The Film Chain is the name given to the process that a film goes through, from the very initial idea to it's exhibition after the cinema on formats such as DVD, BluRay and TV channel film screenings. By following the film chain, it helps the owners of a film to not only produce the film and get it to cinemas, but to also attract appropriate audiences to ensure that the film will do well at the Cinema, and beyond, and make money for the owners of the film.
Different films will follow different elements of the film chain, depending on who owns them and how much money has gone into financing the films. It might also depend on whether the film is a blockbuster or an independent film, the genre of the film, the type of technology that is being used to produce the film, the audience it is for and how the film is promoted to audiences and the type of release it has at the cinema.
By the end of this unit, you must be familiar with what happens at each stage of the film chain and how your case study films follow the film chain and the reasons for any differences in the ways they might do this.
There are a number of models that help to understand the order that the film chain follows in order to make money, such as the ones below:
Read through the slides in the document below to get a clear overview of what happens at each stage of the film chain:
