Why it takes half as long to make a movie today than 50 years ago

First, the video:

If you’ve found my content useful support me and watch my film A Count Of Ten today.

This is a fun exercise, a proper study is required. Here are the major errors in this data:

It only accounts for 10 films per year.
The filming dates are from IMDb or Wikipedia and might be wrong.
I could have made errors counting days (error of ±5 days).
The filming dates might not include breaks or gaps in the shooting schedule.
It doesn’t account for the number of hours shot per day. A more accurate estimate is from the number of hours shot.
I’ve tried to mix low budget films and big blockbusters, but the sheer variety of films made per year was not taken into account.
It does not take into account action vs dialogue scenes, etc.
It does not take into account the movie’s running length, or shooting ratio (how much was shot vs thrown away).
The problem is compounded because there’s relatively more accurate data for recent films over older films.
The equipment and type of shooting was different over the ages.
And on and on and on.

So let me stress again this is not a scientific study, nor a definitive statement. But I thought the results are interesting so I’d share. Maybe a film school could take on the challenge and publish the data.

First the films. I’ve chosen ‘great’ films as recommended by Google search, of which filming dates were available. I thought keeping it random like this would improve the odds of accuracy. Bias can still creep in, because Google never recommends the same thing to everybody.

Here’s the complete list:

1920s

#	Title	Released	Shot (approx.)	Approx. Days
1	The Birth of a Nation	1915	1914	90
2	The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari	1920	1919	30
3	Nosferatu	1922	1921	60
4	Ben Hur	1925	1924	660
5	Faust	1926	1925	180
6	The General	1926	1925	100
7	Metropolis	1927	1926	510
8	The Jazz Singer	1927	1926	60
9	The Cameraman	1928	1927	74
10	Un Chien Andalou	1929	1928	55

1930s

1	Frankenstein	1931	1930	40
2	City Lights	1931	1930	180
3	M	1931	1930	42
4	Freaks	1932	1931	24
5	It Happened One Night	1934	1933	40
6	L’Atalante	1934	1933	120
7	Gone with the Wind	1939	1938	330
8	The Rules of the Game	1939	1938	90
9	Mr. Smith Goes to Washington	1939	1938	94
10	The Grapes of Wrath	1939	1938	44
11	The Great Dictator	1940	1939	539

There are eleven here because I did one extra and didn’t have the heart to remove any of these films.

1940s

1	Citizen Kane	1941	1940	115
2	How Green Was My Valley	1941	1940	64
3	Casablanca	1942	1941	75
4	The Magnificient Ambersons	1942	1941	84
5	Double Indemnity	1944	1943	57
6	It’s a Wonderful Life	1946	1945	102
7	The Big Sleep	1946	1945	92
8	Notorious	1946	1945	100
9	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	1948	1947	165
10	The Third Man	1949	1948	42

1950s

1	Singin’ in the Rain	1952	1951	156
2	On the Waterfront	1954	1953	69
3	Rebel Without a Cause	1955	1954	58
4	12 Angry Men	1957	1956	21
5	The Bridge on the River Kwai	1957	1956	165
6	Touch of Evil	1958	1957	42
7	Vertigo	1958	1957	45
8	Ben-Hur	1959	1958	240
9	Some Like it Hot	1959	1958	92
10	Psycho	1960	1959	80

1960s

1	Breakfast at Tiffany’s	1961	1960	120
2	Lawrence of Arabia	1962	1961	126
3	Sound of Music	1965	1964	155
4	Blow-up	1966	1965	90
5	The Graduate	1967	1966	120
6	Bonnie and Clyde	1967	1966	88
7	Rosemary’s Baby	1968	1967	105
8	Night of the Living Dead	1968	1967	180
9	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	1969	1968	120
10	Midnight Cowboy	1969	1968	126

1970s

1	The Godfather	1972	1971	100
2	Chinatown	1974	1973	90
3	Barry Lyndon	1975	1974	240
4	Jaws	1975	1974	159
5	Rocky	1976	1975	55
6	Halloween	1978	1977	21
7	The Deer Hunter	1978	1977	195
8	Apocalypse Now	1979	1978	238
9	Alien	1979	1978	98
10	Friday the 13th	1980	1979	30

1980s

1	Raiders of the Lost Ark	1981	1980	120
2	The Evil Dead	1981	1980	72
3	The Thing	1982	1981	84
4	Blade Runner	1982	1981	90
5	ET	1982	1981	88
6	Nightmare on Elm Street	1984	1983	32
7	Aliens	1986	1985	150
8	Dirty Dancing	1987	1986	52
9	Do the Right Thing	1989	1988	55
10	Goodfellas	1990	1989	100

1990s

1	Reservoir Dogs	1992	1991	33
2	Schindler’s List	1993	1992	73
3	Pulp Fiction	1994	1993	51
4	Forrest Gump	1994	1993	138
5	Seven	1995	1994	55
6	Before Sunrise	1995	1994	33
7	Titanic	1997	1996	235
8	Psycho remake	1998	1997	52
9	Fight Club	1999	1998	138
10	The Sixth Sense	1999	1998	52

