Netflix is basically remaking all of TV now
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I think people underrate how big this is from a creator perspective. As viewers, we typically appreciate when work is uninterrupted by commercials (though some shows are more forgiving of them than others), but to my understanding, it's quite difficult as a creative to segment your work out into 12-14 minute segments, constantly building up enough momentum that people will be riveted through the commercial long enough to stick around, and then having to ensure enough recap is done after the break that it doesn't break the narrative flow.
Instead episodes usually feel much more like short movies, with proper pacing and reveals.
As photography and CGI improved, writing went down the toilet. Mainly because it's not necessary to make money. Most viewers are happy enough for bad plots, so-so acting, dubious congruency and limited dialogs as long as it's visually entertaining.
As usual, the wider your audience, the duller your product has to become to accommodate everyone.
The worst is definitely dubbing. In France you can clearly see that around 2000, producers gave up any effort on looking for decent translator and voice actors. The voices are always the same from one movie to another, the lips don't match, the jokes are lost.
When I watch the 5th element or the naked gun however, I'm amazed at the fantastic work they did to translate the spirit of the lines so beautifully.
Still, sometimes on netflix you got some very nice surprises, provided you watch it in orginal version only. "The good place" and "Dirk gently" really made my day.
I finally found a switch to switch to the German soundtrack with English subtitles. I'm much happier with that.
I wonder why each scene is not just shot twice, once with the German dialog and once with English. It would work much better than dubbing.
I also wonder why the original actors didn't do the dub voices.
"Everybody's heard those nightmare stories of somebody doing a take 20, 30, 40 times. Other than obvious errors like forgetting a line, often I can't see any difference between take one and take 20."
https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/0309-Sept-2003/C...
Exactly my point!
> the reward of a better shot greatly outweighs that cost
My point, too, the "better shot" being the improvement of the lips and voice matching the movement and action. Consider that the English language market is most of the world.
I've seen it done, don't recall which movie it was.
> make a film
I'd love to do that. Wanna finance me?
Because this would require an exclusively bilingual cast, dialog that works equally well in both languages, and would drastically increase the production cost.
Not really. First off, most Germans seem to know English passably well. Even if one doesn't know English well, one can still memorize/recite dialog. There isn't that much dialog in a show. And lastly, one can always dub the ones who can't do it, as a last resort.
> dialog that works equally well in both languages,
A requirement anyway if it is being dubbed.
> and would drastically increase the production cost
Increase it, sure, not so sure about drastically. Why spend a lot of money on the production (as is obvious in Babylon Berlin) only to make it sound crappy to the biggest market (English speaking)? An English soundtrack makes it accessible to most of the world.
This happens in most Netflix shows; jarring and obvious product placement that disrupts the flow of the story.
So it's not that they are ad free, they just featured reduced ads in most episodes.
I don't know if the Oreos thing was a product placement (though it seems likely), but if I'm writing a script or a screenplay, I probably have fewer mental gymnastics to hurdle through to inject Oreos into a script than I do to have to accommodate a show-break.
On the flip side, it's worth pointing out that it isn't either/or, as shows with commercial breaks may still include product placement, and not all of them are going to be as mightily integrated as Snyder's of Hanover was to Psych.
Bringing up a pack of Oreos and waving it around the screen so everybody can really see it's a pack of Oreos is one thing, but the endless trudge of scenes like this is something else:
X: "So you got the brief from the NSA?"
Y: "The National Security Agency, they monitor all the communications in the US to prevent terrorism... yes I got the brief. You bring in Mr Snucklebum for questioning?"
X: "Snucklebum, the man under suspicion for trading classified secrets? Yeah he's in interrogation, right through here."
- alarm bells, ad break -
Y: "Snucklebum's escaped! Lockdown!"
X: "Snucklebum, the guy under suspicion for trading classified secrets to the NSA?"
