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The Cost of Good Movies

soaringtwenties.substack.com

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Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#21

Post by runnerup »

crazygringo wrote: post #20
saucymew wrote: post #14

After finishing reading the article, it didn't mention one anecdotal cultural trend a friend who's teaching film class at his local community college noticed. Every semester at the beginning of class, he'd quiz his students what they've watched. In the past few years, nearly everyone has limited knowledge of current films, let alone old films. He realized young people do not have the attention/habit of watching long-…

Here's an alternate interpretation: they're watching television now rather than movies. Because the kind of character development and depth of storytelling that can happen in 20 or 50 or 80 hours goes far beyond what you can do in 2 or 3. And the idea that young people can't watch long things due to a lack of attention goes directly against the evidence of the increasing habit of binge watching . Forget about watchin…

For me the sweet spot has always been miniseries like band of brothers, where it’s basically an 8-12 hour long movie.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#22

Post by saucymew »

crazygringo wrote: post #20
saucymew wrote: post #14

After finishing reading the article, it didn't mention one anecdotal cultural trend a friend who's teaching film class at his local community college noticed. Every semester at the beginning of class, he'd quiz his students what they've watched. In the past few years, nearly everyone has limited knowledge of current films, let alone old films. He realized young people do not have the attention/habit of watching long-…

Here's an alternate interpretation: they're watching television now rather than movies. Because the kind of character development and depth of storytelling that can happen in 20 or 50 or 80 hours goes far beyond what you can do in 2 or 3. And the idea that young people can't watch long things due to a lack of attention goes directly against the evidence of the increasing habit of binge watching . Forget about watchin…

Great point, ultimately we're describing two different outcomes on where the current audience are spending their time on vs movies.

You posit television series, if I could add to that list, it'd be live streams, YouTube, Discord, etc.

All of these competing content genres are eroding the cultural cache and expected value of long film projects.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#23

Post by slyall »

crazygringo wrote: post #20
saucymew wrote: post #14

After finishing reading the article, it didn't mention one anecdotal cultural trend a friend who's teaching film class at his local community college noticed. Every semester at the beginning of class, he'd quiz his students what they've watched. In the past few years, nearly everyone has limited knowledge of current films, let alone old films. He realized young people do not have the attention/habit of watching long-…

Here's an alternate interpretation: they're watching television now rather than movies. Because the kind of character development and depth of storytelling that can happen in 20 or 50 or 80 hours goes far beyond what you can do in 2 or 3. And the idea that young people can't watch long things due to a lack of attention goes directly against the evidence of the increasing habit of binge watching . Forget about watchin…

But I wonder if their knowledge of TV is also as deep.

When I was a kid the TV was filled up with a lot of repeats of TV shows. Things that had been create 10,20 or even 40 years before. I'd watch them because there were not many other options (probably because new shows were too expensive to waste on offpeak timeslots)

I wonder what percentage of today's kids would recognize any of the below shows beyond the name (or more-recent revivals) let alone have watched a large number of episodes.

https://www.classic-tv.com/shows/decade/1960s

or even:

https://www.classic-tv.com/shows/decade/1990s

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#24

Post by tompagenet2 »

Genuine question that I couldn't see in the article; does everyone on a film get residuals, or just the more notable roles like writer and actor? If not, did e.g. a lighting specialist not contribute at least as much as a person whose face was scanned?

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#25

Post by OfSanguineFire »

saucymew wrote: post #14

After finishing reading the article, it didn't mention one anecdotal cultural trend a friend who's teaching film class at his local community college noticed. Every semester at the beginning of class, he'd quiz his students what they've watched. In the past few years, nearly everyone has limited knowledge of current films, let alone old films. He realized young people do not have the attention/habit of watching long-…

I own a projector and good surround-sound setup, and have a circle of friends who call themselves cinephiles. Sometimes they will suggest some film for me to put on for everybody. Nevertheless, virtually the moment the film starts, they take out their phones and then keep only half an eye on the film. I don’t even bother mentioning this out loud as a problem, I feel like it would just make me look like an out-of-touch weirdo.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#26

Post by OfSanguineFire »

crazygringo wrote: post #20
saucymew wrote: post #14

After finishing reading the article, it didn't mention one anecdotal cultural trend a friend who's teaching film class at his local community college noticed. Every semester at the beginning of class, he'd quiz his students what they've watched. In the past few years, nearly everyone has limited knowledge of current films, let alone old films. He realized young people do not have the attention/habit of watching long-…

Here's an alternate interpretation: they're watching television now rather than movies. Because the kind of character development and depth of storytelling that can happen in 20 or 50 or 80 hours goes far beyond what you can do in 2 or 3. And the idea that young people can't watch long things due to a lack of attention goes directly against the evidence of the increasing habit of binge watching . Forget about watchin…

Among younger generations, binge-watching is very frequently done by having the video going in one window, while doing something else like Discord in another window. Or having the video playing on a laptop while browsing TikTok on one’s phone. It is no counterevidence for declining attention spans.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#27

Post by BLKNSLVR »

AlbertCory wrote: post #19

It's Shameless Self-Promotion Time again! https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-o... I started the Cinema Club at Google, which is still going on, AFAIK. You can download the list of the 300 or so movies which I put on. I really don't care about MCU, Harry Potter, Hollywood studios, AI, or Rotten Tomatoes. It's pointless to rage about it. Just offer an alternative. I'd rather show a great movie t…

I've wanted to do something like this, but I'm not sure of the 'public viewing' licensing / permissions / royalties required. I looked it up a while back, but life got in the way and so the idea was mostly lost (thanks for the reminder).

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#28

Post by oezi »

harshreality wrote: post #12
bee_rider wrote: post #6

It is going to be weird in the future, when people realize how much use these companies get out of things like the $200 scan and perpetual license to somebody’s likeness, and as a result stop using them. All art will be presumably based on remixing a set of scans from between like 2020 and 2025.

Will that be significant 15 years from now? I imagine most work by then using 3d models that aren't based on any particular person, to avoid license fees. I can't imagine this strike ending with one-time payments for perpetual license to use actors' likenesses. However, even royalties based on screen time of AI-generated derivatives of their likenesses won't save their jobs in the longer term.

In 15 years I would expect a large percentage of stand-ins to be CG but also that there are various movies which are entirely generated bybl extensions of today's diffusion models. The actor personalities there-in will have been either created on the fly or supplied as previously created to the generator software.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#29

Post by watwut »

g42gregory wrote: post #18

As a general rule (there are notable exceptions), I don't watch any movies made past 2019/20. Most of them seem to have some sort of a messaging embedded inside. Regardless of the nature of the messaging, I figure that they should pay me for watching it, not the other way around. I hope this would change soon. John Wick was awesome though...

If you don't like movies with messaging, I have bad new for you about pretty much whole movies history. Because, oh boy, old movies were quite big on messaging ... and they even had codes/guidlines to ensure messaging is right.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#30

Post by brightlancer »

tompagenet2 wrote: post #24

Genuine question that I couldn't see in the article; does everyone on a film get residuals, or just the more notable roles like writer and actor? If not, did e.g. a lighting specialist not contribute at least as much as a person whose face was scanned?

AFAICT, all credited directors, writers and actors get residuals; production crew do not get residuals directly, but it's paid into health and retirement funds; uncredited actors get nada.

https://www.ep.com/blog/the-beginners-guide-to-film-and-tele...

https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/hollywood-unions-...

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