"Troubled Productions"

As a fan of the television series The Walking Dead, I find myself genuinely interested in the upcoming adaptation of Max Brooks' popular zombie novel World War Z, and upon reading about it was a little surprised to find out that the production has hit a number of roadblocks, some of them logistical in nature, but more than a few of them stemming creative issues. It's seen its script rewritten, its ending re-shot, and its budget skyrocket.

It got me thinking about the whole concept of the troubled production, which is hardly new in Hollywood, but which, in this day and age, feels a little silly. Script rewrites aren't new and neither are re-shoots for that matter. Heck, with the whole concept of test audiences, alternate endings have been around for a while too.

What's the difference, then, between then and now? Why should "troubled productions" be less common than they used to be?

Well, apart from the fact that most Hollywood scripts are practically written by committee these days, which by itself should provide plenty of opportunities to review and correct errant storytelling, there's also an oft-used technique nowadays called "pre-visualization" which, if I understand correctly, takes the whole concept of the storyboard into the 21st century. I first saw the "pre-viz" process on the DVD of the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which the filmmakers, using a computer, basically mapped out how a given scene would look without shooting a single frame of footage.  It was a way to test the contents of the printed page in a moving, sort-of-living environment, and they got to work out everything from blocking to optimal camera angles.  Almost every big-budget movie these days utilizes pre-visualization; take the time to watch the credits of any effects-heavy film and one will see a sizable portion of the credits often goes to the pre-visualization department. These guys are as integral to any blockbuster as any visual effects vendor, with the only different being that they create their computer-generated imagery before and not after a film is shot.

Between script reviews, "pre-viz," and dailies, I'm hard-pressed to imagine why any major film production, after the conclusion of filming, would have to undergo extensive re-shoots that jack up the budget. Sure, if I were the mayor of the city where a particular film is shot or re-shot, or any of the local crew I'd probably be happy to have the extra income. Like I said in my previous post, lots of people can benefit from film shootings in general.

But then, often re-shoots are attempts to pander to the films' intended audiences. It's some of the most expensive second-guessing around; as this re-jiggering of the story are often initiated after a handful of people have seen the movie and delivered a verdict on it. Motion pictures being such expensive affairs these days some filmmakers are more than ready to hedge their $100 million dollar bets, even if it means spending MORE money with no ironclad guarantee of success. And the thing about pandering is that it is rarely, if ever, a purely artistic decision, but is often brought on by the machinations of the suits behind a film's production, whose sole purpose is not to tell a story but to turn a profit, regardless of the actual quality of the story involved, and so it's not unheard of that story quality is one of the first casualties.

 Of course, it's never really wise to generalize, but the thing about original endings is that, for better or worse, they often represent the filmmakers' uncompromising vision of what they want to put on the screen. Revised, often sanitized endings or sometimes scenes inevitably dilute this vision, and sometimes the disconnect between what the filmmakers intended and what was forced upon them is painfully evident. For example, I found Ridley Scott's 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven to be an unholy mess of a story, but when I read about a much longer director's cut that explained a lot of things that didn't make an ounce of sense to me in the drastically pruned theatrical cut, I looked more kindly on the film, even though I have yet to see that longer, more sensible version. Scott had wanted to tell a story, but the suits at 20th Century Fox had wanted to sell a summer movie, and in the end they both lost.

So as World War Z nears its opening,  questions linger as to what kind of quality viewers can expect from a film that has been obsessively tinkered with, most probably in the name of ensuring a handsome return on investment. The mere fact that this is a zombie movie touting a PG-13 rating already screams "watered down" considering that most hard-core zombie-centric movies like the George Romero films, their remakes, and Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later were all rated "R" and considering further that The Walking Dead would have enough gore and profanity to flirt with the dreaded "NC-17" rating if it were a movie, but the monumental production delays could represent another level of creative butchery altogether. There's naught left to do but wait and see.