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The Cost of Good Movies

soaringtwenties.substack.com

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Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#41

Post by voltaireodactyl »

mk_stjames wrote: post #36

> But if I did edit a feature length film that became a major box-office hit, I should get some residuals to help tide me over. This is the line that made me sit and think about this whole construct for a bit. I've worked as an engineer for multi-billion-dollar companies. I've designed components and whole systems that then get put into mass production and stay in production for years. Safety-critical in some cases.…

FWIW residuals are all a result of union effort, so the market IS actually what’s allowing for/encouraging the residual structure. If the studios felt they could create similar products without the benefit of union workers (eg SAG, WGA, ACE, etc), they could easily break contract and start hiring from wherever they please, under whatever rates they agreed upon. Perhaps this current strike will end in just such a scenario, which would support what you’ve outlined in your comment here.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#42

Post by mk_stjames »

dijit wrote: post #38
mk_stjames wrote: post #36

> But if I did edit a feature length film that became a major box-office hit, I should get some residuals to help tide me over. This is the line that made me sit and think about this whole construct for a bit. I've worked as an engineer for multi-billion-dollar companies. I've designed components and whole systems that then get put into mass production and stay in production for years. Safety-critical in some cases.…

I had a similar discussion on Tiktok of all places regarding the Rachel Zellger comments on her playing Snow White. “I had to sit 17 hours in a Disney Princess dress! I want money for every hour it is watched” and I had a similar thought to you. I feel like its a good idea but I’ve definitely missed something with capitalism: I thought the notion of being paid for your time leaves the fruits of that labour in the rig…

That's just it- at least with a likeness- your face, your voice... I can see a bit more of a justification. It's you, and it means 'you' are a continuous part of the product directly.

But an editor? A composer? A VFX artist? Why not the light guy or the craft services people?

How about this thought experiment:

My tile guy did a bang up job on my shower when I rebuilt this house. I mean... literally this rock wall in the bathroom is a work of art. It definitely increased the value of the home. I paid about $1600 to the guy for that work, it took him about 3 days. (I actually can't remember what it cost right now and I'm not up on masonry work prices so if that number seems way off don't read into it.)

Now, about 8 years later, and the market value of this house is about double what it was before I renovated. If I sold the house now... that nice shower is definitely adding to the fact the house is worth what it is, along with the overall market increase. If I made a 180% return on this home when I sell, should I fire off a $1280 check to my tile guy?

Sound ridiculous? Or no?

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#43

Post by noelwelsh »

mk_stjames wrote: post #36

> But if I did edit a feature length film that became a major box-office hit, I should get some residuals to help tide me over. This is the line that made me sit and think about this whole construct for a bit. I've worked as an engineer for multi-billion-dollar companies. I've designed components and whole systems that then get put into mass production and stay in production for years. Safety-critical in some cases.…

The difference is 1) the power law distribution of revenue and 2) the finality of a movie.

1: A few movies (e.g. Barbie, Spiderman, Oppenheimer this year) make the majority of the money. Most movies make little. So if you pay based on expected return you probably don't pay your actors at all, or pay them peanuts. That's inequitable. But you can't pay them lots because you don't know how much money the movie is going to make. The solution is profit sharing. Most software business have much more stable income.

2: A movie, when finished, is done. There may be a director's cut in a decade or two if it's a super popular movie. There are occasionally different edits for different markets (alternate endings etc.) But basically it's done. The movie that is shown on release is the movie you watch 20 years later. So you can easily apportion credit to the actors, writers, etc. This isn't the case for software. It continually evolves. You made the initial design, but 64 other developers have worked on it since. Who gets credit?

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#44

Post by mk_stjames »

noelwelsh wrote: post #43
mk_stjames wrote: post #36

> But if I did edit a feature length film that became a major box-office hit, I should get some residuals to help tide me over. This is the line that made me sit and think about this whole construct for a bit. I've worked as an engineer for multi-billion-dollar companies. I've designed components and whole systems that then get put into mass production and stay in production for years. Safety-critical in some cases.…

The difference is 1) the power law distribution of revenue and 2) the finality of a movie. 1: A few movies (e.g. Barbie, Spiderman, Oppenheimer this year) make the majority of the money. Most movies make little. So if you pay based on expected return you probably don't pay your actors at all, or pay them peanuts. That's inequitable. But you can't pay them lots because you don't know how much money the movie is going…

Good points, helps solidify differences that I had trouble thinking about.

But to add, for me I wasn't talking about software, I actually engineered hardware- in my case, vehicle and airframe structures. Way more direct and less abstract than software. Large software systems may be some of the most difficult examples in the credit tracking problem, for sure.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#45

Post by trebhin »

mk_stjames wrote: post #42
dijit wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar discussion on Tiktok of all places regarding the Rachel Zellger comments on her playing Snow White. “I had to sit 17 hours in a Disney Princess dress! I want money for every hour it is watched” and I had a similar thought to you. I feel like its a good idea but I’ve definitely missed something with capitalism: I thought the notion of being paid for your time leaves the fruits of that labour in the rig…

That's just it- at least with a likeness- your face, your voice... I can see a bit more of a justification. It's you, and it means 'you' are a continuous part of the product directly. But an editor? A composer? A VFX artist? Why not the light guy or the craft services people? How about this thought experiment: My tile guy did a bang up job on my shower when I rebuilt this house. I mean... literally this rock wall in…

If, instead, the price of your houses halves over that time frame, do you invoice your tiler for his portion of your loss?

