Eli5 Why do movies, sometimes with just one star actor and usually less than 3 hours long, take years to make, but shows, which often have many stars and have hours in a season, take a winter of summer break to film, and the next season is out?
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Basically, it’s about how much effort and detail they put into it. Most movies will film on multiple locations, with elaborate action scenes or camera movements which take time to prepare and rehearse. While most TV shows will use the same locations over and over again, and don’t put as much effort into having unique visuals and styles for camera movement. So they’re able to film TV shows much faster, because you don’t need as much preparation time.
The standards are generally higher for theatrical releases because you have to entice people to leave home, drive to the theater, and pay for the experience. That’s not necessarily the case with some high budget TV shows or low budget movies, but it is true for high budget movies and low budget TV shows.
It’s mostly about differential standards and economies of scale.
*differential standards*
If 20 minutes of a movie is a trainwreck, then the movie as a whole is pretty much a trainwreck, even if the rest of it is fine. If one episode of a season of a TV show is a trainwreck, that’s “the bad episode”. As a result, you tend to end up being less perfectionist during the production of a TV episode then you would for a movie. This is super important as you can think of quality as something that has diminishing returns. There’s no real upper bound to quality for a movie, but if you had to score it, think of it like this… every 10% of additional quality is going to add 50% more to the overall budget and time to make the movie. The easiest example is the number of takes shots and takes you might do for a critical scene.
*economies of scale*
Virtually everything you do for a movie is _bespoke_. It gets used once and then thrown away. This is even more common in today’s environment when production design for a top tier movie is expected to be unique and have it’s own identity. The sets you build for Avengers Endgame aren’t going to get re-used anywhere.
For a TV show, you’re re-using almost everything from one episode to the next. That applies to everything… everything gets cheaper when you’re going to be buying lots of it, including services from other companies. Think about it… a special effects house that’s doing work for a movie production is going to demand a higher rate of pay, because a) the production can probably afford it and b) they don’t know when the next paycheck like that is coming, so they have to charge more to stay afloat. On the other hand if you know that you’re going to be getting work from a TV show for a significant amount of time you can charge them less per delivered hour of work because it’s a more steady income stream.
I’ll challenge the premise, you’re really talking about super expensive movies. There are tons of movies with only one star that don’t take long to make. Even the most elaborate tv shows aren’t usually high end movie quality.
The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, etc, they are not at the same quality as a major film, but they could be more entertaining.
There are tons of movies that take no time to make, usually they will get in one famous actor to help sell it.
On top of what others have said I think you may also be conflating “development” with “filming”. Often times we will hear about a movie and that a famous actor has signed in for a key role. But when that happens, the actor is often already booked up in the immediate future. So they have to work around that schedule which could take multiple months or even over a year. Meanwhile, the writer and director will be working on the film in pre-production. Some other members of the cast may sign on but mostly this isn’t the daily work of an entire crew or film set. As they get to filming, then the crew is established and filming takes place. This usually only takes about 90 days unless they have a ton of location shoots. Then they have post-production which can vary depending on the film. And then once it’s finished, they need a distributor. Sometimes this can take a long while for a film to find one. And then once it’s found that distributor will pick a release that makes sense for the movie and the release schedule. All of these things take a timeline of a movie and stretch it out to years.
Now, in a TV show, they often have longer shoots since they have more content, and as a result those actors have less other things they can do. This means it’s easier to get them for season 2. Especially back in the day when network shows routinely had 20+ episodes per season. But additionally, the studio is paying for the show and will release it once it’s finished. So they can shoot right away and then don’t have to worry about finding somebody to buy it. And there’s also not any release window issues to deal with. Instead they just drop a TV show when it’s finished.
Multi camera set ups are one of the biggest time saver.
Think about a fairly simple [reverse angle shot](https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-reverse-angle-shot-definition/#:~:text=A%20reverse%20angle%20shot%20is,perspectives%20of%20the%20same%20scene.) in a film.
You have to set up one shot, make sure the lighting is correct, everything in the background is set, and get one actor’s lines and reactions. This can take hours to set up and shoot.
Then you have to repeat the process for the reverse shot.
A fairly simple conversation can take days to film.
With a multi camera setup a similar shot can be completed within minutes.
You are comparing the whole process of a movie vs only the filming of a season of tv. In reality, the filming of an average movie will only take between 1 and 3 months, which is actually faster than season of some large scale tv show. It really depend on the scale of both movies and tv show. Do they film in different location or only in a studio. For example, the pilot of GoT took 26 days of filming, and the first season took between July and December 2010 so 5 months.
