Hollywood ... as in, the end of ....

While I generally agree with premise, at least some of it is misinformed by Bilton's own lack of knowledge about the business and from the "entrenched interests" he spoke with. I recently became a member of a union, I went to an orientation and honestly, the whole thing did seem myopic and sheltered from reality. All of the people running this particular union who were there at the orientation are ancient white guys who definitely are good at their craft and at politics, but seemed somewhat mired in the past and seemed to think, "this is how production is done", rather than "this is what production is evolving to". Video games surpassed filmed entertainment at least a decade ago as far as budget and money generated as an industry so this should not come as a surprise to anyone in this business. The first time I worked on and produced projects where the VFX and or animation was farmed out to China and or India was also over a decade ago and even then, I knew that someday Hollywood would become irrelevant to the world of entertainment. It's still big business, but it is fading and will eventually be as much of a relic as silent B&W is to today's audiences. It is for this reason that I try to evenly sub-divide my career between entertainment, corporate and writing. Entertainment is evolving in a way where in five years, I may or may not be involved with it. Corporate will always have a need for media content, although at some point, the same technology the article describes for entertainment will be used in corporate media as well. This will sound weird, but I just received my new Rhino EVO motion control system yesterday and was playing with it. Between tech like this, tech like my Zhiyun crane, drone technology, the focus is clearly on being able to someday not need a skilled camera op, DP or editor. Gimbals, drones and motion control are all pretty capable of doing some amazing shots that are easier to obtain than putting an Alexa on a camera op's shoulder. As far as writing, I think there will always be a need for writers and writing, although HOW we might earn a living with writing in a decade is highly debatable.
 
puredrifting said:
. Gimbals, drones and motion control are all pretty capable of doing some amazing shots that are easier to obtain than putting an Alexa on a camera op's shoulder. As far as writing, I think there will always be a need for writers and writing, although HOW we might earn a living with writing in a decade is highly debatable.
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The same happened with writing, used to be something for literate people, now everybody can read and write. Also everybody has computer/ and can publish direct to the world. But good storytellers are rare. The same is happening with video. It is democracy, everybody can put a video on the web, but good stories and good storytellers are still rare.

Tell good stories, that is the secret
 
Doubt audiences are ready for virtual Actors just yet. It's one of the thing to CGI a real person into a film, quite another to invent a virtual actor that we can relate to on a human level.

About a decade ago a major fashion magazines tried using a virtual Model on their cover, but it flopped. The Model looked real enough, but the audience could not relate. Perhaps it's the aspirational aspect that was missed.

Imagine one day this will change too.
 
CharlesPapert said:
If only writers of articles like that were able to see the real balance sheets on a production, they may be astonished to learn where the majority of the money is going. Hint: it isn't crew labor. Doesn't support that narrative though.
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The above-the-title talent will also have to take a cut in pay, as it has done on big budget films. As to smaller productions, "Split" was made for $9M, "Manchester by the Sea" for $8.5M, "Hidden Figures" for $25M, "La La Land" for $30M, "Patriots Day" for $45M.

Additionally, the cost of VFX and CGI animation is coming down.

The reshuffling of the distribution is also in the offing. What Neflix is doing is only the first salvo.

Bern Caughey said:
Doubt audiences are ready for virtual Actors just yet. It's one of the thing to CGI a real person into a film, quite another to invent a virtual actor that we can relate to on a human level...
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If one looks at "Benjamin Button", he can see a combination of an actor and a CGI face. Such combinations, beside Peter Cushing's archival footage, are already plentiful.
 
Bern Caughey said:
Doubt audiences are ready for virtual Actors just yet. It's one of the thing to CGI a real person into a film, quite another to invent a virtual actor that we can relate to on a human level.

