A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value, First Edition. Edited by Mette Hjort and Ted Nannicelli.
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2022 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Introduction
Filmmaking is one of the most complexly layered forms of artistic production. It
is a deeply interactive process, socially, culturally, and technologically. Yet the bulk
of popular and academic discussion of filmmaking continues to attribute creative
authorship of films to directors. Texts refer to “a Scorsese film,” not a film by “Scors-
ese et al.” We argue that this kind of attribution of sole creative responsibility to
film directors is a misapprehension of filmmaking processes, based in part on
dubious individualist assumptions about creative minds. Such a misapprehension
is effacing the public value that a more inclusive and accurate understanding of
filmmaking offers. By “public value” we mean the potential to enhance social and
cultural well-being, particularly in working lives and collaborative undertakings in
the screen industries. Better understanding of the systemic and social nature of cre-
ativity in filmmaking can potentially help in democratising aesthetics, which we
consider a clear public good.
By treating motion picture production as a model case of distributed creativity,
we can more accurately identify the public value of filmmaking processes. We can
do justice to the unique roles of highly skilled individuals and offer some insights
into creative collaboration. This approach has theoretical, descriptive and normative
benefits. A more robust understanding of how films are “made” serves as a model
for a richer understanding of distributed creativity and cognition. By considering
filmmaking as a “‘trans-corporeal’ enterprise not simply bound by the skull or the
4
Reframing the Director
Distributed Creativity in Filmmaking Practice
Karen Pearlman and John Sutton