Y: "The national security agency. Yeah"
There are a ton of shows that let you discover the show along with the characters though; Breaking Bad, The Wire, Carnivale, etc. Those shows tend to be well regarded, and most people don't realize that it's just the lack of exposition making the people pay attention that they like.
It was a good year for Ferrari sales, too :-) The Testarossa was one of the stars of the show, and nobody minded it. Probably the best product placement ever!
In fact I actually think they can't. Anyone remember season 2 where they tried to develop characters and what-not? It was agonizing.
It had such a wonderful start...
No, Netflix has managed to keep the requirement that a studio needs a ton of cash to produce something.
Youtube, on the other hand, probably has done a lot to change television. Shame it is changing back.
No ads? Don't have to cater to advertisers, don't need to have advertiser friendly content.
No ad breaks? Don't need to create cliffhangers on a defined schedule. Can preserve flow.
On demand? Don't have to worry about people missing episodes.
No syndication? Don't have to worry about episodes being watched out of order. Now the world and characters can change in meaningful ways.
"According to Isaacs, brands pay $50,000 to $500,000 per episode for getting into a Netflix or Amazon show. The price is calculated based on the popularity of the show and how long the product will be showed in the episode. There are two options for product placement in the shows: a logo in the background or a real plot point in the story." [0]
This, to me, seems just as disruptive to the creative freedom of a program's producers/writers/directors.
[0] https://learnbonds.com/134772/netflix-killing-secret-ads-sho...
This is probably the end-game of Adblocking unfortunately. A lot more product placement that is obviously harder to filter.
only if there is a wide disparity in the price companies are willing to pay to have their product in the show.
say you have a show about a lawyer and they need a car to drive around in. my guess is bmw and mercedes offer similar amounts of money, so you just pick the one that the character would prefer.
on the other hand, you're probably not going to see anyone using a pixel 2 outside of mr robot.
[1] Listening to directors' commentaries on <ahem> laserdiscs "ruined" this bit of moviemaking for me early on
Consider what it means that a service would optimize for this form of monetization. Brands that are placing products on Netflix shows are unencumbered by the brands/deals supported by other shows, since the product placement happens on the content level, instead of the distribution/broadcast level. Netflix can basically offer much more "robust" monetization options because its content choices don't narrow the scope and breadth of its list of supported brands.
One positive externality caused by the more limited advertising strategies employed by traditional broadcasters was that advertising was not a free-for-all. Ads were shown in predictable ways, on consistent (contractually-obligated) schedules. Now, Netflix can enable more and more next-generation advertising options within its content offerings, which is certain to lead to some disturbing changes. These changes would definitely catch its customers by surprise, if Netflix chose to roll out these strategies all at once. But they appear to be doing it slowly, so that most of their users will probably not notice it.
I do agree that impositions on the creative team to write in product placement are a hurdle, but I disagree on how difficult that hurdle is relative to literally stopping the show for a few minutes at a time, and from a consumer's perspective, product placement (when not overdone) is far less disruptive to the narrative than a commercial.
Of course, people discuss products in real life all the time, so it can be made to feel natural. Four Roses bourbon, TV shows like "Legion" and "Fargo", or Seagull Guitars could be product-placed into a TV show about my life and would look like just any other day in my life, for example.
Anyway it seems like there could be an increasing pressure against scripts that have no opportunities for brands.
It took me completely out of the show. I would honestly have preferred an isolated 30 second ad to that. It does still affect the creative process, too - your show needs to be one an advertiser wants to be placed on, so there's every incentive to soften the show.
Were there other products in the show? I remember looking for logos on the rovers and seeing none.
For starters the story needs to be set in modern day, and mostly modern western world. Cans of coke look out of place in Game of Thrones.
I can roughly imagine how you can get writers to create an embarrassing episode for Joey and Chandler over a Dunkin Donuts voucher, but the number of ways that can work well must be limited.
One is the trend toward longer, multi-season story arcs. This is also a trend in traditional television, but seems that the single episode story is dead on Netflix.
