The director is always the most important influence on the film
The director is always the most important influence on the film
compare how far your two chosen films support this statement
a common miss conception throughout society is that they believe that the director has all creative control over the piece of media they are producing. this is true to a certain degree but most pieces of media are influenced by production companies like Columbia Studios who can have a major impact on the films production.
an example of this is Orson Welles' film "the lady from shanghai" which was released in 1947 was completely ruined when they fired Orson Welles from the film completely (for multiple reasons like going over budget) and Columbia Studios who was funding the production passed editing over to Viola Lawrence in an attempt to "save the story". this resulted in the entire movie to become disorientated with shots in the wrong place and the story being hard to read and leading to there being hardly any story at all. This can be compared to the movie Blade Runner which was directed by Ridley Scott original in 1982 before releasing a directors cut in 1992 where Ridley Scott was fired from production when the budget for the film came to 30 million US dollars. the original blade runner came to a run time of over 4 hours long which allowed the film production to cut it down to just 2 hours leaving out important scenes making the story hard to follow and confusing with some of the plots lines being cut short or unanswered like when Deckard who is played by Harrison Ford is teased to be replicant the story's version of robots with short life spans as well as the unicorn scene being left out. these were important scenes which helped progress the story which was supposed to be more artistically than story driven due to Ridley Scott caring more about artistic value compared to the story which the company ruined the film by firing the director making them dysfunctional and hard to watch by the editing in both Blade Runner and The Lady from Shanghai. this also lead Warner Brothers to force Ridley Scott to add a voice over voiced by Harrison Ford to help audiences to follow the story of blade runner which Harrison Ford was against it the most because they all viewed it as unnecessary but because Warner Bros had power over the production of the film they had to do it otherwise production would stop completely and Blade Runner would be cancelled
Rita Hayworth was cast into the film in an attempt to save her marriage with Orson Well which Orson Welles used get the roll as director and a budget for the film to help settle his financial struggle which got the people at Columbia Studios angry because she was known for her long red hair and Orson Welles decided to cut it short and dye it bleach blonde ruining her iconic feature. this can be compared to Ridley Scott painting Sean Young who played Rachael's lips leaving their mark on the film by getting into the film and doing small little changes to personalise the film which is also known as the auteur theory. another example of this is that Orson Welles painted some of the sets in the film which actually ended up angering some of the set designers on the preproduction team because he ended up just scraping their ideas and doing it himself.
Harry Cohn (the co-founder, president, and production director of Columbia Pictures Corporation) also demanded close ups of Rita Hayworth throughout the film to help sell the film due to her being the star of Hollywood at the time which lead to random cuts in the film zooming into her face when it is is not necessary ruining the flow of the film for example the random close ups of her on the rocks while the two characters are trying to talk to each other another example of this is when there is around a minute clip of her just lying down singing while the camera is in her face which makes the clip awkward and hard to watch.
in blade runners production, the cast and crew had to film at night and in the rain which was forced to re shoot until everything was perfect to Ridley Scott's standard leading to the production team to create t-shirts stating to have survived blade runner. this even went as far as them, making a t shirt with "Yes Guv'nor, My Ass" that mocked Scott's unfavourable comparison of U.S. and British crews; Scott responded with a T-shirt of his own, "Xenophobia Sucks" making the incident known as the T-shirt war. this shows the relationship between crew and director. this can be compared to the lady from shanghai which was filmed in a variety of places like Acapulco in Mexico to San Francisco which is one of the main reasons for the budget being so high because they went to many different locations to film. this also caused problems with the cast and crew and even the production company because the size and weight of the cameras to film were massive leading to it being to traverse small areas and hard to film which lead to many problems for Orson Welles due it them not being very versatile for some of the shots he wanted. places like Acapulco also lead to most of the crew becoming sick at one point halting production.
