similarly to how the director-unit expanded the director system, by multiplying the number of producers leading productions while establishing an external studio head in charge of coordinating their creative efforts (Staiger Hollywood 270).

Finally, the system 'liberalized' itself with the arrival of the package-unit mode of production where work arrangements and structures were arranged film-by-film (Staiger Hollywood 301). Here, authorship lays precisely in a 'package', for all artistic department heads are

equal in that they were put together by a producer-agent to create, together, a product; without a clear hierarchy between them (Staiger Hollywood

301, 324). This might justly remind one of the

Producer-unit system

Package-unit system

practices continuity script _authorship

execution authority execution conception 2nd_conception - associate producer - - director, DoP, editor-

- specialized technicians - - departments / experts -

structure

- studio head / producer -

boundaries

authorship

structure

- director, producer, stars, writer, DoP, editor -

- specialized technicians and departments -

- capital (studio, bank,...) -

execution conception - execution Figure 8. Figure 7. boundaries - agent/producer - film-by-film

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21 collaborative practices Sellors claimed, but one must not forget that this only regarded the upper- and middle-levels of work; the same hierarchical relationships and pyramidal concentration of authorship still existed (Staiger Hollywood 323, 325), only the number of hands involved had changed.

If we take these different systems of production and extend them before us not as historical sequences in a line of progress but as different expressions of one and the same phenomenon, we will have an ample tool with which to think much of the history, and present, of film production. For example, we will find that the director system — which had a great presence in the European 1930s avant-garde movement until it was substituted by producer-based models— serves to explain and describe the type of production model which the auteur theory vouches for and upon which much of the European New Waves and art cinema's based themselves (Thompson). But, most of all, it will allow us to identify and spotlight those shared principles which underlay most of film production in an unrecognized and uncritical manner: the legitimization of the notion of single authorship through an imposed pyramidal hierarchy which oversees and controls all creative processes, raising the artistic criteria of one member over the rest. The motivations for this may be economic or artistic, but the fact remains: the same shared means for those varied scopes continue, unchanged and unchallenged.

Though the presence of hierarchy in film production may be clear, the suggestion that this makes the modes of production function primarily as modes of control over authorship may seem absurd and illegitimate. On the other hand, this idea that control over authorship was of outmost importance for film production is not my own, but instead was made public, explicit, and prescriptive by Hollywood's head producers in the Code to Govern the Making of and Talking Pictures or Motion Picture

Production Code, enforced by the 'Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of

America' (or 'MPPDA') from 1934 to 196712 (MacKenzie 405):

The motion pictures, which are the most popular of modern arts for the masses, have their moral quality from the intention of the minds which produce them and from their effects on the moral lives and reactions of their audiences. This gives them a most important morality.

12_{A period which coincides with classical Hollywood but also with the central producer, producer-unit,}

and package-unit systems, as developed by Staiger. It could be considered to be the final and institutional expression of a mentality and process which already began with the introduction of the first mode of production in 1907: the director system.

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22 1. They reproduce the morality of the men who use the pictures as a

medium for the expression of their ideas and ideals.

2. They affect the moral standards of those who, through the screen, take in these ideas and ideals. (MPPDA 411, own italics)

The importance of who holds authorship control over the production of the film is primal in this fragment of the Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the 'Hays Code' (Production Code for short). As can be guessed, the 'collective authorship' defended by Sellors as the essence of filmmaking, or which took place in Musser's cameraman system, is not the best way of making sure that "the intention of the minds" producing the films have the correct "moral quality"; because who is making the film would not be that definable. Instead, it would be imperative to centralize authorship in concrete, well-known hands which could overpower all the (uncontrollable) authorial

actions of those below. Under these principles, hierarchy is the clear way to go. This is precisely what the Production

Code established, and not merely in words: the industry's

self-censorship which the Code enforced would be supervised by exactly seventeen specified individuals, heads of the diverse Hollywood studios (Cecil B. DeMille, Irving Thalberg, Charles Sullivan, and J.L. Warner among them), and who could only be substituted by an unanimous vote (MPPDA 410).

It could thus be argued that the standardization of "classical" style in Hollywood was not a result of a particular mode of production, as has been mainly put forward (in: Staiger Hollywood; Bordwell et al.), but instead a result of an industry-wide monopolization of authorship in a few limited hands; bestowed diversely by different modes of production but achieved identically through hierarchy. If this were to be the case, then the Production Code could be considered to just be the final and institutional expression of a practice already introduced by the first mode of production, the director system in 1907, which, for the first time, introduced authorial hierarchy by

[Wikipedia. 1934 Motion Picture

Production Code cover. 2017.

