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Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

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Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#221

Post by astura »

HellDunkel wrote: post #48
keiferski wrote: post #15

Netflix thought they could take on Hollywood and beat them at their own film game. But in the process they realized that it’s not actually a game worth winning, and more importantly, that YouTube and TikTok are their real competition, not Hollywood. The future of most media is video-based, and I think Netflix probably understands this and is trying to get away from the historical model as movies you watch online and…

Can you please explain what this optimized video ecosystem of youtube is actually optimized for other than clickbait? Maybe it works for others but i fell into this for a while and now i look at it in disgust.

YouTube is optimized for unattended children.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#222

Post by ghaff »

keiferski wrote: post #213
binary132 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately all content is being optimized for increasingly brief attention spans and availability / focus.

Interestingly it’s not all content. Super long videos are doing well too, particularly interviews and video podcasts.

I assume some of this is the same trend of people putting long content on and half watching it in the background.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#224

Post by hiatus »

fnord77 wrote: post #122

Amazon already has this but as a 2nd audio track noticed this when watching Stargate SG1 the other day

I thought that was for visually impaired people to help them get a better sense of what's on the screen. Makes sense it can be used for "casual viewing" though.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#225

Post by [deleted] »

genezeta wrote: post #96

I was just wondering a bit about this. I read some of your comments here and, as I sometimes do, writing and discarding before submitting my response. But it just occurred to me... Maybe Netflix should do half-movies next. The movie is designed to be appealing on the menu, to have a good but not too engrossing first 30 minutes, and then start ramping down the budget drastically for the remaining of the film, which -i…

[deleted]

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#226

Post by katamari-damacy »

ginko wrote: post #28
katamari-damacy wrote: post #7

it's for training AI.... easier done that way, I think

That doesn't make sense. Netflix has access to the scripts.

I don’t get it. The whole point of asking the actors to say something is to have it end up in the script. I’m suggesting that whatever they want them to say is relevant to training some AI. Just a theory but in its hypothetical context it does make sense.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#227

Post by s5300 »

sourcepluck wrote: post #147
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best modern productions are now the series rather than the films as there's so much more time to tell the story and have room for characters to breathe etc. Just look at the artistry and story-telling skill displayed in both seasons of Arcane - there's so many brilliant examples of "showing, not telling" on display there. As a counter-example, I enjoyed watching the "Flow" film the other day - an animated…

Couldn't disagree more about Arcane, I thought it was the usual pedestrian writing and mish-mash of tired tropes we've come to expect from mainstream productions. A friend was pushing me to give it a try, a friend who likes Marvel, and the Miles Morales spiderman film, who plays League, who was excited by Baldur's Gate, etc etc. I tried to say "no, there is no chance of me enjoying that, it'll be the usual drivel", b…

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Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#228

Post by giraffe_lady »

cs702 wrote: post #191

Nowadays, whenever I browse Netflix, I feel like that Bruce Springsteen song, "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)."[a] Sure, there are lots of choices, but they all kinda suck . I find myself wondering, why? The OP weaves an insightful, opinionated narrative that explains how we got here. Much of it rings true. This passage, in particular struck a chord with me: > Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told m…

TV was also like this though. It's one of the first things you learn in a 20th century media class. Early TV shows were adapted from radio play scripts, and later written by radio play scriptwriters moving into the new format. That structure and its conventions stayed strongly influential right up until the end of prominent network TV shows.

TV show creators understood and planned for people watching their shows in a variety of environments, with varying degrees and kinds of attention. A lot of what made for example X-files and Sopranos compelling was a willingness to break this convention, so it was still firmly in place by the late 90s.

You could also maybe reasonably claim that all TV shows before those were bad as well. But then you need to view netflix as reverting to the norm rather than being a novel travesty. We are simply exiting a 20 year anomaly where TV was good.

I'm not quite making that argument here though. I think there was good TV before the 90s, so I think this is a constraint on the form that good creators can work through and still make compelling art. Why netflix can't is an interesting question but I think this avenue is a dead end for understanding it.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#229

Post by katamari-damacy »

bilekas wrote: post #69
katamari-damacy wrote: post #7

it's for training AI.... easier done that way, I think

Aha that's a really interesting tinfoil hat theory! I doubt it's true but reminds me of the recent YouTube drama about Google using the transcript to train their AI. Seeing Spotify generate ai music to bloat their library it is a nice harmless conspiracy theory for fun if nothing else.

Yeah we specialise in nice harmless conspiracy theories that are fun and delicate

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#230

Post by [deleted] »

cs702 wrote: post #191

Nowadays, whenever I browse Netflix, I feel like that Bruce Springsteen song, "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)."[a] Sure, there are lots of choices, but they all kinda suck . I find myself wondering, why? The OP weaves an insightful, opinionated narrative that explains how we got here. Much of it rings true. This passage, in particular struck a chord with me: > Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told m…

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