Changes in Film Production Departments by the Numbers
The business of making movies has seen many changes over the past century, including the rise of the studio system in the U.S., the introduction of sync sound, and the emergence of rival visual media like television. Using a large set of film credits, I sought to measure how different roles in production have changed since the 1920s.
In a previous article I used a relatively short list of top films to get some basic data on how what departments have been credited in films since 1975. I was interested in finding how common digital forms of production work like visual effects and post-production had become and if other more traditional roles had fallen by the wayside. This article is the product of further research I have done that includes a much bigger dataset (about 45,000 movies on IMDB) with a broader historical scope. Seeing historical changes in production like the introduction of sound offers us some perspective on more recent changes relating to digital technology.
A Note on the Data
This graph shows the extreme imbalance in the number of entries in IMDB. Because this dataset is so lopsided, I have decided to treat the eras before and after 1990s separately. While all live-action English language movies from before 1990 are included, only movies with budgets above 10 million are included after 1990. This means that we cannot directly compare these two periods, but the information in each block is stronger on its own because of this choice. I discuss this choice in more detail at the end of the article.
In each year I count how many times a given department shows up and then divide it by the number of movies counted. Thus a result of 1.0 means all movies had that department, and a result of 0.25 means only one in four had that department.
Every graph has a link beneath it that will take you to a fully interactive version where you can isolate each department.
Some Departments Have Been Consistently Ubiquitous
There are several departments that have been standard since the 1920s. Cinematographers, directors, producers, and writers all appear consistently across the date range.
Over Time Several New Departments Have Become Standard
Staring in the 1920s you can see several departments becoming more and more common, to the point that they are in most film credits by the 1940s. This is likely the product of the formation of the studio system and the classic Hollywood aesthetic form. Titles like Assistant Director and Script Department suggest a more organized, systematic approach to filmmaking, and departments like Make-up, Costume, and Camera suggest more emphasis is being put on the “production values” of studio films. Another phenomenon at work here is the introduction of synchronized sound in the late 1920s, leading to departments like Music, Sound, and Composers. Perhaps the most surprising department to find in this group is Editors, which are very common some years but don’t seem to become a universal credit until the mid-1960s.
Some Departments Associated with Studio Production Temporarily Declined in the 1970s
Certain departments grew in popularity during the studio era but then stared to see moderate decline through the late 1960s and 70s. This is worth noting because it supports what we already know about film-making trends during this time period. The Paramount Decree of 1948 was the start of a gradual decline in the power of Hollywood studios, and the late 1960s saw low budget sleeper hits like Bonny and Clyde and Easy Rider popularize stripped-down modes of film-making. Given these economic and aesthetic shifts, it is not surprising to see jobs like Art Director, Costume Designer, and Set Decorator declining. The drop in Composer and Music Department is somewhat surprising, though it is possibly related to these shifts as well, since films like Easy Rider popularized the idea of soundtracks with non-original popular music.
Many Departments that Had Been Around for Decades Became Standard in the 1980s
One might expect that Editorial Department, Production Managers and Stunts would have been standard since the studio era. This graph shows that while they did appear in about half of all productions, they did not become standard (appearing in 80% of productions) until the end of the 1980s. Equally surprising, things like Production Design, Location Management, Transportation Department, Casting Director, and Casting Department were relatively uncommon even in the 1970s before they rose rapidly to become standard by 1989.
Productions Have Generally Increased in Complexity Over Time
This graph combines all departments, where a score of 32 in a given year would indicate every film having credits for every department. The complexity of English language film-making seems to have consistently risen over its history.
Digital Forms of Production Have Risen Comparably to Past Changes
The data from after 1990 see most departments credited in most movies. This is consistent with trends present in the preceding graphs, but it is also likely exacerbated by the fact that the post-1990 data is limited to films with budgets over 10 million. The only departments that are not standard in the 1990s are Visual Effects, Special Effects Companies, and Animation Department. These are also the three departments that have seen the most change since 1990. By 2003 Visual Effects and Special Effects Companies were becoming as standard as any other department. Animation Departments went from being in about 5 percent of live-action movies in 1980 to being in over half by 2017. This is particularly striking because this is from a very large list of English language movies, not just the top blockbusters. These changes were no more significant or rapid than the rise of Sound Departments in the late 1920s and 30s, or of Casting and Transportation Departments in the late 1970s and 80s though.
This increase in Visual Effects and Animation also does not seem to have replaced any other forms of labour, as no other departments saw significant decrease during this period of time.
Conclusion
While we might imagine that the norms for film production were relatively standardized between the beginning of the studio era and the introduction of digital technology, this study shows that was clearly not the case. Many roles we might assume to be common were not. Film production seems to generally grow in complexity over time, although shifting economic and stylistic trends in the 1960s and 70s saw a temporary decrease in some departments.
Consistent with my findings in my previous research, while certain departments like Visual Effects and Animation are indeed on the rise, they do not seem to be replacing other departments. Indeed, the case is even stronger here, as we see no departments in decline at all after 1990. This does not tell us anything about the stability of work or of the changing role of unions, and we cannot count invisible and uncredited labour contributions though. Job titles may also be changing much more within departments themselves. This article looks specifically at job titles within these departments in the film industry.
Data Sources and Methods
This project used a list of 45,000 movies from movielens.org. I pared down this list in several ways to ensure I could get a like-with-like comparison. First, I removed all animated films, using genre tags from Movielens. Removing animation was a difficult decision, because I believe we should be considering the increase in animated features as part of global production trends. However, removing them allowed me to see how live-action film production has been integrating more animation work. I also pared the list down to English language only, to ensure there were no translation issues with titles.
I used Davide Alberani’s IMDBPy library for Python to retrieve the data. I encountered an issue using IMDB’s API where they, understandably, cut me off after requesting the data for about 2000 films. Thus, to keep the list a manageable size and to balance the number of earlier and later films, I cut movies with budgets under 10 million after 1990. This means we may be missing some of the lowest-budget trends in the past few decades. I had considered removing random movies, but many of the low and no budget movies from the past few decades have flawed data and are not what I would consider industrially significant. Many didn’t even return results on Google searches. The number of movies counted each year after 1990 was still much greater than before, even after adding this filter.
This article is part of a series on the special effects, visual effects, and animation industries. It is based on research supported by:
- Le Fonds de Recherche Québécois sur la Société et la Culture Postdoctoral Fellowship
- The University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Film & Media
- Photo by Avel Chuklanov
