Television movie

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"Telefilm" redirects here. For the Canadian government's film and television funding agency, see Telefilm Canada.

A television movie (also known as a TV film, TV movie, TV-movie, feature-length drama, made-for-TV movie, original movie, movie of the week (MOTW or MOW), single drama, telemovie, or telefilm) is a film that is produced for and originally distributed by a television network.

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[edit] Origins and history

Though not explicitly labelled as such, there were early precedents for "tv movies," such as the 1957 version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, starring Van Johnson, one of the first "family musicals" made directly for television. The 1956 production of Requiem for a Heavyweight, usually considered a made-for-television film, was actually a live production later rebroadcast on kinescope.

The term "made-for-TV movie" was coined in the United States in the early 1960s as an advertising gimmick to encourage even larger numbers of the cinema-going audience to stay home and watch television, on the premise that they were going to see the equivalent of a major, first-run theatrical motion picture in the comfort of their own homes. The first of these made-for-TV movies is generally acknowledged to be See How They Run, which debuted on NBC on 7 October 1964. The Killers, starring Lee Marvin, was filmed as a made for TV movie, although it was decided to be too violent and switched to cinema release instead.

These events originally filled a 90-minute time slot (including commercials), later expanded to two hours, and were usually broadcast as a weekly anthology series (for example, the ABC Movie of the Week). Most TV movies featured major stars, and some were accorded even higher budgets than standard series television programs of the same length, including the major dramatic anthology programs which they came to replace. However, most made-for-TV films were (and still are) considered inferior in artistic quality to those shown in theatres, although it could be argued that HBO's many made-for-TV films are not. It is also possible that the current epidemic of special effects films may render many theatrical films inferior (in the eyes of critics) to those made for TV.

Today the advent of cable television has served to increase the number of venues for the broadcast of TV movies as well as their form. Budgets may be higher and the constraints of writing to fill fixed-time slots while accounting for commercials have been eliminated on the subscription-based cable stations. Conversely, the dispersal of the audience for TV-movies among numerous cable channels with a penchant for "original programming" has resulted in lower budgets, lesser-known performers, and even cheaper effects and settings, along with formulaic writing, on commercial-driven channels.

[edit] Notable examples

The most-watched TV movie of all time was ABC's The Day After, which aired on November 20, 1983, to an estimated audience of 100 million people. The film depicted America after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and was the subject of much controversy and discussion at the time of its release.

Another popular and critically acclaimed TV movie was 1971's Duel directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Dennis Weaver. Such were the quality and popularity of Duel that it was released to cinemas in Europe and later the US. Another was Brian's Song, which also saw theatrical release. However, many 1970s TV movies were a source of controversy, such as Linda Blair's movies Born Innocent and Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, as well as Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway and Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn, which were vehicles for former Brady Bunch actress Eve Plumb.

Often a successful series may spawn a TV movie sequel after ending its run, and TV movies may also be used as the first episode of a series, otherwise known as a pilot. For example, the 4-hour miniseries Battlestar Galactica, originally aired on the SciFi channel in December 2003 became a television series beginning in 2005. With high ratings, executives for the SciFi channel greenlit the weekly series for full production and it is currently in its 3rd season.

Only the first film in The Parent Trap Series was released thearetrically. The Parent Trap II, III and IV were TV-movies.

TV movies are often broadcast on major networks during sweeps season or on cable networks that specialize in producing them such as Hallmark Channel, Lifetime, and HBO.

There are also TV movies known as "reunion movies," which bring back the cast of TV series. These include:

[edit] Production and quality

Despite their promise to compete with theatrical films, network-made TV movies in the USA have tended to be inexpensively-produced and low quality; stylistically, they often resemble single episodes of dramatic television series. Often they are made to "cash in" on the interest centering on stories currently prominent in the news, as the Amy Fisher films were. The stories are written to reach periodic semi-cliffhangers coinciding with the network-scheduled times for the insertion of commercials; they are further managed to fill, but not exceed, the fixed running times allotted by the network to each movie "series". The movies tend to rely on small casts and a limited range of settings and camera setups, and tend to progress in a literal, linear fashion. Even Spielberg's Duel, while a well-crafted film, features a very small cast (apart from Weaver, all other acting roles are bit-parts) and mostly outdoors shooting locations in the desert. The movies are typically made by smaller crews, and they rarely feature expensive special effects. Often they are recorded in less expensive video rather than the preferred motion picture medium of film. Various techniques are often employed to "pad" TV movies with low budgets and underdeveloped scripts, such as music video-style montages, flashbacks, or repeated footage, and extended periods of dramatic slow motion footage (sometimes taken to ridiculous extremes as in the USA Network thriller Wheels of Terror).

Some TV movies are notoriously melodramatic, with soap opera style plots; typical plots associated with the genre include "disease of the week" movies or films about domestic violence. Rape is also a common theme, though not always the focus of the storyline. The series of Moment of Truth Movies that run on the Lifetime cable network exemplify these melodramatic tendencies. Certain actresses, such as Valerie Bertinelli, Michele Lee and Nancy McKeon, have been stereotyped as TV actresses due to the number of TV-movies in which they have appeared.

TV movies often follow specific naming conventions. For example, the title of many biographical films consist of a dramatic phrase, followed by "The [Firstname] [Surname] Story". Examples of this naming format include Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story, and Fight for Justice: The Nancy Conn Story.

[edit] Movie-length episodes of TV shows

Occasionally, a long-running television series is used as the basis for TV movies that air during the show's lifetimes (as opposed to the above-mentioned "reunion specials"). Typically, such movies employ a filmed single-camera setup even if the TV series is videotaped using a multiple-camera setup, but are written to be easily broken up into individual thirty- or sixty-minute episodes for syndication. Many such movies relocate the cast of the show to an exotic overseas setting, such as Europe or Australia.

Examples include:

  • The Facts of Life
    • The Facts of Life Goes to Paris (1982)
    • The Facts of Life Down Under (1987)

Some children's TV networks (such as Nickelodeon) have also recently stretched the definition of a "TV movie" as counting what would normally be a hour long special, as a movie. They may also be an extended episode of a series already airing on a network, such as Zoey 101's Spring Breakup, and several Jimmy Neutron, Drake and Josh and The Fairly Oddparents specials, which have all been promoted on Nickelodeon as "full-length movies".

[edit] See also

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