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How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

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Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people, especially left leaning and young people, are very against any AI use and especially for AI pictures or video. For them it's very cringe-worthy. So that would all need to change somehow. Remember that a lot of the people driving opinions on stuff are the artists that would be displaced by this technology. Also... Actors aren't hired based on acting skill. AI can't replace the notoriety part of why st…

Once it’s good enough no one will care. A green room in Atlanta can become Venice Beach. Actors will still be in demand, at least leads and most speaking roles. 3000 extras, that’s going to be AI. My hope would be this allows for hyper small budget shows to rival what takes millions today. Maybe we can actually get some creative stories instead of Marvel slop fest 43

> My hope would be this allows for hyper small budget shows to rival what takes millions today.

No way. Small creatives will go elsewhere. Unless the structural "winner takes all" economy changes, small players will have no chance, especially when they have to use monopoly expensive tech.

Good writing already left hollywood, hollywood is already repetitive reboot factory.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people, especially left leaning and young people, are very against any AI use and especially for AI pictures or video. For them it's very cringe-worthy. So that would all need to change somehow. Remember that a lot of the people driving opinions on stuff are the artists that would be displaced by this technology. Also... Actors aren't hired based on acting skill. AI can't replace the notoriety part of why st…

> AI can't replace the notoriety part of why studios hire actors. I mean it probably can if a few famous actors license their likeness to be used in AI films. And it's probably only a matter of time until fully AI actors get marketed and licensed for use in AI films. I don't see a fundamental reason why AI actors couldn't build the same kind of notoriety and following.

> I don't see a fundamental reason why AI actors couldn't build the same kind of notoriety and following.

Can AI's trash a room at Hotel Marmont? Dump their girlfriends when said girlfriends turn 25? Become Scientologists?

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#83

The article repeatedly mentions how production moved to Atlanta due to tax incentives. Even that is a race to the bottom, as Disney moved production of Marvel movies out of Atlanta last year to the UK where they got better tax incentives. Even the undercutting cities are being undercut.

What has yet to be mentioned is why Hollywood, in the first place? Out of the many reasons, one is quite simple: daylight. This used to be really important with film. Historically, this was why efforts to move filming to somewhere like 'Scunthorpe, UK' didn't really work, despite tax fiddles, because you need light and some places just don't have it. But this doesn't matter now, because film has moved on, there is no…

Why Hollywood?

Because Edison and Patents in New York which was the original centre for filmmaking in America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company...

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#84
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This works because a movie is not a separate accounting entity. Each movie is set up as a separate legal business entity (LLC). That's the SPV (special purpose vehicle). https://www.google.com/search?q=each+hollywood+movie+is+a+se... There's also a separate LLC for the parent production company. The production company LLC can also send invoices to the individual movie LLC for services. People can get creative with p…

Why would that matter if it's all still a subsidiary of Apple/Amazon/Disney/Comcast/Netflix/Sony? The relevant taxing authorities would be concerned with the parent companies' financials, not the subsidiaries. Moving money from right hand to left hand doesn't change one's tax liabilities. "Hollywood accounting" only refers to civil disputes due to insufficiently defined contracts between two businesses (usually actor…

The benefit of “Hollywood accounting” isn’t necessarily tax avoidance; that’s what the tax credits are for. Rather, “Hollywood accounting” provides a way to avoid paying profit-based compensation.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#85
post #27

An interesting read but also feels like the rearranging of the deckchairs on the Titanic given the forthcoming disruption from generative AI in this industry. I spent some time last month with a relative in the industry (camera operator and producer) and he already uses some very sophisticated AI to map out scenes and shots in gen ai full video before they shoot IRL. It's mostly a cost saving exercise as well as occa…

Man, this is so misguided.... 1. Stagecraft/virtual production is a thing, yes, but the backgrounds are not "AI rendered," they're 3D scenes built in Unreal. They have to be, because they need to dynamically react to the camera moving to create parallax. 2. Yes, some people are using AI to plan scenes. With respect to your relative, those people are not the ones getting hired on large projects. When someone is hired…

Who cares about Oscars? It's about sales and mind-share. Ticket sales still have not recovered to pre-COVID levels, and they were already in a severe downward trend before the pandemic.

