
Hollywood as We Know It Is Over - jamessun
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/why-hollywood-as-we-know-it-is-already-over
======
Animats
Production cost is a problem, and technology has made it worse. Look at that
long, long list of animators and technicians at the end of any effects-heavy
film today. A cast of thousands.

In the late 1990s, when I was working on physics engines for animation, I was
talking to a major Hollywood director. He'd done some of the first films that
had both live and photorealistic CGI characters. He wanted to get the cost
down, so he could make $20 million movies. At $20 million, he could direct; at
$100 million, he was running a huge operation that had to have everything pre-
planned in great detail.

His model was the early CGI cartoon, "Reboot". Reboot was a weekly half hour
cartoon made by a staff of about 30. He wanted to get to that level of
productivity at theater quality - make a 2 hour film in a month with 30
people.

That didn't happen. Not even close.

It's been tried. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" started as a low-
budget picture rendered on Macs. In that film, if nobody touches it, it's CG.
Ended up costing $70 million. Worldwide box office $50 million. Fail. "Iron
Sky" was made for €7.5 million. Worldwide box office $11.5 million. Fail.

There were successful low budget directors in the past, Roger Corman being the
prime example. (His autobiography is titled "How I made a hundred movies in
Hollywood and never lost a dime".) It's harder to do that today. Viewers today
expect incredible production value. Most TV shows have more production value
today than 70s movies did. Hollywood has so many people on set because they
bring a team together on short notice to do a job, then disband the team. They
need many competent people with different skills to make that work. If you cut
corners, it looks like Youtube crap.

On big movies, we've mostly replaced set painters and carpenters with people
who sit at workstations and do the same job with CG models. "Big" is now
cheap, but "detailed" remains expensive. Procedural visual content generation
can generate good landscapes and vegetation now (check out SpeedTree), but as
yet, nobody has been able to procedurally generate one convincing block of a
city street seen at ground level. Making GTA V cost $265 million. Not seeing
an incoming reduction in production cost.

Netflix has no huge advantage. HBO is in the same position - they make content
to sell to their own customers, and know exactly what sold. Data collection is
retrospective. Trying to figure out what movies will be box office failures in
advance remains hard. That's why Hollywood generates so many sequels -
predictability.

~~~
paganel
> Viewers today expect incredible production value.

Not really, no. I expect interesting movies, and I'd say being an interesting
movie doesn't have anything to do with CGI. I'm a film buff through and
through and it almost literally pains me when I see that people involved in
the movie industry don't seem to understand what their problem is: they don't
make films for grown-ups anymore.

The only outlet that has provided interesting movie-like content in the last
10-15 years was television. There's almost no CGI in shows like The Wire, The
Sopranos, Black Mirror (to just name a few), shows that have made me casually
think about them while I was riding the tramway and the like years after I had
last seen them.

I miss great movies.

~~~
racl101
Agreed.

I don't think there's any CGI in Pulp Fiction (1994) and it cost around $9
million to make in 1994 dollars. It made around $200 million worldwide.
Whiplash (2014) , a more recent movie with little to no CGI, cost $3.3 million
to make and made around $49 million worldwide.

The point is that people want interesting, well written movies with great
stories. If that warrants CGI sure, but it's not a requirement.

A boring movie is not good. But a boring and expensive movie is terrible and
that's what's mainly being put out: boring and expensive movies.

As far as movies with huge production budgets for every great movie with a
justified fair amount of CGI there's tens of crappy ones many that break even
or don't make their money back.

Creatively speaking there's probably never been a worse time for big Hollyood
movies.

~~~
jonhohle
Pulp Fiction was one of the first movie that came to my mind as well. It's a
beautiful movie (visually), and could be made today for the same cost as it
was in 1994.

Looking back at movies from several decades ago, the credit scroll had a few
hundred people at most. Now there are a few hundred animators for something
like Arrival. Interestingly, Arrival's credits list about the same number of
people as Terminator 2. Both excellent movies, but one is small and intimate,
and the other grand and explosive - same size crew, much higher balance on
visual effects in Arrival vs. practical engineering and effects in T2. Would
Arrival have been significantly different or less effective if made with 1991
technology? Probably not.

"[They] were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop
to think if they should."

~~~
baddox
How "accurate" are credits lists though? Couldn't it be that the credits
simply list every employee of every company that did any contract work for the
film? It seems plausible that many of the people listed didn't even work a
full day on the film.

~~~
cdtwigg
While this is possible, longer credits mean more filmstock to be duplicated
and fewer showings per theater screen, so there is an economic incentive to
keep them as short as possible. I know when I worked in the VFX industry an
artist had to clock a certain number of hours on a given show to be given
credit for the work.

~~~
baddox
Surely the difference is nearly negligible. With the exception of movies with
popular after-credits scenes, I assume people leave when the credits start
anyway, and I suspect the employees can begin cleaning when people clear out
even if credits are still running.

------
TACIXAT
I love movies. Whenever I visit my dad (other side of the country), we go to
see movies. However, most of the year I live with my girlfriend who falls
asleep in theaters and can't justify the cost. This leads to me not seeing
movies in theaters anymore.

Now, I am subscribed to two streaming services. I don't pirate. I refuse to
watch anything with ads, happy to pay, and somewhat ironically, the only ads I
watch to completion are trailers that I haven't seen. I would love to catch
movies as they are released but I have to wait until they're available on the
streaming service. When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is
that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical
location and employees! They've priced their digital content in such a way
that I will only pay to see the movies that I really want to see. If it was
cheaper, I'd be a constant consumer.

