Math in Film Making

  As long as I've been exploring math in music, I thought I'd check out information for film making.  Most of us have a student who love filming everything and turning it into the epic adventure. 

I'm not talking about the student who is always making selfie video to post on their site but the one who has  vision they create on film.  It turns out film making uses so much math.

The math goes from the producer keeping track of the budget to making sets, costumes, filming, and so much more  I found several sites that have wonderful information on the topic. 

A student online newspaper has a wonderful article on math in film making. The author discusses how the producer uses math in the cost of the film while the cinematographer must calculate the best angles for a shot.  We are told not to forget the sets and the costumes both of which involve quite a bit of math.  In addition, the author comments that animators use the most math and several types of math.

The Mathematical Association of America has a lovely piece on film making and math. They actually reference a paper about math and animation that goes into quite a bit of detail.

No Film School goes into specific detail about the golden ratio, the Fibonacci sequence, perspectives, the rule of thirds, and there are accompanying videos to show many of these. 

Plus Maths has a very technical article on mathematics and animation. This article takes the reader through the process step by step so the get an idea of how creatures and items are created.  There is talk about matricies, vetices and so many other mathematical material.  It is such a cool article.

Eveltio has a list of several articles with links, all dealing with math in film making.

To make it even more relevant, I found a few places that talk about the cost of making a movie from start to finish.  This puts the information of the previous articles into context. 

Investopedia has a great piece on the cost of making films.  They include information on the cost of marketing films.  Something many people don't think about.

Quora has a summary of a 75 page budget used for the movie the Village.  The final cost was over 71 Million for making it.  You see how much costumes, sets, lighting, visual effects, etc.  This ties in with what the producer keeps track of.

Digital Films has sample budgets for independent films to give approximate costs. 

Slide Share has a whole piece on when a film starts making money and many of the misconceptions involved in that process.  The article uses Spiderman 2 as its example.  I found out that there are huge costs involved in printing and distributing the film.  Something in the neighborhood of 50 to 100 million!

Just think what type of eye opener this kind of unit would make for our students!