Explainer 02
A film is years of paperwork with a few weeks of filming somewhere in the middle.
Seven stages, in this order: development, financing, pre-production, production, post-production, delivery, distribution. The part you picture — a camera, a set, somebody saying action — is the shortest and most expensive of the seven, and by the time it starts almost every decision that matters has been made.
This is the shape of the whole thing, with real timings and the people in charge at each point. None of it is secret. It is never explained, and not knowing it is one of the reasons capable people talk themselves out of this industry before they start.
The mapThe seven stages, and how long each takes
| Stage | What happens | Who runs it | Realistic duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Development | An idea becomes a script somebody would risk money on. Rewrites, attachments, a budget and a pitch document. | The producer, with the writer | One to six years. Most projects stop here permanently. |
| Financing | The money is assembled from several sources at once, none of which will move first. Ends in a green light or in silence. | The producer and the financiers | Six months to several years, overlapping development |
| Pre-production | Prep. Crewing, locations, design, build, schedule, budget lock, recces, tests, insurance and a thousand decisions. | The line producer and the 1st AD | Six to twelve weeks on a modest film; longer with a build |
| Production | The shoot. The only stage where the whole crew is on the payroll at once, which is why it is guarded so fiercely. | The 1st AD, on the floor | Four to twelve weeks for a feature; longer for a series |
| Post-production | Edit, sound, music, visual effects, colour. The film is made a second time here. | The post-production supervisor and the editor | Four months to a year |
| Delivery | A long technical list of masters, subtitles, audio tracks and compliance documents, checked frame by frame. | The post-production supervisor | Four to twelve weeks, and always late |
| Distribution | Festivals, sales, a release plan, marketing, and the long tail afterwards. | The distributor and the sales agent | Months to decades |
Stage 01Development, where almost every film dies
A producer options a book, commissions a script, or takes one that arrives. An option is a small payment for the exclusive right to try to set something up for a fixed period, usually eighteen months, renewable. Most options lapse. That is not failure; it is the ordinary metabolism of the industry.
The script goes round
Draft after draft, with notes from the producer, then a financier, then a broadcaster or a streamer, then a director who has just come on. Ten to twenty drafts is unremarkable.
Attachments make it real
A director, a lead actor, sometimes a DoP. Nothing is financed on a script alone. It is financed on a script plus the names willing to be publicly associated with it.
Somebody builds a budget
A line producer or production manager schedules the script, works out how many days it needs and prices it. This is the moment a film discovers what it is.
And a deck exists
Twenty pages of tone, comparison titles, audience, cast wish-list and finance plan. Most jobs in development are, in practice, the making and remaking of this document.
Stage 02Financing, which is a stack rather than a cheque
A British independent film is typically financed from five or six sources at once, each of which wants to see the others committed before it commits. Assembling that stack is the producer’s real craft, and it is why films take years.
Public funding and broadcaster money
National and regional funds, and a commission or pre-buy from a broadcaster or streamer. On high-end television that commission is often the whole budget; on film it is one slice for one territory.
The tax credit
An expenditure credit returning a defined share of qualifying UK spend, reliable enough to be borrowed against months before it arrives.
Pre-sales and equity
A distributor abroad buys the right to release the film before it exists; private investors take real risk for a share of any profit, recouped last and often not at all.
Gap and bridging finance
Loans against money that is contracted but has not landed. Interest on this is why a schedule slipping by a week is a financial event.
Stage 03Prep, where the film is made
The moment the green light lands, a production office opens and starts hiring. Heads of department come on first, then their crews, in a staggered order following what each department has to build. Camera comes on late; art and construction come on early, because they have things to make.
The schedule is built
The script is broken down into scenes, then reordered by location, cast availability and daylight. You will not shoot the story in order and you will rarely shoot a whole scene in one day.
The budget is locked
Every department gets a figure. From here, wanting something means finding it somewhere else in the same budget, which is why the answer to a good idea is often no.
Locations are found and recced
A recce is a visit to a possible location. The tech recce is the later one, where heads of department walk the space and work out what it costs them in power, noise, access and time.
Design and build happen
Sets designed, drawn, built and dressed. Costume designed, sourced, fitted and aged. The longest lead time on most productions.
Camera and lighting prep
The package is assembled at a rental house and checked item by item, lenses are tested, and the DoP shoots tests for the grade. Prep is where a trainee learns more than anywhere else.
The paperwork that makes it legal
Risk assessments, insurance, permits, road closures, child licences, chaperones, medical cover, and a movement order telling everybody how to get there.
Stages 05–07Post, delivery and distribution
| What it is | What happens in it |
|---|---|
| Picture edit | An assembly, then a director’s cut, then a producer’s cut, then notes from financiers and broadcasters. Scenes and sometimes whole characters disappear here. |
| Sound | Dialogue editing, additional dialogue recording, Foley, atmospheres and effects, then a mix. Roughly half of what an audience experiences as picture is sound doing the work. |
| Visual effects | Not only spectacle. Most VFX on British drama is invisible: removing a modern aerial, extending a set, fixing a continuity error, cleaning a sky. |
| Colour grade | The DoP and a colourist set the final look shot by shot. The first time the film looks like itself is often here. |
| Delivery | Masters at several specifications, a textless version, a music and effects mix for foreign dubbing, subtitles, audio description, captions, QC reports, chain-of-title paperwork and compliance forms. Well over a hundred items, checked by somebody paid to reject them. |
| Distribution | Festivals, a sales agent selling territory by territory, a distributor planning a release, and a marketing spend that on a studio film can exceed the cost of making it. |
Post-production is where the film is made a second time and frequently made differently. Delivery is the technical audit that follows. Distribution decides whether the previous six stages mattered.
Instructor showing two trainees the camera in a shop set
Six surprises
The parts that only make sense once somebody says them out loud.
- The shoot is the shortest stage. Development and post each routinely take longer than filming by a factor of five or more.
- Nothing is shot in story order. A lead actor may play the end of a relationship in week one and the start of it in week five.
- Almost everyone on a film is freelance, hired for that production only, and looking for the next job before this one wraps.
- The green light is not a moment of confidence. It is a moment of contract, and productions collapse days before it.
- The credits are long because the list is accurate. Roughly two hundred distinct jobs exist, and most people can name five.
Where you fit
Every stage on this page is somebody’s whole career.
Development is a producing career. Prep and the shoot are where the crafts live. Post is a set of highly technical careers almost nobody is told about at school, and delivery and distribution are careers too — among the least contested in the industry.
