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peartreed wrote:In terms of the continuing conversation about CIA, conspiracies and corruption in Hollywood, It might be helpful to review how a movie or t.v. script gets changed.
First, the original screenwriter usually writes a first draft (or adapts a story from a book or play) upon approval of a treatment (or précis outline) by the producer. There are many influences in the early stages, like editors, agents, researchers and proofreaders, or specialists brought in for their expertise on some aspect of the story to verify descriptions and enhance verisimilitude. The writer’s family and friends are often the first to get a kick at the cat before it’s released.
Next, a producer will usually use the draft script to solicit funding and Executive Producers whose primary role is financing and facilitating the production. Once a script is “green lighted” for production a separate production company is formed or assigned, and such a company has its own organizational hierarchy to chip in. For feature films there are often several subcontracted companies participating.
The Director will also have a Cinematographer or D.O.P. and a technical crew for camera, lighting, electrical, grips, props, set-dec, costumes, make-up, hair and transport etc. The performers chosen by casting and the producer/production executives also have contracts that sometimes allow creative “input” or script revision rights. Post production sound, SFX and editing also alter the product.
Such changes also evolve naturally as production proceeds and the exigencies of budget/schedule/weather/location/circumstance alter or edit the shooting script and its sequentially numbered drafts. Most often the script goes through several drafts and revised dailies or “sides” during production.
Once produced and edited to an editor’s cut, the film will then go through a process of legal and industry institutional approvals towards earning a classification and a rating for distribution. Distributors and their hierarchies also influence a product.
Sometimes a disputed film or episode is produced/edited to more than one version.
There is a multiplicity of script changes made by a myriad of people in the process.
Returning to the possibility of military, corporate or governmental interference in a film, that is usually a product of controversial content, research or sponsorship lobbying. Writers, producers, performers and directors strive for authenticity and credibility, even in fiction. To achieve that takes real help and support from real life participants in the actual activity, specialty or expertise being depicted. This also opens the door to input, second-guessing and agenda pursuit by biased parties.
If budget/funding/financing factors are involved, as usual, influence is often directly proportionate to the provider’s input. Films about military require equipment and support. Films about corporate product/services and activity do too. So do shows about intel conspiracy.
Spy movies and shows, like police drama, often evolve out of actual case studies. Expertise is sought, as are researched elements, from real life participants. When you bring a spy out of the cold into a hot property, you bring the danger in too. And covert operatives are extremely cautious about exposure and covering one’s ass. Authorities are dragged in, and they have their continuing agenda of manipulation.
It takes a strong studio executive to stick-handle through the spook hoops and not turn the story into more distortions, propaganda, disinformation or cointelpro pap.
Even Sci-Fi series of a simulated future are subject to projected inside probabilities.
Shows move an audience through emotion, tension, conflict and ultimate resolution, so the more convincing the dramatic depictions the better the box office or market share numbers. Producers are dependent on high quality expertise throughout. They also play and press the existing audience buttons, like sex, romance, violence, combat, patriotism, fears, biases, suspicions, prejudices and their cathartic release. The distinction is that they hire film professionals, the best, to integrate it all well.
Films or cartoons created by and for propagandists are transparently obvious and bad. They are overtly promotional of a one-sided, superficial bias and belief. They disclose their own agenda by ineptitude in pounding home the message’s delivery.
But all the people involved in the entire process of film production are also loaded with their own agenda. Producers probably served their time in uniform. Actors emulate their own heroes from childhood storybooks to fantasy comics and on to characters who led the way on the silver screen, including amazingly evil villains.
And everyone exerts an influence on the final product. No single person controls it, nor does any overriding force or agenda – including imagined power conspiracies.
The single most influential originator of a film story is the writer who conceived it.
That writer turns it over to endless second-guessing edits and editorializing in return for payment and residuals, all in the hope that some semblance survives. It hurts to hear that the credit is usurped by spooks.
According to a new report from Wired, the Pentagon considered joining forces with Joss Whedon’s The Avengers—possibly by lending the recently christened blockbuster some of its military aircrafts during the making of the film, as it did for another Marvel hit, Iron Man. Unfortunately for The Avengers, the government could not see where it fit in the S.H.I.E.L.D. chain of campaign. Explained Phil Strub, the Defense Department’s Hollywood liaison, “We couldn’t reconcile the unreality of this international organization and our place in it. To whom did S.H.I.E.L.D. answer? Did we work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? We hit that road block and decided that we couldn’t do anything.”
jlaw172364 wrote:I thinks its a matter of propaganda agents cultivating relationships with key individuals, and then leaning on them at appropriate times.
People who comply get rewarded. People who are "difficult to work with" or "not team players" get punished.
Rewards and punishments are measured in work, money, praise, and publicity.
Another element is advancing people that share your worldview, and holding back people that don't.
Nordic wrote:That is NOT what I read on the internet!
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