In How Images Are Made I reflect on the role of the cultural producer by looking back at French avant-garde filmmakers in the 60s and 70s who understood the dissolvement of the role of the author as an integral part of their aim to lay bare the artificial construct of cinema. More specifically I look at the infamous traveling shot in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Weekend (1967) which (rumour has it) he insisted on filming it in one take without a cut. This led to a conflict with the producers as the shot became logistically very ambitious with over three-hundred tracks laid down to slide the camera over. In comparison I look at twenty-second long advertisement films that Godard has produced for the French ready-to-wear label Marithé + François Girbaud (1987) and argue that these two (historically contrasting production structures) are in fact not so different from each other.
