Gloom and Doom

[a whitmer]

I had a feeling this was happening ...

http://www.diyphotography.net/camera-sales-report-2016-lowest-sales-ever-dslrs-mirrorless/


I am sure this applies to filmmaking as well. I've seen some pretty decent stuff made on Smartphones. They even have Smartphone Film Fests now ...

http://spff.ca/

Here's a phone-film sample ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4FRujDeqFw

Maybe this quasi grind house effect is the new black? Maybe it isn't about making money anymore, but about piling up the likes? I mean, it isn't Red, but serves the purpose of entertainment - in short bursts for a new audience coming into full maturity.

Red might want to consider a Pocket-Red. Have they already?

Seems Film overall is really in the slumps, or maybe even some kind of paradigm-shift chaos. I picked up my first Netflix card (I rarely watch film, and seems something happened over my 'missing years'). Most of the films are bad, and when I read the 'release and response' info, the more common guilty party is the script. Poor writing! Even "The Mummy", with screenwriter David Koepp involved, picked up some pretty bad reviews, and some blamed the writing (a disconnected derivative mish-mash). I am of the correct opinion that much has to do with an over-dependence/reliance on screenwriting software (let the machine do everything for you), and accepting the preponderance of How-To books as Bible. So very not so.

And this ...


http://www.cracked.com/article_19012_5-hollywood-secrets-that-explain-why-so-many-movies-suck.html


I don't know what to say. As a writer, I have noticed a big change in the past three years especially. The industry has lost its mojo. Not sure how all this is effecting you guys and gals in rentals and camera-for-hire (music vids, weddings, aerial work and so on), but narrative film is really in trouble. Per Dustin Hoffman, it's the worst he's seen in 50 years, and all points to this being television's new golden age. All the energy is moving away from film - now just a rehash after rehash of comic book garbage. But hey, it sells. So do cigarettes, but that doesn't make them a good thing.

Pray for the small fish trying to tell compelling stories and making a few bucks doing it.

Depressing food for depressing thought.

Alex








Short Scripts up for grabs ...

PINK SOX: a young girl goes head to head with her grandfather in this generation gap story. Cellphones vs. sitting and looking at nothing. Three actors, 3 locations. 22 pages.

SAME TIME TOMORROW: a kind man visiting a young woman's apartment arouses the chagrin of a nosey neighbor. Not is all as it seems. 4 actors, two locations. 10 pages.

FOUR WALLS AND A WINDOW: A young woman suffering from some heavy-duty emotional trauma finds comfort in an unexpected way. 4 actors, 4 locations. 29 pages.

HONEYSUCKLE: erotic vampires on the loose. 5 actors, 4 locations. 15 pages

 

[Tom Dowler]

Also worth noting documentary, which is in a golden age right now, even if the money isn't completely following.

With Amazon and Netflix now leading the charge financially and creatively, the things they seem to be putting money behind are episodic, doc and (to a lesser extent) indie-style narrative features.

 

[Matt Bai]

Wayne M should be up any minute now. :idea:

 

[Matt W.]

That iPhone short film is one of the most aesthetically atrocious things I've ever seen. I couldn't watch it. I thought it was a parody at first, but most parodies of poor aesthetics are at the very least cohesive. Hideous. Not to mention the content.

This looks pretty good to me, though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALSwWTb88ZU

I used to shoot 4x5 stills, 16mm film, whatever. Such a film snob. Still am. And when I got into digital it was exciting that a full frame dSLR had 6x7-level image quality–at the very least. But I found the whole thing so boring with digital. My whole approach just turned to spray and pray photography. I see the same approach on big sets with absurd multi-cam coverage ("direct it in post"). Are we really in a golden age of photography or cinema now that they've been democratized? Absolutely not. The most interesting photographers out there (Gursky, Crewdson, and I'm not even a particularly huge fan of either but I do like Gursky a lot) are still mostly shooting 8x10 film but it's so cold and formal with them. The most interesting filmmakers are generally sticking with film (kudos to Fincher for embracing a digital look, though I do prefer his older work by far).

