The star / Hollywood

• The stars are the people who 'sell' the film. 
• 10% of the profits go into the stars pockets.
• In the old days, Hollywood stars were under 7 year contracts and were told what to do (had little freedom)
• Directors - have a lot more control nowadays than they used to. 
• The producers - are there to keep everything on track.
• Most Hollywood films lose money.
• Lightening in a bottle illustrates how hard it is to create a successful film.
• Stars sell movies.
• The stars judgement isn't always the best one - most famous actors are generally tight-cast which means they tend to play the same character types over and over.
• Charlie's angles was directed by an inexperienced pop video director.
• It was doomed to fail but Columbia tried hard to get it back on track with 18 writers.
• 6 out of 10 movies fail.
• Out of these - one breaks even  - two make a little money - three make some money and four of them make a major profit.
• Bonfire of the vanities failed miserably. 
• Town and country- greatest flop of all time - took 100 million dollars to make but only made 6 million.
• Characters have to be likeable or movies fail.
• Failure effects everyone in Hollywood.
• Profit = success.
• Success is measured in 3 ways - Commercial  (money) , Artistic success (great movie visually) and Critical (critics reviews.)
• The story - they get ideas from books, magazines, video games, comic books and old TV shows.
• Dreamworks is owned by Steven Spielberg.
• Everybody within Hollywood production was stuck in 7 year contracts.
• Bill Mechanic was the Fox Studios chief for about 6 years.
• Summer is the season where Hollywood goes all out with film premières every week.
• Within 2-3 hours- Hollywood knows if a film is successful or a complete flop. 
• Everything rides on the opening weekend. 
• Top 10 films are reviewed every week.
• Internet is good and bad for Hollywood (good for advertisements but bad for reviews and bad publicity)
• Movies can lose 10 million in the first weekend if there's major lack of people.
• A film has to make 3 times as much as production to break even.
• Production takes 15 hours a day, 5 days a week for a 12 week total. 
• It costs up to half a million dollars a day in production for a Hollywood film.
• Pay and play system is when Hollywood employs the best actors to participate in their films - and even if the film fails, the actor still has to be paid.
• It cost 100 million dollars to make Gladiator.
• The sets and the play and pay contracts cost 10 million dollars.
• The star gets 10% of the money that the film makes.
• Within the last 20 years, actors have become more picky and demanding about the content of the scripts.

Testing.

• Test screen - showing a film before the première to gage how successful a film is going to be in advance.
• Independence day - number one hit of 1996.
• Negative feedback from test screening can mean re-shooting many scenes.
• 267 million at box office -my best friend's wedding - 6 brand new scenes were shot after testing.
  
  Marketing.
• Stars have a limited screen persona - can only stick to one genre and character type.
• Actors / actresses aren't limited - they can play a number of different roles.
• 50-150 million goes into marketing.
• Hannibal took 350 million at the box office.
• 2 types of posters - taster and proper poster.
• Posters have 2 second reads.
• 5 minute interviews with main stars - showed on a number of different channels to same target audience.
• There was problems with the production of Doctor Doolittle because Eddie Murphy was found with a transvestite prostitute which could have put the production in complete jeopardy
• Titanic went way over budget (by 30 million) and cost Fox a total of 150 million to produce but it made 1.8 billion dollars so it was one of the best selling films of all time. 
• The producer's role is to make sure that everything runs smoothly.