Working as a group to tie something together and share it with the world is a difficult task. You have to balance every thing and everyone on a spinning top while holding hands, and if someone lets go, you all fall down.
Creating a film requires dozens, sometimes hundreds of people to come together. It takes a crew to get what needs done, and every single person helping to put the project together is an artist, vying to get their work, and the entirety of the film, out on display.
There are artists like the director, who is in charge of the overall artistic structure of the film. Actors, who discuss their characters in-depth so they can portray the script correctly. The playwright, who starts it all by writing a script and putting it up in hopes a film company decides to make their story a reality, and who sits in on the first rehearsals to fix, rewrite, discuss, and explain his work and his messages to actors and directors. The producer, or the ‘in the background’ director, who is in charge of several artistic and business portions of a films production; and those are only the major roles.
Other artists who come in to create a film are: casting directors, location managers, sound designers, art directors, storyboard artists, choreographers, costume designers, directors of photography, directors of audiography, sound mixers, composers – hundreds of people come together to make a single film. If any of these people fail to do their job properly, the spinning top of a movie’s production tilts. If one person falls down, the balance of production is threatened. Examples of a single person letting go and forcing all the artists trying to make a film to halt or lose their jobs is rare, but it does happen, and when it does, it could even affect how everyone involved tries to snare jobs after that film tragedy.
Take Charlie Sheen for instance. Most famous for his lead role in the television comedy “Two and a Half Men”, directed by James Widdoes, Sheen has grown himself a bit of an attitude, and that attitude has forced the creators, crew, and other casts of “Two and a Half Men” to freeze production. He called his director names to the public, took copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, and has quite literally affected everyone he works with because of his actions and words.
Something as simple as an injury to an actor can also topple film productions, but the most common reason films are halted or put on hold is funding. When a funding agreement falls out, you have several organizations of people in your group that pull out as well. If there is less funding, people aren’t getting paid, and if people aren’t getting paid, there’s a problem. Making movies isn’t cheap, and no one who has strived through thousands of dollars for a degree in college wants to work for free, no matter how much they love making movies.