One of the major fashion magazines tried using a virtual Model on their cover, but it flopped. The Model looked real enough, but the audience could not relate. Perhaps it's the aspirational aspect that was missed.
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Agreed. It's easy to pull off Grand Moff Tarkin whose face at that age had the acting range of an 80's sitcom. Great actor but he wasn't exactly pulling off any dynamic acting range in a New Hope or in Rogue One. Comedy and Romance is an entirely different ballgame. Besides the key to VFX working is how much it can blend it with photographic plates. Tarkin kind of worked because all the other actors were real and acted as an anchor to pull him into the scene and into reality. If the sets were fake and all other actors fake the entire thing would have been fake. While this may work for a few shots with supporting actors who move very little it is going to be a very long time before you see leads of a movie done digitally. Well the human leads at least.

Besides even Tarkin still had a stand in actor to help pull off some level of realism and the look of Tarkin was blended into the real actor. The days of digital humans are not here yet. Rogue One is more of a very special case with very specific circumstances and would not have worked if Tarkin wasn't such an emotionless static tool.
 
I thought the article was full of clichés and hand-waving regarding the technology side. First, the CGI actors didn't work even in their very limited appearances in Rogue One. Second, computers won't replace editors until they can think, feel emotions, and perceive emotional queues at a very high level, which will probably not happen for many decades, if ever. Wake me up when they create a computer that is self-aware and can ponder its own mortality. If Hollywood dies it will be because of simple human competition.
 
Exactly. The number of actors employed for the role of Grand Moff Tarkin was the same: 1. This time it was Guy Henry instead of the late Peter Cushing. If you're talking about augmentation, sure. If you're talking about replacement, I think we're still a ways away. Even video game characters still have real human actors behind them, especially for talk-heavy games like Uncharted.

In fact the full replacement will never happen. This is when the article sounded like yet another one of those 1950s articles in Popular Science, or the Tomorrowland exhibit at Disneyworld, about how we'll all have jet packs in 1990. It's one thing to have Nathan Drake and the other characters in Uncharted, be computer-animated. It's another to watch a movie where all the characters are computer-animated. In Rogue One, I had to look away when Tarkin was onscreen. It made my toes curl too much. Needless to say, I was pulled right out of the story. Of course there will always be Toy Story and other computer-animated movies. But I don't want to watch only such productions.

The things I've seen technology ruin are things that people even at that time thought were kind of lame.

Uber is replacing taxis, and taxis are kind of lame; how many comedians have told a joke about your stereotypical taxi driver? Taxis are expensive, and the taxi drivers are still poor. It's not the best way to do things. It is ripe for upheaval. Google replaced my encyclopedia set. I consider myself better off, even though I would feel some nostalgia if I saw my old encyclopedia set. The Internet replaced CDs and is replacing DVDs. Again, I feel some nostalgia, but I think it's an overall gain.

So look around. Is anything kind of lame? That is vulnerable to upheaval. That's why I tend to agree with the article when it says that a crew of 200 mostly milling around shouldn't feel safe. Then again, shooting a big movie is a logistical nightmare and dangerous. It sort of reminds me of construction. There you see a lot of people who seem to be standing around too. But they haven't been phased out yet. Maybe it's hard to find the middle ground. For very large projects it's either fast, sloppy, people sometimes get hurt, and the result is shoddy. Or it's slow, inefficient-looking, and expensive, but the quality of the product is more predictable. How often have you seen a middle ground, where most of the people are working most of the time, the cost is medium, and the product is still very good?

Anyway, some things just won't go away. I think people will still want to go out every once in a while. So there will still be theaters, just like there is still the Theater. It may just be fewer and far between, and more special, like when we went to see Back to the Future at one of those theaters that serve you food and pass out souvenirs. That was one of the funnest times I've had in my life. But I spent $100.

I don't know, I don't think human writers, directors, and actors will go away either, ever. Actors don't meet my "it's kind of lame today" test. People aren't walking out of the theater saying, "Robin Williams was really good in that movie, but I kind of wish he was just a computer-generated character, without even a human character behind the scenes doing the voice." Nobody says that. Maybe some formulaic screenwriters will be replaced by a robot.

Technology tends to taper off. There is not one endless disruption after another, forever. Look at houses. Look at planes. Look even at laptops these last few years. I mean, they're getting a little more refined here and there, but it's not the doubling in processor speed we saw in their adolescence.
 