But like I said, this is only about filming. GoT was pitched in 2006, the work on the script started in 2008, location were scouted and casting was started in 2009 and by October of that same year the pilot was filmed. Then the filming of season 1 in 2010 before it was aired in 2011.
So if you look at the whole process of season 1, it took 5 years between the pitch and the season airing for the first time.
Now the difference between a movie and a tv show is that for each movie they need to do all the preparation, pitching, writing, location scouting, casting, set construction, financing, etc. TV Show need to do that as well, but they can take shortcut in later season. They might have some casting decision to make for extra and additional characters, but the bulk of the work was already done for season 1. Several sets are already constructed, only new location need to be scouted, etc.
In addition, for tv show you have an overlapping of discipline. The writer work on the script of season 2 when the filming of season 1 start, the filming of season 2 start when the editors are working on season 1, etc.
It’s pretty regular in tv show to have several director for each episode so they can make the pre and post filming work while the other director are filming. That way the filming crew can work non-stop and don’t have to wait for preparation or editing in-between each episodes.
Principle shooting (getting all of scenes shot, the part when you are paying most of the cast and crew for) goes about as fast on a movie as it does with a TV show. There’s a lot of reasons to make sure this is done efficiently, as it’s very expensive. (Just getting everyone fed and all the equipment you need rented is quite a lot of money). Principle shooting might take 1-4 months for a TV season or feature film. Even though a TV show might be 12 hours long an efficient shooting plan can get all the shots in a reasonable amount of time.
But principle shooting isn’t all of what a TV show or movie is. First there’s the Development phase. In this part the money is found, the script selected and bought and people like the director are hired and a bunch of legal agreements are reached. This can take years, but very importantly for this conversation most of the work in this phase only needs to be done once for a TV show, with some more development done with each new season.
After development, there’s pre-production. This involves planning everything that will be done in principle shooting and planning how the movie will be made, who they will need to make it and ordering all the things they will need. Sets have to be built, costumes made, storyboards drawn, actors hired, crews hired, permits secured and locations scouted.
Again, a lot of this can be reused for a TV show from one to the next, saving time for TV shows.
After that, you get to shoot! After principle shooting, it’s off to post production, where the film is edited, then the real work starts for a lot of shows as special effects are performed, it’s properly colored and the sound and music are added. This can take a lot of time, like ‘more time then every other part put together’.
Keep in mind most tv series have the same people working on it at the same locations. Not to pick on the big bang theory but it is a great example. Most of the show was the same handful of people existing in one room. Minus a few key moments (Howard returning to earth) really nothing had to be done episode to episode. Maybe this time they go to the comic book store but that really is as adventurous as it gets. No need to rent a place/set something up just go to the local mall for an hour or 2. Maybe add a few set pieces for the episode but that is it.
Most movies have many different locations, different people. Even behind the scenes there is more ‘is this angle better? Well what about this one?’ instead of the static camera that most of the show is filmed from. Add in action scenes that generally isn’t present in the average tv show – now you have to have a stunt double. We can’t risk action movie star to be injured because there is a scene where he does a ‘karate kick’ (or something else equally as generic). What he he somehow breaks his ankle? Then we have to wait for it to get fixed. In a a TV series even if there is a comparable action scene if someone gets hurt…so what? The actress in How I met your mother who played lilly got pregnant, it was just written into the show. She wasn’t available for a season? Written into the show. In a movie something like an offscreen injury requires some in movie explanation. (Mark Hamill in star wars) But it can’t be a ‘oh yeah we were trying to have a kid, it finally happened’ throwaway line. It requires far more work.
Even just focusing on the actors you have to remember that a small part in a movie may require them and they are only available for a short time frame so you have to fly Dwayne Johnson out to Peru as well as his sleeve buttoning person (because he cannot do it himself) before the movie where he is the star needs him and that person to fly to a different jungle in Brazil to wrangle his sleeve. A tv show generally expects that your full time job is pretending to be a doctor at…the young and the restless’s hospital or whatever.
Movies are usually shot in sequence, with each scene being filmed after the preceding scene. For example, if the story calls for a scene at home, then a scene on the cruise ship, and then another scene back at home, they will often be filmed in that order.
Television shows, on the other hand, are often shot out of sequence. In the above scenario, they will film both at home scenes, then shoot the cruise ship scene.
Another time saver is parallel filming. With a movie, the action typically centers around a person, or a small group of people who are often together. Because of this, they are forced to film one scene at a time.
Television shows, because they have larger principle cast, can break the cast into small groups and each of those small groups can film their scenes at the same time. The operating room scene featuring the doctor, the nurse, the child needing the operation, and the nervous mother can be filmed at the same time as the scene where the older brother is behind the bleachers with the sexy cheerleader and gets caught by the coach – for example.
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