It seems that is how most things in society get priced. Not for ultimate
consumption, but to maximize the profit curve. I get that is how capitalism
works, but that logic doesn't make sense to me for digital goods. They are
practically zero cost to distribute once they are manufactured and your
competition is people pirating them. If you're worried about audience size,
lower the cost. You'll enable a lot more people to see a lot more movies.

~~~
ttcbj
Assuming you are a software developer, I think you should reconsider your
"price should approximate production cost" reasoning. I think it will hold you
back if you eventually try something entrepreneurial.

When I started a small software company, I originally had a similar
understanding. I subconsciously thought that the software should be priced to
pay for its development cost, plus some profit. I was not very successful,
until I realized that the product should be priced as a percentage of the
value it delivered to the customer. Customers don't want you to do a lot of
work, they just want their problem solved for a price that is reasonable
relative to the benefit of the solution.

This idea reverses several of your conclusions:

1\. The product should be priced based on how much value it delivers, and only
those companies that can deliver the product for significantly less than that
price will stay in business. Once a company finds a need that people will pay
for, it generally makes sense to drive the cost of production down while
maintaining the same benefit, thus maximizing profit.

2\. The more value a company creates with the resources it uses (the greater
its margin), the more left-over resources it will have to invest in producing
still more benefits, or to return profits to its original investors.

So, going back to the cost of digital content, I am happy to pay for it, as
long as I end up feeling the movie was worth watching for the price. And if
they can produce great content without many resources (or with lower cost of
delivery), all the better. My problem, right now, is that there is so much
great content I cannot ever hope to watch it. But that is not a problem that
really bothers me, I am happy to keep paying to have a long list of shows I'd
like to watch, if I could just find the time.

~~~
hbt
There is a name for that: price gouging.

Maybe you can justify selling an ebook for 800$ because when using it the
customer will recover their investment.

What if your hospital/doctor/insurance starts doing that? After all, wouldn't
be a good investment to not be DEAD or suffering? Wouldn't you give them a
shit load of money for all that value they created for you?

It's a bullshit justification for milking people out of their money.

I prefer the Amazon/walmart approach. Commoditize aggressively and keep the
competition away by having low profit margins. Make your money off volume
instead of gouging a small pool of customers.

The same applies to this Hollywood crap. They are price gouging with licensing
deals, geo-location restrictions, delayed releases etc. Then wonder why aren't
enough people willing to pay us what we ask them to? Fuck off.

~~~
nemothekid
>I prefer the Amazon/walmart approach. Commoditize aggressively and keep the
competition away by having low profit margins.

Yes, and pay everyone in between absolute peanuts. Enjoy your sitcoms farmed
out to overworked Amazon Turk writers.

Amazon can get away with it because buying a book on Amazon is the same as
buying one on Barnes and Nobles. Good content however costs money, and decent
writers won't work for the same wages as Amazon warehouse workers.

------
sitkack
> An algorithm generally provided better suggestions than an actual in-store
> clerk.

Could use another pass or two of editing. And the whole thing smells like an
anti-union hit piece.

Funny thing, I was just in a shared ride with a production person from
Hollywood. They might agree on the face of it, "Hollywood as we know it is
over", because you and me baby, we KNOW Hollywood. But that Netflix and Amazon
have fueled an explosion of new content that is outside of normal channels and
normal timelines. Production houses all over the country have more work than
they know what to do with. If the title was, "Hollywood as we know it is
transforming" it wouldn't sound so dramatic.

~~~
TheGRS
Yea this is one thing I was thinking. Part of the downfall of music and
newspapers, which are the prime examples cited in the article, are that those
industries were ripe for disruption by everyone with a little talent (and even
some without). Anyone with a guitar and some practice can create music and
anyone with a little money for a personal sound studio can even create pretty
good music that can go up on Spotify. The newspaper industry had even less
barrier to entry. Anyone with a computer can setup a blog and write an op-ed
piece. Film isn't unique because anyone with a good camera and some basic
lightning and sound equipment (which aren't very expensive these days) can put
together a movie. But really good films also take more than one person to
make, unlike the other industries cited. You need crew and actors to bring
everything together on a set and none of those come cheaply. I do think film
is ripe for disruption, but not in the same way as these other industries
where only a single person was needed.

~~~
ysavir
You say that... But have you compared the quality of youtube videos today to
those from 10 years ago? The quality of writing, effects, and production have
escalated sharply, even when done by a single person.

Youtube is unlikely to disrupt Hollywood, due to it's format (video shorts),
but it makes it clear that there's potential for someone else to step in and
fill the gaps.

~~~
tehwebguy
Also note that YouTube continues to push longer and longer content over time,
not only as the platform grows but as the hobbyists that dominated it grow
into pros.

~~~
TheGRS
I would question the quality of those longer videos though. The long form
videos I usually see are easily made rants over stock video. They aren't
typically stories like you would see in a professional shoot. Well-done
youtube videos clearly have a team of people behind them doing lighting and
set work, plus good editing and even some animations. They cost money too! But
I'll concede that movies aren't truly special at the end of the day and they
can still be disrupted in the same way as the industries I mentioned above.

------
jarjoura
The article reads more like an anti-union piece than anything else. Yet,
Hollywood has been making TV shows in Vancouver for the last 20 years to avoid
this union overhead, so it's not really news to anyone paying attention.

Lord of the Rings was famously filmed in New Zealand and brought accents to
our movies. Now you'd be hard pressed to watch a recent film without a couple
accents.

Post-production is pretty much all that's left in Los Angeles.

Edit: Sorry, in my quick commenting, I meant to imply that accents are more a
symbol that Hollywood films its big blockbusters outside the US now. In re-
thinking it, it was a bad form.

~~~
throwaway91111
What do you mean by the accent remark? America didn't have a shortage of
accents in movies before LOTR, that's for sure.

------
banku_brougham
The 'raindrop story' is meant to emphasize the union aspect, but the author
apparently knows nothing about continuity in filming and editing. If the actor
is supposed to have drops of rain on their shoulder, thats a part of wardrobe,
and seeing a wiped off shoulder before it rained (because editing) is the
reason they are so fastidious. For example, a filmed discussion over drinks
where the actors glasses gradually fill up rather than empty.

continuity fails:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WibfRyQK0kY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WibfRyQK0kY)

------
gmarx
The writer has little sense of history and doesn't understand what "Hollywood"
as a business, is. Hollywood is content creation. When Netflix creates their
own content, they are becoming part of that business. The theater business is
a different thing and the author neglects to mention that long ago the studios
also owned theaters, so integration of that kind is not new. The author thinks
that the fact that the price paid for studios recently means something. The
history going back thirty years or more is of companies paying too much for
studios because of the glamour of the business and later selling when they
realize they have no idea how this crazy business works.

~~~
Gargoyle
It's the same people making the content, it's just different people paying for
it. Netflix and Amazon are just wave number #928288919 of funding sources for
Hollywood.

------
mtalantikite
Which really isn't a bad thing. If we can kill off the big budget movie that
is all terrible writing and only effects (Ben-Hur, $100 million budget, $26
million gross) and replace it with smaller budget movies with great scripts
and acting (Hidden Figures, $25 million budget, $104 million gross), I'm
completely fine with that.

Add in movie theaters like Metrograph in Manhattan, where I can buy an
assigned seat for, say, a Kurosawa double feature, then I think we're moving
in a good direction.

