How Are Motion Picture, Video and Television Production Classified in ISIC Rev. 5?

Motion picture, video and television programme production in ISIC Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, covers developing, producing and completing films, videos and television programmes, including feature films, documentaries, series, commercials and similar works. The work includes script development, filming, editing and post production up to a finished programme. Distribution and exhibition are related but distinct steps, and the UNSD structure describes them separately from production itself.

From an idea to a finished programme

Production, in this guide, is a journey with a clear end point: a finished programme. It begins with development, where a script is shaped, a subject is researched, and a format is settled. It continues through filming, where material is shot, and through editing and post production, where footage, sound, and picture are assembled into a work that can be handed on. When that finished programme is delivered, production is complete, even if no audience has yet seen it. Distribution, exhibition, and broadcasting are the next steps in the chain, and they are described separately in the UNSD structure.

A documentary company, followed through one project

Consider a production company that develops a documentary, and follow that one project in detail. It begins by choosing a subject, researching it, and writing a treatment that sets out the story the film will tell. It then shoots interviews, gathering testimony and location material over weeks of filming, sometimes returning to a location when a first shoot leaves a gap in the story. Editing follows, and it is here that the film takes its shape: interviews are ordered, scenes are cut, and the argument of the documentary emerges from the sequence as much as from any single shot. Sound is added, picture is finished, and the company delivers a finished programme to a broadcaster.

At no point in that project did the company become the broadcaster, even though its programme will be broadcast, and at no point did it become the distributor, if it does not handle onward sales. It also did not become the cinema, if it does not operate a screening venue, and it did not become the performer, even though performers appear on screen. Each of those roles is a separate activity, and the company’s statistical place is the production step it actually performed.

What production covers, and what it leaves to neighbours

Production covers:

• Production of motion pictures for cinema release
• Production of television programmes, series, and documentaries
• Production of videos, including commercial and promotional videos
• Post production activities that complete a film or programme
• Production activities for streaming and broadcast programmes where the UNSD entry includes them

It leaves to neighbours the work that happens after the finished programme exists, and the work of appearing in it. Film distribution to exhibitors and platforms, cinema operation, and television broadcasting are the onward steps, while talent and casting services and acting or presenting as an individual performer are the human inputs that a production may engage but does not itself constitute. A reader who counts distribution revenue as production revenue, or a performer’s fee as production output, will distort both totals at once.

Why statisticians insist on keeping production apart from release

Film and television output is expensive, project based, and often supported by public funds or tax measures. Those features make the production total a sensitive one: it is used to ask how much is being invested in new work, where that investment sits, and whether it is rising or falling. If a successful release were counted in production, distribution, and exhibition all at once, the same money would appear three times, and investment would look far larger than it was. If production investment were hidden inside broadcasting revenue, the opposite error would follow, and a fall in new production would be masked by a strong broadcasting year.

Checking a production case against the UNSD wording

Locate this activity in the UNSD structure, note the exact wording at each level from section down to class, and compare it with the distribution, exhibition, and broadcasting entries before settling. Pay particular attention to whether the activity described matches the entry in full, including any exclusions noted there, and to whether post production is included in the entry or described as a separate step. Confirm the result with the national statistical institute or business register before it is used in a return or a register, and keep the wording beside the working note.

This guide is statistical classification only. It does not determine any reader’s code, principal activity, or registration, and the national statistical institute or business register that holds the record should be asked to confirm any real production case.