"lost only gives you a few mysteries at a time, and always wraps up a few before delivering the next batch"
Which mysteries have they wrapped up exactly? Do we know what the island is? No. Do we know why there are polar bears there? No. Do we know who The Others are? No. And these are all mysteries that were introduced in the first season.
Lost is pretty popular and I used to like it a lot, but I stopped watching because the writers NEVER resolve anything of real importance.
Firefly, OTOH, was cancelled before they had the chance to pay off any of their setups.
"If Whedon isn't interested in retrying the show in an iTunes/download model, it is because he doesn't have faith in his own creation and he doesn't have the balls to take a risky venture."
Whedon doesn't have any say whether or not to try the iTunes/download model. The production company (20th Century Fox, which is not the same as the Fox TV channel) decides what shows they want to spend money to produce, as well how they're distributed.
"This guy is Hollywood now, and there's no turning back."
Whedon has ALWAYS been Hollywood. Look at his resume. How many independent productions do you see listed there? None.
"Great news, geeks: we can do it ourselves. How? Fanvids."
Yes, fanvids. How brilliant. Have you ever sat through a student film? Do you think it will magically get better because someone makes a student film based on Firefly? Student films don't suck exclusively because production costs are high, it's because -- guess what -- it takes TALENT to tell a story, and not everyone has talent.
And do you really think Nathan Fillion and the other cast members would jump onboard if you asked them, "Will you be in my Firefly episode! Never mind that we'll all be sued out of existence!" (And rightfully so, why should you get to profit from someone else's art?)
"Take it, write better episodes. Find another Firefly ship with another crew and go deeper into the universe of Browncoats and the Alliance."
Of course, writing is effortless, anyone can do it. How silly of me.
No offense, but you obviously don't know a lot about film production, so why are you trying to teach others how to do it?
That you think SERENITY looks like a TV movie wouldn't have much to do with the format, or what it's edited on. Most movies are shot and edited the same way TV is: 35mm, Avid. It's de facto.
The reason TV looks cheaper is because there's not enough money to build big sets, and not enough time to light them. So the directors will accomodate by keeping the shots in medium and close up.
Re:Great movie with free market touches
on
Serenity Opens Today
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· Score: 2, Informative
FWIW the movie does feel TV-ish. I'd like to know what it was filmed on and edited on.
So it's my conclusion that while JW wants the movie to succeed, I can't help but wonder if it isn't just one big loving Dear John letter to the fans.
I've seen the movie twice now, and if it was only aimed at the current fan base, then I don't think Joss would have went to such incredible measures to make it accessible to newbies.
I went to the June 23rd screening with a couple people who had never seen the series, and they both loved the movie enough to go out and buy the DVD set.
The movie is certainly more resonant if you've spent 14 hours with the characters, but Joss has gone to great lengths to make sure no one's left in the dark.
Nope. People like to hold contradictory facts in their head, but very few people actually change who they are based upon what they learn. Real change in behavior is rare.
That's your opinion. The Operative's change at the end was not a betrayal of the character. At the beginning of a movie, he was willing to kill for a greater good. At the end of the movie, he would still kill for a greater good, but not for any other reason. When the possibility of a "better world" was lost for him, he stopped killing.
He certainly goes through an arc and change, but it's not a contradiction of the character.
Having the bad guy behave the way he did at the end cheapened the whole 'believe in something' theme that they were trying to push throughout the movie.
I disagree with you. The Operative's turn at the end was completely justified. What makes him such an interesting villain is that he knows what he does is evil, but he sees it as a necessary evil.
At the end, when he's lost the battle but still has the opportunity to kill River, he doesn't, because he knows it would no longer be for a "better world."
The reason I love going to the theatre is that I get to see a movie with an audience. Not just a few friends, but a bunch of people I don't know.
A comedy is always so much funnier when there are other people laughing -- it's contagious. And during a good thriller, the collective tension in the room really adds to the suspense.
I was lucky enough to attend an advanced SERENITY screening, and let me tell you, the experience of being in a crowd that CHEERS so loudly for it's heroes is thrilling.
