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

211–220 of 264 posts

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#211

Post by class3shock »

morkalork wrote: post #169
wingworks wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the Stargate series were filmed in Canada too. If you pay attention you'll realise the planets they visit all look like Canadian forest, or an old quarry filming location.

Even funnier is when actors and extras re-appear across series. Or the random extra has an unapologetically Canadian accent. Xfiles and SG1 are guilty of this.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0233304/?ref_=tt_cst_t_9&_ssoLoo...

Stargate Universe once, Atlantis twice, and SG-1 six times!

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#212

Post by mrloopex »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #120
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…

Cape cod. In the 1980s the rich people had trouble getting their trash picked up because no one could afford to live within an hour of the wealthiest areas.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#213

Post by mrloopex »

mc32 wrote: post #75
lenerdenator wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. See the Kansas City Chiefs. Clark Hunt is the largest recipient of welfare in the entire region.

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.

People are also pretty fucking dumb and vote for stadia instead of schools, parks, and libraries.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#214

Post by thaumasiotes »

dexterdog wrote: post #156
VanTheBrand wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your information about ticket sales is out of date. This year is on track to outsell pre Covid years.

Adjusted for inflation and population?

I probably wouldn't try to adjust for both of those at once. You could ask whether inflation-adjusted revenue is up, you could ask whether per capita ticket sales are up, but I don't think the combined concept, whatever it might be, is very meaningful.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#215

Post by stephen_g »

throwup238 wrote: post #19
noja wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why though? I thought Hollywood had their own accounting rules which always meant movies made a loss. What are they paying the tax on?

Hollywood accounting rules are regular accounting rules (GAAP). The only reason “Hollywood accounting” is a thing is because of a bunch of actors who didn’t know the difference between “gross” and “net” points got screwed over. Everyone involved still pays their taxes, but the special purpose vehicle used to organize the production is essentially a passthrough entity.

That seems an incredibly generous description (or breathtakingly naive, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt because hopefully most people aren't that credulous).

The point of Hollywood accounting is to intentionally create enough inflated expenses (billed from companies controlled by the studios or related parties of the producers etc.) to ensure that the net profit is zero or less, even when the film actually generated a lot of income.

It's true that tax gets paid eventually (and somewhere, maybe a tax haven) but it is intentionally creative accounting designed to minimise tax and screw people out of their royalties.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#216

Post by stephen_g »

jezzamon wrote: post #46
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…

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…

Honestly I hope people's distaste for AI generated content grows stronger. The existing mass media is bad and inauthentic enough, AI content is even worse...

I find myself mostly watching small creators on YouTube these days and only pay to watch a film if it's unusually good... But I never want to pay a cent to consume the output of some statistical model.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#217

Post by class3shock »

moate wrote: post #165
expedition32 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hundred years ago they were practically giving away land in LA. The real estate value has flipped.

You, uh, you're not from New Jersey are you? I promise you, we're not giving away land around here.

Central NJ (if you believe it exists) is cheaper depending on the particular town but yeah, not being given away by any means.

https://www.zillow.com/home-values/11267/edison-nj/ https://www.zillow.com/home-values/12447/los-angeles-ca/

Might be opposite sides of the country but CA and NJ are lock step when it comes to making it unaffordable for younger generations to buy homes.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#218

Post by the_af »

mistyvales wrote: post #162
andyfilms1 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but saying that AI is the magic bullet to solve this is completely speculative. If and when a fully GenAI film is released and performs well at the box office, than I'm sure the industry will align itself to the new direction. But pretending like that situation is an inevitability is just wishful thinking...any number of things could, or could not happen.

If that happens, I'll never watch a new movie or show again. I'm already hating a lot of Netflix-ified shows that pander to phone slaves with no attention span, so have stopped that dreck already. I have tens of thousands of hours of old films and shows to watch and would never finish before I die, so I am good.

I'm with you. When you think about it, what you call "Netflix-ified" demonstrates this race to the bottom started even before than Gen AI. People claimed Netflix produced shows and movies done "by algorithm", and in a way, this is the first kind of thing that can be replaced by AI, because it wasn't that good to begin with. Sadly.

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#219

Post by s1artibartfast »

madrox wrote: 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

Re: How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

#220

Post by the_af »

iusewindows wrote: post #157
andyfilms1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a few notable exceptions (James Cameron) the film industry is largely unconcerned with "possibility." I think this is often why there is such a big misunderstanding from tech folks about how movies are made, since tech is very feature and tool driven whereas filmmaking is very much process-driven. The Odyssey was shot on IMAX cameras half the size of a car that weighed 400lbs. It's easy to call that out as being…

Nolan is irrelevant. He is the last of a dying breed. Once him and his ilk are gone, studios will go 100% into AI slop, Oscars be damned. No company is funneling 200 million into risky Oscar bait when they can make one hour Tiktok equivalents and get higher ROI. Movie theaters as a whole might go the Blockbuster route in a decade or two. The younger generations are not supporting the film industry with their eyeballs…

> Nolan is irrelevant

Irrelevant to whom? He's not irrelevant to me and many movie fans.

Also, you are lecturing someone who seems to actually work or has worked on the movie industry.

Post reply on HN