Closing the Gap between TV and Film.
TV has never looked better, right?
The answer to how we got here is a little more complex than ‘streaming budgets’. And besides, where can it go now? Should TV be trying to rival cinema?
We’ve Never had it so Good
Big franchises have been hopping between the TV and the silver screen for over 50 years. Commissioners are no longer scared of serialised storytelling, as they were in the late 90s and early 2000s. Budgets of individual episodes can be the same as (or more than) a mid-tier feature film.
In my opinion, more opportunities for filmmakers of any craft to tell stories in any format, is a good thing. Digital filmmaking means that the production methods of narrative TV and cinema are becoming increasingly similar, so filmmakers can transition between them more easily than 40 years ago. It’s great that there are resources in the industry to attempt TV shows of this scale, while conventional mid-budget shows still have a valuable place. It’s also important to remember that the two mediums are designed to tell different kinds of stories. However, I think the assumption that spending a feature film’s budget on a TV show will visually achieve the same result, is one that needs challenging.
A (not-so) Quick History Lesson
Expensive, good looking TV shows are nothing new. Taking an obscure example; 1983’s The Thorn Birds arrived during a heyday of network-commissioned television miniseries - to universal critical acclaim. This four-part drama cost around $21 million. For context, Return of the Jedi, which came out in the same year, cost around $35 million, only a third more. Then came Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), a show which drove a bus through the audience's low expectations of science fiction television. It revolutionised the genre and helped kill off a certain… more economically restricted sci-fi serial being produced across the pond. TNG cost around $1.5 million an episode, averaging out at around $30 million a season. Doctor Who never stood a chance.
Both of these shows looked great at the time, have aged well, and raised the bar within their respective genre - thanks to strong creative visions furnished with unprecedented budgets. Neither of them, however, were visually competing with the feature films of their time. But it wouldn’t be long until someone tried, the result came in 2001, in the form of Band of Brothers.
It took two of the biggest names in Hollywood, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, to make it happen. HBO’s Band of Brothers is the story of Easy Company, of the American 101st Parachute Infantry Regiment. From their training in 1942, to VJ day in 1945. It has a large ensemble cast, many of whom would be A-listers ten years later. The story needed the visual scale of a feature film, and the runtime of a television miniseries. Over the 10 hour show, the visual style established by Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan transitions seamlessly to the small screen. I would argue it’s the first mini-series that genuinely looks indistinguishable from its cinematic contemporary. Small wonder, given it cost $125 million, nearly twice as much as Saving Private Ryan. For the next ten years, the only shows to rival Band of Brothers were those produced by HBO, including its pseudo-sequel, The Pacific.
So - what now?
The new budget bar set by HBO is now regularly surpassed by dozens of shows. Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, Disney+’s Star Wars and Marvel series, and most notably Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, each season of which has a budget equivalent to Peter Jackson’s trilogy (when adjusting for inflation). And yet, a common criticism of such shows is that they often look a little soul-less, sometimes mass produced, not cinematic. Now there are exceptions, I’d cite Andor, but often the large budgets aren’t allowing these shows to artistically transcend their format.
All of these expensive shows have (usually) great production design, strong visual effects and talented casts. But, I think there are lessons to be learned from Band of Brothers, and Andor, if you want your series to feel like more than just a series. Both of these shows had something that money can buy you, but won’t guarantee you. A bold, cohesive vision. The various writers and directors had feature film source material (Rogue One, in the case of Andor) to draw inspiration from and inform the look of the show. I’m not suggesting that an expensive TV show needs a feature film to copy, but ‘cinematic’ does not mean expensive. It means deliberate visual storytelling, which to work on TV, must be paired with equally strong writing. If a big budget show feels bland, it’s likely because it came with all the trimmings of a feature film, but none of the spark.
In essence, a TV show having a large budget does not guarantee that it will look like a film. However, this also means that your show does not necessarily need to be expensive, to be cinematic.
Callum Swan, Filmmaker & Creative Director
