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The Fall of Traditional Entertainment Conglomerates
Advocatus Diaboli writes "We no longer live in the era of 'plantation-type' movie studios or recording houses. However large private companies still have considerable power over content production, distribution and promotion. Technology has been slowly changing this state of affairs for almost 30-40 years, however certain new technological advances, enabling systems and cost considerations will change the entertainment industry as we know it within 5 years."
"This video contains content from UMG. It is restricted from playback on certian sites."
Welcome to the future.
The various *IAAs around the world are going to continue shitting up everything about the entertainment industry.
Humans will remain happy with the status quo, eat up sequels and fawn once a decade when presented with original content.
Just the internet will have more regulation as net neutrality is eroded in time.
Well, OK, if some guy with a Wordpress blog says so, I'm convinced!
Being less snide -- I wish these pioneers godspeed; I'd be happy to see big changes. I'm just not sure it'll happen as easily or as quickly as the write-up asserts.
The problem with all of this, is that *talent* is still expensive. You can get a guy to hold a cellphone for a music video, but you can't get a trained steadycam operator to film an on-foot chase scene without paying him 50 an hour. You can spend 20 hours making a music track yourself in Garage Band that everyone hates, or you can pay a group of musicians a few grand to use their stuff. You can hire all of your friends for free to act in your movie, but your friends are really not actors. Even if your friends ARE actors, they're wrong for the parts and will just muck it all up.
Face it, good entertainment still needs budgets and organization. Not to mention a 2 hour movie requiring something like 2 weeks of full-time editing alone. The barrier to entry isn't one of technological costs (like indie music) but people costs, like staging public spectacles. And unlike music, that barrier to entry isn't getting lower. Add in that any one person doing their job poorly can completely screw up a movie, and there are hundreds of people making movies, and big, professional houses seem secure.
The ______ Agenda
While the TFA's GTA movie is no doubt impressive, the Blender Foundation produced Big Buck Bunny, a (in my opinion) beautifully rendered ~10 minute short. You can download the rendered version here, and can even download the production data here -- it's released under Creative Commons I think.
It may not be quite up to Pixar's standards, but I think it's pretty slick (and no, I'm not affiliated with either company =) )
Sure they will, provided the law doesn't get in the way.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Given the recent merger between NBC and Comcast, and the fact that record companies show no sign of disappearing. I think there will be no change for another 30 years...
The price of creating movies is the reason for the number of generic films and sequals. You won't get something original if you are taking a chance with that much money. Even if you get the "good" actors, cameramen and crew, you will are screwed on the other end of it.
I blame a word that people like to throw around called "Immersion." It is overrated and in many cases is used to try to gloss over the more intellectual portions of the film. This is classically called valuing SFX over story.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
what about sets cheap ones show as well as bad cgi.
The biggest difference in the short term will be the death of "Big TV Sci Fi" of the Galactica/Stargate/Trek variety. SGU was canceled recently due to poor ratings, yet several torrent tracker sites reported it consistently ranked in the top 5 shows downloaded. Say what you want about the quality of the show, but if it was consistently downloaded by that many people, it had an audience. The problem was, it had an audience that couldn't be monetized.
The reason why Big TV Sci-Fi is in trouble more than other genres is that the audience of Big TV Sci-Fi is the most likely to seek a method of viewing the product that can't be monetized. The SyFy channel isn't moving towards showing wrestling because they think that wrestling is cooler than space ships and time machines, it is just that the audience for wrestling will watch wrestling on the TV rather than downloading it and watching it in an alternate manner.
Perhaps, maybe, somehow there is a business model where you can make money out of hi-budget Sci-Fi that people download rather than watch, but other than George Lucas' "sell lots of toys" method of recouping expenses, no one seems to have found it yet.
Where do you get your new music? Back in my days, it was the radio - top40, alternative, rock+pop+R&B, etc. And MTV came up and actually played music videos then, instead of whatever they have on now.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
but good cgi is getting both cheaper and easier.