The only thing that revived my interest in photography was my iPhone. I'm totally hooked on Instagram. Not even shooting on a dSLR and uploading to Instagram, just the built in processing I do when I take the photo and the filters. When Vine was around, I saw some good stuff on Vine. There's some good stuff on Vimeo and the best of it (Watchtower of Turkey, etc.) is usually shot on cheap consumer gear, embracing that kind of spray and pray approach and integrating it into the result. Definitely YouTube's golden age but I'm probably too old to be the target audience (that and I don't really play video games, which are a big topic of interest there).

Cinema might as well be dead in my opinion. And not like a little dead. Dead dead. But there's a lot of good tv and short form. I think pretty soon even more of it will be shot on an iPhone, or at least on a consumer camera, but embracing the unique iPhone look, not...

....well... looking like whatever that hideous mess was.

 

[a whitmer]

Also worth noting documentary, which is in a golden age right now, even if the money isn't completely following.

With Amazon and Netflix now leading the charge financially and creatively, the things they seem to be putting money behind are episodic, doc and (to a lesser extent) indie-style narrative features.

You're right, documentary is rockin' along. Seems one can never run out of material (China's Round Houses, history of the Lebanese in Mexico, survival stories, great unsung inventors, and on and on and on), and the more folks that get into it, the more great and surprising stories will get dredged up form the obscure past and present. As opposed to Narrative where the old adage says there are no new ideas. I talk about this in my book, and don't really agree. One can find new ways to retell the same theme (inspiring teacher, road trip, teen slasher, etc,), but there is a massive creative void right now, and maybe it's that spec writing has worn itself out. That and laziness.

But crappy films keep getting made, and far too many with those 16%% or 22% (or even 0%) approval ratings. So I look up the writers and see they have 5 more films with A-listers attached, and all of them with poor ratings. How do these guys and gals keep getting their work produced? Something is seriously wrong in the vetting process. With this kind of dismal track record, of course the money and better talent are going to look for other options.

What a mess. It's a shame that with all the new cool tools and technology that can produce pretty much any imaginable world, and the creative and curious technical talent behind it, the writing is stuck in reverse.

RIP

Alex









Short Scripts up for grabs ...

PINK SOX: a young girl goes head to head with her grandfather in this generation gap story. Cellphones vs. sitting and looking at nothing. Three actors, 3 locations. 22 pages.

SAME TIME TOMORROW: a kind man visiting a young woman's apartment arouses the chagrin of a nosey neighbor. Not is all as it seems. 4 actors, two locations. 10 pages.

FOUR WALLS AND A WINDOW: A young woman suffering from some heavy-duty emotional trauma finds comfort in an unexpected way. 4 actors, 4 locations. 29 pages.

HONEYSUCKLE: erotic vampires on the loose. 5 actors, 4 locations. 15 pages

 

[a whitmer]

That iPhone short film is one of the most aesthetically atrocious things I've ever seen. I couldn't watch it. I thought it was a parody at first, but most parodies of poor aesthetics are at the very least cohesive. Hideous. Not to mention the content.

And it boasts ... World's most awarded iPhone short film.


"Cinema might as well be dead in my opinion. And not like a little dead. Dead dead. "

It's really only 120-ish years old, which is nothing on the grand scale of things. Lop a chunk off of that before it really became mainstream. Not sure folks are ready to give up cinema, though, which is really just a way to bring the millenia-old idea of the theater into you home. A portable stage. Guess we'll have to wait and see what shakes out in the next few years.

Yes, the other clip was better.

a

 

[Marc Wielage]

There's great stuff out there to watch, but not all of it's in the theater. American Gods, Mr. Robot, and Better Call Saul are the best TV shows I've seen in a long time, and they're critical darlings that do very well with a limited audience. I'd take any of these against a Transformers anytime.

Having said that... I'm looking forward to Spiderman in a few weeks, and Wonder Woman was not bad for this kind of thing.

 

[Ben Scott]

There's so much good work out there these days ad so many distribution platforms putting out more niche stuff that if you can't find the stuff you're into it's on you, not the filmmakers.