~~~
jobigoud
> smaller budget movies [...] $25 million budget

Movie budgets have always astonished me. Even your low number is so
extravagant. I mean, twenty five million dollars. Thinking what this
represents for a company or a city.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Watch the credits until the end, and that doesn't even include the catering.

~~~
l33tbro
Or locations fees, travel, and accomodation budgets.

------
roymurdock
_And it’s only a matter of time—perhaps a couple of years—before movies will
be streamed on social-media sites. For Facebook, it’s the natural evolution.
The company, which has a staggering 1.8 billion monthly active users,
literally a quarter of the planet, is eventually going to run out of new
people it can add to the service. Perhaps the best way to continue to entice
Wall Street investors to buoy the stock—Facebook is currently the world’s
seventh-largest company by market valuation—will be to keep eyeballs glued to
the platform for longer periods of time. What better way to do that than a
two-hour film?

This might begin with Facebook’s V.R. experience. You slip on a pair of Oculus
Rift glasses and sit in a virtual movie theater with your friends, who are
gathered from all around the world. Facebook could even plop an advertisement
next to the film, rather than make users pay for it. When I asked an executive
at the company why it has not happened yet, I was told, “Eventually it will.”_

Really interesting point - would expect to see Facebook/Netflix converge on
this idea, perhaps even enter some type of M&A action. If it were legal,
perhaps Alphabet would be wise to move first and bolster YouTube with Netflix
content to create a quasi monopoly on video content - both user created and
studio produced. The other giant player to consider would be Amazon with
Twitch and their original series as well.

Seems like a bit of a fight to the bottom, but I'm not sure what the
margins/financials look like for these businesses.

------
iampliny
There are two kinds of "disruption":

* The first merely inconveniences people who already work in a given industry, by forcing them to learn new tools or workflows.

* The second unseats incumbents and fundamentally shifts power dynamics.

"Hollywood", "Film" et al have by and large not been disrupted yet, in the
second sense. Digital change came late to film & tv. We are just now on the
tail end of digital transformations that will enable the second wave of
disruption.

I've written about this extensively, it's kind of my bag:
[http://endcrawl.com/blog/two-digital-revolutions-
disruption/](http://endcrawl.com/blog/two-digital-revolutions-disruption/)

~~~
anjc
The first is people incorrectly using the dictionary definition of the word
without understanding Organisational Strategy. The second is the "canonical"
definition of the term as defined extensively by Christensen.

The state of the film industry and streaming services fits into Christensen's
parameters of "disruptive innovation" but it's a long way off given that
something like 90% of houses pay for network TV services.

------
_pdp_
It occurred to me that the cinema as we knew it would be soon over as soon as
I saw the first episode of Lost. Technology is definitely driving the price of
content production but also content consumption to the bottom and there is no
way escaping it, except maybe what Netflix is currently doing - original
content - which they are getting better and bette at.

It is kind of a medium between hollywood productions and youtube - fun,
engaging and most importantly agile. According to Netflix reports they spent a
lot of money last year but the amount of original content produced in a single
year is astonishing. That being said, younger generation prefer watching
youtube which is 95% free - and I can see the appeal.

I doubt that we will stop watching movies anytime soon but I am more than
certain that the format will change to make it bite-size, more engaging and
instantly available for a small fee that makes it actually rather annoying to
use torrents to consume pirated content.

Netflix is right there but what I find even more interesting is what Amazon is
doing because of the way they package everything up into a single service.
Let's be honest, the most annoying thing with subscription services,
regardless how less you are charged, is the renewal. I know this first hand
because I run my own SaaS. Amazon packages everything into their prime
subscription which is annual and for a small fee not only you get to receive
expedited delivery on many of the items but also original content and music
and that is quite a killer feature that is hard to compete with. Combine this
with the fact that almost every modern TV you can buy since 2016 is preloaded
with Netflix and Amazon Video - you start to get the bigger pictures.

I am sure others such as Google and Apple will follow but they might be too
late in the game.

------
jvagner
The three act structure of most "film" is also killing it. Television, cable,
streaming and Youtube have introduced much richer versions of content
formats... a 100 minute action movie, or historical drama, will follow so many
familiar beats nowadays that there's almost no way to make it compelling.

~~~
malnourish
While I agree that we could use some structural novelty, I would be hard
pressed to believe that mainstream audiences care.

~~~
thenomad
They care far more than you'd expect.

Almost everyone watching a movie has seen hundreds if not thousands of movies.
They're _experts_ on movies.

They might not be able to explain their expertise, or turn it into creation,
but they recognise and have feelings about the structures and the tropes.

They may like them or they may hate them, but assuming your audience is
ignorant of the cinematic form is one of the big newbie filmmaker mistakes.

~~~
gowld
The mistake is assuming audiences don't want the age-old well established
hugely popular and profitable cinematic forms.

------
bad_user
Article mentioned the CGI characters in Rogue One, but those ruined the movie
for me, among other reasons. For one I think I've seen better graphics in
video games and while I concede it must have been the contrast between real
and fake, what really pissed me off is the realization that either they lacked
the imagination to come up with a credible alternative story or that this was
some sort of sinister "fan service".

The other thing that pissed me off is that in Rogue One, like in other recent
movies, nobody is kissing anymore, but people dying of violent deaths is
totally OK.

The primary reason for why Hollywood is having problems is because they make
really shitty movies, full of CGI but with no story. I can even understand the
violent deaths, after all, given the lack of story, you can't relate to those
characters, so they might as well die spectacularly, before the audience dies
of boredom.

Oh yes, I'm not from the US, so not sure what audience they are targeting, but
it ain't me. I like some kissing to go with my action.

------
dbg31415
Seems relevant:

* Kim Dotcom on Twitter: "How to stop piracy: 1 Create great stuff 2 Make it easy to buy 3 Same day worldwide release 4 Fair price 5 Works on any device" || [https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/288199968932630528](https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/288199968932630528)

------
sandworm101
Unions and filesharing are not killing hollywood. (Did the mpaa write this?)
The fact that 70% of revenue comes from overseas is to be expected. 70+% of
people live there.

Unionized, wage earning, labour costs are not high. Look any large production.
Compare the headliner (stars, directors etc) takehome to the union workers.
The rise in production costs has far more to do with on-camera talent than
cameramen.

"Hollywood" is dieing, but only if you are one of the old guard, the handful
of old production studios that make up the mpaa. Netflix, youtube and amazon
show us that there is plenty of money out there should you produce something
people actually want to watch, delivered in a way people actually want.

Ditch the commercials. Stand up to your a-list talent during negotiations.
Actually pay the writers (see the Goodfella fiasco). Cut the focus groups. And
make something worth my time to watch.

