Runaway Productions Research Articles

Gli accordi Anica-Mpea e l’impiego dei capitali americani nel nostro cinema / Parte 2 – Dal finanziamento dei film al finanziamento dell’Anica

The agreements between the industrial and trade organizations ANICA and MPAA/MPEA regulated Italian-American film relations between 1951 and 1962, promoting the growth of “Runaway productions” and joint productions in Italy, but also supporting the distribution of Italian films abroad by US companies. The article, based on extensive archival research, reconstructs for the first time the development and implementation of these agreements, also following the paths of American money in Italian cinema.

A Green Intervention in Media Production Culture Studies: Environmental Values, Political Economy and Mobile Production

This article develops an interdisciplinary theoretical method for assessing the environmental values articulated and practised by dispersive or ‘mobile’ film production practices, aiming toward applicable strategies to make media practices more environmentally conscientious and sustainable. Providing a social and environmental study of the local relational values, political economy and ecosystem ramifications of runaway productions and film incentive programmes, this study draws on contemporary international green production practices as entryways into environmentally positive film industry change. Offering an overview of the potential use of a relational values approach to media production cultures, the essay uses two opposing models (the Michigan film incentive and the underwater cinematography culture of South Florida) in order to assess the political dynamics, social consequences and environmental threats of Hollywood's mobile practices – as well as their potential as sites, beyond Hollywood, to converge environmental values with local media culture.

AVA GARDNER EN LA ESPAÑA DEL DESARROLLISMO: LA RECONSTRUCCIÓN CINÉFILA DE LA MEMORIA SOCIAL EN LA FICCIÓN TELEVISIVA ESPAÑOLA

Resumen: Este artículo examina la reconstrucción de la memoria histórica que lleva a cabo Arde Madrid, una comedia ambientada en el Madrid de comienzos de los sesenta donde vivía Ava Gardner. Las referencias al cine español de los años cincuenta y a las runaway productions hollywoodenses se entremezclan con la biografía de Ava Gardner, al objeto de homenajear a una actriz cuyas películas ambientadas en España fueron determinantes en la construcción del mito. La revisión de los símbolos de la españolidad asociados a la Dictadura y el retrato social convierten la serie en un lugar simbólico de la memoria colectiva.Abstract: This article explores the reconstruction of the historical memory of Arde Madrid, a comedy set in Madrid in the early sixties where Ava Gardner lived. References to the Spanish cinema of the fifties and the Hollywood runaway productions intermix with Ava Gardner’s biography, in order to celebrate an actress whose films set in Spain played a key role in the shaping of the myth. The revision of the Spanishness symbology associated with Franco dictatorship and the social portrait of that period make the series into a symbolic place of collective memory.

Film It in France, Build It in Burbank: How <em>To the Victor</em> Paved the Way for Postwar Runaway Productions

Film It in France, Build It in Burbank: How <em>To the Victor</em> Paved the Way for Postwar Runaway Productions

Set for Success: Hollywood Runaway Productions in Socialist and Post-socialist Hungary

Set for Success: Hollywood Runaway Productions in Socialist and Post-socialist Hungary

Bringing the Battle to Britain: Band of Brothers and Television Runaway Production in the UK

This article explores the development and pre-production history of the 2001 HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. It does so via a combination of original archive research (conducted at the BFI Reuben Library) and interviews with several industry figures with relevant professional experience, including John Barclay, the current Head of Recorded Media for the UK trade union Equity, and Roger Harrop, the former director of regional film commission Herts Film Link. Using these methodologies, the article identifies Band of Brothers as the first significant US runaway television production in the UK, and uncovers how this HBO programme came to benefit from British film tax relief. Here, close attention is paid to dubious practices concerning tax policy and contractual agreements for actors, especially Damian Lewis's pay. The article demonstrates the impact Band of Brothers has had on television production in the UK in terms of providing Equity with a useful precedent when negotiating for subsequent international productions such as Game of Thrones (2011–19). Band of Brothers offers important and timely lessons to be learned, especially given the recent growth of US television runaway productions in the UK.