I truly wonder how long until the majority of films use cgi instead of actors
David Byrne on the future of entertainment production and distribution: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all
The problem is that they won't die without fighting, doing as much damage as they can in the process. We still have years of DRM and its mutations to witness in the next years.
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
With powerful technology and the constant downward pressure of the prices of technology, the barrier of entry to filmmaking is coming down. You could now, in theory, use VP8 and make an independent film without worrying about royalties.
I had the idea several years ago of doing a computer animated movie using a voluntary distributed computing model, like distributed.net or SETI@Home. Once it was scripted and storyboarded and the animation plan was complete, individual frames (or even portions or layers of frames) would be farmed out to folks to run on their computers. The complicated part would be that folks would almost certainly be able to assemble parts of the film prior to release, but that might be OK. Multiple scenes could be produced, so the plot could have multiple possible endings. If I were to produce part of the film on my home machine, I'd want to go to the theater and see how it all works.
My script idea was of three or four young kids, who fly in virtual fighter planes over a landscape that is based on the real structure of the net as a geographic metaphor. Of course cities and other facilities in the virtual landscape would match up fairly well with the real landscape, since the net does that already. I think the father of one of the kids is the one who invented the visual metaphor immersion system. They would discover one guy who was a bully or hood at school IRL flying his own plane (as a result of hacking into the father's system and stealing an early copy, that has some flaw the bad guy doesn't know about), and dropping 'bombs' (metaphorical visualization of inserting hacks) onto websites around the net. (I came up with the idea when most hacking was recreational, not commercial or political.) So these kids would have to use their own skills and tools to fight the hacker guy in virtual space, and also deal with him and his gang in real life.
IMHO that would be a great movie, and I'll bet a large number of slashdotters would love to participate. Heck, the profits could even go to support open source. And now it's possible to do it in 3D.
I even toyed with the idea of setting up a website where folks could work together to build the script and the story board. This could be the first 'open source movie'. I do own meatspace.us ... hmmm.
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Sure, the majors are entrenched beyond a 5-year timespan, but I never figured they're going completely away.
The increasing viability of indie production/distribution is a very good thing don't get me wrong. However, it isn't just shifting market share away from the majors, but rather complementing the industry as a whole.
Even the majors shift with the changing market, albeit not the ways you'd like as quickly as you'd like.
Actors, musicians and vocal artists are about to be replaced with computer generated synthetic entertainers which will reduce the cost of film and music production. It will also generate a legal crises in that one might be able to blend say John Wayne and Elvis Presley into a new synthetic being. People who own rights to various characters will all clamor that they see their image or property rights portrayed in a synthetic entertainer. The litigation will be endless.
What do you think the DMCA, ACTA, COICA, etc are all for? Going after petty downloaders? No. The media companies already know that they can use the same laws passed under the guise of "combating piracy" to shut down and irreparably harm indie and upstart companies. "Whoops, we accidentally flagged your band's website for copyright violations on recordings we don't own the rights to. No problem, just submit an appeal to the Attorney General's office and it'll be removed in a few weeks/months/years. Oh you were actually making money? I'm sure we can work something out..." With all this legislation pretty much working off the DMCA, there will be fuck all punishment for false allegations, thanks to our friend "in good faith" (in hastily-written antipiracy algorithms). You think the courts have been made a mockery of so far? You haven't seen anything yet.
Is it just me or is "consuming entertainment" not your idea of living a meaningful single lifespan, too?
Stupidity is its own reward.
First off, the article doesn't say anything about five years. Inaccurate summary.
Secondly, the examples given in the article aren't that great. Namely:
* A "feature film", which is machinima of GTA IV. In other words, a movie totally dependent on a game produced by a traditional content studio.
* A short film with impressive special effects and not much else.
* A demo of a game engine that was created by a traditional content house and modified by another traditional content house.
