🎬 Is Film an Industrial Product or an Art Form? Rethinking Reused Footage and Creative Efficiency

Viewing Film Through an Industrial Lens

For those who believe “film is art,” this perspective may be hard to accept—but I see film as half industrial product.
From planning and shooting to editing and revising, nearly every step relies on mechanical tools and structured workflows.
In that sense, filmmaking shares much with manufacturing.

The “artistic” layer of a film is something added on top of a well-built industrial foundation.
Personally, I don’t consider myself especially gifted, so I don’t worry about adding artistic flourishes.
Even when I build a film methodically, the quirks and “unnecessary touches” that sneak in reveal the creator’s personality—and that alone can be enjoyable.

While directors may find this industrial foundation less exciting, producers—who manage the entire project—must embrace it to deliver a finished product within constraints.
And that challenge can be creatively rewarding in its own way.

The Value of Reuse in Filmmaking

Reuse is a common strategy in industrial production.
Take car manufacturing: even if a new model looks completely different, it often shares engines, tires, or electrical systems with previous models.
This dramatically reduces development costs and allows resources to be allocated to areas that matter most.

Unlike painting, literature, or music, film—with its industrial components—can benefit from reuse.

Real-World Examples of Reused Footage

The most obvious example is stock footage.
Instead of shooting new material, filmmakers often use pre-recorded clips for:

• Airplane takeoffs and landings
• Disaster scenes
• Cityscapes and background shots

Older films frequently reused dinosaur fight scenes—footage of monitor lizards and crocodiles dressed up with fins and horns, staged to look prehistoric.
The same clips appeared in multiple movies.

The film Game of Death is another example.
After Bruce Lee’s death, the production reused footage from his earlier films, inserting close-ups and using lookalikes to complete the story.

Animation offers even clearer examples.
In robot or transformation-themed shows, the same “combining” or “morphing” sequences are reused every episode.
Not only does this save costs, but kids love seeing those familiar scenes again and again.

Pushing Reuse to the Extreme

In serialized dramas, similar scenes appear repeatedly.
Police procedurals, for instance, often follow rigid patterns.
Mute the audio, and many scenes become indistinguishable.

So what if we leaned into this?
Imagine a dubbed drama where recurring scenes are reused across episodes.
This frees up time and budget to shoot new scenes, allowing more episodes to be produced at lower cost.

As the series grows, so does the library of reusable footage.
Eventually, you could build episodes using 50% reused material and only shoot the unique scenes.

A Sherlock Holmes Example

Picture a detective series like Sherlock Holmes.
Each episode introduces new suspects and cases, but the detective and assistant remain constant.

Scenes inside the detective’s office—receiving clients, discussing theories—could be reused.
The detective wouldn’t need to be filmed anew at all.

To support this, you could shoot green screen footage of the detective in various poses, ready to be composited into new scenes.

Of course, dialogue changes with each episode.
That’s where dubbing comes in: if the lip movements roughly match, you can swap in new lines.

For a 30-minute episode, perhaps only 15 minutes need to be shot fresh.

The Case for Reuse-Driven Filmmaking

Some may scoff at this method, questioning its artistic merit.
And it’s true—the final quality is unpredictable.

But one thing is certain: this approach satisfies the desire to turn written stories into visual works, at a fraction of the cost.

The structure would be formulaic, with scripts written like fill-in-the-blanks.
Originality is limited, but with clever planning, the results could still be enjoyable.

Seeing your own story transformed into a film is deeply rewarding.
Before diving into a fully original, high-budget production, why not try this method?

A Familiar Format

Popular period dramas often follow rigid formats.
Take Tōyama no Kin-san, for example.
Its iconic action and courtroom scenes could be reused every episode without viewers noticing.

That’s why I believe this method has potential.

Eventually, I’d like to host an online workshop where participants use pre-shot footage to create their own episodes.
Hope this sparks some ideas.