Essay Exam Questions Prep

Explore the factors which affected the production of Slumdog Millionaire.

The main factor which affected the production was the budget of the film, which was only $16'000'000. Compared to modern hollywood cinema this is not a large budget for a film, this can be associated with the production company, Film 4. Film 4 specialises in Indie films, which generally don't generate more revenue than their mainstream counterparts, this means that they won't take the risk of investing huge amounts of money into a film, especially one as diverse as Slumdog Millionaire. I believe that the equipment used in the film was a factor that affected production. During the chase scenes, they were limited to very static camera work due to the size of the camera, the director Danny Boyle, decided to order and use mobile steady cams. This added realism to the films, specifically the chase scenes in which the mobile camera work could weave in and out of the crevices of the slums. The environment itself played a huge role in the production, firstly when filming, large crowds of pedestrians would gather around the crew and the scene, this can mean frequent eye contact with the camera in some scenes. Also, the environment constantly changes. India is constantly growing and shifting, so the environment will as well, construction sites everywhere may create background noise or walls may appear or disappear in scenes. Danny Boyle himself said that finding the perfect cast was a big issue, as the narrative structure means that there would have to be 3 variations of each of the main three characters (for each stage of their life), this would mean that the cast would have to look somewhat like the previous version. Also, Danny Boyle had set images in his mind of what the characters looked like, thats why he chose Dev Patel, an English actor, for the job - he 'suited the character'.