Agreed, it's expensive and there are numerous annoyances, but I hope there will always be large audiences who want to sit down and enjoy a movie together.
I get the feeling that Joss Whedon has a genuine desire to tell his story in it's entirety, since he wasn't able to do that with the TV series.
I don't think he's doing it for any financial incentive... the film industry tends to pay a bit better than the comic book industry, in case you didn't know.
"The problem of course is that no one will pay to watch a show they don't trust to be good, so this scenario only works for established shows everyone likes."
You're right about this. However, you're thinking about it from an independent filmmaker's standpoint. An independent filmmaker has no money, and so can't get that initial $3,900,000.
In a studio system, they already have that $3,900,000, and they're always looking for a new project.
"Not that you implied it, but purely on its own, you'll never get innovation in drama this way..."
In this sort of system (if done properly), the production companies that actually MAKE the shows can bypass the networks (UPN, ABC, etc), cutting out the middlemen.
What I think (hope) that means is that production companies like Mutant Enemy and Bad Robot get money based on their audience, and not on what the networks decide to pay them.
Controlling their own funds means production companies get to greenlight their own shows, leaving more room to take chances, which is how we'll see innovation. As long as a show can generate enough revenue to sustain itself, it can stay on the air. If it can't, it's gone.
I'm not sure there's a huge market for people who want to watch TV on their computer, but if a company like Tivo can bring it from the internet onto our TV screens, I think there'll be some interest.
I think the downloading model will be a cash cow. Here's why: TV is about convenience, at least it is for me. Know what's not convenient? Being home at 8:00 on Tuesday night to watch "House". TV should work around my schedule, not the other way around. The people at Tivo knew this.
Know what else isn't convenient? Jumping into a story in the middle of it. I'll wager there's a few people besides myself who hop onboard for episode 11, don't have a clue what's going on, and give up. Let me play catch up and buy the old episodes. I want to pay for them, let me.
That's in a perfect world, but I'm sure they'll fuck it up somehow. It's all common sense mostly: Make it as easy as possible for the consumer to get your product. In the end, I'm sure there WILL be a middleman, hopefully, it's a good one.
I love the pay-as-you-go type of billing. Since Skype's main revenue generator is this Skype Out service, I wonder if they would object to seeing integration into instant messaging clients such as gaim? It would probably only help in getting more customers onboard.
Microsoft, or AOL, or someone with some bank could probably put Skype out on their ass by copying their business model and integrating similar services into their own already popular instant messaging clients. (Though I hope they don't)
I was about 15 years old and got some sweet contract work for the summer setting up a Linux server for my school. I installed Debian and everything worked like a charm.
One day my supervisor calls me and tells me that the server's down. I try to ssh in to fix it, sure enough, it's down.
So I ran (in those days, I ran) down to the school to figure out what the problem was. Sendmail was still running, I could ping other machines on the network, the firewall was configured correctly, I couldn't figure out what was wrong.
I sat there unable to figure out what was happening. I spent a couple hours reading man pages for programs I already understood, hoping to find some piece of information I must have missed. I completely rewrote my firewall rules.
Hours passed...
Eventually I got so frustrated that I decided it was time to re-install the OS altogether.
Luckily, I had a brilliant idea. I looked at the back of the computer, and only one of the ethernet cards was plugged in... the other's cable had come loose.
After 5 hours, the very best part of it was the conversation I had with my supervisor afterwards:
"Okay, it's fixed."
"Awesome, now I just need you to write a report of what you had to do to fix it."
'Meanwhile, average users are no longer tech savvy.' Which is to say that they at one point were?
I think what they're saying is that popularity has grown to the point that the average users of 802.11 are no longer geeks, as Mom and Pop are using it now as well.
"...within a few days it was catching 99.99% of my spam. That's obviously a made-up figure, but that's how it felt. I never missed a single real mail..."
If SpamBayes filtered a legit message in with the spam, how would you know about it?
Hopefully he's improved on his big-screen capabilities since the original Buffy and Alien 4. Ick.