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Never been on a set where after a take, the screenwriter walks over to "instruct the actor"...thought the article biased and naive...the description of everybody standing around being inefficient is rediculous....misses the point of the crew turning up in the dark and working till after dark...and what else does the crew do when camera's rolling, but stand by...be ready...and quiet...surprised such a pedestrian article would come from Vanity Fair...and what exactly does sylicon valley make with their "efficiency" except money...if Hollywood is going under, it's probably in great part to do with the terrible choices execs are making re one expensive superhero sequel after the other...while for television the productions only seem to be improving...
 
Youtube is making it more personalised entertainment for people. Now you can directly watch youtube from your TV screens or your own phone while you are in bed. Rather than be in the midst of a noisy crowd with someone's phone ringing, a baby crying etc, many would prefer to be with their companion at home with their favourite intoxicant in hand and watching and consuming entertainment.

Bigger productions will soon create different endings for their films and stream it to the audience based on their psychographic profile. So a sadistic fellow will see the villain win vs the happy endings preferred by others. The big studios, if they would still be around with the decision making centred around moronic executives, they will try to create many versions of the movie based on some sophisticated writing program throwing up options. :cheesy:
 
combatentropy said:
.... It sort of reminds me of construction. There you see a lot of people who seem to be standing around too. But they haven't been phased out yet. Maybe it's hard to find the middle ground. For very large projects it's either fast, sloppy, people sometimes get hurt, and the result is shoddy. Or it's slow, inefficient-looking, and expensive, but the quality of the product is more predictable. How often have you seen a middle ground, where most of the people are working most of the time, the cost is medium, and the product is still very good?.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu6NZmMhgNQ (don't feel like embedding, since this is off topic)

In any case, I'd disagree on several categories. Presuming a fully digital "actor" will be indistinguishable from a human by 2025, as claimed by an "expert" in the article, I can see a lot of work for the voice-over actors. Homer Simpson will still be voiced by Dan Castellaneta but will resemble an actual fat, balding, middle aged man a lot more than he does now.

http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/4257/slide_4257_59924_large.jpg

As to "Hollywood", its power lied in both exclusivity for production (manufacturing of moving images) and distribution. Both are of these advantages are disappearing much like the record and video stores of the yesteryear. There will still be movie theaters but they may not be showing the first run movies in the same manner as they do now. I suspect that they will go upscale with luxury chairs and even beds (those already exist in various parts of the world) while the mass market will shift toward the instant VOD.

PS. As a side note - on Saturday, Unimas (a Spanish language network in the US) was showing a flick called "Skyline" just prior to the US-Serbia soccer match. I sort of watched it while making a meal but my curiosity was piqued enough to search for more info online. This VFX laden Transformers/Aliens ripoff apparently only cost $9M for its live action sequences, with an additional $10M in VFX provided by a specialty house in LA. These VFX folks were subsequently sued by Sony (if my memory isn't failing) for essentially double-dipping - i.e., borrowing from the footage from another project for which they got paid by Sony. Sony eventually decided not to pursue legal action and the movie grossed about $80M globally from just the ticket sales despite being poorly rated by the critics and fans alike. The point is that the cost CGI is falling rapidly. What may require $10M today will be $1M five years from now. Sun SPARC processors (actually made by Fujitsu) used in their workstations for the original "Toy Story" (1995) had 1.2 million transistors. Today's SPARC's (also made by Fujitsu) have 3.75 billion. And VFX artists can be found anywhere across the globe. And that will soon make a $200 million Hollywood tent pole a $20M Bangalore special. And it will play on YouTube for $19.99 on its opening weekend. And Hollywood will be bypassed entirely.
 
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Hollywood performs an important role as a filter for content. Yes, you can rent the same cameras and do the same vfx as Hollywood but so what? What makes a good Hollywood film is the writing, the cast, the locations , and real world sets (even if the set is painted green actors still need something to stand on).
It was predicted that a sot of gatekeeper role of Hollywood was unnecessary with the advent of cheap cameras and YouTube but more than anything equal access creates an infinite pile of crap to sort through rather than providing quality content.
Hollywood puts the talented writers, directors, and actors together with the money needed to make a blockbuster. That role is not going away imo.
When I rent movies at the red box I skip everything that is "not rated". Basically that means it wasn't good enough to get into theaters so they didn't bother to spend the fees to get a rating from the mpaa. They spent that money cover art for the DVD box that I know will look way cooler than anything that's actually in the movie.
 