June 2018. <https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Producti on_Code#/media/File:Motion_Pict ure_ Production_Code.png>]

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23 concentrating authorship in one single person's hands. Thus, the infamous "self-censorship" (MacKenzie 405) the Production Code imposed was, in reality, just so for the highest levels of production; those who had decision-making (and thus creative) power. The rest suffered the censorship imposed by the criteria of 'propriety' of those higher levels which 'self-censored' themselves. As a closed knit group of similarly minded and shared interests, it could be argued that Hollywood's uniformity around the "classical" style was not a "simultaneous movement" to that of the mode of production's development (Staiger Hollywood 153), but instead its direct consequence. It was not particular modes of production that lead to standardized aesthetic styles, but the concentration of authorship in an authoritative, small and confabulated group of minds, hearts, and hands, around the values of moral integrity, economic success, and political independence.

It is precisely in the intertwining of these three values that the importance of authorship control in film production can be understood, and the common notion challenged. For it is for the imposition of a concrete conceptualization of these three values that hierarchy is justified and authorship control articulated. In the first place, 'political independence' is not to be understood as a 'freedom of speech' (as the

Production Code's prescriptions make evident) but as a 'freedom' from any kind of

government intervention, Hollywood's greatest fear (MacKenzie 403). This points to two implicit principles: not all was about economics (or the route to economic goals was not always by economic means), and what Hollywood's heads desired for themselves was not necessarily applied to those below them. For if they desired the freedom of applying their own economic and moral values for product and production, they then needed to impose their particular views to the rest of the production pyramid.

In second place, these values of theirs, materialized themselves around the attention to the product's 'moral integrity'; not only in an "altruistic" interest for the morality of their citizens regarding certain conservative moral values of religion, race, crime, sex, etc. (MPPDA 406-409), but also in a very self-conscious interest in personal economic profit. Thus, the correct 'moral standard' of the film was not only an ideological motivation, but also an economic one: to attract the maximum possible audience into the cinema, and to avoid government intervention. It was the ideal of what a 'good' film looked and sounded like that checked the modes of production, because the notion was that if the product 'improved' (according to those arbitrary first values of quality), then profits also would (Staiger Hollywood 220). Therefore, authorship was

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24 concentrated in the least possible number of hands, who trustworthily would impose the values of a 'good' film on the multiplicity of the personnel needed to make the film, who, otherwise, would be difficult to proof their adhesion to those original values (though this is precisely what the House Un-American Activities Committee would attempt to do).

Thirdly, and in consequence, though the objective was always one of economic success, this goal was not achieved through economic means of efficiency and austerity, but instead through lavishly investing the minimum necessary to reach that which was considered a 'good' product (both in its moral and purely stylistic senses). This is that which justified extravagant (yet common) practices such as the consideration, during silent film shoots, that a full orchestra was a necessary element to establish the appropriate mood on set (Staiger Hollywood 195), as the building of sets which were more expensive than building the actual houses they were imitating (Staiger Hollywood 180), or as the extremely expensive reshoots of material that was not convincing, adequate or according to the established standards (Staiger Hollywood 199). Standards which were always established according to the authorships' personal criteria of what a 'quality' film should be, within the technological possibilities of the time. The introduction of new technologies —such as color or sound— would not cause, in themselves, a change in the modes of production, as Staiger claims (Hollywood 229), but merely a stylistic one. Instead, changes in production due to the introduction of new innovations (Staiger Hollywood 216) was not motivated by the technologies themselves but by the new standards of quality these inaugurated —which had always been the aim of US cinema technological research (Staiger Hollywood 216); this would explain why such incorporations were realized without considerations for cost (Staiger Hollywood 220).

The stylistic homogeneity of Hollywood laid not in the particular configuration of production practices, but in the restrictive and authoritative distributions of authorship among homogenous individuals. Even when an atypical product, which by Hollywood's standards and ideals should have not been economically profitable, made its way and suddenly was an economic success, Hollywood would rush to imitate that model, applied again through a strict authorial control; only this time oriented towards a new ideal of the 'good' film. "Ideological/signifying practices" (Staiger Hollywood 5) and values did not govern Hollywood, economical ones did; but certainly the former were considered the means with which to predict and achieve the latter. If only for

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25 advertising: this key phase was based solely on having a product of a certain quality to market (Staiger Hollywood 216), and having spent millions of dollars was also a valued way to sell product quality (Staiger Hollywood 24); in fact, Hollywood would discover that the more they spent on having a 'good' film, the more they earned (Staiger

