Bottom lines and below-the-lines on the film set

Jackson Francis Malle

Chapter 4 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Economic Anthropology, 2025, pp 268-272 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: A key distinction emerged in the daily life and practices of individuals on the film set, or “mobile village,” as I call it, of creative versus technical expression, manifest in a perceived opposition between the work of “below-the-line” crew people and that of their “above-the-line” counterparts. I examine this distinction, a lived and real aspect of set life, by showing its rootedness in the language of people working in film production today. Observations of the workplace lend descriptive detail to my analysis, as do crewmember interviews. The aim of this piece is to present the production community as a complex network, to suggest that making movies involves the inputs of many laborers—financial, technological, managerial, creative, and even culinary. I focus on the more demonstrable contributions of production assistants and teamsters working behind the scenes (backstage), rather than the upfront managerial labor of producers, actors, and directors on set.

Keywords: Cinema; Film production; Ethnography; Labor; Reflexivity; Visual culture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035312566
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