Over the long weekend I watched the extended movie versions of the second and third Lord of the Ringsmovies. I also watched the “Making of” DVDs for the first movie which was actually twice as long as the first movie itself. Plenty of other folks have talked about the value of making of videos for the performing arts so that isn’t my purpose today–At least not directly. I am sure I will circuitously make the case for doing so somewhere along the way.

The thing that was most on my mind as I watched the “Making of” DVDs (other than the fact I want to move to New Zealand) was how speculative making a movie is. As I watched the producers, directors and designers discuss all the concept art, storyboarding, computer rendering, writing, modeling making, location excavation and manufacturing that went on for years before shooting even began all I could think about was the money that was being spent without any income being generated.

Not long afterward, I decided the movie could now probably single-handedly fund the arts in New Zealand by donating half the sketches and cast off paraphenalia to charity auctions and finance a new movie by selling the other half on E-Bay.

Coming from a world where making slightly more than you spend constitutes a successful season, it is difficult to empathize with an industry that measures their success as making three times as much as they spent. When you think that some of the money is going to finance movies like The Lord of the Rings years before the movie has a chance to make money, it is easiers to sympathize. (When drug companies make the same argument about developing medications to support why I am paying so much for a pill, I am pretty much unmoved though.)

Which is not to say that the chances movie studios take are bigger than performing arts institutions. In some regard it is a matter of scale. A $100,000 loss to a small theatre can be as devastating as a $100,000,000 loss to a movie studio. In a small organization the stakes can seem even larger because you have a more intimate relationship with the people you have to fire if you screw up.

If anything, for all their money and personnel analyzing costs, movie studios are just as apt at making stupendously poor decisions as an arts organization run by someone who has had no experience in the field. Miramax was going to produce the LoTR project originally and wanted it all in one movie. That would certainly have flopped in a HUGE way. Peter Jackson, the director, planned on doing it in two movies but fortunately some sainted man at New Line insisted it be done in three.

So yeah, if you haven’t surmised by now, I am a big fan of the books. I don’t usually watch the “Making of” portions of DVDs, nor do I in fact own too many DVDs. I don’t have much basis for comparison but one of the things that made it easy to like the production segment of the DVD was the fact that Weta Workshop where so many elements of the movie were created ran things economically. Two guys created all the chainmail for the movie linking and soldering something like 12 million links one at a time.

Obviously coming from a performance background I have a frame of reference that accords me a level of appreciation for the hours that were invested in creating items that appeared for 15 seconds on the making of the movie video and was unobtrusive in the movie proper. In some respects it is almost foolish for an arts organization to try to make a behind the scenes video to compete with the splendor of those connected with movies like the LoTR trilogy. (Although a 45 minute piece done by a theatre is probably going to be watched more often than the 5+ hours for the Fellowship of the Ring.)

The other thing I was thinking as I watched the movies is that if the trend of declining attendance at movies continues, within my lifetime I may be seeing campaigns advocating attendance of performing arts events that include movies. I’ll bet that just as people today argue that in Shakespeare and Mozart’s time live events were raucous affairs, people will point out that a similar environment existed in movie theatres in the early part of the 21st century and that the strictly regimented dress and behavior are unnatural and people should be able to wear whatever they want. (Granted, not a complete parallel with the current situation since many of the first movies in the 20th century had uniformed ushers handing out program books.)