~~~
kazagistar
I've seen what entertainment industry looks like without unions; animators in
anime get paid below living wages, even though that industry is bigger then
ever.

~~~
Grue3
Yeah, and the state of western animation (especially hand-drawn) looks
pathetic in comparison. So it's either unions, or cheap entertainment, you can
only pick one.

------
espeed
YC RFS9: Kill Hollywood

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/160491053080776706](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/160491053080776706)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542)

Mission complete?

~~~
l33tbro
I'd have to say mission incomplete. Part of the whole 'Kill Hollywood' meme
was that a ground-breaking startup would appear with a business model to
succeed the current production and distribution systems. Anyone nailing that?

------
the_watcher
> “We’re different,” one producer recently told me. “No one can do what we
> do.”

Any industry whose leaders make a claim similar to this is probably one you
can safely bet on a severe disruption to come, if one is not already in
progress.

------
frik
Hollywood, as we know it is dead for 10+ years. The mass of super hero movies
is appalling.

Where are the action movies and funny comedies, that were so great in the late
1980s, 1990s and earlier 2000s.

Last year's San Andreas was pretty good, but so many other movies are just
boring, unfunny, too dark, too shaky camera, too much CGI, etc. That TV series
got too much attention by Hollywood studies hurts movies a lot. The only TV
series I saw last year was Silicon Valley, I don't know were people have the
time to watch that many series - I would trade TV series for great movies all
day.

~~~
Arizhel
Forget the action movies and funny comedies, where are the sci-fi movies???
And I don't mean some stupid movie about a guy living in what appears to be
the modern world sans display screens and talking to his earphone, I mean
movies with spaceships (and especially spaceships with elaborate corridors).
The 70s and 80s were chock full of these movies. And no shaky-cam back then
either. So far, all we've had is Star Wars--blah (yet again, Hollywood milking
an old franshise), and Prometheus in 2012 (again, milking an old franchise).

Supposedly we're going to get a few spaceship sci-fi movies this year,
including "Passengers" which looks promising. But we've gone quite a long time
now without much in the way of sci-fi.

~~~
pault
That's funny, I was just looking at a list of big budget releases in 2017 and
I was thinking that sci-fi is making a comeback in a big way. At least half of
the films in the list had some sci-fi element to them. Of course, the two
biggest (blade runner and ghost in the shell) are unnecessary sequels/remakes,
but any port in a storm, right?

Edit: Can we get a Red/Green/Blue Mars miniseries on HBO, please? That would
make my decade.

~~~
VLM
"Edit: Can we get a Red/Green/Blue Mars miniseries on HBO, please? That would
make my decade."

(spoilers follow, although this book is 24 years old so if you haven't read
it, you're probably never going to read it. Also Vader is Luke's father)

I also enjoyed that trilogy but the problem is the studio execs don't define
"adult" as above room temp IQ or for actual adults, they define it as using
the word Fuck every five minutes, disgusting bloody gore, and plenty of
ratings boosting sex, because in their twisted freak world that is in fact the
only difference between kindergartners and adults. "Hollywood" is too screwed
up to relate to real people.

So imagine KSR's series absolutely brutalized and... I don't want to think
about it. Imagine 30 minutes of steamy sex between Hiroko and Coyote (Vlad's
home life is probably even more photogenic) then Phyllis has every spoken
phrase contain the word Fuck and when Maya kills her we get at least five
minutes of gore-pr0n of dismemberment and blood and organs lying on the
ground. And to save money they rewrite the entire story to be a scientific
research station in antarctica and vampires are still hot so we'll add some of
those. Just horrible.

If you really want a mind-warper, imagine modern degenerate media execs trying
to do a on screen Bible.

We're in an era of narrowcasting where only trash is made and only trash
sells.

~~~
npsimons
> imagine modern degenerate media execs trying to do a on screen Bible.

Actually, they'd probably treat it well: sex, violence, vengeance, sodomy,
incest, torture. Sounds like a perfect script for a Hollywood movie. Just ask
Mel Gibson how well "Passion of the Christ" did.

------
1_2__3
My personal belief is what will kill (and is killing) Hollywood is what
(effectively) killed TV: Scale, and blandness. Hollywood had a hard enough
time being interesting when it had to appeal to a broad swath of Americans.
Now they want to make world-friendly films, which has already sparked a race
to the bottom in terms of common denominator. This will continue as more and
more markets are able to access maintstream films, and the end result will be
nothing but the least-offensive, most-broadly-kinda-appealing pablum.

------
robert_foss
I guess $COMIC-$REBOOT-7 isn't all that appealing.

~~~
api
I actually think it's this rather than technology that is killing Hollywood.
They've overfit to the teenager demographic and have stopped producing films
of any substance. It's now just a factory churning out film versions of comic
books.

~~~
ghaff
Eh. This sounds an awful lot like there's no good music/books/films/TV any
longer which various people have been saying pretty much forever. There is a
lot of crap out there, but Sturgeon's Law...