The trend is that increasingly, the entertainment people consume comes from small-time creators. And these small creators have thus far had very little capacity to create truly visually appealing content and take on more ambitious works. And still, they've been taking mindshare from the movie industry.

Increasingly sophisticated experiences are becoming possible for these creators via AI tools. Where do you think this is going? Keep on laughing it up at your award ceremonies, but the audience is moving on.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#86
post #27

An interesting read but also feels like the rearranging of the deckchairs on the Titanic given the forthcoming disruption from generative AI in this industry. I spent some time last month with a relative in the industry (camera operator and producer) and he already uses some very sophisticated AI to map out scenes and shots in gen ai full video before they shoot IRL. It's mostly a cost saving exercise as well as occa…

Man, this is so misguided.... 1. Stagecraft/virtual production is a thing, yes, but the backgrounds are not "AI rendered," they're 3D scenes built in Unreal. They have to be, because they need to dynamically react to the camera moving to create parallax. 2. Yes, some people are using AI to plan scenes. With respect to your relative, those people are not the ones getting hired on large projects. When someone is hired…

The future is probably not 100% generated, but probably a mix of generation + animation + motion capture. AI is not going to be able to replicate the deep and affecting performances you get from humans—I fully believe it can recreate some aspects of the visual arts, but no way is it going to get to the point where it will be the best of the best. It may become good enough, which is a thing and will make an impact, but I think creatives will still want that kind of control.

And when we see the edges of that control, people will be interested in seeing things that make it "the old way," part of the reason you see a lot more practical effects these days, and I would include the background-in-unreal backdrops there, because they read as more real than actors in front of a green screen—for reasons that are totally unconscious unless you are highly trained in the differences.

While I do think gen AI is going to change how movies and TV shows get made, anyone telling you it will be a whole hog replacement has not studied the history of multimedia and probably hasn't made anything that required a high-level of vision themselves.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#88
post #27

An interesting read but also feels like the rearranging of the deckchairs on the Titanic given the forthcoming disruption from generative AI in this industry. I spent some time last month with a relative in the industry (camera operator and producer) and he already uses some very sophisticated AI to map out scenes and shots in gen ai full video before they shoot IRL. It's mostly a cost saving exercise as well as occa…

A lot of people, especially left leaning and young people, are very against any AI use and especially for AI pictures or video. For them it's very cringe-worthy. So that would all need to change somehow. Remember that a lot of the people driving opinions on stuff are the artists that would be displaced by this technology. Also... Actors aren't hired based on acting skill. AI can't replace the notoriety part of why st…

Actions matter more than words. Sure, they're complaining about AI, but consuming AI content more and more.

It's a bit like people who complain that everything on the news is always bad. Everyone hates it, yet it's what everyone consumes.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#89
post #27

An interesting read but also feels like the rearranging of the deckchairs on the Titanic given the forthcoming disruption from generative AI in this industry. I spent some time last month with a relative in the industry (camera operator and producer) and he already uses some very sophisticated AI to map out scenes and shots in gen ai full video before they shoot IRL. It's mostly a cost saving exercise as well as occa…

A lot of people, especially left leaning and young people, are very against any AI use and especially for AI pictures or video. For them it's very cringe-worthy. So that would all need to change somehow. Remember that a lot of the people driving opinions on stuff are the artists that would be displaced by this technology. Also... Actors aren't hired based on acting skill. AI can't replace the notoriety part of why st…

I hope you’re right because I like the film industry a lot. But I worry this will be a repeat of the model versus cgi thing where many of the purists were converted by the cost to get the picture they can seen in their minds get made and seen by the masses.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#90
post #17

Nothing new. When I was in college down in LA I lived in a very small town founded by stunt people. Probably 80% of the people there were in the stunt business. Every few months they were off to another state or country for filming. Hollywood is just for the studio execs now, everyone else flies to whatever country offers the best tax breaks for them to film. They go to some pretty incredible lengths too, A friend of…

Aging myself here but growing up in a "movie set city" (definitely not LA) in the 90's meant getting rerouted on the way to school because The Wire needed our block again. It's funny to see how the article shows this wasn't just a local annoyance back then, but an early sign of a much bigger, long running shift in where and how Hollywood actually makes movies.

Shooting in Baltimore for a story that is about Baltimore is different than shooting in a different city as a stand-in for the city in the script though. That's just normal location shooting.
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