Yeck. Being president of the Joss Whedon Stalker Club, I may be a little biased, but I've read Whedon's draft of the Buffy movie (which he didn't direct), and the version that actually made it to the theatres... Whedon's draft is much better. Apparently Donald Sutherland insisted on writing his own dialog, the studio wanted it to be more of a teen comedy, and the director didn't understand the material. It's the nature of the business that scripts get fucked with by a series of producers, directors, and studio heads who are constantly looking for ways to fit a monkey into the story somehow.
Whedon has also stated that no one hates Alien 4 more than he does. He had other people dictating what he was supposed to write.
I've also had the experience in film school having one of my scripts approved for production and then butchered beyond all recognition. It ain't fun.
I think the problem was that Fox didn't know what to do with it.
I think the problem is that they just wanted it to be another regular space show. They didn't want it to defy genre conventions, and therefore didn't understand where their potential audience was.
Just one look at the DVDs sort of confirms this. It's all futuristic, and the characters are in their Big-Damn-Hero Poses(tm).
Hopefully Firefly, er, Serenity will find it's audience on the big screen as opposed to the terrible Friday night timeslot it used to live in.
Joss Whedon has turned the town of Sunnydale into a giant musical (Once More, With Feeling), he has taken away the ability for his characters to talk (Hush), and recently he has turned a centuries old vampire-with-a-soul into a felt puppet (Smile Time)... all of it pure comedy.
I think the guy deserves the benefit of the doubt;)
"OIC firefly is good enough for a dvd set and good enough for a movie but not good enough for a series."
Financially speaking, I would say that Firefly may actually be better suited to movies than television. Whedon's shows are excellent... and also extremely expensive. Having to spend huge amounts of money for 22 episodes every year means that the corporate heads demand a pretty big payback pretty damn quick. Fox couldn't really afford for viewers to ease into the show (and God knows a Friday night time-slot didn't help). It's for similar reasons that Buffy left the WB and Angel was recently cancelled.
As a motion picture though, they spend the big bucks once and reap the benefits for months in merchandise, rentals, etc. You don't get that kind of a pay-off with TV (at least not that quickly).
I love Whedon's serial storytelling, but I'm excited to see how he adapts to the big screen.
Video phones won't be very useful outside of business transactions.
My girlfriend lives on the other side of the country, and we use h323 WITH video conferencing daily. It's been a very important part of making our long distance relationship work. I get to remember how pretty she is, and she gets to make sure I'm haven't got fat.
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Which mysteries have they wrapped up exactly? Do we know what the island is? No. Do we know why there are polar bears there? No. Do we know who The Others are? No. And these are all mysteries that were introduced in the first season.
Lost is pretty popular and I used to like it a lot, but I stopped watching because the writers NEVER resolve anything of real importance.
Firefly, OTOH, was cancelled before they had the chance to pay off any of their setups.
Yes, fanvids. How brilliant. Have you ever sat through a student film? Do you think it will magically get better because someone makes a student film based on Firefly? Student films don't suck exclusively because production costs are high, it's because -- guess what -- it takes TALENT to tell a story, and not everyone has talent.
And do you really think Nathan Fillion and the other cast members would jump onboard if you asked them, "Will you be in my Firefly episode! Never mind that we'll all be sued out of existence!" (And rightfully so, why should you get to profit from someone else's art?)
Of course, writing is effortless, anyone can do it. How silly of me.
No offense, but you obviously don't know a lot about film production, so why are you trying to teach others how to do it?
That you think SERENITY looks like a TV movie wouldn't have much to do with the format, or what it's edited on. Most movies are shot and edited the same way TV is: 35mm, Avid. It's de facto.
The reason TV looks cheaper is because there's not enough money to build big sets, and not enough time to light them. So the directors will accomodate by keeping the shots in medium and close up.
I've seen the movie twice now, and if it was only aimed at the current fan base, then I don't think Joss would have went to such incredible measures to make it accessible to newbies.
I went to the June 23rd screening with a couple people who had never seen the series, and they both loved the movie enough to go out and buy the DVD set.