 

[Hugh Scully]

If you are writing spec scripts with the hope that they will be picked up by studios then yes, you're barking up the wrong tree. Those scripts are used now as examples of writing as it said in one of those articles. We're still in the middle of a big shift in distribution and the model. The one that the studios use, with worldwide theatrical distribution, requires more money than they can make with smaller films that don't do well internationally. That's the big studios.

What about Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea?

We have yet to realize the benefit of "democratization" but that is changing too. It requires innovation in the way we organize productions. It's happening.

Check out Soderbergh on Fingerprint Releasing in the article from EW, "The economic model is pretty simple. You sell the foreign to cover the cost of the [film] negative. We sell the non-theatrical rights to cover the cost of the [prints and advertising], and that’s it. It’s really simple. People have done this before. The distribution part is only a little different because we control it in a way that you normally don’t get to control distribution."

That is a modern strategy. Now if you're Soderbergh you can get A list actors to work for scale and a chunk of the back end. Forget the big Hollywood Studios. Those movies aren't for us anyway. It's just another form of globalization. Be innovative and produce your own work or learn to partner up - or work your ass off to get into one of the TV writer's rooms.

 

[a whitmer]

There's so much good work out there these days ad so many distribution platforms putting out more niche stuff that if you can't find the stuff you're into it's on you, not the filmmakers.

Of course there is tons of good material out there. My point is there is some kind of upheaval in mainstream film that is having repercussions down the line, including the sales of cameras. Or so it seems. As a writer I can really feel it, so I was curious if others are also feeling it. Fewer gigs? Harder to get funding? Nobody renting equipment?

And my question is, why is the big money being thrown at really bad films, or mediocre at best? The film "The Prince", for one example, has Bruce Willis and John Cusack, and a budget of 18 million bucks. It's Rotten Tomato approval rating is 0. ZERO!


This ... Chuck Wilson of The Village Voice wrote, "The action thriller "The Prince" is so bad that the most noteworthy thing about it is that the opening credits list 19 executive producers"

And yet it got made and distributed.


And "Fathers and Daughters", with Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried. 22.4 million to make it, with a box office return of 5.1 millions. A 28% approval rating on RT, with this to say ... "Fathers and Daughters name-brand cast can't cover for a screenplay that makes a half-hearted effort at delving into family dynamics but falls back on melodrama."

And yet it got made. Don't these seasoned actors know when they are reading junk? Paycheck work?

Who's vetting these scripts? I used to read a lot of scripts for folks, and most were in fact junk, but a few really stood out, so there is hope. The one script I never forgot is titled "Amelia Earhart and the Bologna Rainbow Highway", and after 12 years it is now in development. The writer team of Amy Garcia and Cecilia Contreras (first female writing team to earn a Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), also have this ... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2927212/?ref_=nm_knf_i1 (47% approval).

Really solid writers.

Again, my question is why are there so many bad films out there? Has there always been a statistical average of bad to good films, and this is really nothing new? Why are some of the fests drying up (fest ghettos, as mentioned in the article), and camera sales down? On another forum, there was a two-month space between writer's posts, when there used to be several a day. And no one seems to be looking for material to shoot. No -- bo -- dy. I used to get between 120 and 150 hits per day on my site, now I get maybe 5 a week (cuz I suck at writing, but that is beside the point).

Something's going on top to bottom. This isn't to say the good stuff isn't out there. It is. Just getting harder to find, and the finite money is evaporating. Or so it seems. Not all of us are tech-savvy, or up on the new platform this and new platform that, or have the best equipment to find and watch it.

Some great stuff coming out of Iceland, but is there more? How do I find it?

I know this is mainstream, and made for mass-audience appeal (which should be a red flag anyways), but its overall health and well being can and does have ripple effects, which might also be a good thing - as in forcing new and innovative ways to get the good stuff out there.

Jus' saying.

 

[Tom Dowler]

I will say this about Hollywood, though: they follow the money.

