Production Constraints

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In chapter two of Nina Leibman’s Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family in Film and Television, she explores the relationship between the production of media and the content of media. She is focused mainly on the nuclear family as portrayed in television shows such as My Three Sons and Leave it To Beaver and how the formant of television dictated the content of the shows. The episodic nature of television made the plot lines digestible and soft, but it also gave the characters within the show a more full and round representation (unlike film where character development occurs strictly within the time frame of one film). Additionally budget constraints on television shows, especially the early forms, created challenges and affected the product. For example using a laugh track is easier than managing and housing a studio audience- it is less of a risk of re-shooting a scene.  To distill these into one clear image I will reference the example from class where we mentioned that wardrobe pieces are cheaper to buy in sample sizes so actors are usually smaller people which in turn causes the message in media to be that all people are “model size.”

Keeping this in mind I thought to examine the film institution of James Bond pictures. This example is something of an anomaly in the film industry.  Whereas most films with sequels become progressively contrived and less and less main-stream, the James Bond series has presented itself as just that: a series. In production and execution James Bond is very similar to a television show, the movies are self contained plots with a cast of recurring characters, they center on the action and leave the character development to be developed as the series progresses.  Most importantly, more similar to a television show than a movie, the james bond series functions under production constraints. Continuing the films for a half a century means many changes. The most obivious of those changes is the cast.

Six different men have played the character of James Bond and the changes in casting are met with no more than a sideways glance. At one point George Lazenby’s wife is killed (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) and in the next film Sean Connery returns as Bond to avenge her death (You Only Live Twice). Distinctively, these changes are usually due to the age of the actors rather than contract negotiations in television.

What intrigues me most about the institution of James Bond is that, aside from the more indie cult of Woody Allen, it stands unparalleled in longevity. Even compared to Woody Allen films there is a huge disparity in budget and profits as almost each James Bond film is a financial success and the most recent, Skyfall,  broke the box offices records in it’s first week in the UK. What is this series doing right to continue producing with popular and financially stable successes?