Personally I don't have any trouble finding sufficient quality films to fill
my (fairly limited) time for watching movies.

~~~
npsimons
> This sounds an awful lot like there's no good music/books/films/TV any
> longer which various people have been saying pretty much forever.

No. People in the know have noticed the decline in originality in Hollywood,
and predicted it would get worse, and they were right:

[http://www.gq.com/story/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-
harris](http://www.gq.com/story/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris)

Don't get me wrong, the plethora of film available now is astonishing and
nice, but you really have to dig for the gems, especially as it seems they are
not advertised. It doesn't help if, like me, you browse TVTropes and watch
"Honest Trailers", "How it Should have Ended" and "Everything Wrong With" on
Youtube. You start to realize how truly _bad_ and cliche the vast majority of
movies are.

~~~
bmm6o
It also seems like the Thoughtful Adult Movies get squeezed into December
after 11 months of schlock. I don't get to the theaters much, but I went more
in the past two months than the previous 10. And it's so depressing when you
go to see Best Picture Nominee and the trailers are all for Robot Wars 6 and
Shyamalan's freshest turd - it's just a reminder that you won't be back for a
year.

~~~
will_pseudonym
I think that's a function of awards eligibility windows. It's better to
release late in that window, to be fresh in the minds of committee members,
and it will cost less to advertise to them.

~~~
npsimons
> I think that's a function of awards eligibility windows.

Only marginally at best; read the GQ article from 2011. "Summer" has been
starting earlier and earlier and ending later and later for decades, mostly
because studios realize that "Summer" blockbusters can make a ton of money.
Check the cross-over between highest grossing films versus AFI's top lists.

~~~
ghaff
>"Summer" blockbusters can make a ton of money

Which is in part also a function of the fact that international distribution
has become a far more important piece of the gross of films in general. And
the summer action blockbuster does well in non-English-speaking markets. The
"small" character and writing-driven film, not so much.

------
ktRolster
This is (to me) the most revealing quote of the article:

 _Some 70 percent of box office comes from abroad, which means that studios
must traffic in the sort of blow-’em-up action films and comic-book thrillers
that translate easily enough to Mandarin_

------
rayiner
Who cares about Hollywood? In the last few years I've seen a handful of movies
in the theaters: Frozen (I have a 4-year old), that documentary about Anthony
Wiener (not Hollywood), and Fantastic Beasts. Almost all my consumption has
been Netflix, Amazon, and HBO original content. These companies are hitting it
out of the park when it comes to good storytelling.

(Which, incidentally, is a good illustration of the good side of copyright.
Not being able to just be a cheap distribution outlet for existing Hollywood
content forced Netflix and Amazon to start making their own content. And the
movie/TV industry is far better for that.)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Ha--exact the same three. Plus one more, I think, though I can't remember
which one right now.

On the other hand, I've been hooked to _The Man in the High Castle_ , _Black
Mirror_ , strings of documentaries and cartoons bought through iTunes, _et
cetera_.

------
Shihan
The upside of this is that there will be fewer celebritites who think that
because we are interested in their acting we are also interested in their
political views.

------
Ericson2314
Globalization, technology, union decline, foreign-bankrolled censorship (of
course original Red Dawn is wildly propgandistic), feedback loop of banality,
monopolization---for one, Netflix and co practicing the same vertical
integration that was broken up at the end of the golden age. It's all here.

The article adopts the classic disruptor snide and glee, but seeing the
political blowback of the past few months, and the inherent dubious benefit of
some of the things I listed, I'd have adopted a more ambiguous tone.

It's one thing for David to kill Goliath, it's another for Goliath to kill his
parents.

~~~
Ericson2314
"The good news, however, is that we’ll never be bored again."

Ok, please have that final, ominous line mean the tone of the piece was at
least somewhat satirical.

------
plandis
I LOVE going to see movies in movie theatres. When I watch movies at home it's
hard to focus. Pretty much constantly someone will feel the urge to check
their phone. They will talk during movies, get up, etc...

At a theatre that ever happens. Everyone is focused and there are, in general,
few distractions.

~~~
the_watcher
I also love going to movies. The giant screen, surround sound (or at least
sound that is properly equalized so I don't need to constantly turn the volume
up and down), and the mental shift to "I'm in a movie, my phone is off" all
wildly improve my enjoyment of the movie. It's also a huge reason why I saw so
many more movies in theaters when I lived in Austin and could go to the Alamo
Drafthouse, since it simply built the experience around the things that make
theaters great. Since moving to the Bay Area, I find myself seeing far fewer
movies in theaters though.

------
webwanderings
Things have evolved based on time and change in people's habits due to
technological advancement. You noticed that the TV industry is thriving,
particularly the studios which are positioned to deliver slow-paced but epic
shows like Games of Thrones (which stands as a barometer for the others to
compete). People are just better suited to keep up with their entertainment
needs, in different settings and environment. The movie industry would need to
adjust itself.

------
somberi
In another part of the world which consumes movies voraciously. An Indian
movie called "Bahubali" which had lot of special effects (of varying quality),
was made for 40 million USD. It is a two-part release so each one cost about
20 million and made ~100 million. The second part is yet to be released.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baahubali:_The_Beginning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baahubali:_The_Beginning)

One can imagine the special effects from efforts like these become mainstream,
reducing the cost.

A related read: [https://qz.com/674547/hollywoods-special-effects-industry-
is...](https://qz.com/674547/hollywoods-special-effects-industry-is-cratering-
and-an-art-form-is-disappearing-along-with-it/)

Another movie that was heavy on special effects and story (but light on the
wallet) was Pan's Labyrinth (Cost 20 Million USD, made ~80 Million USD).

------
thr0w__4w4y
I live in Los Angeles, specifically the west side; hardly a day goes by that I
don't see a Ferrari pull out of the Sony Studios facility, a 50-person crew
filming 2 actors talking next to a cafe, or an action scene that closes down
part of a freeway, with 100s of police, security, helicopters, etc. around.
Many scenes of Grey's Anatomy are filmed in what is almost my back yard, and
they often involve a dozen camera-crew trucks, staff of 60+ people, etc. I
just cringe when I think of the cost.

What most people want is a great story, and great dialog. I'm not talking
about the audience for a Transformers movie, I don't watch them but some do;
that is a different story, and the animation can be done, and is being done,
more cheaply outside of Hollywood already. But what I'm saying is that if you
can write a great script and have a great story with great dialog, there are
plenty of hungry, often young (age isn't relevant BTW) people with RED 4K
cameras who can film and edit and put together a great product for $3M, not
$30M or $100M.

The days of Brad Pitt getting $30M for a movie, of Julia Roberts getting $25M,
are coming to and end. It might take 5 years, or 10 years, or even a
generation, but it will happen. Same thing to studio execs; the days of
drinking champagne for breakfast and lighting Cuban cigars with $100 bills
will end. IT JUST IS NOT SUSTAINABLE, NECESSARY, OR COMPETITIVE ANYMORE.
(Sorry for shouting, but that is the crux of my point). 30 years ago, there
was no internet to speak of, there were no RED (or Canon, etc.) cameras, there
were no "prosumer" drones with HD cameras, non-western countries were isolated
and not part of the global workforce, etc.

That has all changed. It is just very easy to put together a great product for
less, and all must adjust. It happened to IT, computing and programming, and
it's happening to entertainment.

------
j1o1h1n
> If you could give a computer all the best scripts ever written, it would
> eventually be able to write one that might come close to replicating an
> Aaron Sorkin screenplay.

This is nonsense. Children's programming, however, Thomas the Tank Engine
episodes, are ripe for disruption.

------
youdontknowtho
Hollywood is dieing because of tech and stuff so we should kill unions?

------
FussyZeus
It's worth noting that a big part of what hit Big Print and Big Music was
democratization, not just SV. Where it used to be only a few people could
publish blogs and make music to the quality of a Real Recording Artist,
regular Joe's and Jane's all over (and a number of big name DJ's) all got
started making shit with Garageband and the like. Audio editors used to be
exclusive software and required beefy (for the time) computers to use, now? A
low end Macbook can easily stand in for the majority of what you'd find in a
recording studio, as long as you output in mp3 at a reasonable bitrate, the
mainstream consumer could never tell the difference.

Same thing is now happening to movies, GIF makers on Imgur belt out effects
that look like pro movie work for the cost of Adobe After Effects (or not,
their morals depending) and I've seen fan films for various franchises that
could easily stand toe to toe with budget movies.

I think this trend toward the costs of entertainment creation going down are
what's really going to eat the creative industry's lunch, including Netflix
and the like eventually. Once we get to the point where a few friends can
create something on the level of, just pulling something out here, Orange is
the New Black over a few weekends at an investment of 20 grand? Why even pay
Netflix at that point? We're already seeing a near infinite amount of free
content created by people who just wanted to make things, without even
intending to get rich in the process. Sure, the quality is hit and miss but
how is that terribly different from Hollywood these days?

Sorry for the ramble, hope I got my point across.