And right now, this endless reboot, universe-building thing is *not* working out for them, and they won't suffer that for long. On the flipside, films like Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight are showing that strong writing is just as powerful as brand recognition to an increasingly sophisticated audience.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the 90s spec scene come back a little bit. It's a numbers game, after all. They kept making $200m tentpoles because they were reliable. DC and now Sony have learned that's not true anymore (until Wonder Woman, when they did something different by hiring a female director). So if your $200m movie can flop just as easily as a $5m movie, and Moonlight can do $65m worldwide on a $2m budget.... It makes more sense then to make 50 Moonlights on the expectation that 2-3 of them will break out, than it is to put all your eggs into the one $200m tentpole basket.

But that's just my 2c.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

I had a feeling this was happening ...

http://www.diyphotography.net/camera-sales-report-2016-lowest-sales-ever-dslrs-mirrorless/


I am sure this applies to filmmaking as well.

It doesn't.


What you are seeing there is significant decline of non-interchangeable lens small sensor cameras, because there is little need for them with quality of mobile phone cameras. Other camera sales have a much smaller decline. Cameras have become really good and market is saturated.


Film making is alive and well, does not depend on big studio features, has no problems with creativity and visual creatives now have a saturated creative tool market with wide spectrum choices to pick from, starting from $1000 modded stills cameras.



Btw, I noticed a melancholic tone in a few of your threads.

Watch out not to "stay inside" of what you express in your creative work. It tends to cling on and affect one's daily state. Musicians, writers, composers, poets, actors and many other artists can be affected by this. Especially if dealing with heavy emotions and for a longer period. If you have had a couple of moody works in a row try to write something uplifting and even hilarious to bring your spirit back up. If the subconscious takes "moody" as a base mode you are in trouble.
Just a friendly suggestion...

 

[Elsie N]

Of course there is tons of good material out there. My point is there is some kind of upheaval in mainstream film that is having repercussions down the line, including the sales of cameras. Or so it seems. As a writer I can really feel it, so I was curious if others are also feeling it. Fewer gigs? Harder to get funding? Nobody renting equipment?

And my question is, why is the big money being thrown at really bad films, or mediocre at best? The film "The Prince", for one example, has Bruce Willis and John Cusack, and a budget of 18 million bucks. It's Rotten Tomato approval rating is 0. ZERO!


This ... Chuck Wilson of The Village Voice wrote, "The action thriller "The Prince" is so bad that the most noteworthy thing about it is that the opening credits list 19 executive producers"

And yet it got made and distributed.


And "Fathers and Daughters", with Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried. 22.4 million to make it, with a box office return of 5.1 millions. A 28% approval rating on RT, with this to say ... "Fathers and Daughters name-brand cast can't cover for a screenplay that makes a half-hearted effort at delving into family dynamics but falls back on melodrama."

...

Again, my question is why are there so many bad films out there? Has there always been a statistical average of bad to good films, and this is really nothing new? Why are some of the fests drying up (fest ghettos, as mentioned in the article), and camera sales down? On another forum, there was a two-month space between writer's posts, when there used to be several a day. And no one seems to be looking for material to shoot. No -- bo -- dy. I used to get between 120 and 150 hits per day on my site, now I get maybe 5 a week (cuz I suck at writing, but that is beside the point).

Something's going on top to bottom. This isn't to say the good stuff isn't out there. It is. Just getting harder to find, and the finite money is evaporating. Or so it seems. Not all of us are tech-savvy, or up on the new platform this and new platform that, or have the best equipment to find and watch it.
...

Jus' saying.

Your example is comforting to me... it suggests (to me, anyway) that audiences are becoming more sophisticated and that story matters. Of course star power will still matter as well, but imagine what this movie would have made without the known cast. '-) (on the other hand, it may have come closer to break-even without the costly cast.)

I will say this about Hollywood, though: they follow the money.

And right now, this endless reboot, universe-building thing is *not* working out for them, and they won't suffer that for long. On the flipside, films like Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight are showing that strong writing is just as powerful as brand recognition to an increasingly sophisticated audience.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the 90s spec scene come back a little bit. It's a numbers game, after all. They kept making $200m tentpoles because they were reliable. DC and now Sony have learned that's not true anymore (until Wonder Woman, when they did something different by hiring a female director). So if your $200m movie can flop just as easily as a $5m movie, and Moonlight can do $65m worldwide on a $2m budget.... It makes more sense then to make 50 Moonlights on the expectation that 2-3 of them will break out, than it is to put all your eggs into the one $200m tentpole basket.