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#46

Post by MichaelRo »

mk_stjames wrote: post #42
dijit wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar discussion on Tiktok of all places regarding the Rachel Zellger comments on her playing Snow White. “I had to sit 17 hours in a Disney Princess dress! I want money for every hour it is watched” and I had a similar thought to you. I feel like its a good idea but I’ve definitely missed something with capitalism: I thought the notion of being paid for your time leaves the fruits of that labour in the rig…

That's just it- at least with a likeness- your face, your voice... I can see a bit more of a justification. It's you, and it means 'you' are a continuous part of the product directly. But an editor? A composer? A VFX artist? Why not the light guy or the craft services people? How about this thought experiment: My tile guy did a bang up job on my shower when I rebuilt this house. I mean... literally this rock wall in…

You could replace that rock wall with a turd wall and the house would be worth exactly the same and it's being valued that ONLY and ONLY because other houses in that location ask the same prices.

I lived to hear everything. "My property has doubled in value because of a turd wall".

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#47

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

hyperion2010 wrote: post #4

> This is why I introduced the concept at the beginning of royalties for AI work. Ultimately AI is not an alien brain generating texts or images from its own imagination. Neural networks and large language learning models input real people’s intellectual property and output that intellectual property when prompted by someone using the program. The novelness of the output is merely how the IP is reformatted to fit the…

If nobody has original ideas then where did the "classical western canon" come from? And what about all those people in the Far East, who never read Homer? Where did the Romance of the Three Kingdoms come from?

I don't understand how we got to this point, where a machine trained to reproduce the results of human creativity is taken as evidence that there exists no such thing as human creativity. What are we training LLMs with, if not the results of human creativity?

I think maybe that's all the result of growing up in an era were there is so much repetitive, trope-filled entertainment that people assume nobody could ever create an original work of art that wasn't just a stitching together of other peoples' ideas. But that doesn't make sense for the same reason I give above: those ideas must have been original at some point.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#48

Post by lapcat »

ben_w wrote: post #39
lapcat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The crux of the argument is this paragraph. But swap out AI in that paragraph for "writers who have read the classical western canon" and suddenly you realize that no one has original ideas, and that the idea that somehow humans are uniquely capable of being the primary causes of their own thoughts and owe transitive credit (and royalties!) to the great authors of all time, or their estates, is madness. I disagree.…

I would argue that autobiographical content is no less derivative than reading a book or watching a film, then retelling it. Any creativity is in the difference, and only the difference.

> Any creativity is in the difference, and only the difference.

I eagerly await your autobiographical film or novel.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#49

Post by noelwelsh »

mk_stjames wrote: post #44
noelwelsh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is 1) the power law distribution of revenue and 2) the finality of a movie. 1: A few movies (e.g. Barbie, Spiderman, Oppenheimer this year) make the majority of the money. Most movies make little. So if you pay based on expected return you probably don't pay your actors at all, or pay them peanuts. That's inequitable. But you can't pay them lots because you don't know how much money the movie is going…

Good points, helps solidify differences that I had trouble thinking about. But to add, for me I wasn't talking about software, I actually engineered hardware- in my case, vehicle and airframe structures. Way more direct and less abstract than software. Large software systems may be some of the most difficult examples in the credit tracking problem, for sure.

My bad for assuming software. In your case, I imagine it's the lack of power law returns that make profit sharing less attractive.

Re: The Cost of Good Movies

#50

Post by ben_w »

lapcat wrote: post #48
ben_w wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that autobiographical content is no less derivative than reading a book or watching a film, then retelling it. Any creativity is in the difference, and only the difference.

> Any creativity is in the difference, and only the difference. I eagerly await your autobiographical film or novel.

"I had a fairly standard upbringing.

Learned to read from the Commodore 64 user manual, Spock and Wesley Crusher as a role models. Summer holidays in Mousehole, first trip abroad was to meet my Uncle in Canberra, amongst other parts of Australia and Asia, where I totally failed to see Uluru or get beaten up by a kangaroo (though in fairness I was like nine and would have been mild and gross irresponsibility respectively on the part of my parents if they had in fact happened). Raised Catholic by an atheist father and a mother who filled the house with Hindu idols, Orthodox icons, healing crystals, and runic horoscope equipment. Saw my father suffer an epileptic fit at the kitchen table — what's now called 'tonic-clonic' but at the time we called it 'grand mal'.

You know, the usual."

(Can you guess what, if anything, is embellished?)

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