All Film is a Construction

• special effects and a top-notch cast can easily cost upwards of 30 million dollars or more to make, but also lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales, overseas marketing, video rentals, soundtrack rights and other ancillary sources of income
• The first hurtle to overcome is obtaining the rights to the source material and permission from estates or survivors to use their story
• even getting the rights to a particular book involves serious negotiations and counter-offers
• If all works out well, the film maker ends up with the right to create a movie from the book, and the author ends up with financial incentive to continue writing
• Now that the rights to the original source have been secured, the film maker might need to commission a professional screenwriter to convert the book into a working script (he or she will be paid at least scale wages for the task of condensing a 1000 page non-fiction book into a two-hour movie script)
• Occasionally, a first script will be rejected and other writers will be hired to rewrite the entire screenplay or 'doctor' the existing one
• Once a script has been approved by the backers of the film, essential personnel must be hired, including a director, casting director, cinematographer, assistant producers, editor and musical director
• Casting directors must also create a short list of actors appropriate for the characters
• Location is another factor to think about: film may either be shot in controlled environments such as sound studios, or they may be filmed on location
• If the film is shot in a studio, many craftsmen will need to be hired in order to create a convincing atmosphere for the film
• trips out of the studio are never cheap, and transportation expenses must be handled by the producers
• If a film is being shot on location, then the cast and crew must be transported to the site and housed between takes
• The movie must be promoted to an influential reviewers and media outlets 
• After the film is shot, the actors are to appear on numerous talk shows and press conferences