But that's just my 2c.

I agree, things do have a way of coming full circle. Doesn't mean it will be that on the same old venues, but rather old done new.

 

[Matt W.]

Well, forget the iPhone short. So far as I know there’s no “second most awarded” iPhone short so shit mountain isn’t even that tall. This king of shit mountain is just standing on a pile of dog shit. That said, I’m not sure how sales of cameras are related to someone shooting this video on an iPhone first of all because what's the correlation and secondly because studio pictures always rent.

I can see why dSLR sales are decreasing, though. I prefer shooting on my iPhone. And if I were a pro I'd buy a medium format digital back or shoot on film to look like a pro because everyone already has a dSLR.

From what I understand (and I know very little of it), the writer’s market is bad but it always was. Two of my friends recently had scripts purchased by major studios. The pay checks were okay, not great. But they do say it’s harder than it once was. Writers I know who worked in LA in the 90s were cleaning up by comparison (well, at least making a doctor/lawyer-level salary), but often never had even a single script produced. Financially the industry did seem to be healthier then but in terms of quality content being produced all the same political issues were just as detrimental.

I agree that you should follow the money if you want to see where we're going, but I strongly disagree that the endless reboot cycle isn’t working. Or that it isn’t working as well as Indies are. It might not be working as well as it once was, but tentpole IPs still accounts for the vast, vast majority of profit in the industry. Without reboots and expensive IPs, the studios would go under overnight. The math you suggest re: Moonlight doesn’t work. First of all, I often work on that level of movie or slightly higher and the pay checks are too low to sustain the below-the-line crew’s livelihood. Not insultingly low, but just not good either. And if you look at 50 random $2 million dollar films and consider the distribution and advertising costs (generally $10-$15 million per feature for anything that gets a major theatrical release), the profits will come out much worse than looking at the average tentpole. Much worse. There are exceptions to this rule; Blumhouse is doing very well by taking a similar approach to what you suggest. Split was a big hit. But to do this, Blum ends up burying and eating the cost of most of his films, because the cost of advertising and distribution is so high even if the film’s budgets are that low. And, yep, below the line crew members are pissed about it, to the extent that if they made that little money on every feature they worked on, they’d leave the industry. And it’s also all horror, which has traditionally done well with this model. Indie, not so much. I believe some film company in Austin tried the approach you suggest and all they had was a bunch of $2 million features that all ended up being worth nothing. They just lost everything they had within a year or two. Imo that market sucks because the production company bears the weight of costs and then the major distributors only pick up a few features and generally for only a few million dollars each on a budget of a few million and it's the distributors that make most of the profit. Imo it's a bad approach, especially if you're not connected with the majors in the first place (as Blum was).If you have a killer story to tell and indie is the only way to tell it, do it! But there's money there only like there's money in playing the lottery. That said you’ve reminded me to reach out to Blum as a potential vendor.

I still agree with you that money is the problem. The dirty secret of the Renaissance is it was as much the Medicis as Michelangelo. Without that money, there’s too little room to take risks. Video games are a bigger market now with way more profit than film, anyway, and that’s been the dominant artistic medium over film for years (though they too are in an endless IP loop). In the early 2000s and 90s there were a lot of incredible blockbusters, many of which generated the IPs we’re seeing rebooted today. Commercial cinema was doing great. Great profits. Great films. Indie scene was great, but we also got Minority Report, Titanic, the Matrix, really innovative original stuff with big budgets. Now it’s 95% recycled IPs. Today, there will be the occasional cool film in the mix, but I think the days of the best films also being blockbusters is essentially over with the occasional cool indie being the scraps we’re left to feed on. Mad Max is the exception that proves the rule. And it, too, is a reboot. But I think reboots etc. will get better. Wonder Woman, Mad Max, Logan, etc. prove that it actually helps to differentiate your four quadrant movie. So a little risk taking is back. (Not much.)

