Search results

The purpose of this research has been to compile an up to date survey of the management methods of the film and television industries used by local and regional government agencies in international production centres. It was intended that the results of the survey would clarify differences in mode of operation and governance and the factors that may contribute to their “attractiveness” from the point of view of the film production market.

The methodology used a combination of written questions and telephone interviews to elicit responses from selected agencies in English‐speaking countries. A typology of different management approaches has been prepared on the basis of the survey data.

The main findings are that the primary government role is connected with film production management, yet very limited evidence has been found for proactive spatial/economic planning support for the industry by local or regional government.

The limitations of the research relate to the smallness of the sample and the difficulty, in some cases, of eliciting meaningful responses. The implications of the findings are considered to be of considerable relevance to desirable modes of governance, the need for planning reform, and ways in which production management processes can be better streamlined. The potential role for local or regional government in adopting practices more in tune with market requirements has considerable implications for the creative and cultural economy, and the findings are of relevance to government decision makers and senior policy staff.

The social implications are indirect and theoretical as they relate to improvements in the cultural landscape of spatial industry clusters. They have not been examined in this paper.

This research program is considered to have originality in that it bridges distinct areas of inquiry usually dealt with by separate professions or skill‐sets (film production, governance and management). Its originality is supported by the limited data discovered in the literature on this combination of topics.

Audiovisual works – especially cinematographic works – are at the heart of the changes resulting from the development of the information society. Media convergence radically changed the way traditional audiovisual content is produced, distributed, consumed and eventually archived. Film producers slowly started to experiment with new ways of digital production such as the shortening of release windows to favor new on demand services. How does this translate to European film policy? Due to the unique double nature of cinematographic works which are both economic and cultural goods at the same time, the European film policy is at the crossing point of media, culture, competition and heritage. This paper seeks to address these issues.

In this research paper the authors assessed to what extent the adoption of digital technologies is stimulated throughout the value chain of film making and more precisely to what degree the distribution of a European culturally diverse catalogue of films is encouraged.

For the first time in history, European producers have the tools at their disposal to collaborate, promote and distribute internationally, at lower transaction costs and at a higher speed, and to look beyond their national market. The fast‐evolving technological developments provided the European legislator with the opportunity to strengthen and support the promotion of the European cultural identity in all its diversity. But is this also reflected in the current legislative framework? It is clear that different hurdles still need to be tackled.

In this research paper an overview is given of the regulatory steps that have been taken so far in the field of European film policy to stimulate the digital production and distribution of European film productions. In the context of new unfolding alliances between stakeholders and experiments with premium video‐on‐demand or shorter cinema release windows, the relevance of digital production and distribution schemes can no longer be neglected. The emergence of web‐based services including cloud computing is likely to accelerate this trend.

Since the launch of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003, Hong Kong cinema is believed to have confronted drastic changes. Hong Kong cinema is described to be dying, lacking creative space and losing local distinctiveness. A decade later, the rise of Hong Kong – China coproduction cinema under CEPA has been normalized and changed the once pessimism in the industry. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Hong Kong cinema adjusted its production and creation in the first 10 years of CEPA.

Beginning with a review of the overall development, three paradigmatic cases are examined for reflecting upon what the major industrial and commercial concerns on the Hong Kong – China coproduction model are, and how such a coproduction model is not developed as smooth as what the Hong Kong filmmakers expected.

Collectively, this paper singles out the difficulties in operation and the limit of transnationality that occur in the Chinese context for the development of Hong Kong cinema under the Hong Kong – China coproduction model.

This is the author’s research in his five-year study of Hong Kong cinema and it contributes a lot to the field of cinema studies with relevant industrial and policy concern.

The purpose of this paper is to understand and identify the marketing strategies and specific promotional tools used by film commissions to attract the production of films and television.

The paper involves in‐depth interviews with film commissions worldwide and a content analysis of their promotional materials.

Film commissions employ three key strategic marketing approaches when promoting their locations to film producers – product differentiation, service differentiation, and cost advantages. They use six main specific promotional tactics – advertising, sales promotions, joint promotions, public relations, online marketing, and direct marketing and personal selling. A model explaining the relationship between film commissions and film producers involving these strategies and promotional tools is suggested.

The marketing of film locations is under‐researched and has to be further addressed in the marketing literature. Future research can seek to identify the specific marketing activities that will lead to success for the marketing of film locations.

Examples of the best marketing practices amongst film commissions are highlighted.

This is an original contribution in that it is the first academic paper to address the marketing of film locations. It will be of significant value to film locations seeking to attract production to their locations.