Runaway Hollywood: Internationalizing Postwar Production and Location Shooting by Daniel Steinhart (review)

Reviewed by: Runaway Hollywood: Internationalizing Postwar Production and Location Shooting by Daniel Steinhart Kallan Benjamin Steinhart, Daniel. Runaway Hollywood: Internationalizing Postwar Production and Location Shooting. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019. In Runaway Hollywood: Internationalizing Postwar Production and Location Shooting, Daniel Steinhart historicizes Hollywood’s current globalized filmmaking practices by offering a detailed historical study of post–World War II Hollywood’s overseas production. Focusing on the late 1940s to early 1960s, Steinhart combines archival research with formal visual analysis to argue that multiple and multifaceted issues—political, economic, geographical, logistical, stylistic, technical, and interpersonal—shaped postwar overseas (that is, “runaway”) production. Any readers who assume that exploitative economic aims alone can account for Hollywood’s shift into overseas production will come away from Steinhart’s study convinced of the more complicated and intersecting forces at play. He argues that “Hollywood’s global power…was at once accommodating and assertive” and offers persuasive examples of the trade-offs involved in intercultural exchanges of talent and craft. Though firmly rooted in the postwar period, Steinhart frames his study in terms of current production practices, suggesting that “[i]n the end, this is a story that helps provide some perspective on the globalized world of today” (20). The book is organized into three sections. The first covers the cultural and industrial contexts surrounding postwar production and explores the complex mix of incentives that lured Hollywood filmmakers overseas. In line with other scholarship, Steinhart shows that access to frozen funds, foreign subsidies, and inexpensive labor enticed Hollywood filmmakers to shoot their films abroad. However, he takes his analysis beyond economic factors to explore filmmakers’ creative motives, particularly their desire to achieve greater realism through authentic foreign location shoots as postwar audiences grew savvier about recognizing Hollywood backlot versions of foreign locales. Steinhart also presents a case study in each section; he first looks at Moby Dick (1956) and unearths the intertwined creative, political, and economic incentives that lead director John Huston to shoot the film in several foreign countries and out at sea. “There’s nothing that compares with the fury of a real storm at sea,” said Huston, as quoted by Steinhart, but he was also taking advantage of a tax exemption for Americans working abroad and avoiding domestic red-baiting hysteria (58). After establishing the industrial, cultural, and economic contexts surrounding Hollywood’s expansion of overseas production, Steinhart uses the book’s second section to describe the actual experience of shooting in a foreign country for filmmakers and below-the-line crew. Anecdotes about American filmmakers adjusting to European production cultures are a highlight; for example, director Vincent Sherman was bewildered by the union-sanctioned twice daily tea breaks he encountered in the UK: “He wrote to studio head Jack Warner in Burbank: ‘Just as we were ready to shoot—came a tea break. This meant that everybody, from the electricians way up high on down—had to stop to get tea!!’” (114). In addition to British teatime (and leisurely Italian morning coffees), runaway productions faced challenges related to infrastructure, equipment, technology, and, importantly for Steinhart, personnel. He writes: “the interchange of people and practices was itself a new production challenge” (94). This exchange of methods between Hollywood filmmakers and local crews is central to Steinhart’s argument. “In going abroad to shoot motion pictures in these countries, Hollywood filmmakers encountered some production practices that resonated with the industry’s way of making movies and other diverging methods. I contend that this encounter wasn’t so much transnational as it was transcultural.” While he allows that scholarship on transnationalism in film studies [End Page 84] “has generated rich insights into the migration of filmmakers, the distribution patterns of films, and the contested identity of national cinemas,” Steinhart's own transcultural approach suggests that Hollywood norms, rather than national identity, most influenced filmmakers’ work abroad (15). At the same time, Hollywood crews absorbed local production cultures, and foreign settings guided filmmaking choices. Runaway productions thus involved a constant give-and-take between opposing forces—between imposing Hollywood methods and adapting to local norms, but also between condescending to “‘native’ casts and crews” and appreciating the skills of local craftspeople, taking advantage...

Right Here in Hollywood: The Greatest Story Ever Told, the American West, and the American Film Worker

Shot on location in the United States, The Greatest Story Ever Told (1963) is an uneasy balance of spirituality, capitalism, nationalism, and the mythology of the American West. Location shooting in the United States was unique in the postwar period, but practices echoed those used in foreign runaway productions.

Creative industries policies and conditions of cinema labor in Colombia in the 21st century

In Colombia in 2012 the second “cinema law”, called Location Colombia [Filmación Colombia] Law 1556, was enacted with the aim of taking advantage of the nation’s natural landscapes as film locations and hoping to improve the capability of the local audiovisual industry. By 2018, 32 international film productions had received benefits from the Location Colombia law. Based on those results the Ministry of Culture has considered the law a success story. This article brings forth the results of the first series of qualitative semi-structured interviews (n = 10) with Colombian workers who had taken part in films supported by the Location Colombia law. They provided their insights on local labor conditions, knowledge transfer and production capability. The results present a picture of precarious services offered at a low price and with governmental incentives that invite runaway productions with minor improvements in the working conditions in the local audiovisual sector.

