Specifics of the Motion Picture Industry

Abstract

In this Chapter I will give an outline of the motion picture industry with the movie as its product. I will describe the value chain of media products in general and of the product movie in particular. I will then focus on the production process of a movie and describe the project network as the prevailing organizational form. The Chapter will end with an exposition of the technical transformations in the motion picture industry today, mainly the ongoing digitization. I will also describe the efforts of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) to create notational standards like MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 for the description of digital content elements. This Chapter will clarify the strategic challenges in the motion picture industry which have direct implications on the strategic IS management.