Currently the “creative industries”, especially the British film industry, are receiving much popular attention. The aim of this paper is to present a description and evaluation of employment in the film industry, and through doing so to challenge dominant populist and academic analyses of employment in this sector, as exemplified by the Labour government and a number of British and American academic commentators. These analyses are both premised on the apparent occurrence of an epoch breaking change in society, the balance of economic activity in society and the organisation of work. However, trends in employment practice over recent years, it would appear from the survey evidence and from other sources presented here, have not improved in the manner they could be expected to if such fundamental epochal change had occurred. Rather the data presented here point to much continuity in the employment relationship between capital and labour.

The purpose of this paper is to show how an increasing number of film and tourism industry stakeholders are working together with the dual goals of attracting film production and then capitalizing on the subsequent exposure.

Recently published reports and articles related to the film industry and film tourism in particular are thoroughly reviewed.

Although most tourism organizations and film commissions have been slow to tap the potential benefits of film tourism, the examples highlighted show how partnerships between the two industries can be mutually beneficial.

If leveraged well, film tourism can have large economic gains for countries and regions. Destination marketing organizations should be working with film commissions and engaging in marketing activities at four distinct stages of a film's lifecycle; before production of a film, during production, during release of the film, and after release.

This is the first full film tourism paper to reflect on existing collaboration between the film and tourism industries.

We investigate the competitive consequence of vertical integration on organizational performance using a comprehensive dataset of U.S. motion picture production companies, which includes information on their vertical scope and competitive overlaps. Vertical integration appears to change the dynamics of competition in two ways: (i) it buffers the vertically integrated firms from environmental dependence and (ii) it intensifies competition among non-integrated organizations. In contrast to the existing literature, our results suggest that vertical integration has implications well beyond both the level of the individual transaction and even the internal efficiency of the integrated firm.

In current research on market categories, hybridity (i.e., the association of organizations and/or the products they offer with multiple category memberships) represents an important issue with many practical implications, especially for project-based forms of organizations. This chapter explores the evolution of hybridity and the conditions under which different kinds of project-based organizations develop hybrid projects. By studying the feature film industry in the United States from 1920 until 1970, this chapter contrasts the current perspective based on status-organizing processes and suggests that hybridity is a population-level process that can be interpreted as the result of the construction and interplay of different identities, and on the dynamic of the identity dimensions employed by different actors in such effort. The chapter shows that the development and construction of the identity of a temporary organization is different from other types of organizations, and is linked to identification processes both at the organizational level, with the company or with specific individuals in key roles, and at the institutional/collective level, with pure (single-category) and hybrid (multi-category) genres. This chapter highlights the mutual interactions and constraints between these two levels in different life stages of the film industry.

This conceptual paper aims to explore under what conditions multinational companies (MNCs) are more likely to internationalize through externalization modes.

This paper complements previous studies by proposing three industry-specific factors that affect MNCs’ decision for externalization. It then applies this framework to the case of Korean MNCs’ strategic choice when entering the Chinese film market which is highly regulated by the government, to illustrate how such a framework works in practice.

This paper suggests that MNCs are more likely to choose externalization entry modes under the three industry conditions: when the business grows fast, when there are best practices of industry standard and when the business requires multi-competence. It also shows that the three conditions explain well the growing Korea–China co-productions in the Chinese film market.

This paper provides useful implications for the government’s regulatory effectiveness. The protectionist policies of the host government are valid only in an industry where the three conditions are met, as they increase the possibility of domestic firms’ participation by encouraging foreign MNCs to shift their entry mode from sole venture toward alliances with domestic firms.

This paper enriches the entry-mode research by indicating that MNCs’ externalization decisions need to consider these industry-specific factors. In addition, it also contributes to the understanding on why some countries maintain their high attractiveness for foreign MNCs, whereas other countries do not, given the similar level of restrictive government regulations.

This study examines the variety of cooperative strategies used to organize the international co-production of motion pictures. Motion picture production is a high-goal singularity, project-based industry in which the structure of relationships between companies involved in cooperative strategies is highly visible. Working from existing theories of co-production and drawing on the strategic joint ventures literature, I examine archival data, first for evidence of the strategies predicted by theory, and then for project participation strategies that theory does not account for. I identify four strategies on the basis of the ways that firms participate in international co-productions. A large number of relatively short-lived firms enact strategies of supplying resources and skills to the persistent firms dominate the industry. Two types of persistent firms cooperate with both direct competitors and complementors but pursue different markets, whereas a third type avoids cooperation with peers. The observed strategies constitute a hierarchy of strategic roles, and thus demonstrate the complexity of strategic behavior involved in project-based production.