But so what if commercial cinema isn't doing great? TV is. Tv interests me way less since it’s a writer’s medium and I'm not a writer. But for writers it has been great. There are also lots of great web series emerging, embracing innovative content and good storytelling with barebones resources. Rocket Jump is doing great things. High Maintenance is another great example. (I’m biased since I know the producers on both but I honestly think they are.) Lots of good YouTube videos if that’s your thing (it’s not mine, but I’m old lol). I'm told Pewdiepie etc. and Twitch streamers are at the top of their game but I can't understand what's going on there lol. Hopefully soon (maybe when iPhone video gets a little better) we'll get web series funded through Patreon as a viable point of entry into the industry or a viable career path on its own (still obviously incredibly competitive and also a crap shoot, as the arts are).

We’re all visual artists and storytellers. We’re not tied to the medium that inspired us. If James Cameron and Michelangelo were born in different eras they might be doing each other’s jobs (or they might have gone nowhere, but I think that’s less likely... Pewdiepie might exclusively be of his time, though lol). It’s always been hard for writers. Many successful screenwriters had to switch to graphic novels to find their audience even during commercial cinema's heyday. But if you have a story to tell, that story matters more than the medium. That’s what I think, at least. Don't let the medium get in the way.

And I don’t think the “death” of a medium is bad. Commercial painting basically died with photography but then the few (very few) successful painters we got were Picasso, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Sol Lewitt–all people doing way more innovative stuff than Renaissance painters ever had the chance to try. When cinema overtook the novel we got Pynchon and David Foster Wallace (following Joyce and Woolf, also post-cinema). Seeing commercial cinema basically die a slow death has been painful for me because it’s always been where I’ve wanted to work. And I'm a classicist, I like Mozart and Spielberg and Caravaggio. But I have tried so hard and not had much luck in commercial cinema... and... it's not really good anymore, is it? What I didn’t even notice is that during that time trying to make it in film, I stopped watching movies and started watching tv and online content, which is where I mostly work anyway. So when one opportunity dies another arises. I dunno. I think it’s what you make of it. Or so I tell myself. And I think post-death of cinema cinema will be incredibly exciting and interesting and resemble meta modern painting and literature more than it will resemble contemporary commercial cinema. I think we'll get weird meta modern self-aware remix cinema like Adult Swim and Swiss Army Man (awesome movie) on one hand and really strange raw pornography on the other really drawing on Bazin's ideas of film as a record of a time and place, very raw, like post-Warhol stuff. So... that's cool, too.

 

[Zack Birlew]

To put it simply, I just don't think people can afford it anymore. Who has money to put towards one indie movie after another? How many investors can or would finance one project after another? More importantly, who has the time? On top of that, who can afford the added computer and storage requirements for 4K? People have lives, families, and, often, day jobs outside of the film world. There's only so many channels on TV, only so many studios, and only so much space at the cinemas. So many people are out there trying to make whatever movies they can come up with, some have good production values, a few others have clever writing, most are awful, and barely any make it to as little as RedBox at the grocery store. If nothing else, these movies can end up on Youtube for the hopes of ad revenue but even that is all jumbled up now to where you can barely make money on Youtube anymore. For people strictly interested in cameras, I blame the stagnant quality of cameras on both still and video fronts. The incremental upgrade method isn't working out and mirrorless cameras going after the cheap low end market have failed to the point of embarrassment. Sony has the right idea to keep pushing boundaries and innovate but pricing and product fatigue across the industry aren't helping them. Just look at Canon, how bad could it have gotten when each non-professional camera has had the same 18mp count and cruddy 1080p video for years on end? Even for videocameras, I haven't seen anything that's all that much better than the Sony AX100 4K camera from years ago which I bought from a pawn shop and now use for my Youtube videos. Still, I admit that I have fallen into the phone trap too as I like being able to take photos, edit them a little bit, and upload them to Instagram or other social media platforms all from the convenience of one device.