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fboonzaier said:
Never been on a set where after a take, the screenwriter walks over to "instruct the actor"...thought the article biased and naive...the description of everybody standing around being inefficient is rediculous....misses the point of the crew turning up in the dark and working till after dark...and what else does the crew do when camera's rolling, but stand by...be ready...and quiet...surprised such a pedestrian article would come from Vanity Fair...and what exactly does sylicon valley make with their "efficiency" except money...if Hollywood is going under, it's probably in great part to do with the terrible choices execs are making re one expensive superhero sequel after the other...while for television the productions only seem to be improving...
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Nailed it perfectly.
 
fboonzaier said:
Never been on a set where after a take, the screenwriter walks over to "instruct the actor"
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Yes. While I thought it was a bit ridiculous that the costumer got after the screenwriter for brushing a raindrop off the actor's jacket, I was waiting for director to come over and say, "Hey, you're doing my job." That's what should have happened.
 
It's a pretty stupid article, not for the what the writer projects as the future, but for gross ignorance of basic facts - if you're going to be making predictions about an industry, it helps to actually know simple facts about it:

[...]how inefficient the film-and-TV business appeared to have become. Before us, after all, stood some 200 members of the crew, who were milling about in various capacities, checking on lighting or setting up tents, but mainly futzing with their smartphones, passing time, or nibbling on snacks from the craft-service tents.

ahem - watch the first 3 minutes 20 seconds of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9_LW5H2EC4

as the guy says: it's the hallmark of the amateur to think that everyone working at the same time is "efficiency" - everyone has had this thought starting out, when they see a set with people sitting around.
 
It's rare when I've seen a journalist truly get things right when it comes to reporting on the goings-on of a large scale set. Fair enough, there's a lot happening and it's hard to identify or understand the details, but then again that's what their job is. Come to think of it, maybe someone on the set should have casually handed the writer of that article a pre-written paragraph for them to use in the article...think his reaction would have been anything other than "that's not YOUR job, that's MY job?"

I don't hear the term "screenwriter" used as a title in the television industry (the set described in the article was a "production for a streaming service" which could have been either a TV show or a feature, but the anecdote with the wardrobe person was described as a network TV series). If the "screenwriter" was actually a writer/EP and especially a showrunner, it's not out of the question for them to give notes to actors directly, although etiquette generally dictates they should be passed through the director.

Since the "drop of water" story was related by this individual to the Vanity Fair writer, I have no doubt that it has been embellished to prove a point. That "tiny droplet" of water may well have been a very specific amount of wetdown that was needed to be maintained for continuity. Or the "polite" brush-off may have dislodged something in the wardrobe. Or who knows, that same person may have done similar things multiple times before without thinking about it and this was a last straw. Many jobs in the industry require paying attention to what could be construed as minutiae, but they all add up to achieve a certain result.

I also doubt that if this was a EP or showrunner, it's pretty unlikely that a costumer is going to be yelling at them on set unless they want to get sent home. I'm imagining the tone as described was again exaggerated.

Finally, the suggestion that this was a "terrifying" example of industry bloat--imagine, one person whose entire job is to brush raindrops off an actor, when they are not milling around nibbling on craft service!--is an old, boring cliche. The peculiarity of the filming process is that much of the crew works at different times from each other, so at any given moment there is a certain amount of standing around at any given place on set. If that writer had been walked from place to place so that they hit the center of activity at all of the appropriate times, they may have had a very different impression (assuredly after 14 hours of seeing what is often a barely-controlled panic, they would be passing out from fatigue and emphathetic stress)! On virtually every job I do, every department head has to battle to get enough crew to maintain efficiency. Surely to those here who have only worked with small crews would find this sentiment unlikely and perhaps a little entitled, but the scope of work and expectations of the results all require a specific and calculated amount of manpower to achieve.