~~~
gmarx
The price of the tech goes down, but with so much choice the quality of the
writing, acting and so forth, if anything, needs to be higher

~~~
FussyZeus
Right, but Hollywood doesn't seem to be attempting to scale that mountain.

------
matheusmoreira
It's wonderful to witness the fall of these rotting "industries". It's taken
way too long.

Being required to organize my time around some TV channel's programming just
isn't good service. Internet-based services like Netflix have no such
requirements. Yet these aging TV companies are still relevant to me just
because they have exclusive rights to the series I like and won't let Netflix
have them.

Why do I have to go to the cinema just to watch a new movie? To me it's not
that good an experience. I'm basically paying more than a single month's worth
of Netflix to watch a single movie on worn out and uncomfortable seats in a
crowded theater with half an hour of irrelevant ads before the film actually
starts. My only other choice is waiting months until it finally arrives on TV,
only appearing on Netflix much later if at all.

Even when they do arrive, it's significantly delayed just because I'm not
American. It's beyond irritating to discover I can't view something on Netflix
or even YouTube just because I'm not in the US. Maybe it's due to some
copyright issue I'm supposed to care about.

This "industry" treats me like a third rate customer and acts as if I was
lucky to get whatever scraps of stale content they decided to make available.
In reality, most of the movies and series they release aren't that good. Given
enough convenience I'd watch them but as it is now it costs way too much in
terms of money, time and dignity. The only relatively new movie I'd actually
pay to see again in theaters is Mad Max: Fury Road.

Is it any wonder people pirate stuff? Pirates consistently provide much better
service with much lower operational costs. If anything, they're the state of
the art.

------
elihu
The "disruption" of the music industry by the Internet, Napster, etc..
ultimately led to users being given greater control over the music they listen
to. You can now legally purchase DRM-free single tracks from the various
online stores.

Maybe a similar thing needs to happen with movies? I think the fansub
community, the Tolkien edit of The Hobbit, and MST3K and Riftrax are examples
of what "greater control" could look like.

Suppose there were a standard video format that accepted a separate stream of
commands to skip or re-order scenes, insert audio or subtitles or splice in
video from external sources and remove or alter vocal/sound effects/music from
the original content.

Now, users could create alternative versions of their favorite movies and
share them with each other. Suppose a movie with an alternative sound track
requires songs that you already own? No problem, it just uses them. Suppose it
requires songs that you don't already own? Maybe it pops up a window "would
you like to buy these tracks from Amazon/iTunes/whatever for 99 cents each?"
and then when you buy them it adds them to your music library. If you don't
want to buy all the tracks, maybe there's just no music in that part of the
movie.

I could see this as a really great way for movies to increase music sales, and
for people to get excited about and re-watch old movies and have a way to
participate in the creative process. It also can be done in a way that's
respectful of copyright law, by giving users a convenient way to purchase all
of the copyrighted content they need to watch the movie in its edited form. I
suspect a lot of traditional Hollywood types will hate the idea of people
watching movies in any way other than how the director originally intended,
but I think they should just get over it.

~~~
forgottenpass
_Maybe a similar thing needs to happen with movies?_

It won't. Consumers got the level of control over their music library that
they did as an accident of timing. The quality of the popular home format (CD)
was very good, home computers came with the hardware to read them, the power
of home computing and network speeds were just good enough for audio piracy.
So music piracy became ubiquitous before the pieces were in place for DRM to
stop it.

Video piracy only hit big at the tail end of that window, so the market
doesn't expect as much flexibility when buying video as with music. Every year
we're stuck with more and more DRM technology coming standard in the products
we buy and software we use.

