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

Must fully agree with Charles...the drop of water may well have been a continuity issue...and as any department head knows on a big set, try to explain to a producer or director that they're not getting their shot because you tried to save the money for 1 one or 2 extra crew for grip or art dept. or anything that will be needed for the shoot day...that's why the article smacks false to me...I've had many different jobs in my life, and never with harder working people than a film crew...and maybe the "writer" was actually the show creator which I suppose carries a much higher level of clout. Still seems implausible to me, that a director (who's fully responsible for either the success or failure of the shoot) would just let it go...would set a terrible precedent.
 
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Gillvane said:
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)...
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Hollywood doesn't have exclusivity on talent. There are good writers, actors, directors everywhere across the globe. Furthermore, there are good Hollywood based writers, actors, directors who are "underemployed" - just look at credits from TV series from the 1970' and 1980's - and would be quite willing to work for a lot less than the scale.

OldCorpse said:
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!..
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Roger Corman shot the "Little Shop of Horrors" in one day. If only Roger Corman knew how to work digital.
 
DLD said:
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Roger Corman shot the "Little Shop of Horrors" in one day. If only Roger Corman knew how to work digital.
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How long did it take to do "Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader" or "Dinocroc vs. Supergator"? Or, or... "Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf"? ; )
 
Run&Gun said:
How long did it take to do "Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader" or "Dinocroc vs. Supergator"? Or, or... "Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf"? ; )
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Back at the 1990 CES, I walked by Russ Meyer. Sadly, Russ was confined to an "adult" exhibit, which was a lot sleazier than even a sexploitation filmmaker warranted. But his genre was de facto killed by the proliferation of cable TV channels such as HBO and Cinemax.

Corman made LSoH in one day because the tax credits were running out.

BTW, our friend Charles Papert lensed a Roger Corman style film called "Hell Baby" (2013). Allegedly, it cost $2.5M to make vs $1M for the "50 FT". As far as pay/stream channels go, Netflix's gamuts runs from the widely acclaimed "Crown" to the less widely acclaimed "Ridiculous Six". Considering that the Netflix server space is virtually limitless, one expects both high and low brow entertainment options. For around $6 Billion per year that they are spending on original programming, it's pretty difficult to avoid the latter variety. And, if so, the Digital Age Roger Corman (the original is still with us) just may find a place to call home.
 
combatentropy said:
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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I have to agree with you. One thing I hate, is when people talk about crew "standing" around. Anyone who has ever worked in an office or corporate setting, knows that most people put in far less than the 8hrs of real work, and the rest is looking busy and trying not to fall asleep after work. Coders are always pushing things off, because they know no-one has any idea what coding really is. Repair men can always make some take longer. The list goes on through every industry. It is insulting, when temporarily employed crew gets called out for "standing around". They still have to get up at all hours, leave town for weeks or months, deal with extreme conditions and stress.
 
I'm actually working on one of those things the author is afraid of:


There are other, more dystopian theories, which predict that film and video games will merge, and we will become actors in a movie, reading lines or being told to “look out!” as an exploding car comes hurtling in our direction, not too dissimilar from Mildred Montag’s evening rituals in Fahrenheit 451. When we finally get there, you can be sure of two things. The bad news is that many of the people on the set of a standard Hollywood production won’t have a job anymore. The good news, however, is that we’ll never be bored again.
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Where things are going is very simple.
YOU will be the distributor.
The most viewed artists are therefore defacto media outlets.
This can already be seen in photography. An advertiser/agency does not choose a photographer based merely on their skill set or even their style.
They also chose them now based on how large an audience the photographer can now bring to the advertiser. They are therefore another source of diffusion for the product.
Welcome to the reality of the 21st century.
 
DLD said:
Today's article from the Hollywood Reporter. It's ostensibly about Brad Grey stepping down at Paramount but also touches on other themes mentioned in this thread.