That's a shame, because it often is possible to succinctly express an idea in 30mins or 1hour. But it's in Netflix's best interests to keep you hooked on a show and "watching one more episode". That's particularly valuable for content that is released week-by-week. It also has other benefits, the more you watch, the more you're dependent on their service.
The one exception to this I've seen on Netflix is Black Mirror. But that was a show developed outside of the platform initially. I can't see something like Star trek the next generation, or another idea driven show which explores a single idea in a single episode being green lit on Netflix, and that's a shame.
I think that'll slowly change though, because the current trend seems primarily motivated by culture rather than structure or economics. Like, procedural shows are still big, but they were everything for a few years after CSI. These things come and go.
As much as I love it, Star Trek feels old. And this is the #1 reason why. With relatively small exceptions, every episode is complete disconnected from every other. The beginning of the episode sets up some sort of problem or danger. By the end of the episode, this danger is dealt with, gone. Character development is either non-existent, or happens at such a painfully slow pace that it's difficult to feel connected to what's going on. Instead what we see (if anything) are "snapshots" into the character's mental state. This is simply not how you tell a good story! So it's not surprising to me that Star Trek went fallow for a long time.
The point about character development applies to the universe too. People like to say that the Federation feels old. But what they really mean, in my opinion, is that the Federation should be viewed as a character. And if you think about it that way, it becomes obvious that as a character, the Federation is completely missing character development. So it's no wonder people get tired of it! Would you want to read a novel about a character who doesn't change at all during the course of the story? Would you come back for more after a half dozen of these?
The problem with saving the world perfectly every time is that over the long term, this means there is no change. Every individual episode might be a great story, but at the end of the day, did any of it matter? If there are no permanent consequences, it's hard to see how. This becomes especially obvious if you binge-watch the shows. Everything is always the same. Nothing changes.
What I want to see in a show (Star Trek or otherwise) is change. Permanent, irrevocable change. You dropped a glass, and it shattered, and no amount of wishing otherwise will put it back together again. That doesn't mean you can't do something about it! But certainly, you're not just going to put things back into exactly the same state they were before.
P.S.
You might be tempted to say, "oh, but what about DS9?" But even there, the format was largely unchanged. Go and count the episodes. The ones that actually dealt with any sort of ongoing story are a minority. Most of the shows follow the same framework as previous series. Except for one 10-episode sequence at the very end, you can basically forget that the war exists between the episodes that they mention it.
But I think it's also interesting to sometimes explore idea in a shorter period of time... I don't think there's much space for that anymore. And sometimes that can explore certain ideas more succinctly.
You mention DS9, I think a few characters developed in quite interesting ways over the course of the series actually Dukat and Kai Winn for example.
Rather then one series that runs for 5 to 10 years I’d prefer 2 or 3 different series telling different stories about the same characters. A few crime series have been dealing with one case person. I’d like to see more things like that.
Is it? For Netflix the more the watch, the more it costs them. The only thing they want is to keep you subscribed and that's an entirely different sort of motivation.
Traditional TV is focused on selling eye-balls to advertisers; keep you hooked on a show is necessary. For Netflix, they just have to ensure the entire service provides enough value that you'll continue to pay monthly for it.
They also talk about their competition being sleep, games, YouTube, etc.
These aren’t the actions of a company that wants to give users “just enough.”
I think the only time they’d apply this idea (the only place it’s appropriate, IMO) is when reaching the limits of their budget and prioritizing one market over another. In that case it would make sense to avoid dropping below a threshold of attention. However, as in the article, they do what they can to make content watchable in all markets at once so they don’t have to take that risk.
When a film ends, they always seem to play a trailer for something else (even if you've seen that trailer 10s of times already). They seem to want to push content at you.
As noted elsewhere in the thread, they seem to see their competition not just as traditional TV, but as other ways of spending time.
It looks more like a “we’ll pay you to make stuff people want to watch” approach, with no specific request on “high brow” or “low brow” or overall length.
