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How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

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221–230 of 264 posts

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#221
post #88

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…

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.

I think you're wrong. A lot of people who dislike AI in art are putting their money (and their actions) where their mouth is. They don't buy stuff done with AI, ask authors whether they use it, and ban it/kick it from their communities. I've seen it and done it.

I can't tell you whether this will be sustained in the future, but it's disingenuous to claim it doesn't happen.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Vancouver ruins a lot of tv shows. Chicago? Nope, Vancouver. New York? Nope, Vancouver. SF? Nope, Vancouver! On the flip side, they use a lot of local place names and things, so it’s like a little in-joke when you notice them.

> Living in Vancouver ruins a lot of tv shows. Chicago? Nope, Vancouver. New York? Nope, Vancouver. SF? Nope, Vancouver! Also Toronto / southern Ontario. If you see a city scene and there's streetcar tracks, it was probably shot in Toronto. See opening shot of this scene in Reacher s02e04: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MQQrvYjdbQ

Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall is always funny to see. It was Vought HQ in The Boys and UN headquarters in The Expanse while the show runs were overlapping.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#223
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…

Practical effects still beat CGI most of the time. AI doesn’t help with that.

AI may replace classic CGI

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#224
post #175

Tangential to this, I worked in Hollywood for a while. The studio I worked at had a gaggle of unpaid interns. There was a mix of normal kids and the sons/daughters of prominent Hollywood execs. I would agree, in many respects, that unpaid internships are glorified daycare. It isn't like a tech internship. No one gets a project to own. The reason these roles existed at all was because it didn't cost anything. Paying t…

My guess is that they had a better understanding of the social aspect of the industry (or work in general). They were there make a good impression and build connections

I think there’s a lot to that. Hollywood is very relationship driven.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Imagining someone sneaking across the border from Mexico so they can work under the table to afford a $4k/mo 1BR in Hollywood

WalterBright got flagged into oblivion because of a war with reality. He said something to the effect of immigration causing/keeping real estate high/unaffordable. This IS what is happening. I live here in West LA. Immigration is causing this. It’s basic supply and demand. I live on one side of a 2 family in a 2 bdrm and rent out the living room space to make it more affordable. Next to me is a 6 unit building, all 2…

> He said something to the effect of immigration causing/keeping real estate high/unaffordable. This IS what is happening

Oh looking forward to some stats or estimates or some economic data then. Because it's well documented and known that California doesn't meet housing build targets unlike many cities in Texas which also have high immigration and yet have declining rents and home prices

> Next to me is a 6 unit building, all 2 bdrm units. Everyone is a recent immigrant from either Guatemala or Mexico

Oh okay anecdotes. Surely the actual hard evidence is coming later...

Okay, no evidence or economic stats or even theories at all. Wild. Zero grappling with why housing goes up in cost here vs down in other metro areas with similar high rates of immigration

> I work for Google and make relatively great money.

My God. You can work at Google and have your economic understanding of the world around you just be "I see a lot of immigrants. That must be the issue"

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#226
post #140

My take on the problems including cost sickness: 1) Supply/demand. There's actually a shortage of quality movies relative to what the market will bear, one need only look at the occasional breakout hit like Obsession to see that it's possible to make a ton of money if you understand the demand signals. 2) Demand signals. Median age of someone with greenlight authority is ~62. In the 80s, there were 30-year-olds runni…

Ad 2.) 30 years old are on the youtube. They do their own thing. And it is also actually ok to do entertainment for older people, including boomers. People act as if there was something shameful about over 40 existing and have entertainment for them. It is as ok as enrertainment for young.

My 70-something mother loves youtube.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#227

To be fair: the quality of movies produced by Hollywood has gone rapidly downhill already in the 1990s. You only need to compare the movies Quentin Tarantino makes; now personally I think Pulp Fiction is still by far his best work, but I concede that the movies he created lateron were above average (though I would not go as far as many others, who'd rate these in the 8 to 10 point ranges; I'd go more between 6 to 7 o…

Investment-driven development. When it's no longer about creating something compelling, but about convincing the investors that banking the production means a fairly safe ROI, you stop getting creative works by auteurs and you start getting sequels, remakes, and low-stake, inoffensive, mediocre, forgettable, bland sludge. At the upper end, investors give directors checklists and guidelines to limit their authorial vo…

AKA "Love of money is the root of all evil."

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“If you die in Canada, you die in real life!” https://m.xkcd.com/180/

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link to a high quality example of a short drama? The article mentions ShortMax's "Too Late! The Daughter of Olympus Forsakes You" and NetShort's "One Move God Mode". I found something on YouTube for both, but there's zero chance what I saw was Hollywood level quality (unless you really hate Hollywood movies!)

Most of these things have awful plots. As yet, the AI systems used are not very good at plotting. If given a screenplay and character sheets, they can do reasonably well. But the "generate a 60 episode drama from one prompt" jobs are not very good. This is more of a problem with the Asian drama industry than the technology. There are not that many different plots. The visuals are consistently good now. If you put in…

Here's a half-decent example.[1] The visuals are good, the plot is adequate, and the audio is poor.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5w1jiTYrTw

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#230
post #30

When corporations grow to a certain size, they become banks. The same thing kind of happens to industries when they get dominated by a few large players. The large players are banks. The core of the industry becomes a form of finance. Hollywood is now the financial capital of the film industry, not where films are made. Hollywood finances films.

Years ago I learned that GM’s financial arm made more money than the car company. The other day I also read that airlines make more money from selling points than from flying people.

Crazy world.

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