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Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

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Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#161
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but plots are only half the story. I'd be very grateful if they could give me some sample scenes (ideally automatically, so I don't have to go through the trouble of starting them every single time). I mean, how do people even decide whether a movie might be for them without having first inspected a good portion of it?

It's weird to me how the first two replies to this comment completely missed the sarcasm. Do we need to start using the "/s" tag here like became necessary on reddit? I don't like the thought, but maybe it's a different issue in this case-- more of a non-native-English or on-the-spectrum thing than an inexperienced teenager thing? I hope so.

Any time one is tempted to post a sarcastic comment, it's good to re-read Poe's law[0] first. It does in fact always apply when posting on the internet.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#163
As a young film student I was once going to a film industry meeting on behalf of my professor who was fed up with TV executives at that point. It was essentially a fancy dinner with all kinds of people from the German TV industry explaining why the stuff they do is so bad and why it has to be. It was incredibly fatalistic.

Money quote of the evening: "Our average viewer is between 60 and 65 and they are not 100% there mentally when viewing, so it needs to be so simple that you can still follow along while you are ironing your shirts."

Nobody there believed they were making good entertainment, everbody in fact hated it and yet they all said it has to be that way. Theh knew they are losing the young audiences, but didn't know what to do.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see this working for individuals but what about families? And although i dont feel thinking too much about netflixes business it raises the question if this would requre to adapt their model to an ad based model rather than subscription. Anyhow- i see a gigantic problem coming towards us caused by rapidly decreasing attention capacities and this does not help.

Not sure what you mean by families, but I would be willing to bet that most families today already let their children watch more YouTube family content than Netflix content. And I do believe Netflix introduced a cheaper ad tier recently?

Every parent I know forbids Youtube, for obvious reasons. Even the content on the Kids service is utter crap (I know several who tried the service and dropped it.)

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#165
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to me how the first two replies to this comment completely missed the sarcasm. Do we need to start using the "/s" tag here like became necessary on reddit? I don't like the thought, but maybe it's a different issue in this case-- more of a non-native-English or on-the-spectrum thing than an inexperienced teenager thing? I hope so.

Being English-as-in-UK I often run into situations where my dry/sarcastic humour completely fails to be clear to USians. Then again from the UK POV the leftpondians barely count as native English speakers anyway ;)

Yet you'll find sources that claim spoken American English is closer to historical British English, because of some aspects like rhoticity. [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-p...

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some that I've enjoyed recently (or rewatched): Good One (2024) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30319516/ Strange Darling (2023) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22375054/ The Creator (2023) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11858890/ The Night House (2020) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9731534/ The Empty Man (2020) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5867314/ Possessor (2020) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5918982/ Booksmart (2019) https…

Wow, great to see The Fall is on Mubi. That's one I had to pirate as it wasn't available anywhere.

It's getting a 4k Blu-ray release soon AFAIK. Will definitely pick it up.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#167
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to me how the first two replies to this comment completely missed the sarcasm. Do we need to start using the "/s" tag here like became necessary on reddit? I don't like the thought, but maybe it's a different issue in this case-- more of a non-native-English or on-the-spectrum thing than an inexperienced teenager thing? I hope so.

Being English-as-in-UK I often run into situations where my dry/sarcastic humour completely fails to be clear to USians. Then again from the UK POV the leftpondians barely count as native English speakers anyway ;)

(So I guess "Rightpondia" would be Airstrip One?)

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#169

You can't do 100% "show, don't tell" unless your movie is 15 hours long. It's always about balance, and it's probably one of the hardest challenges in scriptwriting and directing. Netflix movies have always leaned more toward the "tell" side, and this feels like an open acknowledgment of it. Small digression: Turkish series have been doing an extreme version of "telling" for ages. I've been watching the cheesiest one…

> You can't do 100% "show, don't tell" unless your movie is 15 hours long You most certainly can, though it relies on trusting the audience. Flow (2024) Sasquatch Sunset (2024) Hundreds of Beavers (2022)

It also probably depends on having a generally undistracted audience which you probably don't have a lot of the time especially outside of a movie theater.
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