* A music video that was apparently made on an iPhone 4. Arguably the best example.
* And a couple fun facts about Netflix streaming being cheaper than mail, social networking allowing for free ads, and analogies to reality TV.
Not exactly a compelling case. That being said, it wouldn't surprise me at all if low-budget films start to displace studio productions eventually. But not in five years. Although everyone loves to speculate about movies (probably because of the file-sharing aspect), I suspect that e-books are going to be the first big displacer. The production model is basically the same (one writer or a small team), the costs are the same (one writer's spare time plus a keyboard) -- the only difference is publishing. So when indie e-books kill off all the big publishers, *then* you can start telling me that Hollywood will die any day now. Meanwhile, how about some better articles and not just blog fluff?
Visit the
Hi -
Not too many years ago people were saying similar things about the music biz, and how (then) new sites like MP3.COM would allow any musician to have their music discovered without having to struggle through the traditional restricted channels. Well, before too long (as I recall) there were over one million songs available for download from MP3.COM As I recall one act, a duo called Fisher, was "discovered" via MP3.COM and made some news. And some others (like The Cynic Project) made decent money selling their homemade CD's via MP3.COM or their own sites. But in no way did MP3.COM and similar sites destroy the traditional record labels and related methods of distribution.
(Yes, a few years later the Apple iTunes store put a big dent into CD sales, but I think the great majority of music sold there is still from the traditional large label conglomerates.)
- TWR
Redondo Beach, California
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No, someone needs to dig up Alexander Bui. Get Lin Yu Chun and Jackie Evancho for soundtrack backed by FunTwo of Electric Pachelbel fame.
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My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'd pay for rights to cut up the movie as a My/i Edit kind of thing. You take the existing movie, pay your fee, then if you really don't like that stupid bit in Transformers 2, cut it out. Then post your version for the usual Facebook Likes gig.
Studios are doing awesome on the production overall, and Rotten Tomatoes keeps reporting that the guys in the Script Meetings are crushing things.
What about studios doing Custom Clips that don't belong in any single episode but you need on hand as a stock? A George Hammond Glare or something. a Jack O'Neill Frown when he doesn't like where things are going. I'd pay a buck for 10 seconds each of those or such.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The future of books is in turbo Print On Demand.
Harvard Bookstore has an early model. It produces paperbacks that actually hold together. For whatever reason, these early Google-Scan texts have no real cover, more like a fancy page layout file, but it works. Cue 2nd Generation with small quality improvements, and the rights to pick your own cover from a stock.
So that's not even the same question.
Back to Movies.
There's tons of stories that just need about 10 good actors telling humanities stories, and some basic location backgrounding shots, then all kinds of filler can be CGI'ed in. "No one" has 2 mil lying around, but a surprising number of small groups can swing $50,000 spent really intelligently.
Per Rotten Tomatoes, it's all about the scripts. If we can get some devastating scripts and almost-watchable backing scenery, I'd pay a buck to downlaod/stream it.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The cost of the film is irrelevant - a film is just a way to transfer tons of money from the backers to the studio and distribution change. Every possible cost is put into a film so you can extract as much profit from it without worrying if it ever makes money. Every why you want a cut of the gross, not the net? Because Hollywood accounting ensures there won't be a net for a long time, if ever. Sure, some indies can produce a decent low budget movie; just as some indies can produce a decent game. Of course, if they are the .1% that is really good, they'll probably move to the mainstream - because that's where the money is. Someone pointed out you can get talent for free - if the talent want's to build a resume. Why do they want a resume - to make real money later. never underestimate the power of profit.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
There are talented people on stages everywhere that previously couldn't afford to make a movie or get it distributed. They are professionals.
Hahaha article demolished on first post...deserves +5 Funny and +5 Insightful.
