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An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

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Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#71

Post by sangnoir »

bennesvig wrote: post #10
thewopr wrote: post #3

I am not an insider but wow, this really resonated with me. > We pursued a potentially great summer movie like Edge of Tomorrow and completely botched its release. Edge of Tomorrow was a pretty solid movie. I would absolutely have gone to it in the theater, but the marketing just did not connect with me. I've run into this with a number of movies now.

It didn't help that they changed the name to Live Die Repeat for its home release. My wife doesn't like action movies or Tom Cruise but loved Edge of Tomorrow. That movie was definitely a missed opportunity.

So the creatives delivered, but Marketing botched it? This point negates the theme OP is running with in most of the letter, implying rank and file office plebs are doing a great job, but the filmmakers are letting them down.

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#72

Post by sangnoir »

jedberg wrote: post #46
kiba wrote: post #2

I wonder why story quality in movies such a toss-up? They got screenwriters, producers, and editors, right? You think movie studios should had managed to figure out 'consistent quality' by now.

Sunk cost fallacy. A director shoots bad material, they don't go back and start over. They make due with what they have because of what they've already spent on it. Disney does the opposite. Look at what we've heard about the Rogue One -- the studio felt that it was good but not great and sent them back for a whole bunch of (expensive) reshoots. Pixar does the same. If they don't like the final product they'll rip it…

> If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again.

WB dies that too, but they can't seem to do it right. In the aftermath of Batman v Superman flopping, WB panicked and asked Ayer to "punch up" Suicide Squad adding more humor and faster pacing - this included reshoots. SS wasn't originally meant to be a blockbuster, but an end of summer fun movie

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#73

Post by aidenn0 »

20yrs_no_equity wrote: post #62
alexandercrohde wrote: post #48

The thing that I think makes this letter great, and the reason I upvoted it on a tech site, that I haven't seen anybody else mention yet is this: it's a universal point. Movies aside, I think his point applies to a lot of other industries, "If I worked at a donut stand, and I kept fucking up donuts, I'd be fired. Even if I made a tiny decent one every now and then, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna get fired." I have foun…

My experience made me identify with this letter very closely-- in broad generalized terms, you often have "management" which is a bunch of "business" people who are directing "creatives" (whether software engineers or movie artists) based on the management's perception of the state of the market. Unfortunately, there is always a tendency to believe your own PR, believe you know more about things than you do, and to b…

The problem is that (general intelligence aside) management skills are orthogonal to engineering/art/other creative work. This means that it takes a lot of work to find and train creators to be managers. On top of that (at least in engineering), a large fraction of the quality engineers I know actively do not want to be managers.

If we haven't seen as many screw-ups due to lack of managerial skills among engineer-managers as we've seen screw-ups due to lack of engineering savvy among MBA-managers, it's at least partly due to the fact that there are a lot more of the latter than the former.

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#74

Post by aidenn0 »

cycomachead wrote: post #57
Throwaway23412 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the weird thing. Is Disney Studios printing money because they're so incredibly excellent at making movies or because their competitors are doing so poorly at competing?

I'd say somewhere in the middle. Disney has gone through some _really_ rough periods both in the '90s and '00s but now they seem to be on a pretty good upswing. Interestingly, it seems like a significant part of that upswing is through acquisitions (aforementioned Marvel and DC, also Pixar), though they still have an amazing breadth of talent and style.

I know nothing about how Disney works internally, but it seems that they've done cross-pollination with their acquisitions as well (I've seen John Lasseter credited on more than one non-pixar film, for example).

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#75

Post by aidenn0 »

jedberg wrote: post #46
kiba wrote: post #2

I wonder why story quality in movies such a toss-up? They got screenwriters, producers, and editors, right? You think movie studios should had managed to figure out 'consistent quality' by now.

Sunk cost fallacy. A director shoots bad material, they don't go back and start over. They make due with what they have because of what they've already spent on it. Disney does the opposite. Look at what we've heard about the Rogue One -- the studio felt that it was good but not great and sent them back for a whole bunch of (expensive) reshoots. Pixar does the same. If they don't like the final product they'll rip it…

FWIW according to the Rogue One filmmakers, the reshoots were planned for and fit in with the already planned shots. Nothing like what happened with Toy Story 2.

