Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

statsignificant.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 264 posts

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#111

Post by mc32 »

lenerdenator wrote: post #106
mc32 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sports teams are an interesting one because often times these things go on the ballot and people vote for that. So it looks like people and municipalities have varying reasons for keeping a team. That said sometimes it just doesn’t make business sense for a team to stay and other times a municipality decides it’s not worth the cost to keep a pro team.

In the case of the Chiefs, Jackson Co., MO voters voted not to fund a new stadium. The reasoning was pretty simple: the Hunt family is worth $25 billion [0]. They could likely pay for any sort of improvements to Arrowhead, or to replace it altogether, without taxpayer funds, which comes from people in a metro area where the average income is on the lower side of things in a time when costs for everything keep going u…

I also don’t like subsidizing sports teams. To me it doesn’t make too much sense. Yes I know fans can be pretty loyal and sometimes that team is sort of like a pet dog. They love it through highs and lows. It’s something that can provide some identity to some as well as live vicariously through them. I get it but I feel sometimes you gotta let boyhood ideas and dreams go.

But hey sometimes people vote for their teams to stay despite the negative monetary ROI.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#112

Post by Ekaros »

UltraSane wrote: post #48
dotBen wrote: 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…

People want to see expensive effort in movies they have to buy tickets to see and AI is the opposite of effort.

Expensive movies are liked because they look impressive much more so than cheap movies. Say Titanic in past. Or Lord of The Rings. If AI can do the same they don't actually care if it was expensive or not.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#114

Post by xp84 »

andyfilms1 wrote: post #74
dotBen wrote: 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…

> half the movies at the Oscars last year were shot on film, so the notion that all filmmaking is just going to turn into pixel soup being generated from prompts

> audiences don't want to watch content created that way.

I want to point out a couple things. Not that I'd assert that you're wrong in basically your whole post. But...

Filmed movies and normal television programs aren't competing only with other content coming from (so-called) 'Hollywood studios.' They're competing for audience attention with all content, and to be thorough with any other activity people might get up to. The potential damage to (so-called) Hollywood is equal in these two scenarios:

1. 50% of films and TV shows shift production to AI-first: They use no real shots, they just motion capture a few actors and use AI and Unreal sets built primarily with AI and put the whole thing together digitally.

2. Of the time per week that people today spend watching films and TV, people shift 50% of that time to watching cheap, often-AI-produced junk on TikTok. Or for that matter, it doesn't even need to be AI-produced junk - it could just be influencers screwing around / ranting / doing sponsored content / etc.

Either way we lost 50% of the jobs. As for whether audiences want to watch that content, I'm starting to be concerned that we (human consumers) have lost most of our control here. Most people today consume content in a few ways:

1. Algorithmic feeds show us content, one item at a time, decided by a platform owner (Meta, Google/YouTube).

2. Streaming services. Again, algorithmic. You have to scroll like 12 sections down to get to "Resume Watching" - past 11 other carousels of What Platform Owner Wants You To See

Distant third: Movie theaters, but people usually go specifically to see a certain film. What movies you even know about hinges on either a platform owner deciding to show you a video discussing a movie, or ad spend. And some people block ads, and most others try their best to skip them - this is a far cry from the 90s, when movie ads were a staple of every commercial break. I used to at least know of every film in an 8-screen theater at all times, able to give a brief synopsis of the premise, just based on the linear TV advertising I saw.

Anyway just a long-winded way to say, don't underestimate the power of platform owners to force-feed us AI garbage and artificially generate "demand" if they decide that it's in their interest to - and this is exactly their playbook due to the cost savings potential. Same reason Spotify started padding their first-party playlists with AI slop.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#115

Post by preommr »

bsenftner wrote: post #29
intheitmines wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super interesting, do you feel this is death by 1000 cuts or can you point at the economics no longer working as small handful of causes (i.e. rise of cost of living in LA, move towards direct to streaming rather than theater releases, AI workflows)?

I think the economics of a global entertainment and wealthy persons' playground is what is "ruining" Los Angeles. Earlier in my time there, I spent time in an uber-wealthy circle and basically encountered Epstein-class people doing what they do with the children of their own staff, and that is when I noped out of that entire social circle. There is not much that can be done when you see such wealth pursuing such agen…

> encountered Epstein-class people doing what they do with the children of their own staff

kind of glossing over something pretty major

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#116

Post by gtowey »

sublinear wrote: post #45
dotBen wrote: 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…

I still don't understand why there's such a race to the bottom. If they don't want to make a movie properly, why make it at all? The corner cutting across the board has become so bad that these movies are unwatchable. This isn't even a new problem. A lot of traditional CGI can still be bad enough to ruin the illusion when it's the state of the art and a lot of attention to detail went into it. We've been circling the…

> If they don't want to make a movie properly, why make it at all?

Hollywood moves have little to do with art or even entrainment for that matter. They are simply revenue generating machines. Rich people invest in a movie production and expect a return. Hollywood moves don't take artistic risks anymore which is why franchises have become such a big thing. If it make money before, it will probably make money again. Even if it's bad, fans of the last movie will buy a ticket just to see. If it's bad, well, you have their money already!

It's pretty similar to Silicon valley these days. The technology is just a vehicle to produce a return on VC money.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#117

Post by morkalork »

stephenhuey wrote: post #76
datakan wrote: 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…

A few days ago I visited the little picturesque town of Hope, British Columbia. While driving down the Main Street, I saw a dozen chainsaw carvings of wildlife. I thought, why does that one look like Rambo? Found out the first movie was filmed there in 1982. The movie took place in the fictional town of Hope, Washington. When the movie begins, you see Sylvester Stallone walking into town under the real “Welcome to Ho…

A staggering amount of film and TV is shot in Canada.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#118

Post by morkalork »

moate wrote: post #95
anamax wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

As someone who originally comes from a field that cannot be consumed by AI anytime soon (food service. AI can't actually be eaten) it's insane watching tech-dorks think "nobody actually cares about what they buy, which is why they will suck down all this slop because ultimately they just want output". Some of us remember the story of the Luddites and hope that this time might be different with 200 years of social pro…

>food service

>nobody actually cares about what they buy, which is why they will suck down all this slop

McDonald's exists?

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#119

Post by [deleted] »

mc32 wrote: post #111
lenerdenator wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the Chiefs, Jackson Co., MO voters voted not to fund a new stadium. The reasoning was pretty simple: the Hunt family is worth $25 billion [0]. They could likely pay for any sort of improvements to Arrowhead, or to replace it altogether, without taxpayer funds, which comes from people in a metro area where the average income is on the lower side of things in a time when costs for everything keep going u…

I also don’t like subsidizing sports teams. To me it doesn’t make too much sense. Yes I know fans can be pretty loyal and sometimes that team is sort of like a pet dog. They love it through highs and lows. It’s something that can provide some identity to some as well as live vicariously through them. I get it but I feel sometimes you gotta let boyhood ideas and dreams go. But hey sometimes people vote for their teams…

[deleted]

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#120

Post by atleastoptimal »

datakan wrote: 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…

This seems inevitable for most industries in the US (car/general manufacturing)

1. City/region becomes a boom-town based on a new high profit-margin industry

2. As that region becomes more wealthy, labor increases in price, thus there is more incentive to seek labor/resources for that industry outside the city/region

3. City/region hollows out of middle-class level jobs for the industry, retains ceremonial labor and executive offices.

Post reply on HN