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Does anyone know of ongoing attempts to achieve these kinds of products now? Seems like vaporware right now
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The non unionized would have no recourse regardless. Except going outside the current game
Not necessarily. The pending UPS strike is about improving the wages and benefits for non-union labor. Which in turn benefits the union labor because otherwise they're at risk of being replaced with cheap scabs someday.
Unions mostly exist for unskilled workers (the most replacable) or specialised workers whose skills don't easily transfer elsewhere.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Netflix churns out hundreds of thousands of hours of content each year at heavy, heavy losses Netflix is quite profitable, so this is clearly not true in any meaningful way.
A lot of their productions are very niche. I mean, Bojack Horseman... absolutely good show, beloved by its fans and more than worth a binge, but was it actually mainstream much outside of the Mental Health Twittersphere? The worst thing for Netflix is, for none of their original shows they managed to pull off "outside" draw: merchandise/swag outside of hoodies and coffee mugs, books, spin-offs and most importantly fa…
I support the strikes and hope it comes to a good conclusion; but this feels a touch forced, honestly. I get that it is in vogue to blame silicon valley, but hollywood has a littered history of killing their goose, as it were. For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a s…
Netflix used their magical tech money to compete with studios in a wildly unprofitable way. Netflix churns out hundreds of thousands of hours of content each year at heavy, heavy losses, because they can afford to burn money to force the studios to the table. If we imagine a world in which streaming platforms were only ever licensees and not producers, it’s easy to imagine the status quo could have continued indefini…
I support the strikes and hope it comes to a good conclusion; but this feels a touch forced, honestly. I get that it is in vogue to blame silicon valley, but hollywood has a littered history of killing their goose, as it were. For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a s…
Let me put it in perspective for you: Hollywood the actors and writers are on strike because Hollywood, the money making machinery decided to replace them with a product from SV. I don’t care for Hollywood and indeed it has gotten quite garbage anyway but I do support the actors and writers striking because they can. For the rest of us it remains to be seen how we’re going to handle it or whether we boil slowly.. In…
I could as easily say they are on strike because the economy is contracting, and they are the least shielded from the contraction. No need to add SV into the mix. Studios have always been on the lookout for ways to not pay them, such that the latest attempt being streaming seems a bit of a non story item.
Again, consider if we had never moved to streaming and instead they were trying to get their payouts from the movies that are checked out from redbox. They would be seeing as much of a dropout in residuals as they are seeing, as the dip is in syndication residuals.
I continue to wonder how much studios are ACTUALLY hurt by this strike. The studios have reserves of money, they still get money from streaming existing content. And short term they can still release content that are in post-prod enough to release. On the other hand, the public supports of the strike amounts to ... wanting new TV shows and movies. It's annoying for many I'm sure, but its not exactly something that ke…
Nobody in my social circle has taken any notice of it, because movies and TV has become so bad that none of us watch them anymore. Dune was the last Hollywood movie I watched, Oppenheimer and the next Dune are the only movies I’m looking forward to watching. There’s nothing on TV that I watch. I’m somewhat looking forward to the 3 Body Problem adaptation, but I’m expecting it will be bad.
As far as I’m concerned they can stay on strike forever. Let somebody who can do a better job replace them.
One could argue that the per capita entertainment expenditure in the US might have been in the hundred+ dollar range in the nineties.
But now due to Netflix and Spotify that’s not true. Even with all the subscription services it’s a small fraction once you divide family sharing. Thus we are making more movies and shows and music with less money for the total pie. Something’s gotta break. Realistically half the studios or folk making these things just have to stop making them. The industry cannot survive on the smaller pie with so many people eating chunks of it (I mean studios and tech companies not workers). It’ll be interesting to see how this actually ends up working out.
> We’ve heard a lot about the ways that studios want to reserve the right to use AI — to create endlessly usable digital replicas of actors, to generate scripts that writers will be paid lower rates to fix up. Does anyone know of ongoing attempts to achieve these kinds of products now ? Seems like vaporware right now
I support the strikes and hope it comes to a good conclusion; but this feels a touch forced, honestly. I get that it is in vogue to blame silicon valley, but hollywood has a littered history of killing their goose, as it were. For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a s…
No mustache-twirling required, just a business model that made sense then and is no longer equitable.
The other point is that extras are getting full-body 3D scanned for a day’s pay, licensed in perpetuity. That is an existential threat to the profession; no actor could ever become a high-paid superstar if a bunch of producers own the rights to their likeness from back before they were famous. That’s the Marvel movies, not Netflix.
As you say, it seems Hollywood has a long storied history of abusing their labor pool at whatever opportunity they get. This is not something they learned from SV.