In a way I think they don’t care if a creator or studio makes 4 different series where 2 are big hits and 2 with a meh reception, or one big 4 season series where viewers drop out a random places.
As long as viewers come back to Netflix to look for more stuff it should be fine for them.
I've often seen shows go "It was Mr. X all along!", everyone looked at the person who said that in shock and awe and realization, there was a sound cue, screen faded to black and then the show continued with them going to kick Mr. X's teeth in, but already in a much less dramatic tone.
And then the actual break happens in another spot, where it's much less appropriate and breaks the flow completely instead of making me eagerly await the end of the break to see Mr. X get his teeth kicked in.
This is actually a trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CommercialBreakCl...
Netflix never would’ve done all this if (a) they could easily just stream other peoples’ content, and (b) other people could easily stream their content. Instead, the logical business play would’ve been trying to leverage network effects and lock in to keep consumer eyeballs on their service instead of a competing service.
I've never heard the argument that copyright promotes progress by making works inaccessible, thereby forcing new creations.
I remember a year or two ago Stranger Things was a massive super hit. I mean that's all reddit could talk about that year - it overshadowed almost every other show at the time.
See comparison to Game of Thrones or TWD: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
Personally, I’d rather watch Netflix’s catalog over AMC’s or HBO’s.
I don't know about that, 90% of netflix's content is pretty bad IMO.
I sincerely doubt that.
They create content to increase the value of their platform. That is unrelated to copyright, except that copyright lets them compel other platforms to not show their content.
We don't have any legal platform without DRM or copyright to compare against. We also can't, because copyright is a monopoly.
I realize this is anecdotal (feel free to ignore), but most times I open Netflix and go through almost everything they feature on the home screen...before turning it off because there isn’t anything that looks good.
I can't even count the number of Netflix shows/movies that the description didn't look all that appealing and the show absolutely was wonderful. Chef's Table was probably the biggest example. It looks like a cooking show. In reality is a beautiful documentary series about how world-renown chef's made their way.
Don't judge a book by its cover.
"We need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art" ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
That said, their documentary productions are way better than the crap Discovery, History Chanel, et al. have been producing this past decades or so.
I just wanted to say that I strongly disagree. "USS Callister" and "Hang the DJ" in particular were great episodes in my opinion and very well received overall. "Black Museum" was also quite good. And "Metalhead", together with the black and white versions of Fury Road and Logan, presented a very interesting view of a mostly hopeless future.
I was actually hoping for a cooking show :-) I stopped watching after a couple of episodes.
Though I think it's more like when people say "ugh, nothing to do!" after checking Facebook and Reddit.
On Netflix some people go through a season of a show in a day or 2. Then they complain there is nothing on for a couple months until they spend a weekend watching something.
Second, the description fits my experiences with Netflix quality quite well, so I don't really care about them as a producer either, regardless of the platform.
You get 30+ hours of ad-free gameplay (that's > 60 half-hour TV shows), PLUS the chance to replay and experience a new story. (Good) RPGs are the best bang for your buck entertainment-wise.
It's hard enough writing a single good plot, let alone multiple plots that have to branch from each other. Plus it's much more expensive (many more scenes filmed per show), and it kills the shared experience between viewers.
I like the idea, but I'm not sure people are able to tell in advance what will bring them the most entertainment.
Maybe it could work for something with a small cast and with only studio locations, but even then it's a big risk.
Past that, since democratizing the plot would almost certainly yield a regression to the lowest common denominator, it seems like a really fun way to ruin quality television.
I can't help but wonder how long it'll be before there are ads, the price goes up a lot or it gets split up into 'channels' where you'd have to pay separately for separate set of content.
Another thing I think that's coming, is Netflix adding daily shows like the Jimmy Fallon show or Ellen. It seems like a no brainer - they're trying it out with David Letterman monthly series, and it's doing very well as far as I can tell.