Hollywood 307). Concern concentrated around achieving that ambiguous 'quality' mark

which made cash flow in; while constantly attempting to formalize prescriptive descriptions (Staiger Hollywood 8-9) as, for example, the Production Code. For the same reasons, the variations in between Hollywood and other film industries which imitated its model (Staiger Hollywood 319), would be based on different conceptions of what made a 'good' product; a posteriori conditioning production practices in a non-historically determined manner, even if non-historically given (as can be appreciated in Staiger's studies of production in the USSR, Japan, and India [Hollywood 338-340]); an unilateral conception always imposed through a strict control of hierarchy, of production in the name of the product.

In other words, the "complex and economic ideological/signifying developments" cannot be really separated from the "shifting and coalescing standards of quality filmmaking" as Staiger does (Hollywood 126), but instead both are mutually connected criteria which guide the structuring of film production. Concretely, they justify its hierarchy and monopolization of authorship, in the name of reaching this zealously kept and unilaterally conceived ideal of the 'good' product, to which all other production members merely bow their heads. Hollywood was subscribing Frederick Windslow Taylor's words that, quality did not lay at the workers' level or actions, but at the capacity of the managerial level to plan and control all decisions and steps in the work process (Staiger Hollywood 143-144). This ideal of authorship control required finding a practical materialization within film production. This leads us to the second condition that allows the control of authorship: division of labor. Of this, the most expressive consequence was the introduction of the 'continuity script': "a very detailed shooting script … to plan and budget the entire film shot-by-shot before any major set construction, crew selection, or shooting started" (Staiger Hollywood 126). Conception and execution were to be distinctly separated responsibilities in production.

1.4 Detailed and Social Divisions of Labor

In a similar manner to how I have already argued that the Hollywood system did not mind spending great amounts of money as long as it was for a worthy, quality, result, I

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26 would like to propose that division of labor was followed precisely for the control it allowed over the resulting product; more than for the economic control, or efficiency, it allowed, as Staiger argues (Hollywood 16). This was the foremost attractiveness of the aforementioned continuity script; not only in the USA but also in the USSR —called the "iron scenario" (Thompson 397)— or in Germany, in the form of 'classified' scripts (Thompson 392). The continuity script was a strict blueprint of the film, a mechanism to pre-check quality (Staiger Hollywood 23), which was also in itself deeply submitted to radical divisions of labor; "seldom did one person do all the work all the way through" (Staiger Hollywood 183). This, for one, allowed the omniscient presence of an external, single individual who was the only one to hold a whole picture of the process and on whom, therefore, all other activities depended. His or her will was transmitted down all the production line through the carefully designed and detailed continuity script. This common reference, constructed by the holder of authorship, compensated for the dilution of the worker's authorial capacity and for their lack of trans-departmental communication and coordination; the "continuity clerk" is who made sure the these fixed guidelines where being followed and easily supervised by the authorial head (Staiger Hollywood 197). If Sellors has reclaimed that the multiplicity of workers involved in filmmaking implied a collective effort, this multiplicity was instead, historically, articulated through principles of isolation, so as to control the creative input:

A hierarchical and structural arrangement of control over subordinate and separate work functions and hence, product input, is also a characteristic of the labor force. A system of management controls the execution of the work. The mode assigns work functions to each key management position, making the worker in that position responsible for supervising part of the total labor process. (Staiger Hollywood 10)

Yet, this type and function of division of labor is what Staiger calls 'detailed' division of labor: each worker realizes a repetition of an isolated part within the whole process; conception and execution of the work are divided and, thus, the more complicated and more segmented the task, the more specialized and separated from the whole process the worker is (Staiger Hollywood 16), with continuity scripts and clerks compensating for that gap. Therefore, a given worker, while a contributor to the final product, will have a lot less to say how a film will look and sound than the scriptwriter or cameraman, who

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27 in turn will have different things to say than the producer (Staiger Hollywood 10). This is the establishment of the authorship pyramid.