2000s

1	Ocean’s Eleven	2001	2000	115
2	The Royal Tenenbaums	2001	2000	90
3	Catch Me if You Can	2002	2001	52
4	Napoleon Dynamite	2004	2003	25
5	Million Dollar Baby	2004	2003	40
6	Little Miss Sunshine	2006	2005	30
7	The Departed	2006	2005	127
8	The Devil Wears Prada	2006	2005	57
9	Iron Man	2008	2007	102
10	The Dark Knight	2008	2007	200

2010s

1	Drive	2011	2010	48
2	Zero Dark Thirty	2012	2011	88
3	Dallas Buyers Club	2013	2012	25
4	The Guardians of the Galaxy	2014	2013	92
5	The Hateful Eight	2015	2014	137
6	La La Land	2016	2015	30
7	Get Out	2017	2016	23
8	Us	2019	2018	67
9	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood	2019	2018	133
10	The Irishman	2019	2018	108

Movie schedules over the decades

Now here’s a summary, per decade:

Decade	Average (<100 days)	Total average
1920s	67	182
1930s	53	140
1940s	77	90
1950s	58	97
1960s	94	123
1970s	66	123
1980s	72	84
1990s	50	86
2000s	57	84
2010s	60	75
Grand Average	65 days	108 days

I’ve made two averages. One is the total, taking into account all films in that decade. The second is the average of movies that have a schedule less than 110 days. This eliminates those movies that took too long.

Here’s a graphical representation:

Does it take half as long to make a movie today than 50 years ago?

As I write this, it’s 2020. Fifty years ago it was 1970. As you can see, the average was almost twice (not exactly, but different enough for fun’s sake).

Did film directors in the 1960s-70s have a greater luxury in terms of shooting schedules? Let’s take a couple of examples.

Psycho

Psycho is a very instructive example because both Psychos (1961 vs 1997) are almost shot by shot copies. It should have taken roughly the same amount of time to shoot both. Hitchcock didn’t waste time on a film set!

But Psycho (1961) took 80 days to shoot. Psycho (1998) took 52 days to shoot. Assuming the data is accurate, that’s a huge difference.

https://website-39341349.tnb.awf.mybluehost.me/how-alfred-hitchcock-scared-everyone-without-moving-the-camera/

Why should this be so? Cameras were lighter, lights were lighter. What about budgets?

Movie	Original Budget	Budget in 2020 dollars
Psycho (1961)	$806,947	$7,027,990
Psycho (1998)	$60,000,000	$96,372,710

The newer Psycho had a huge budget, even accounting for inflation. More than 10 times!!! If you account the cost per shooting day it’s even higher.

Let’s take another example.

Ben-Hur

Ben-Hur (1925) took 660 days. Ben-Hur (1959) took 240 days. Assuming the data is accurate, that’s three times the difference.

Here are the budgets:

Movie	Original Budget	Budget in 2020 dollars
Ben-Hur (1925)	$4 million	$60,303,391
Ben-Hur (1959)	$15 million	$133,804,671

That’s twice the difference, but one-third the shooting dates!

Let me stress again the we need a lot more data to generalize, but for fun’s sake I’m going to do it anyway and say movies used to take a lot longer to make – maybe because it was cheaper.

Filmmakers could afford to spend more time. Actors gave more time. Crew unions charged lesser. Locations were cheaper, transportation and food was cheaper. There were no computers or visual effects. Sound and music was cheaper.

How long should an average movie take to film?

Keep in mind this is just about principal photography. There’s pre-production before and post production after.

It seems the gold standard is around the 60-day mark. Over the decades that hasn’t changed all that much.

A 90-100 minute film should take about 60 days to make, on average. That’s 1.5 script pages a day.

Of course, for low budget films this time is halved.

A 90-minute low budget film should take about 30 days to make, on average. That’s 3 script pages a day.

And, if you really want to make a movie like the big directors, you might have to go longer.

A 90-150 minute film can take 100 days to make, if you really want to indulge like they did in the 60s and 70s.

Note these movies:

1	Breakfast at Tiffany’s	1961	1960	120
4	Blow-up	1966	1965	90
5	The Graduate	1967	1966	120
6	Bonnie and Clyde	1967	1966	88
7	Rosemary’s Baby	1968	1967	105
8	Night of the Living Dead	1968	1967	180
9	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	1969	1968	120
10	Midnight Cowboy	1969	1968	126

Some of the movies have action scenes, but nothing extraordinary. Night of the Living Dead took long because of money issues. Putting that aside, you’d think these movies should only have taken 60 days according to today’s standards.

But the directors were lucky to get about 100 days on average. Again, this is going by the data and hoping it is accurate.

Now let’s look at the reverse and look at these movies from the last 10-20 years:

Catch Me if You Can	2002	2001	52
Iron Man	2008	2007	102

The Guardians of the Galaxy	2014	2013	92
The Irishman	2019	2018	108

Marvel movies, with their enormous budgets, are getting done in about 100 days. It shows how efficient they are at production. They should really have an Oscar for production.

https://website-39341349.tnb.awf.mybluehost.me/the-marvel-cinematic-language-explained/

And finally, note how fast Spielberg shoots:

Movie	Days
Jaws	159 days
Raiders of the Lost Ark	120 days
Schindler’s List	73 days
Jurassic Park	96 days
Catch Me if You Can	52 days
Minority Report	115 days
Munich	90 days
Lincoln	60 days

Jaws had tons of problems, but over the years his production unit works at a blistering pace.