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."

Comments

Ayup...

[Waccoon]

"This video contains content from UMG. It is restricted from playback on certian sites."

Welcome to the future.

Re:Ayup...

[MoonBuggy]

I was just about to say exactly that. The very first video on an article about how new creation and distribution technologies are changing the game, no less.

Admittedly not nearly as bad as outright region restriction, since in this case the full version is still only a click away, but perhaps an unfortunate sign of restrictive 'old world' thinking.

Re:Ayup...

[betterunixthanunix]

Unfortunately, those same old people are educating their own replacements. In the broader world, the one beyond the confines of /., there are plenty of young people who believe that DRM is necessary and who are willing to prosecute file sharers and push to keep old media models alive by any means. This problem goes much deeper than the generational gap.

Re:Ayup...

[poetmatt]

quite accurate, and agreed, most certainly.

however, for all the education and lock-in these people try to keep going forever, the more people just innovate around them time and time again.

People are still the expensive part

[cgenman]

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.

Re:People are still the expensive part

[hedwards]

It is expensive, but it's not that expensive. A significant portion of the money goes to tell people what they want to buy. You could easily cut that out and just spend it on more groups. There's little reason for high price music videos other than demonstrating that you've got a bit of an insecurity about your dick.

Re:People are still the expensive part

[OzPeter]

psh. you can do pretty much everything with computers as far as music goes...you're stuck 20 years in the past my friend.

The trouble is that there's an old adage that says something like "You can give a kid a steinway grand piano, but that won't make him Beethoven"

Re:People are still the expensive part

[MoonBuggy]

Talent is expensive, sure, but it need not be nearly as expensive as it has become. The budget of a modern blockbuster is not a necessity for talent, it's a by-product of the current industry and its vast barriers to entry. In all but the most exceptional circumstance you certainly need some money, but there's a vast gulf between that and the tens of millions that most major productions burn through. By democratising the marketing and distribution, as well as radically reducing the barrier to entry in terms of equipment costs, modern tech allows talented people to produce a respectable 'amateur quality' film for next to nothing, or one that can stand up against the big guys for tens or hundreds of thousands. Primer is a superb (if somewhat extreme) example - a good story, well told and excellently put together on $7,000. Sure, the particular narrative lent itself well to the low budget, and it was absolutely a product of obsession, but it demonstrates the point.

More generally, damn good actors, directors, writers, producers, etc. are far more likely to be able to get something out there and be judged on their merits, maybe make a decent living wage, rather than a few making hundreds of millions and the rest fading into obscurity.

Re:People are still the expensive part

[MoonBuggy]

The corollary would perhaps be that when everyone has access to a Steinway, it's a lot easier for the next Beethoven to shine.

Re:People are still the expensive part

[badboy_tw2002]

Yeah, its tough because the "its costly because of the people" argument takes into account the $10M your superstar actor makes. But he makes that money not because they're the most talented actor ever (you probably haven't heard of that guy), but because his name will sell the movie. "Bankable" means they can bank a certain return on the actor's name alone, i.e. "the next _______ movie". If you can get to the point where your name goes in there, you're all set.

Of course, if distribution and all that changes who knows, as you won't need the big returns for the "big" movies. 5 years is ridiculous, sorry. But later on where everything is convincingly done on blue screen? Maybe. I still think there always needs to be a "draw" for something. Whether its artificial publicity, who's involved, or word of mouth once the movie has gotten a following, you need something. Top of the Youtube front page is one thing, but you better believe if that was the major distro channel then the "dinosaur" media companies would have that page bought out in a heartbeat. There's also the fact that shoestring budget movies can't pay the talent, but they also can't pay the work-a-day types that make a movie happen - and there's a lot of those and always will be if the movie is of a decent size. As long as people are willing to pay for it (the MPAA wants you to believe they will and won't at the same time), then there will be people willing to do it for a job, and the costs will still be high. 5 years, no way. 25? It won't be the same, but it won't be some garage film utopia where all movies are done for the art and the public suddenly enjoys amateur films over high production value blockbusters either.

Re:People are still the expensive part

[antifoidulus]

You are sort of right, but you are really not looking at this from the right angle. While doing what Hollywood does takes money, but now thanks to the proliferation of technology, we are not limited to just consuming what Hollywood produces. Most people have a set amount of time they can devote to entertainment, now back in the day video entertainment consisted of TV and movies, all products of the entertainment industries. Now there are literally tons of different types of videos I can watch, things like video game reviews or comedy sketches or political commentary. And while the Hollywood stuff I do watch cannot be easily replicated by people on the internet, overall I still end up watching less of what the major studios produce.

Re:People are still the expensive part

[Charliemopps]

Talent attracts talent. In music right now, especially in the progressive styles, musicians are recording one-off collaborative albums in their basement studios at an amazing rate. It's almost to the point now that the extremely talented musicians out there are forgoing any singular band and just floating from side project to side project. The fact of the mater is, a lot of these people are driven by their art and not just the paycheck.

I remember attempting to record an album in the 90's and even for the crappiest studio in town it was $10k-$20k to get it recorded. That didn't include the $2k-$3k for the initial printing of the CD. Today you could build a BETTER studio in your home for the same price. With modern recording software and a few classes at a community college and you'd easily be able to do most of it yourself. Then ship your CD to be mastered by some other guy in his basement. Then you upload the whole thing to your website and collect your money via paypal... That's why there's such an explosion in indi music right now. How far away is the film industry from the same sort of revolution? Not far I'd bet.

Re:People are still the expensive part

[vikstar]

The shit that gets spewed out of big production hollywood these days is far from the likes of Beethoven.