The movie is certainly more resonant if you've spent 14 hours with the characters, but Joss has gone to great lengths to make sure no one's left in the dark.
That's your opinion. The Operative's change at the end was not a betrayal of the character. At the beginning of a movie, he was willing to kill for a greater good. At the end of the movie, he would still kill for a greater good, but not for any other reason. When the possibility of a "better world" was lost for him, he stopped killing.
He certainly goes through an arc and change, but it's not a contradiction of the character.
Having the bad guy behave the way he did at the end cheapened the whole 'believe in something' theme that they were trying to push throughout the movie.
I disagree with you. The Operative's turn at the end was completely justified. What makes him such an interesting villain is that he knows what he does is evil, but he sees it as a necessary evil.
At the end, when he's lost the battle but still has the opportunity to kill River, he doesn't, because he knows it would no longer be for a "better world."
The reason I love going to the theatre is that I get to see a movie with an audience. Not just a few friends, but a bunch of people I don't know.
A comedy is always so much funnier when there are other people laughing -- it's contagious. And during a good thriller, the collective tension in the room really adds to the suspense.
I was lucky enough to attend an advanced SERENITY screening, and let me tell you, the experience of being in a crowd that CHEERS so loudly for it's heroes is thrilling.
Agreed, it's expensive and there are numerous annoyances, but I hope there will always be large audiences who want to sit down and enjoy a movie together.
I have to admit that some of the payoffs would have been really awesome if they would have had time to develop through the course of a TV series.
That said, I was lucky enough to get to one of the advanced screenings they had on May 5th, and holy crap, it's good.
I'll have some brief, spoiler-free thoughts on my site for anyone interested.
I get the feeling that Joss Whedon has a genuine desire to tell his story in it's entirety, since he wasn't able to do that with the TV series.
I don't think he's doing it for any financial incentive... the film industry tends to pay a bit better than the comic book industry, in case you didn't know.
"The problem of course is that no one will pay to watch a show they don't trust to be good, so this scenario only works for established shows everyone likes."
You're right about this. However, you're thinking about it from an independent filmmaker's standpoint. An independent filmmaker has no money, and so can't get that initial $3,900,000.
In a studio system, they already have that $3,900,000, and they're always looking for a new project.
"Not that you implied it, but purely on its own, you'll never get innovation in drama this way..."
In this sort of system (if done properly), the production companies that actually MAKE the shows can bypass the networks (UPN, ABC, etc), cutting out the middlemen.
What I think (hope) that means is that production companies like Mutant Enemy and Bad Robot get money based on their audience, and not on what the networks decide to pay them.
Controlling their own funds means production companies get to greenlight their own shows, leaving more room to take chances, which is how we'll see innovation. As long as a show can generate enough revenue to sustain itself, it can stay on the air. If it can't, it's gone.
I'm not sure there's a huge market for people who want to watch TV on their computer, but if a company like Tivo can bring it from the internet onto our TV screens, I think there'll be some interest.
I think the downloading model will be a cash cow. Here's why: TV is about convenience, at least it is for me. Know what's not convenient? Being home at 8:00 on Tuesday night to watch "House". TV should work around my schedule, not the other way around. The people at Tivo knew this.
Know what else isn't convenient? Jumping into a story in the middle of it. I'll wager there's a few people besides myself who hop onboard for episode 11, don't have a clue what's going on, and give up. Let me play catch up and buy the old episodes. I want to pay for them, let me.
That's in a perfect world, but I'm sure they'll fuck it up somehow. It's all common sense mostly: Make it as easy as possible for the consumer to get your product. In the end, I'm sure there WILL be a middleman, hopefully, it's a good one.
GOD HELP US! The aliens are attacking us with Brian from accounting!
No Brian, stop! I lost the receipt for my red Swingline Stapler, I lost it! Stop, noooooooo...
I use the internet to make fun of improper spelling. What the heck else is it good for?
I love the pay-as-you-go type of billing. Since Skype's main revenue generator is this Skype Out service, I wonder if they would object to seeing integration into instant messaging clients such as gaim? It would probably only help in getting more customers onboard.