This type of division of labor contrasts with the "social" division of labor which Staiger (Hollywood 15) and Musser (91-92) assign to the cameraman system, keeping it, uniquely, a "unified craft": a division of labor where "even if the worker at times performs only parts of the whole task, knowledge of and skill in the entire craft" is still in the worker's hands (Staiger Hollywood 15). Or in other terms: when conception of the final product is not separated from its execution. That is: even if one is only executing a single part of the process, that one is still an accomplice of the project's conception as a whole. Authorship remains decentralized, or as extended as the production's extension. Musser exemplifies how this social division of labor would take place in an editing room:

The organization of work seems very close to a ceramics studio where the apprentice mixes glazes and wedges clay while the master makes the pots. Here, too, the apprentice, typically, will be assigned the easier pot-throwing tasks and will gradually develop the skills necessary to becoming a master potter. Both are fundamentally different from the factorylike process of manufacture that involves detailed division of labor, the production and assembly of interchangeable parts, the separation of planning from execution. (Musser 102-103)

Therefore, social division of labor would regiment the interactions within a single department (such as an editing room) where direct relationships and interactions (and a certain autonomy) still took place, while the "factorylike" relationships would remain in regards to the interactions with other departments and the rest of the production process, due to impositions and controlled isolations of a detailed division of labor coordinated by the presence of a strict continuity script.

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28 But Staiger seems to conceive both types of division of labor as mutually exclusive: she states that, with the apparition of detailed division of labor and the introduction of the director system, social division of labor vanished from filmmaking (Hollywood 19-20). Instead it would seem they irremediably coexist; an impression which is coherent with a close study of Staiger's understanding of these work relationships:

In this system of production [the director system], one individual staged the action and another person photographed it. That is, the director managed a set of workers including the craftsman cameraman. (Staiger Hollywood 94-95)

It seems to me that here (as an example of a move present along her entire thesis), two different types of labor relationships are being, unnoticed, equated into one. The first description which states that "one individual staged the action and another person photographed it", reminds me of a social division of labor, not necessarily a detailed one. While what makes this whole system of production a detailed division of labor is the second one: "the director managed a set of workers including the craftsman cameraman". It is not a necessary consequence, as her "that is" seems to suggest, but instead two different properties and work relationships. On the social division of a distribution of work roles, a subsequent detailed division is added: the hierarchical power and authorship of the director over the rest of the workers. Thus, though the first is submitted to the second, both, to a certain extent, coexist together. (It is in this sense that this observation by Ben Brewster becomes relevant: in the film most influenced by

Detailed division of labor _{Social division of labor}

authorship product conception execution - specialized departments - - 'author(s)' - authorship product - 'author(s)' - conception & execution conception & execution conception & execution - specialist unit - - specialist unit - - specialist unit - continuity script continuity script Figure 9.

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29 Bertolt Brecht [Kuhle Wampe, 1932], there was a high degree of division of labor, but that did not necessarily preclude a desirable collective activity [in Staiger Hollywood 347]).

The consequence of this misunderstanding, though, as Staiger's position clearly reflects, is that the presence and role of social division of labor is overlooked. Film production is a creative industry and, as such, it requires the input of a large amount of workers whose minds and hearts cannot be controlled as precisely as the Production

Code, for example, would have desired (Staiger Hollywood 346). What is attempted,

instead, is to funnel those inputs under the supervision, vision and desires of one 'single authorship' placed at the top of a hierarchy who gets to decide what is the 'good' product that will lead to economic success.

In conclusion: though, contrary to Sellors, there is a production reality which supports (and has legitimized) the understanding of film production as a 'single authorship', through the detailed division of labor, all workers involved still need to be, and are, authors to a certain (carefully controlled) extent, as he claimed, in as much as the social division of labor continues to be irremediably present. It is in this sense that Sellors' critique of the notion of single authorship is correct: we must in fact remember that film is most frequently produced collaboratively (Sellors 7). He correctly points that film production "involves communication and negotiation between members of the production team and will, by virtue of the knowledge each brings to the process, engage a wide range of ideas, perspectives, and filmmaking practices" (Sellors 75). I believe, like Sellors, to this being the true heart of filmmaking, but structurally this has not been the established reality. Precisely looking at the "facts of production" which Sellors highlights as the point of reference for correct authorship analysis (7), through Staiger's studies, my conclusions have precisely lead me to the opposite of what he intended: film production has been structured towards a tight-knit, 'single' authorship of the film product through the modes of production's hierarchy and division of labor, justifying this notion of a 'single', hierarchical, authorship.

Though the "collective authorship" Sellors reclaims still remains present in the form of the social divisions of labor, these are more the 'irreducible pillars' which film production cannot do without, more than a fact supported by film production structure in general. Instead, they would be precisely that which film production has attempted to suffocate, allowing the emerging of the 'single author' paradigm which the auteur theory picked upon. This does not mean that this 'single author' production systems are false or

On the Ontology of Filmmaking: Production authorship, hierarchy and practices