------
chiph
The XBox mention was interesting. I wonder if there's a market for a
machinima-style series, with distribution done via the Microsoft Store (if
they have subscription pricing). Lots of Hollywood actors do voice-over work
on the side. And since it's all virtual, you wouldn't have the overhead of
union-rate costumers, craft-services, lighting techs, and so on.

~~~
touristtam
That mention actually made me question the genuine understanding of the
author. As much as mircotsoft is pushing to be a big player in this, I do not
see them taking a significant part of the market for home media center. There
are just too many android box doing the same job for media streaming and big
players pushing their own (Holu and Amazon come to mind).

------
multinglets
Sounds good to me. Hollywood is a trash heap and every single person on Earth
would be better off if it didn't exist.

------
davidgerard
Called this five years ago: [https://rocknerd.co.uk/2012/10/08/no-film-is-not-
in-unique-n...](https://rocknerd.co.uk/2012/10/08/no-film-is-not-in-unique-
need-of-blockbusterism/) Not that it wasn't obvious.

Filmmakers plead their uniqueness and that only they can deliver
blockbusterism. Record companies did the same! and then the studio turned out
to be a computer with a DAW program on it, and you can literally record
something of full professional quality at home. You _can_ use a full studio if
you want, but now it's _optional_.

------
ouid
"This might begin with Facebook’s V.R. experience. You slip on a pair of
Oculus Rift glasses and sit in a virtual movie theater with your friends, who
are gathered from all around the world. Facebook could even plop an
advertisement next to the film, rather than make users pay for it. When I
asked an executive at the company why it has not happened yet, I was told,
“Eventually it will.”"

This is so profoundly implausible, I have to assume it is a paid advertisement
from Facebook.

------
inthewoods
I'm a bit surprised Amazon, as an example, has not been more disruptive to
Hollywood. Take "Manchester by the Sea" \- gross about $40m in box office.
Amazon has chosen a traditional window approach to the film.

Now imagine, instead, the released it for 2 weeks (or whatever the requirement
is for Oscar consideration) then pull it from theaters and make it available
on Prime. I wonder if they would have made more than $30m on new Prime
subscriptions. That to me would be more disruptive.

------
beloch
Claim: Hollywood movies are going to become less profitable and less viable to
make!

Sane response: What was the last Hollywood movie that actually turned a profit
on paper for tax purposes?

------
sreenadh
I think hollywood's main issue is that there are too many over-paid & useless
actors who drain the resources that can be used to make a better movie.

------
pippy
Technology has also created a market where the number of high quality films
available for movie goers increases at a constant rate. If someone has a
collection of high quality movies to watch, a new film coming to market is
competing with the previous titles. It wasn't too long ago when an improvement
in CGI meant the movie got an automatic increase in quality.

------
Kiro
Regarding the raindrop thing. Why would the production company ever hire
someone for that? The article makes it sound like they are forced to.

~~~
gmarx
I doubt that is the persons only job. She might be the costume person or in
charge of continuity. It's like how the union guys who are in charge of moving
everything (teamsters I think) won't let you move anything

~~~
germinalphrase
It depends what you're moving - and for good reason. Unions remain strong in
industries that continue to have dangerous work environments. Film sets are
controlled chaos with very high powered electric lights/equipment, cables and
cords everywhere, and sometimes uniquely unusual (read: dangerous) work
demands - high ropes, scaffolding, helicopters, pyrotechnics, intentionally
crashed cars and other practical effects.

When I was starting out in the industry - before I was Local 600 (camera
dept.) - I think I scoffed a little bit about the "my job"/"not my job" stuff;
however, in most cases there are some legitimate safety/efficiency/equipment
protection requirements backing those decisions.

~~~
gmarx
Not only that, with a large group of people you can't trust everyone to have
the judgement to tell exceptions to the rule. So it works better to just have
everyone learn a simple rule like "don't move anything"

------
6stringmerc
The big studios with big budgets for big blockbuster movies are a very proven
model. At least until the model goes bust with too many losses compared to
wins. Happens with Music Labels plenty as well.

I like to think "Hollywood" is changing, and A24 is at the forefront of doing
things right.

------
Keyframe
Here's Lynda Obst talking about what, how and why it happened:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_oHW31jQfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_oHW31jQfg)

tl;dw; DVD dead, Netflix ruins it further, New markets

~~~
touristtam
There is the digital locker the film industry has been trying to move forward
for quite a while without being able to make it the standard:
[http://www.techradar.com/news/home-cinema/ultraviolet-
what-y...](http://www.techradar.com/news/home-cinema/ultraviolet-what-you-
need-to-know-1077658)

------
dagenleg
And good riddance!

------
minusf
Carpenter's debut: Darkstar (1974) is estimated to have a budget of 60k...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_\(film\)).

------
two2two
In summary, Hollywood is a dinosaur on its deathbed losing their strength to
control the market as SV seeps into every crevice of consumers lives providing
solutions Hollywood was too stubborn to embrace.

------
tomdell
The assertion at the end of the article is absurd - "The good news, however,
is that we’ll never be bored again." No matter what changes, people will find
a way get bored of it.

------
yuhong
I have been thinking about how lawyers took over Hollywood and the recording
industry in the first place. Remember the Betamax case, not to mention the
history of DAT tape too.

------
rm_-rf_slash
Great, it'll be like the novel-rewriting apparatus from 1984, except instead
of Winston Smith switching around names and scenes, it'll be a neural network.

I'll bet $100 that in the next ten years we will be able to create content on
the fly. Instead of one single _Game of Thrones_ that everybody watches, the
TV microphones will pick up on people's sentiments and adjust the plot line
accordingly. Don't want your favorite character to die? They survive. Hate
another's guts? They'll be gone. Prefer a lighter tone? The entire set has
been replaced with Disney World and the cast now consists of the characters
from _Arrested Development._

------
vonklaus
Hollywood isn't over. The "we" in the article title is hollywood, i.e how it
understands itself. We as HN, and pretty much everyone else knew this in 2010.

------
albertTJames
[http://www.the-numbers.com/market/](http://www.the-numbers.com/market/)

The whole article is based on false assumptions.

------
vostok
Hollywood is being disrupted as we speak. Look at the incredible success of
Annapurna, A24, and the original content by Netflix and Amazon.

~~~
superuser2
Original content by Netflix and Amazon is produced by the same companies,
people, and tools as the rest of Hollywood's output, just for a different
distribution system.