These points prove that directors do not have the most important influence on the film due to production companies like Columbia studios and Warner Brothers getting involved or even the directors being fired mid production just like the case in the lady from shanghai and Blade runner.
compare how far your two chosen films support this statement
a common miss conception throughout society is that they believe that the director has all creative control over the piece of media they are producing. this is true to a certain degree but most pieces of media are influenced by production companies like Columbia Studios who can have a major impact on the films production.
an example of this is Orson Welles' film "the lady from shanghai" which was released in 1947 was completely ruined when they fired Orson Welles from the film completely (for multiple reasons like going over budget) and Columbia Studios who was funding the production passed editing over to Viola Lawrence in an attempt to "save the story". this resulted in the entire movie to become disorientated with shots in the wrong place and the story being hard to read and leading to there being hardly any story at all. This can be compared to the movie Blade Runner which was directed by Ridley Scott original in 1982 before releasing a directors cut in 1992 where Ridley Scott was fired from production when the budget for the film came to 30 million US dollars. the original blade runner came to a run time of over 4 hours long which allowed the film production to cut it down to just 2 hours leaving out important scenes making the story hard to follow and confusing with some of the plots lines being cut short or unanswered like when Deckard who is played by Harrison Ford is teased to be replicant the story's version of robots with short life spans as well as the unicorn scene being left out. these were important scenes which helped progress the story which was supposed to be more artistically than story driven due to Ridley Scott caring more about artistic value compared to the story which the company ruined the film by firing the director making them dysfunctional and hard to watch by the editing in both Blade Runner and The Lady from Shanghai. this also lead Warner Brothers to force Ridley Scott to add a voice over voiced by Harrison Ford to help audiences to follow the story of blade runner which Harrison Ford was against it the most because they all viewed it as unnecessary but because Warner Bros had power over the production of the film they had to do it otherwise production would stop completely and Blade Runner would be cancelled
Rita Hayworth was cast into the film in an attempt to save her marriage with Orson Well which Orson Welles used get the roll as director and a budget for the film to help settle his financial struggle which got the people at Columbia Studios angry because she was known for her long red hair and Orson Welles decided to cut it short and dye it bleach blonde ruining her iconic feature. this can be compared to Ridley Scott painting Sean Young who played Rachael's lips leaving their mark on the film by getting into the film and doing small little changes to personalise the film which is also known as the auteur theory. another example of this is that Orson Welles painted some of the sets in the film which actually ended up angering some of the set designers on the preproduction team because he ended up just scraping their ideas and doing it himself.
Harry Cohn (the co-founder, president, and production director of Columbia Pictures Corporation) also demanded close ups of Rita Hayworth throughout the film to help sell the film due to her being the star of Hollywood at the time which lead to random cuts in the film zooming into her face when it is is not necessary ruining the flow of the film for example the random close ups of her on the rocks while the two characters are trying to talk to each other another example of this is when there is around a minute clip of her just lying down singing while the camera is in her face which makes the clip awkward and hard to watch.
in blade runners production, the cast and crew had to film at night and in the rain which was forced to re shoot until everything was perfect to Ridley Scott's standard leading to the production team to create t-shirts stating to have survived blade runner. this even went as far as them, making a t shirt with "Yes Guv'nor, My Ass" that mocked Scott's unfavourable comparison of U.S. and British crews; Scott responded with a T-shirt of his own, "Xenophobia Sucks" making the incident known as the T-shirt war. this shows the relationship between crew and director. this can be compared to the lady from shanghai which was filmed in a variety of places like Acapulco in Mexico to San Francisco which is one of the main reasons for the budget being so high because they went to many different locations to film. this also caused problems with the cast and crew and even the production company because the size and weight of the cameras to film were massive leading to it being to traverse small areas and hard to film which lead to many problems for Orson Welles due it them not being very versatile for some of the shots he wanted. places like Acapulco also lead to most of the crew becoming sick at one point halting production.
These points prove that directors do not have the most important influence on the film due to production companies like Columbia studios and Warner Brothers getting involved or even the directors being fired mid production just like the case in the lady from shanghai and Blade runner.
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