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
It depends on what you mean by “make”. It takes a lot of time to get any project off the ground whether TV or movie. This would be funding, casting and the rest of preproduction.
Then you need to actually shoot the project, this part can take as little as a few weeks for a movie but can take months at times, TV shows are generally more efficient as much of the process gets repeated week after week rather than starting from scratch.
After that you have to edit and do post production work which is generally more extensive in a movie to make sure it’s polished.
Finally there is marketing, with a show there can be somewhat of a built in audience as shows will appear in timeslots or in feeds on streaming services for people to enjoy. Movies need a more extensive marketing process as they have a narrow window to make their money and can’t rely on people finding it on their own.
Most of the time is spend in pre-production.
You spend year or so in pre-production
Maybe 1-3 months actually shooting the movie
And another 6 months to a year in post production.
As for why TV seasons are made in a year. The first season is not.
For the first season you need a lot of pre-production like finding locations, casting all the characters, hiring all the crew members,…
But for season 2 you don’t need to do that. Most of that was already figured out for the first one.
Another thing, did you notice how Tv shows usually have different director for each episode? That’s because they start editing immediately once the episode is shot. With movies you need to shoot the whole thing before you start editing.
Yearly released show usually limit amount of special effects shots to safe time and money.
Your blockbuster movie will have about 2000 – 4000 VFX shots.
Early seasons of Game of Thrones had about 600 – 800 total.
It takes time and money to get this done right.
Keep in mind a lot of the very high end TV shows typically take about 2 years to release now and are usually about 10 or fewer episodes and a lot of it is very simple, albeit, pretty shots.
Something else that isn’t mentioned is what happens in the edit room. On a TV series, you have multiple editors working on multiple episodes, and VFX start basically as soon as there’s a rough cut. Editing is happening throughout shooting, but you are cutting and finishing in smaller percentages than a movie. So, even on larger budget TV productions, episode 1 could be in final mix, color, VFX before episode 10 has completed shooting.
Also, in movies, the director is king, and gets to spend a luxurious amount of time in the edit room. In TV, the producer is king, so the editor gets their 4 or 5 mandated edit days and then often peace out to direct another episode or work on a different show and the producers take over while directors are on set. Things run concurrently in TV far more than in movies. If you stretched out the timeline end to end, bigger TV shows would take at least to make as a movie.
In addition to the other great points, tv generally has multiple teams and multiple directors allowing them to shoot some things in parallel.
I work in the film industry. I’ve been doing Special Effects for film and television for 32 years, and currently work for the MCU making, primarily features but also do the streamers every once in awhile.
First off, generally the production value of a feature is more detailed than an episodic television show. That detail takes time to create. Additionally, second year TV already has established sets and story lines that don’t need to be established so that is time saved.
None of this is written in stone…there are many examples of features going from development to release in a very short time, and , likewise, tv shows that take more time to make. To add to all of this, if any production requires VFX, that takes even more time to complete.
There is no rule. Some shows just take longer than others.
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.
Let’s, as many have, use GoT for an example since I assume you mean the current era of shows which are much more like movies than the more classic sitcom/procedural type of show.
The answer is: they aren’t made in a year.
You could say GoT started being made in 2005 in D&D went to G.R.R.M to discuss adapting A Song of Ice and Fire….but let’s say it starts in 2008 when HBO exercised their option to buy it.
09/09/08 – HBO buys the rights
10/24/09 – Filming on the Pilot Begins.
11/18/09 – Filming on the Pilot Wraps.
07/23/10 – Filming for Season 1 Begins.
12/16/10 – Filming for Season 1 Wraps.
04/17/11 – The Pilot episode airs.
07/25/11 – Filming for Season 2 Begins…
And so on… that’s 2.5 years from being ordered until the first season begins to air, but 6 years after the process really began.
With 2.5 years for the first season plus 1 year per season afterwards (2 for season 7) we get a total of ~10.5 years for about 70 hours of runtime.
TLDR: TV has more static scenes
Someone answered this here using a comparison to Arrow and the super hero movies.
In the Arrow, Stephen Amell Knows how to play Oliver Queen, He doesn’t need to be taught in seasons 2+ how to act the role out, same for all of the main stars. But Every character in a movie needs to be trained how to be that character in that movie because they dont be that character for as long as Stephen Amell is the arrow, nor as long as
David Ramsey has been John Diggle.
Completely depends on the movie/show and the financing situation. Dallas buyers club took almost 20 years in preproduction due to funding issues yet was shot in less than a month.
I’d imagine it also has to do with pacing and reusing sets. For example the first lord of the rings film probably covered the same plot progression as the entire first season of rings of power simply because it was much slower paced.
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