On a recent commercial, we had a studio pre-light in the morning while we shot day exteriors nearby. I asked my key grip how he was splitting his crew to achieve this. Given that the weather could have ranged from full sun to storm clouds, I had designed various versions of the lighting plan to cover all eventualities. As a result I sensed we were a man short on grip side, which my key grip agreed was the case. I presented my argument to the line producer, we worked together and made a few cuts here and there and we got the extra manpower. On the day, we worked well enough to appear efficient but there were still one or two times when we could have used more hands, as we had to wait a few moments for an extra frame to be built or walked in from the truck. The grips worked hard and did a great job. but surely there were still a few moments when we were rolling where they had a moment to get themselves a coffee or snack. The thought that a visitor to set could witness just that part and draw the conclusion that there was a wasteful amount of crew standing around is truly frustrating, considering all of the above.
 
Like the guy in the video, I too have been on sets in several parts of the world, and indeed, the observation of "people sitting around the set" is present everywhere. There must be a reason, and it can't be because everyone is imitating Hollywood... and even in America you have super cheapskates who are interested in efficiency and squeezing every penny from a production, as the testimony of the guy in the video I linked to about Roger Corman. Now, Roger Corman has literally decades of experience, and is renowned for looking to save a buck if at all possible, and has honed production to a fine art - yet he does the set roles just as traditional Hollywood does, and in fact, inculcates that knowledge to all his new film directors. Because it is the best way!

Here's what kills me about such journalists. If I go into an area I know little about, and I see them do things in a way that I find deeply puzzling, I don't immediatly think to myself "why, those guys are just stupid! My first thought is gotta be better!". Instead, I think to myself - "gee, this seems counterintuitive to me - but I know nothing about this process... maybe there is a very good reason these professionals do things this way - let me find out WHY, instead of immediately screaming 'STUPID!'". Had he done this, he'd soon find out why it is that "people just seem to sit around" on the set, and he wouldn't make a fool of himself.

This reminds me of an episode from my childhood. My family took a vacation in a small Caribbean island - and we were invited to a traditional feast of sea food, where everybody was eating a particular kind of small lobster-like creature. Now, what all the natives were doing was this painstaking way of breaking the shell and carefully pulling out tiny pieces of meat from the claws of the cooked crustacean. It was hard work, and not much meat - but very tasty. Meanwhile, they'd discard the belly and the rest of the crustacean. My brother, thought he was being smart - instead of "wasting" the belly, he found it had a lot of "meat" in it, so he grabbed it and ate it - and then immediately spat it out, while all the natives around the table had a good-natured laugh at him. See, in the belly is where the crustacean gathered its white waste products (in other words "sh|t") - and it tasted like crap. It only looked similar to meat, because that creature's crap didn't look recognizable to us. And this is an illustration of what happened to my brother. Instead of thinking "these people have been eating this food for centuries - surely, it must have occurred to them to eat the belly, yet they don't - there's got to be a good reason, let me ask them!", he went "gee - look at all this meat these fools are missing - so simple! And so easy to get instead of cracking the claws for tiny amounts! Ha, I found a ton of meat others have missed! I'm so smart!". And that's how he ended up eating sh|t.

Same thing here. Look Sherlock, don't you think that all this "inefficiency" would have been clear to producers for literally close to 100 years? Don't you think folks like Roger Corman would've taken advantage to save a buck in efficiency, especially seeing as a complete doofus like you can see, just as anybody with a pair of eyes, that people "are sitting around"? Gee, could it be that there's a reason why you, a complete amateur might be missing something, while those who have thought about this and worked at it for all time, do it this "inefficient" way? Nope, instead, it's I AM THE GENIOUS JOURNALIST WHO SAW INEFFICIENCY ON THE SET! PLEASE LISTEN TO MY WISDOM!

Now, nobody says don't try to improve a process and a fresh pair of eyes might not have a genious insight. Absolutely. But before you assume stuff, it pays to actually find out WHY people do things the way they do BEFORE you try to improve the process. Might save you from writing a stupid article and making yourself look foolish.
 
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