For my Product Autopsy class I switched from a niche technical pen to investigating feature films as a product. This is a wholistic, ideological schematic of the way an individual film is produced, distributed, and consumed through to it's endlife. It's incomplete but is still just a template. I plan to use a production book (the summary of the budget and production post-op produced by the Line Producer) to dive more deeply into the individual components of a specific production (e.g. how many pounds of cheese; who is the distributor of production hardware?)
I imagine that a defining factor as I dig deeper into my research will involve reverse engineering from the end-life of the product - which is interesting as film doesn't necessarily have an end-life - these days being archived and distributed and consumed digitally. My interest in examining film as product is really the cultural impact it has on consumers as film is largely psychological and much of it is oriented around selling product placement advertising and related press activities using actors as spokesperson/salespeople. Film has also historically had a political agenda component to it in many individual cases. I'm interested in how film, its language and lore, has the capacity to change mass behavior - including the way many other goods and services are consumed and regarded. Film has the power to shape mental models.