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/galloway-film-brad-greys-paramount-exit-studios-turmoil-977656
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Much better article, with better writing than the original dumb article a few pages back in this thread. I have mixed feelings about all of this, a good portion of my work comes from the Hollywood machine so on one hand, I want it to survive and succeed. OTOH, as an artist, amateur film historian and consumer of Hollywood's product, Hollywood needs to be burned down artistically. The entire model has become the antithesis of what cinema was, and should be. The titans of the studios during the studio system made a lot crap but their ratio of masterpieces was so much higher than today, where just a couple of times a year, perhaps, we might experience one or two masterpieces with the rest being crap. Tha ratio is all wrong because of the global multi-conglomerate business model. It cannot support or reward taking chances, it can only churn out product that doesn't take chances because the fear of failure is too large and shareholders must be appeased. Sequel-itis and a dearth of edgy, creative and original projects is what killed/is killing Hollywood and they are incapable of breaking out of the way they have done things for decades. That's why the studios are melting down and imploding while the Netflix, Hulus, Amazons and Buzzfeeds are spending billions, building small studios and soundstages all over Hollywood. These new on-line distributor/studios are taking chances, are fostering creative work, much of which doesn't work but a good portion of it does. Their "win" ratio is so much better than the studios. I also think Hollywood didn't have a clue on how to capitalize globally. Sure, they sell movies overseas and make a large portion of their income internationally, but it has been a one way street, "Here is our Hollwyood product, take it or leave it" while the rest of the world has vastly different values and interests than American film studios. So much great work is coming from China, India, Europe, etc. that never gets seen here or if it does, it's only by arthouse afficianados. I worked a couple of weeks ago with an entire crew and client from Beijing, we had some downtime and talked about film, TV and entertainment. Their world is so devoid of what Hollywood wants to sell them. Most of the movies and TV they were interested in had nothing to do with Hollywood.
 
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"Studio executives are intelligent, brutally overworked men and women who share one thing in common with baseball managers: They wake up every morning of the world with the knowledge that sooner or later they're going to get fired." --- William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade, 1983
 
The best exchange from that book was his conversation with an unnamed exec who told him that, if he green-lit every movie that he turned down and turned down every movie he made, he'd still break even. That implies a random correlation - i.e., none - between those in charge and their studios performances. It then becomes more like flipping a coin - sometimes you get 3 heads in a row, sometimes three tails. The "3 head" guy would be named an executive of the year, make gazillions of dollars, only to be fired a couple of years later when he rolls 3 tails. The key, for everyone involved, naturally lies in gazillions of dollars.
 
I finally broke down and signed up for the ad-free Youtube ($9.99 a month) when I found out that it included unlimited streaming of Google Play Music, which includes just about everything, including a phoenix album by an alternative independent Christian band that I thought was dead (Poor Old Lu). On the hipster meter, that's an 8. I suppose there is music that you can't find on Google Play if you're a 9- or 10-level hipster. The family plan is $14.99 and good for six people (no, I don't work for Google).
 
combatentropy said:
I finally broke down and signed up for the ad-free Youtube ($9.99 a month) when I found out that it included unlimited streaming of Google Play Music, which includes just about everything, including a phoenix album by an alternative independent Christian band that I thought was dead (Poor Old Lu). On the hipster meter, that's an 8. I suppose there is music that you can't find on Google Play if you're a 9- or 10-level hipster. The family plan is $14.99 and good for six people (no, I don't work for Google).
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Neither do I (but am available for a competitive wage and, to steal a line from Woody Allen's "Broadway Danny Rose", "competitive wage" is whatever they want to pay me)

In any case, I get an email late last night (I suspect it's not exclusive) that YouTube Live is now available for $35/mo.

More here - http://gizmodo.com/youtube-tv-isnt-perfect-but-its-very-promising-1794070458
 
Publimix said:
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
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I agree, a bit, storytelling is important, selling the story and getting attention is another skill you need. Marketing budgets for games and films are often as high as the production budgets.
 
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