If camera manufacturers want to win back customers, then I think it's high time that they focus on upping the quality of their offerings substantially and aim for higher megapixel counts, outstanding low light performance, ease of use for phone or sharing connectivity, and, above all else, keeping prices the same or lower. Nobody wants to pay $2000+ for a camera anymore and, quite frankly, I don't think professionals are eager to spend $10,000+ for a decent camera either which is something I see starting to happen with the Canon C200 and Panasonic EVA1 which feature 4K and RAW for much less. I do love my RED One MX but I bought it very secondhand for a really good price and I wouldn't mind upgrading to an Epic MX or Dragon, however, I can't justify even the used prices for those at this point which hover in the $8,000 and up range so, even though I love that RED offers it, I obviously can't justify the trade-in to the Epic-W either.

People that make enough money to turn over equipment rapidly can afford these expensive cameras but that is ultimately a very small pool of the population. What I think is happening is that we're now reverting back to the time where having a full professional interchangeable lens camera is something your Uncle bought instead of a fancy car and everybody else takes photos with cheap instant cameras (ie. our phones). 3D didn't take off, I don't think people understand 4K over HD, and absolutely nobody understands HDR and what that means for anything. So with all of these things going on, of course sales are dwindling, there hasn't been enough advancement and there hasn't been any real technical or practical reason for people to upgrade.

 

[Matt W.]

I'm not sure that particular market for features (super low budget indie) was ever that viable. Maybe unless you're doing horror. I've worked with a lot of people who've directed very successful Sundance features. Usually the budget is still over seven figures... not super indie.

And I disagree that image quality has held us back at all in recent years. dSLRs may not be that much better than they were ten years ago, but they're WAY better than what many of the greatest photographs ever taken were shot on. Likewise, even Canon's older cinema cameras surpass the quality of 35mm film for most of its history and FAR surpass it on ease of use.

And no offense, but I don't see how the market for 7Ds and C200s even relates to the professional cinema market. Wedding photography and videography both seem healthy enough to me and that's what those cameras are mostly used for, that and hobbyists (and super low budget indie). I have similar cameras, myself, and I use them as a hobby and occasionally for b roll or vfx inserts. I love them and I do think they're totally viable for professional use in terms of image quality, just that in areas that do turn a profit they have the budget to use whatever they want. I don't think more resolution or dynamic range will change this. Some DPs like the Alexa because it has the fewest buttons.

I do, however, agree that for most people making a feature isn't worth the cost or the time. And that the indie route that Tarantino and PTA took isn't really that viable anymore. Marvel is bringing up directors from tv, and for a reason. The auteur super hero phase went out with Edgar Wright's firing. The Marvel movies are basically one big tv series now (and tv shows these days resemble one big movie).

But it's not all gloomy. YouTube is unbelievably healthy. Monetizing will be an issue, but I can see Patreon and Kickstarter-funded web series targeting hyper-specific tastes (in the model of Rocket Jump) becoming a thing soon, and being largely sponsored by integrated product placement, too. I agree that the super indie no budget film market has not thrived and will not thrive. But alternate media–even similar narrative media–are popping up. Imo, that's where you want to be. And image quality won't be that important there. Content will. Artistry will. Netflix is healthy, too.

Or this could be me being really bitter about the state of the film industry. Not sure! Not sure it matters, either.

 

[M.Halsell]

In all the conversation points, lets not omit the resilience of the market place. Seismic disruption in market segments is nothing new. Most successful companies have battle scars from market shifts, groundbreaking technologies and disruptive startups. Look at Apple for example. Company was on the precipice of insolvency. Avoiding the defeatist attitude, took measurable initiative and spawned new growth markets with iTunes, iPads, IPods, etc. Very few industries haven't been touched by digital industrialization.

Dire doesn’t mean hopeless. An economic assault means you man up and stand your ground. A disruption or drop in revenue doesn’t always means a business model is worthless. This is where company leadership earns its salt. Smart companies will respond with a re jigger of innovation to exploit the new landscape. And generally this where legacy businesses do have a distinct survival advantage. Lesson earned and learned work for big and small.

Anyone looking for high ground, follow the money is a common catchphrase, but in truth it sniffs out or identifies new schemas of opportunity. Takeaway, don't be that guy or company at the back of the line.

 

[Matt W.]