Microsoft, or AOL, or someone with some bank could probably put Skype out on their ass by copying their business model and integrating similar services into their own already popular instant messaging clients. (Though I hope they don't)
One day my supervisor calls me and tells me that the server's down. I try to ssh in to fix it, sure enough, it's down.
So I ran (in those days, I ran) down to the school to figure out what the problem was. Sendmail was still running, I could ping other machines on the network, the firewall was configured correctly, I couldn't figure out what was wrong.
I sat there unable to figure out what was happening. I spent a couple hours reading man pages for programs I already understood, hoping to find some piece of information I must have missed. I completely rewrote my firewall rules.
Hours passed...
Eventually I got so frustrated that I decided it was time to re-install the OS altogether.
Luckily, I had a brilliant idea. I looked at the back of the computer, and only one of the ethernet cards was plugged in... the other's cable had come loose.
After 5 hours, the very best part of it was the conversation I had with my supervisor afterwards:
"Okay, it's fixed."
"Awesome, now I just need you to write a report of what you had to do to fix it."
Good times.
Debian, especially back then, was not a good newby distro. After installing it, I was left at a blank terminal thinking, "Okay, now what."
In my frustration trying to set up X, I decided "to hell with it, I'll install Slackware," and I hastily did a "rm -rf /"
As I listened to my noisy hard drive chug a long, I remembered that I had mounted my Windows partition.
"But surely Linux will know I only wanted to rm the Linux part."
Yeah, I was wrong.
I think what they're saying is that popularity has grown to the point that the average users of 802.11 are no longer geeks, as Mom and Pop are using it now as well.
It was just badly worded.
If SpamBayes filtered a legit message in with the spam, how would you know about it?
Ack, yes. I totally meant to mention that. Edlund wrote and directed it (and he rocks).
Joss is still executive producer tho, so he definitely had some involvement.
Yeck. Being president of the Joss Whedon Stalker Club, I may be a little biased, but I've read Whedon's draft of the Buffy movie (which he didn't direct), and the version that actually made it to the theatres... Whedon's draft is much better. Apparently Donald Sutherland insisted on writing his own dialog, the studio wanted it to be more of a teen comedy, and the director didn't understand the material. It's the nature of the business that scripts get fucked with by a series of producers, directors, and studio heads who are constantly looking for ways to fit a monkey into the story somehow.
Whedon has also stated that no one hates Alien 4 more than he does. He had other people dictating what he was supposed to write.
I've also had the experience in film school having one of my scripts approved for production and then butchered beyond all recognition. It ain't fun.
I think the problem is that they just wanted it to be another regular space show. They didn't want it to defy genre conventions, and therefore didn't understand where their potential audience was.
Just one look at the DVDs sort of confirms this. It's all futuristic, and the characters are in their Big-Damn-Hero Poses(tm).
Hopefully Firefly, er, Serenity will find it's audience on the big screen as opposed to the terrible Friday night timeslot it used to live in.
I think the guy deserves the benefit of the doubt ;)
No worries though, the actors have hinted at being committed to the movie long before this was made official.
I know, isn't that crazy? Next thing you know they'll be making a television series out of a box office flop.
Oh wait...
Financially speaking, I would say that Firefly may actually be better suited to movies than television. Whedon's shows are excellent... and also extremely expensive. Having to spend huge amounts of money for 22 episodes every year means that the corporate heads demand a pretty big payback pretty damn quick. Fox couldn't really afford for viewers to ease into the show (and God knows a Friday night time-slot didn't help). It's for similar reasons that Buffy left the WB and Angel was recently cancelled.
As a motion picture though, they spend the big bucks once and reap the benefits for months in merchandise, rentals, etc. You don't get that kind of a pay-off with TV (at least not that quickly). I love Whedon's serial storytelling, but I'm excited to see how he adapts to the big screen.
My girlfriend lives on the other side of the country, and we use h323 WITH video conferencing daily. It's been a very important part of making our long distance relationship work. I get to remember how pretty she is, and she gets to make sure I'm haven't got fat.