'The Studio' is a brilliant love letter to filmmaking

I hate the saying that something is a 'love letter' to something. But for once I can really agree that something really is a love letter to something else. In this case, that something is the art of filmmaking. The chaos that is creating stories. Where budgets exceed the millions in dollars and the crews are a complex web of various ideas and attitudes mixed together. Now, I haven't really been a big fan of Seth Rogen. He has made some funny films throughout the years but went a bit overboard with it all, then decided to step back from the acting side and begin a bigger career behind the screen, more on the production side. And during that, he clearly saw the difference in both worlds: the actor side, and the more business side of things from the eyes of studios. This is where The Studio comes into play. A television show that so clearly speaks on his experiences within the industry, turning it into a passion project riddled with comedy.

There are a lot of films in particular which look into the film industry, and often glamourise it. The idea of Hollywood. The idea of fame and riches and making art. Though rarely do we see the perspective of how challenging and silly it can actually be. The thought process that goes into making a film, and how the realm of suits and creatives are shared, clashing and spreading concepts, trying to find that balance in efforts to allow the maniac creatives to create massive productions and tell huge stories, while the suit end struggles to maximise their profits. These days these two sides clash more than ever. The studios have more data, they have more money, and they certainly have more competition with how huge various franchises have grown. Now, each studio looks to make the fastest and easiest money while the storytellers asking for millions of dollars struggle to get their visions realised. Seth Rogen portrays Matt Remick, a studio head at the Continental Studios. A massively successful individual that took up the job from a recently removed higher-up he was mentored by. Taking her position, Matt finds himself torn between the business world of Hollywood and the sheer love for filmmaking as a form of art. It shows us that even the most passionate of film fans struggle to push their interests onto the big screen when so many additional factors come into play. Endless remakes and reboots of big franchises, the copy and pasted structure of their narratives. The want to abandon those and tell fresh stories, to even try to make those franchises more artistic and serious. And the inevitable realisation that it isn't always possible. One joke has Matt attempting to hire Martin Scorsese for a Kool-Aid adaptation, though convincing the huge director to tell the story from the perspective of the Jonestone cult.

Showing the struggles of film production, ranging from the clueless studio head which appears on set only to make the entire production an absolute Hell for the crew by not knowing how things operate and how fragile things are, to the fear of missing a film reel while struggling to keep the medium itself alive despite the high costs, the show manages to tell these stories in its own little creative ways. And often enough with its own incredible styles of filmmaking. For example, plenty of long shots which see the chaos unfolding before our eyes, characters moving from one place to another, shouting at each other, as the camera intricately focuses on each person, moving around them without cutting. Only to cut when it's a scene change. Sometimes these long shots last for minutes at a time and you don't even really notice them with how engaging everything is. And that's how film production can be. A long blur of events in which everyone's running around, constant motion between environments. People talking and walking through sets. Each person doing their own thing. As the show progresses, the challenges ramp up, showing different areas of the film production world. I quite like that it doesn't focus too much on one thing. Sometimes it's colleagues fighting, other times it's the emotional pain of event and award shows in which no recognition is given despite all the hard work that was put in. Where only a select few get to be appreciated and thanked. There's still some of that Seth Rogen style that appears, the sort of comedy I'm not always that appreciative of, though I guess here it does offer some contrast between the rest of the show and its events.