Economics of Entertainment

Having gone to film school, most of my peers aspire to be "creatives." I use the term to differentiate between other elements of the industry - which are "business" and "technical," I'd say. Although there is an obvious overlap...particularly in the editing/DP/sound realm between creative and technical and in the producing realm between creative/business...you can fairly safely say most film students want to be some sort of creative person.

It is taken as conventional wisdom that becoming a "creative" is highly competitive and difficult...it takes both a mixture of talent, persistence, and connections. Worst of all, you have to toil away without making any money unless you are one of the lucky few who get an easy first hit, or happen to be independently wealthy and can just toil away as a hobby.

But is it any easier to "make it" in the business or technical realms than the creative?

I am not sure. Take the agenting business. It is well established you can get an entry level job at an agency, work hard, get promoted and try to become an agent. Most fail. Most end up in other assistant jobs around town - producing, casting, development, whatever. If you look at it from a writer-agent perspective...and think each agent certainly reps more than one writer...say 10 on average...you can do the simple math and realize for every 10 writers there can only be 1 agent. In the percentage sense, that must mean there are 10 writers for every 1 agent...and probably a similar ratio of wannabes. Add in managers and I suppose you can have a manager for every writer as well.

What about the other positions? For every movie there is at least 3 Producers (per the Oscar's), although there seems to be more, which is why they are changing the rules. Plus there are midlevel, associate producers. There is generally only 1 director. No associate directors or directors in training...there are all the technical, supporting jobs and then all the assisting jobs as well. Then at the studio there are several levels of executives. I don't know, now need to think about this more....