‘We Have Everything to Learn from the Americans’: Film Promotion, Product Placement and Consumer Culture in Italy, 1945-1965

The relationship between film promotion and the wider economy has scarcely been studied in Italy. This article explores the influence of American exploitation techniques in the peninsula in the years following World War Two and the responses of the Italian film industry. It is shown that, though many advocated imitating American practices in the fields of advertising and promotion, over time the industry learned not only to appropriate successful techniques but to adapt them in ways that were better suited to products that were often presented as being more ‘cultural’ than ‘commercial’. Attention is paid to the way film directors were drawn into campaigns to underline the cultural value of their works. By the same token, Italian stars were not cast as cheerleaders for the developing consumer economy in the way that American stars had been. Yet linkages between film making and advertising were nevertheless forged through practices of product placement that exploited the loophole of ‘verisimilitude’. Hollywood runaway productions like Roman Holiday set the tone for the insertion of Vespa scooters, automobiles and other goods in feature films. The article evaluates the interplay of the cultural and the commercial in Italy’s postwar economic revival and the role of cinema in its development as a mass consumer society.

Ljós í myrkri: Saga kvikmyndunar á Íslandi

This essay offers a succinct but comprehensive overview of Icelandic cinema from its early 20th-century emergence to the present day. Split into two parts, the first half focusses on filmmaking in Iceland prior to the founding of the Icelandic Film Fund in 1978, which was to establish a continuous local film production for the first time. Prior to that filmmaking in Iceland boiled down to the occasional efforts of local amateurs, albeit often quite skilled ones, and professional filmmakers visiting from abroad. Indeed, the few silent feature films made in the country all stemmed from foreign filmmakers adapting Icelandic literature and taking advantage of its photogenic landscapes. The first Icelandic feature was not made until 1948 and although immensely popular, like those that followed in its wake, the national audience was simply too small to sustain filmmaking without financial support. Although this changed fundamentally with the Icelandic Film Fund, which instigated contemporary Icelandic cinema and the subject of the essay’s second half, the Fund’s support proved insufficient as the novelty of Icelandic cinema began to wear off at the local box office in the late 1980s. The rescue came from outside sources, in the form of nordic and European film funds, whose support was to transnationalize Icelandic cinema in terms of not only financing and production but also themes and subject material. These changes are most apparent in Icelandic cinema of the 1990s which also began to garner interest at the international film festival circuit. In the first decade of the twenty first century, however, American genre cinema began to replace the European art film as the typical model for Icelandic filmmakers. Hollywood itself also began to show extensive interest in Icelandic landscapes for its runaway productions, as did many other foreign film crews. In this way Icelandic cinema is increasingly characterized by not only national and transnational elements but also international ones.

Transnational Production, International Policy, and South African Cinema

It has by now become customary within national cinema studies to appreciate that all national cinemas are influenced to varying degrees by transnational movements of talent, capital and ideas. This article seeks to examine some of the ways that South African cinema and the South African film industry have been shaped by various forms of transnational production, including official coproductions, coproductions made outside the auspices of official treaties, or runaway productions. As film policy in South Africa and other countries has helped to foster such forms of transnational production, the article also seeks to provide an overview of the nation’s efforts to form international coproduction treaties. As these have proliferated since the 2000s, the article explores the output of the countries many pacts and asks what has been gained and possibly lost from these deals for South Africa’s filmmaking community. The article closes with a discussion of the ways in which the nation’s international policy instruments might evolve in order to better serve its filmmakers.

A Risky Business? The Role of Incentives and Runaway Production in Securing a Screen Industries Production Base in Scotland

A Risky Business? The Role of Incentives and Runaway Production in Securing a Screen Industries Production Base in Scotland

Encounters at the Margins of Hollywood: Casting and Location Shooting for <em>Bhowani Junction</em>

After World War II, changes in film production finance encouraged US studios to take advantage of foreign financial incentives and locations. Bhowani Junction (1956) typifies many of these runaway productions, but an explanation of its financial logic provides only a US-centric perspective, failing to account for Hollywood’s increasingly global position. Archival material provides the basis for interrogating Bhowani Junction ’s casting practices, textual ideology, and the impact of its location shooting in Pakistan. The confluence of production practices, policy, and aesthetics generates encounters that position Pakistani workers and actors at the margins of production, primarily as extras within the cast of thousands.