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#76

Post by SpaceManiac »

sangnoir wrote: post #71
bennesvig wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't help that they changed the name to Live Die Repeat for its home release. My wife doesn't like action movies or Tom Cruise but loved Edge of Tomorrow. That movie was definitely a missed opportunity.

So the creatives delivered, but Marketing botched it? This point negates the theme OP is running with in most of the letter, implying rank and file office plebs are doing a great job, but the filmmakers are letting them down.

I suppose it's up to interpretation; I got more of an "upper executive mismanagement" vibe, with which Edge of Tomorrow is consistent, than "crew vs filmmakers".

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#77

Post by [deleted] »

CaptSpify wrote: post #52
santaclaus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you think something happened to the music industry? It's still alive and well. Honestly I am more excited by music now than I've ever been. People often cite the 90s and early 2000s as these halcyon days, but I feel like interesting music is way more accessible now than it has ever been. I can queue up tunes from virtually any independent label at the press of a button, I can order vinyl and have it on m…

I think that's the point though. The music industry is thriving, because a lot of the dinosaurs passed away, and the newer businesses took it into a new direction. It was a bad business to be in for a while. Now is the start of the bad time to be in major movies. Independent and niche movies are getting more time than ever, because bigger studios can't figure out how to cope with companies like Netflix.

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#78

Post by maxerickson »

bitJericho wrote: post #61
je42 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney looks like that have a process to deliver great movies. They are not hoping have one. There are engineering one. Repeatable.

At the same time their movie are starting to wear on me, being that the arc is always so similar. If star wars 8 fails to be a novel movie, I think things will not go well for ep 9. Same goes for althe marvel movies.

The Marvel movies are already formulaic.

The reasonable success of Ant Man and The Guardians of the Galaxy sort of points to them having a good formula.

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#79

Post by maxerickson »

manarth wrote: post #67
tw04 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because instead of trying to fill 3 movies, TV can just flow naturally until it's done. Yes, for some shows they end up with filler either because they want to drag it out, or they don't have quite enough to fill an entire last season... but for the most part it feels like TV shows don't have that pressure to fit into a very tight box.

> TV can just flow naturally until it's done If only it stopped when it really was done: Firefly, The 4400, Terra Nova, SGU…

Firefly+Serenity could be a pretty great ~20 episode series.

If it followed TV success, it would have 50-100 forgettable episodes to go with 20 good ones.

I think this applies to an awful lot of stuff on TV. The economics of it mean that buying season 5 is a better choice than taking a risk on something new. I think better stories would get told if series were generally shorter.

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#80

Post by maxerickson »

sandworm101 wrote: post #58
jfoutz wrote: post #55

To throw things in a greek setting, Marvel is traditionally comedy and DC is tragedy. Iron Man is a drunken, womanizing asshole. Robert Downey Jr was is brilliant because he's still likeable. Sure, he's rich, but his life is a mess. You can look down on him. He's a fun guy, you want him to make it, but he's still kind of a scumbag. Christopher Nolan's Batman is the opposite. Sure, he's rich, but he's facing some big…

Iron man is a jerk. He is the embodiment of all that is wrong with our economy. But that is why the Marvel movies work. That's what I like about them. The characters are human enough for me to actually care. Superman? He is too flat for me to have any opinion. For all the bluster, the MCU is full of metaphor and leveled humor. My favorite is the 1-minute WWII skit in Avengers (The old jewish man about to be killed by…

One of my favorite Iron Man scenes is after he almost kills the US pilot and then giggles with his best friend about the new thing he just used to murder a bunch of terrorists. It makes it so clear that you aren't really supposed to think about what is happening.

Killing multiple terrorists to escape probably isn't murder. An individual spending vast amounts of money to build a weapon, flying half way across the world and killing a bunch of people is obviously murder.

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