Each week I look at a different topic around the film industry, focusing on the data and statistics which reveal what’s going on.
Last week saw the publication of my report ‘Cut Out Of The Picture‘, which looked at gender inequality in the UK film industry. In the process of researching and writing the report, we spoke to over 200 film professionals about how someone becomes a film director. I thought aspiring film directors may benefit from a distillation of what […]
A couple of years ago I looked at the number of Assistant Directors on Hollywood films. I want to return to the topic as I now have more data, I can add the UK figures into the mix and because I have conducted interviews with over 30 working 1st ADs in the UK and US to get the […]
Last week, I looked at the average number of people who work on feature films in the UK (778, although it varies quite a bit depending on the film’s budget). This prompted three people to independently ask me the same question: “How many film crew members work on set compared to those working in post-production?” It’s a good question as […]
One of my most popular past articles looked at how many people work on a Hollywood film. I found that from 1994-2013, the average top US-grossing Hollywood film had 588 people in the crew. Despite being a few years old, the article still regularly prompts questions from readers, so I thought I would tackle two of the most frequently […]
Two weeks ago I looked at cinema ticket prices and last week I crunched the numbers on cinema popcorn. Today, we get to hear from the frontline staff who take your money, serve your popcorn, tear your tickets and clean up after you. I collected answers from 151 people who work in UK cinemas, from […]
In the past few weeks I’ve looked at the age of action heroes, Hollywood screenwriters and Hollywood directors, and now I am finishing the journey by looking at the age of Hollywood film producers. I looked at two sets of films – the 100 highest grossing films of each year for the past two decades […]
I spent much of last week in deepest, darkest Somerset away from cities, screens and mobile signal – bliss. While there I was grilled by a recent media graduate as to how he can improve his chances of employment in the film industry. I told him of my previous research into the two most important […]
Last week I looked at the fall in UK film production, especially in the sub-£500k budget range where production has fallen by 50% in the past four years. On the day it was published, I reached out to a number of industry bodies and individuals and asked them two questions… What do you think is the […]
Today’s article is looking at the recent decline in the number of films being made in the UK, specifically the dramatic fall in low-budget film productions. Every year the BFI publishes a Statistical Yearbook, which is a collection of facts and figures about the UK film industry. For the fourth consecutive year, they have recorded […]
Last week I was contacted by the Film Distributors Association, who were trying to work out how many people work on UK independent films. The BFI do an incredible job of tracking films and employment but don’t have the numbers on this specific question. The hard part of the research is splitting the employment numbers […]