FROM TEXT TO SCREEN: CELLULOID HELENS AND FEMALE STARDOM IN THE 1950s

This paper investigates the visual recreation of Helen in the medium of cinema by using as case studies two runaway productions of the 1950s:L'amante di Paridestarring Hedy Lamarr andHelen of Troywith Rosanna Podestà in the title role. Examination of features such as costumes, makeup and hairstyle shows that in the former film Helen's representation is informed by and seeks to capitalize on Lamarr's status as a queen of glamour, equating Greek royalty with Hollywood royalty. The analysis of the second film explores further the homology between ancient and modern celebrity on screen and in extra-cinematic discourses, and shows how Podestà's stardom was built on and remained anchored in Helen's iconicity.

Globalization through the Eyes of Runners: Student Interns as Ethnographers on Runaway Productions in Prague

This essay discusses the possibilities for collective ethnography in media industry studies, drawing on my own research into production cultures in the Czech capital of Prague and a European Union-funded project that I head alongside Petr Bilik.[2] This EU-funded project aims to facilitate the career development of film studies graduates based outside of Prague, and develop closer links between academia and the city's media industries. In academic terms, the project provides us with a chance to reconsider theories of the globalization of media production by observing the operations of global production networks locally and from below.

The Impact of Runaway Productions on Hollywood Labor Organizations

This study tries to show the impact of runaway productions on Hollywood labor unions. In the context of globalization, and also of US federalism used to lower labor standards, the unions’ response towards the producers has generally been weak despite some successes in recent years, notably of the screen writers in 2007. Among all the unionized in the motion picture industry, members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and members of the Screen Actors’ Guild are some of the most vulnerable.

The Hobbit Adventure in a Globalized World: A Brief History of Runaway Productions

The key question is why runaway productions have occurred for more than two decades. Well, companies need to make profits (you do not want to have upset shareholders on every annual general shareholders’ meeting). This industry, despite looking fancy, is not a wise choice of investment. The net coverage return for the past 60 years, almost without variation, has been 5%. Furthermore, the myth that most films are profitable should be brought into this conversation. Yes, most films lose money. Of the 700 movies made per year in the United States, only 200 will see the light of a decent release. The film industry needs tons of capital and financial muscle to make those occasional blockbusters such as Avatar, Titanic or Lord of the Rings, which would cross collateralize the losses of the other films. In the next sections of this paper we describe the reasons why runaway productions were an attempt to solve the rise in production and distribution costs. In section 2 we describe how foreign financial incentives were one of the keys to lure productions outside the United States. We also analyze how different States tried to emulate the foreign economic incentives and why they trust in the multiplier effect of such incentives. In section 3 we describe the role of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in the United States and one peculiar rule that tried to somehow solve the issue of having runaway productions: Global Rule One. We will try to answer whether it is an efficient solution and which legal challenges could be made to the rule. In section 4 we explain the role of Loan-out corporations and how Talent can be considered an independent contractor rather than an employee for tax purposes. Additionally, we review the tests that courts use to determine who is an employee and who is an independent contractor. In section 5 we review how all these concepts described above were the fundamental cause of the whole Hobbit paranoia in New Zealand. We will see the importance that one single movie could make for an entire country, and how New Zealand’s Prime Minister pushed for a lightning amendment to their Employment Relations Act and, on the other hand, demanded additional financial incentives to stay in New Zealand rather than moving the production to Eastern Europe. In section 6 we suggest what can be done (if anything) to lure productions back into the United States.

Hollywood's ‘New’ Orientalism: The case of Tokyo File 212 (1951)

Tokyo File 212 (1951) is an intriguing film. Staged in Japan during the heyday of the Korean War, it portrays an American undercover agent's efforts to thwart a communist uprising in the busy comme...

From Backlot to Runaway Production: Exploring Location and Authenticity in Film-Induced Tourism

Films may represent one place but be made at another. In the early years of filmmaking, quite elaborate sets were constructed on studio backlots. In recent years, runaway productions have represented the United States while being shot in other countries. The dissonance between film setting and film location raises the question of which is more likely to attract tourists. It also suggests that tourists may have difficulties with authenticity. This article seeks to examine these issues by taking a historical approach to the changing ways in which location has been used by filmmakers over time.