------
macspoofing
People want to watch movies. Maybe at theaters, maybe not. Hollywood will be
fine.

------
ravenstine
What a coincidence that this gets written right as I decide to ditch
television and begin going out to see films again. I already watch the least
television out of anyone in my peer group(when I do watch anything, it's
usually educational & self-development content on Youtube), yet I feel that
I've come to an understanding about what this "television renaissance" really
is.

* from here on out, I'm using the word "television" to mean both TV & streaming.

While there we have seen some excellent writing for television in recent
years, and while there are more than 400 scripted shows being produced for
both television and streaming, I'd argue that most of it is trash. Now hear me
out, because I know that word gets used in a relative sense, but I'm trying to
be objective here. I call it trash because as well-produced as these shows
are(in terms of acting, sets, effects), few people that I know, including
myself, actually watch these shows all the way through to their last season.
From the conversations I've had with people, it sounds like a common thing to
binge through a couple of seasons of a given show, get bored of it, and then
move on to another one of the hundreds of available shows. Is this really such
a good thing? Is this better than the state of the film industry at its
height? I've started asking myself these questions a lot lately, as my
experience tells me the average person isn't getting a whole lot of lasting
satisfaction out of a given show yet they are spending an inordinate amount of
time "bingeing".

The film industry screwed itself in the behind for more reasons than are in
the linked story. Big studios are well-known for destroying the creative
process and watering down what might otherwise become a classic. Evidence of
this can be found in interviews by writers & producers who, years after
they've cut their ties with studios, feel safe to talk about what "could have
been" if the executives didn't return scripts with a bunch of notes and lines
crossed out. So not only did we end up seeing a lot of inferior products at
the cinema, but we were paying out the ass for it; somehow we were paying over
$20 to watch mediocre films while sitting in dirty theaters, and people
gradually caught on to the fact that it sucks. On top of that, we they began
subjecting us to loud video advertisements before the trailers would run.

But then why would I go back to film, you might ask? Well, I'm fortunate to
live in LA, and we do have a lot of "arthouse" cinemas that have a far
superior experience, if you are willing to look for them. There are still lots
of independent and foreign films being made that are at least decent and break
the mold of the average Hollywood blockbuster. More importantly, I think it's
healthier to see a film every once in a while, and actually be around other
human beings, than be at home eating diet ice cream while Netflix autoplays.
Films also tend to have a story that has to be complete in at least 1.5 hours;
contrast that with the J.J. Abrams style of television show that's common
these days, where we're lead by a carrot on a stick for several
episodes(possibly entire seasons!) by some idea that seems neat but actually
has very little payoff, only to be then redirected to a more enigmatic carrot
on a stick(e.g. Lost's "hatch" or the "maze" in Westworld). With film, the
worst that can happen is you lost a couple hours out of your life, and that
doesn't happen that often for me. Meanwhile, I've known people who watch
entire seasons of mediocre shows just because those shows are new, and that's
a lot of hours that could definitely be spent doing something better. What a
coincidence that those same people have energy levels far below what they
should have for their age!

EDIT: I forgot to include the real point I want to make: people will realize
that they are overvaluing the time they are spending in front of the tube, and
there will come a point where the film industry makes a comeback.

~~~
ghaff
>From the conversations I've had with people, it sounds like a common thing to
binge through a couple of seasons of a given show, get bored of it, and then
move on to another one of the hundreds of available shows.

Long before streaming was widespread, I would say that I had a "five season
rule." What I meant by that is that, for a given series, by the time five
seasons (give or take) had passed, I was just tired of the characters, style,
setting, etc. Some series do a better job than others in mixing things up but,
even when a series arguably maintains a level of quality, I'm ready to move
on.

Of course, the ready availability of more quality streaming video than I have
time to watch probably accelerates that process even more. There are at least
a couple of series I can think of where I loved the first season but didn't
really get into season 2.

------
cft
Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Snap are the new Hollywood.

------
touchofevil
There's definitely a move from the theater to on-demand streaming platforms
for all movies except giant movies like Star Wars, so I think the author is
right that the theatrical experience will see audience attendance continue to
drop. Also making movies that can play for audiences around the world does
mean that the dialogue has to be very simple and/or reduced. I think Jason
Bourne had 50 lines of dialogue total in the latest Bourne movie for this
reason. Without dialogue it does get harder for great actors to shine (Chaplin
& Keaton excepted). As movies have gotten less culturally specific, they've
also gotten less culturally relevant and this minimizes the importance of
directors, writers, actors, and movies as art.

The author's inexperience in the industry shows though in this article. Crews
are extremely efficient. Movies are made one shot at a time and when you have
big crews made up of different departments (art, camera, sound, lighting, vfx)
they have to work essentially in very quick shifts. For example, the camera
move is set, then the actors step out and the lighting crew lights the scene,
then lighting steps out, art dept. steps in and works, then the actors come
back in, etc. To an outsider it looks like 90% of the crew is just standing
around doing nothing, but it's much more efficient to work that way and safer
too. So I think the author is putting too much blame on union crews for
inefficiency.

Also, the author completely omits the marketing costs of films which increased
hugely once TV advertising was used to market movies. Marketing costs are one
of the main reasons that movies have to basically be blockbusters to make
money. A TV ad spot for Star Wars costs the same as a TV ad spot for an indie
film.

The idea that CG actors are going to replace real actors en masse is not
realistic. I work in visual effects and, trust me, it's a lot more work than
this author realizes and is not cost effective unless an actor has died in the
middle of your shoot.

I also don't see editors getting replaced by A.I. for films or TV/streaming.
Maybe for wedding and vacation videos or perhaps as a tool for reality TV
editors to help select shots from the massive amount of footage. But film/TV
editing is now an extremely efficient process thanks to digital editing tools
like Avid or Premiere. A single editor can cut a film almost as fast as they
can think at this point (okay a bit slower). Having to screen 50 versions of
an edit produced by AI (and then do rounds of editing notes that way) would
take longer than having a good editor just cut the movie.

Don't get me wrong, the theatrical movie experience is going to keep going
down hard. I think the biggest threat to movies is that for the most part they
don't matter much to the culture any more. But this author's lack of
experience in the industry makes some of his predictions suspect.

------
bonif
about time

