The first step towards making a film is the idea for the subject. The next requirement is money to pay for all the production costs. The producer is the man who raises this money and generally he chooses the director, the most important man in making a film. The director then appoints a writer to prepare a screenplay which is like a stage play but consists of hundreds of short scenes which finally make up the whole film.

A film studio seen for the first time is quite an overwhelming sight. You may see a straight road lined with marble columns representing a Roman road of 2,000 years ago. Near this scene there might be a ramshackle prairie town of the Wild West. In another part of the studio there may be a magnificent governor’s palace set in imperial India. The studio is therefore crowded with Roman soldiers or gladiators, cowboys or young English colonial ladies. Some part of the studio will probably be very strictly cordoned off because a film crew may be ‘shooting’ there.

Today film directors prefer to work on location which means they film their scenes in real places outside instead of creating them from plaster and wood inside a studio. Often film crews with their actors and actresses travel from one continent to another. But when a film is a historical or period piece it is usually shot inside a studio.

Films employ armies of technicians. Skillful carpenters and scene painters build intricate structures known as sets which can be of medieval castles, or of ultramodern apartments.