Traditional media is going to be with us for a long time yet, unfortunately.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I thought SGU failed because of all the crying and thoughtful country music sequences that apparently all scifi must have after the BSG remake. Felicity in space. Because geeks just love shows about who's into who and all that crap.
the union will stop that and what about voice?
for all the education and lock-in these [digital restrictions management advocates] try to keep going forever, the more people just innovate around them time and time again.
Not necessary. Devices that refuse to play works unless they have the requisite DRM are around now, and they've been around for 25 years, creating an imprimatur of sorts. Laws allowing the DRM establishment to successfully sue innovators have been around for over a decade as well.
You'd be surprised how easy it is to respect copyright when you have a subscription to a service like Netflix
Let me know when the film Song of the South or an English dub of the series Alegrijes y Rebujos comes to Netflix.
Cheap video cameras and editing equipment will lead to and have led to two major things:
-regional/cultural content - U.S. films still carry a lot of weight in foreign countries but they have to compete with more local films now with similar production quality
-niche films for cable and dvd distribution on channels like SyFy, Hallmark or the History Channel
I don't see big movie studio lots going anywhere. You'll always need these along with TV lots but I could see people looking for a specific type of content willing to put up with lower production values and possibly lower acting abilities.
Same goes for Clerks
Over half the budget of Clerks went toward clearing music rights. Is this reasonably avoidable in a movie taking place in the present day?
There's tons of stories that just need about 10 good actors telling humanities stories, and some basic location backgrounding shots, then all kinds of filler can be CGI'ed in. "No one" has 2 mil lying around, but a surprising number of small groups can swing $50,000 spent really intelligently.
The question nobody has been able to answer adequately of yet is who will have time to watch all these 'tons of stories', let alone sift through all of them to find the ones worth watching. There's already more material being produced by the 'traditional' sources than can be easily experienced by anyone with other things to do. Nevermind re-experiencing the things you liked, or experiencing the things your friends liked and want to share with you. We need less stuff to passively absorb, not more.
We need better filters than the traditional entertainment conglomerates, not better ways to spam humanity with endless timewasting art.
The Blair Witch Project was done on a shoestring budget. It cost only $35,000 and that was over ten years ago. Or how about the original Halloween? It was done on the cheap and that was in the 70's.
These may be outliers, but with technology costs dropping and distribution costs dropping faster, I would be afraid if I were a major studio. It doesn't take a genius to realize that small capital "indie" studios can pop up and eat their lunch.
Cheap productions may not be able to wreck Ferraris on camera, but CGI can be very realistic. Can you honestly saw that you know where the hardware and software tech will be in 5 years?
The article was pretty disappointing anyway. It consisted of a short intro paragraph, then a bunch of examples of films the author liked. ... Dude, where's the analysis? If you want to make the case that the entertainment industry "WILL be changed within the next 5 years", well, could you spell it a little more? A bunch of cool, new school film-making examples is not getting the job done here.
Depends if your story demands that you license already well known songs or not
I believe the idea is to establish the setting by playing songs that were popular during the period in which the film took place. If a character is listening to an FM radio or a portable music player (e.g. Walkman or iPod depending on era), what should it be playing?
Let's work with your reply in reverse order. For "Sift Through", that's easily solved with any of the basic Like/Up/TomatoScore/Downloads kinds of sorts on any site that has decided to make its name in showcasing a comprehensive list of Indie free-to-watch movies. I've heard that IMDB is starting to get elitist. Let's call it the Movie Site or something. Do you know of one that handles these movies in bulk? I'm hard pressed to think of anywhere to go besides IMDB & Hulu. (How do you do a Youtube Search for length?)
As for who watches a movie, isn't an audience of 1000 viewers enough? Across all the time we have to do recreation, I guarantee the viewers will visit. But it has to be ironclad certified as legal, as part of the function of the site. I can't trust any of the mega-anything sites anymore.
What's passive? A good well written movie, or playing Famville? The big movie houses are all about the Blockbuster Common Denominator. So this site would be full of all lesser known stuff. Anything that filters to the top would be promising.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
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