Why do ~2 hour movies take 2-3 years to make, while an 6+ hour TV season can be made in 1 year?
In: 1947
Most TV shows don’t have a largely 1-time cast to negotiate with. Even with small TV shows, the first season has a lot of searching going on in the background long before they announce anything. After that tho, they have most of the actors they’ll ever need for the show moving forward on speed dial
There’s also set pieces. Big movie studios tend to make multiple, extremely expensive custom set pieces for filming. Pirates of the Caribbean made so many custom areas, more than a few fake ships, rooms, everything. Most serialised series don’t have many complicated set pieces. Maybe they’ll have 1 set piece that they’ll use repeatedly over time, the rest of filming can take place in a few rented spaces which they’ll use to record multiple scenes for the season.
On top of that, there’s a difference in attitude when it comes to production
Big blockbusters could spend days filming a single scene, or postpone filming because the sky decided “rain time”; They plan to make everything perfect, so they’re going to take the time to do so. That’s perfectly fine as they have massive budgets, and a lot of money is on the line.
A TV show typically doesn’t care to filter through these types of things. They get shots that are “good enough”, and are more willing to accept natural imperfections in a shot if it means they can keep moving.
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