Re:People are still the expensive part

[MarkvW]

You got it. The glass may be half empty or the glass may be half full, but if you don't have a glass . . . you can't drink.

Re:People are still the expensive part

[dgatwood]

The problem with all of this, is that *talent* is still expensive.

No, not really.

...you can't get a trained steadycam operator to film an on-foot chase scene without paying him 50 an hour.

Maybe in California. Try shooting in a state with fewer unions and less bureaucratic red tape, and you'll find dozens of camera operators working at local TV stations who would gladly do it for $20 an hour just to have something to do on the weekends. Heck, if it's a low budget production, some might even volunteer to do it for nothing. Will it require a few more takes? Probably. Will it require enough more takes to justify paying a camera operator as much as a software engineer or a pharmacist? Probably not.

Besides, you could just cut out the chase scene, film it from multiple static cameras, use software to reduce the shaking in post, or fudge it with a zoom, and odds are good that nobody is going to think any less of the movie for it no matter which of those techniques you use.

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.

Or you can do a time-cost tradeoff and ask a few of your friends to check out local clubs, find a local band that seems good, and get them to record something for peanuts. Or if it doesn't have to be unique, you could go buy some royalty-free music CDs for fifty or a hundred bucks a pop. It all depends on what you're looking for.

In my experience, the key to making movies on a shoestring budget is to get people who can act (but who aren't famous yet), and shoot on location at locations that don't charge money to shoot there. This way you're not paying studio rental costs and you're not paying exorbitant per-hour costs for your cast, so you can take a little longer to get things done without it being a problem. Once you're no longer paying a truckload of money for every minute the cameras aren't rolling, you can get by with a much smaller crew, because one person can wear multiple hats.

For example, unless you're doing an absolutely insane amount of lighting (way more than most low budget productions), there's usually no need to have both an electrician and a lighting person (unless union rules say you have to, of course) because 90% of the power you run is for lighting anyway. (The other 10% is for your camera and audio gear, which if you're doing it on the cheap, translates into an orange extension cord running from the nearest outlet.) During the actual shooting, that person double as your camera operator or your mic boom operator. You can now easily shoot a movie with a crew of two or three people (though extra hands are always welcome when packing, unpacking, and hauling the gear to and from the truck).

You can get good workers from your local university's communications and drama programs. You can often get people to outright volunteer for the opportunity to have their names in the credits of something that they can use in their portfolios when applying for jobs.

And finally, ten days worth of Arriflex 35mm camera rental will buy you an XH-A1 that will do a good enough job that it won't get in your way. And if you edit on a laptop with Final Cut Pro or whatever, you can get away with exactly zero studio or editing bay time, and equipment costs that are a tiny fraction of what they were just a couple of decades back.

What you don't get by going this route is a distribution channel. That's the sole reason that the major studios are still in business. Most movie theaters aren't willing to take chances on works shot by no-name groups, and good luck getting a major DVD distributor to even look at you, much less any rental chains. The actual cost of making a good movie, assuming a crew of two and a principal cast of four or five at $30 an hour is maybe thirty or forty thousand dollars. If you get most o

Blender Foundation tangent

[by (1706743)]

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 =) )

Re:Blender Foundation tangent

[Nemyst]

They've made a newer and arguably even nicer short with Sintel not long ago. Well worth a watch.

Death of Big TV Sci-Fi

[blarkon]

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.

Re:Death of Big TV Sci-Fi

[rrohbeck]

Any kind of media production that appeals more to the brainy folks will bring fewer advertising dollars than shows for morons who will buy anything they see on TV. Hence the downward spiral for commercial TV. American Idol, Glenn Beck, Big Brother... that's what the advertisers like. Fodder for consumers.

Re:Death of Big TV Sci-Fi

[Dachannien]

The problem is that running TV shows on TV means that you're trying to monetize through advertising. Nerds aren't interested in that, partly because advertising is mostly geared toward the low-hanging fruit, i.e., stupid people. These shows can be monetized, but you have to monetize through DVD sales, Netflix, iTunes, etc. In other words, the consumer becomes the customer, and you're selling the TV show directly to them instead of to advertisers.

Yes, there are some nerds who will refuse to pay, instead downloading shared copies of them. But many nerds actually have money because they're intelligent and successful, and they understand that a TV show that is sold directly to them requires that they pay into it in order for it to remain viable. Is it enough to reach critical mass without first running the shows on regular TV? Who knows, as those sorts of sales/profit figures aren't easy to come by unless you're an industry insider.

But if there is enough interest in direct-to-DVD/download/rental sci-fi that has the high production values of current TV sci-fi, it could work - the question becomes, how do you market those shows directly to the viewer if you don't have TV as a platform for doing so?

Re:Death of Big TV Sci-Fi

[vlm]

Putting it on a website for free won't remove it from the torrent sites.

Which is why they need to put it on the torrent sites themselves. With commercials. And a farm of paid, well connected, colo-ed seeders. And intelligent filenames.

Good rips drive out bad rips. If their rip happens to be the best, with the single sole exception of having some commercials...

Which would you download:

teh_daley.sho-January-24-2011_handeld_camcordercap_by_the.leet_team_sadlkbgf_320x240.mkv with a whopping 2 seeders

or:

2011-01-24_The_Daily_Show_HiDef_video_5.1_sound_official_release.avi with 200 lightning fast seeders, which happens to have commercials included?

Your laptop is the new studio

[WebManWalking]

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

[snookiex]

We no longer live in the era of 'plantation-type' movie studios or recording houses

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.

Synthetic Performers

[b4upoo]

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.

He misses the point.

[Registered Coward v2]

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.