Reflection on Hollywood Simulation

Wow, class last wednesday was ridiculous!

Before I begin, let me give you a little bit of an idea of what my background was with the way Hollywood operates. I knew some of the vocab that goes along with the whole Hollywood scene: actor/actress, agent, producer, writer. I also knew that a lot of time, energy and money goes into making a major motion picture. Going along with this idea, I knew that dispite all the money put into a film, it still has the ability to flop at the box office. I knew that this is one thing that film makers want to aviod.

I also knew that Hollywood and the people who work and live there could have a reputation for being a little messed up. ( in the way they deal with fashion, marriges, money, etc.)

So there I was in class; part of a major Hollywood film studio, looking to put together a movie that would be a guartenteed success. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I figured that since we were the biggest studio, we wouldn't have any problems getting people to sign with us. At first this assumption was correct. There were people rushing over to "Big Time Studios" as soon as the simulation began.

The problems started when we starting signing. We signed our script first: The cute love story. So all we needed now were actors and actresses, right? Well, this became an issue because there were only four actors/ actresses, and three movies being produced. We ran into problems trying to sign an actress because the girl we wanted didn't want to be in a romance movie. We had already signed a contract though. What now? Also, our actors kept driving up their prices, and being enticed by other studios. Then, once they signed our actors wanted to be in other movies so that they could make more money. We learned that this would cost our studio.

We got to a point where we figured that it would be easier if we bought out one of the smaller studios and produced two movies. Then we would have a bigger budget and be wouldn't loose money from having our actors in multipule films. This, however, didn't work out. Maybe if we'd had more time...

Then there were annoying script writers (cough Issac and Amy cough) who kept trying to get us to buy their script after we already told them no.

And the annoying agents who kept driving up prices.

Overall it was fun to be able to pretend like we were throwing around millions of dollars like it was nothing in order to produce a major motion picture, but we all knew it wasn't real. Even so, I still heard someone say while leaving "that brought out the worst in people." Many of the things that happened showed people looking out for their own profit only. And you kind of had too.

Thinking about our class simmulation and what I know about Hollywood gave me a little better picture of why the movie industry is the way it is, and why the stuff that happens there can be really crazy.