An economic assault means you man up and stand your ground. A disruption or drop in revenue doesn’t always means a business model is worthless. This is where company leadership earns its salt. Smart companies will respond with a re jigger of innovation to exploit the new landscape. And generally this where legacy businesses do have a distinct survival advantage. Lesson earned and learned work for big and small.

Start from the ground up more than stand your ground IMO. Apple was failing in the consumer desktop OS marketplace, but they were first to create a serious consumer mobile OS, which was disruptive throughout their industry, even into the desktop OS segment. Compare that with Yahoo's recent struggles to compete with Google simply through diversifying into other failing markets (then again, how do you even compete against Google?). Netflix adapted to the death of DVDs brilliantly. Not so with Blockbuster.

Every market disruption is an opportunity. Usually one for the little guys. But being the little guy trying to claw your way to the top of a dying market using dying methods... yeeesh... now that sucks.

Fwiw, people are getting studio feature deals off Vimeo shorts more often these days than of ultra low budget features.

I see short form web and episodic as the place to be right now. Even if you want to work for the majors.

 

[a whitmer]

Btw, I noticed a melancholic tone in a few of your threads.

Watch out not to "stay inside" of what you express in your creative work. It tends to cling on and affect one's daily state. Musicians, writers, composers, poets, actors and many other artists can be affected by this. Especially if dealing with heavy emotions and for a longer period. If you have had a couple of moody works in a row try to write something uplifting and even hilarious to bring your spirit back up. If the subconscious takes "moody" as a base mode you are in trouble. Just a friendly suggestion...

It's that obvious?

I just came off a year-and-a-half of writing an emotionally heavy-duty Ausvich script based on true events. Had to watch a lot of survivor testimony, read a camp diary, and do some digging through post-war trials and how folks managed to get back to so-called normalcy. All this while trying to keep the cinematic experience in mind. Is it entertaining? Visually engaging? No plot holes? F almighty! I kept another light-hearted work going at the same time just to take a break, but I think you're right. I need something fricken' hilarious right now.

I have three passions in life: writing for film (now making the transition to novels), cooking, and landscaping (stone fireplaces and BBQs, stone benches and palapas, and so on), but seems all three are getting a beating right now. Writing I've spilled on in this thread. I also have a small café, a cool little place my wife and I put together by 'picking', and we fixed up all the stuff we found - old farm tables, chairs and sofas, art work, cabinets and counters. All found and fixed. But a spike in gang violence here means we have to shut it down. Three of my employees have been pistol whipped and robbed - not at the café, but within blocks, and two while leaving work for home. Cars are getting stolen by gunpoint in the adjacent parking lot, and folks are getting blow away on a pretty regular basis. Another of my employees had a guy killed in a gang shoot-out right in front of her home a few blocks from the café. My wife was tossed out of a local convenient store by two robbers so they could go about their business - thankfully she got out. NOT MAKING THIS UP. It really is that bad. We are talking extreme violence. So sad, all that work and years of blood and sweat equity and we need walk away.

For a while though, it was perfect.

For the record, I live in what has been declared the second deadliest combat zone in the world. Syria is the first. Not all 'experts' agree, but either way you get the picture. Up until recently, for the most part, our little corner was relatively low key.


And, I live in front of a park that was a real dump when I moved in, so I got together with a few neighbors and we spent a year fixing it up with lots of stone, lots of flowers and trees and brick pathways. Now? completely fucked up by the non-participating neighbors, their kids and drunk friends. "Oh, look ! A flower patch! Lets set the BBQ up right here!''. They break EVERYTHING, and there is not a thing I can do about it except keep fixing it. I quit doing that a year ago, and the once beautiful park is just a trash heap now - and folks just don't seem to care one way or the other. I should post a photo.

'Oh, look, another tree is dying. Quick, get the pop corn!'

So yeah, kinda in low spirits. Trying to use the writing to process all this and channel-dump it into characters that can beat the snot out of each other, but kinda not working.


There is some really good stuff in this thread, about where things are going, and some positive optimism to keep at it. A smart bunch of guys and gals. Maybe now it's just gloom without the doom.

alex

 

[Ben Scott]

If you try to tell me it's game over for BBQs I don't want to live in this world any more!