InDigEnt not all it's cracked up to be? Wired Article - interesting.

[Draccan]

Woah ... I hadn't made this connection before. This company produced three of my greatest film favorites of all times..:

Chelsea Walls | Tape | Land of Plenty

DV production troubles: I wonder if the problem with this is not a combination of having to feed too many people, growing bigger than the actual income justify? Could it be prevented with cost cutting for the company when they don't actual film something?

And maybe they need more creative control?

Let's not extrapolate one case on to the whole industry and conclude it is a futile business... We just need to adjust our business models, right?

Just some thoughts .......................... not claiming to have the holy grail or anything .... :engel017: ..... well I do, but don't tell Tom Hanks !

LLD

 

[c.g._eads]

People always talk about how films are getting worse and worse. But how do we prove this? Do we list the top 10 films from the last 30 years and see, quality-wise, if they have decreased in quality? I don't think so, since it'd be impossible to agree on which movies those were. Maybe the top 5 in the top 5 genres every year for the past 30 years. Anyway, the point I'm making is that it's hard for us grizzled movie-going vets to judge a movie's quality across long periods of time because obviously we've seen more, and therefore are going to be more demanding of a movie now, then we would the same movie, say, ten years ago.

And these movie-going people are talking about how movies are losing more money THEATRICALLY then in any other time in history. This is a totally misleading statement since productions nowadays factor into their budget a business model that includes ridiculously lucrative avenues of income that weren't available 20 years ago such as DVD sales, overseas markets, and video games. If the new Superman knew that they didn't have those income streams, do you think they would've budgeted the movie at $230 million dollars? Of course not. But they do, and the movie makes "only" $300 million domestic and the studios are crying foul. "We can't make money in the theatres anymore." You didn't budget for just the theatres bozos. You budgeted for the whole shebang.

I know it's more complicated than that but one fact that is undisputed is that movie franchises OVERALL are making more money now than they ever have in history. So stop whining studios.

That being said, I do believe that studios are paying less and less attention to the script. But remember, it isn't the script that gets us into the theatre. We don't all read the script online beforehand and say "Gosh this is a riveting read, I want to see this movie!" We see the trailer, the commercials, the actors doing interviews. And that gets us to go. So I can see why the studio heads would argue "Who cares about the script?" I mean look at Dreamworks. They built a model around that very idea. That they'd go back to the days of old Hollywood and really work on writing complicated intelligent scripts. But that doesn't mean anything. The movie can still suck. Take Universal's attempt at doing it "right". Cinderella Man, under the constant evaluation of all of the best readers in the business, worked perfectly. All the motivations were there. The underdog theme, one of the most tried-and-true box office formulas, was there. The dialogue was real. Braddock's story fell perfectly into the three-act structure. But guess what, the movie was boring. And yet every one at Universal will tell you that they set out to do it "the right way".

I personally think it's going to take a revolution to change things. Not unlike when Rodriquez and Tarantino came along, but ten times bigger than that. This new group's idea of what a film IS is going to be completely different than anything we think a film is now. Maybe it'll be a short. Or a 45 minute half-movie. And it'll tie in other forms of media, breaking that fourth-wall. Maybe it's about bringing back drive-ins. Regardless of whatever they come up with, it's different voices that I think we need to get people "into theatres" again. And they need to stop thinking traditionally. "Primer" is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something you won't even understand when it's being explained to you. But a previous poster was right. How are these people going to be seen? How will their content be distributed? I don't know. How did Steve Jobs get noticed in a world of boring computers? How did the Blair Witch people infilterate this unprofitable distribution business, if only for a moment? You really have to think outside the box, find an idea, and then actually go out and back it up.

I am constantly searching for this answer and I don't think it's as simple as "movie - internet - download - money". I mean who saw "podcasts" coming when the ipod first came out? Pretty soon, people are going to be making money off of that. Look into the future people. The answer's waiting for one of us to snatch it up.