Hacker News Reader

> Democratized? It’s more centralized than ever.

Camera technology is so ubiquitous now that an unknown can create content on a shoestring budget. It's now more about gumption and talent instead of gumption, talent, and having enough money to rent professional equipment.

I can remember an indie film shot on a digital SLR camera with a $6,000 budget picking up festival awards a decade ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battery_(2012_film)

Of course, everyone having access doesn't make everyone's content good, but Spielberg got started with a Super 8 camera in his teens.

In general, indie production - in every medium - is run on some combination of favors and gaslighting. You can get away with being more intensively exploitative in the moment, taking fewer precautions, and doing things in non-standard(less effective) ways precisely because you're the little guy and the real victim here.

If we're talking about supporting an industry with professional talent, pointing to the entry level capital cost isn't the way to do it, because there's an element of Baumol's cost disease, where the relative cost of your talent rises because everything else got cheaper. And you want to have the ability to pay people to go the extra mile without duping them. You can certainly make more varied kinds of productions on modern tech and budgets than before, but if there isn't an income stream that keeps the talent base there, you end up with privileged talent that can buy their way into an arts career, not veterans who built an artisanal skillset in the process of staying employed.

I suspect we're actually going in the direction of more and more adaptations. The Marvel movies and Star Wars shows are basically that; Dune, White Noise are both book adaptations. Anime succumbed to it a long while back and most of what's released each season is from a manga or light novel. It's a robust model because it can frame the production budget as an advertising cost, while also tapping into the success of the source, spreading out risks.

But adaptation, as good as it can be, pushes the medium to be in service to its source material, and to "give fans what they want". It's not building off the nature of the medium itself, so it's also somewhat unsatisfying if you really want the films and shows that push boundaries.

Cost of a camera is a tiny piece of good production. There's still good videographers, lights and people to aim them, sound equipment and people to hold them, actors, editors, and so much more. Saving even $100k on a camera is nothing.

I agree — if you allow that YouTube is the means of distribution for an indie-filmmaker. (For better or worse.)

I remember when, in the 80's, sci-fi conventions were perhaps one of the few means of recognition that the Super-8 indie guys get exposure (and maybe a career) with the likes of, for example, "Hardware Wars".

> I will give you the enjoyable b-movies, but also remind you that those have existed always, and often in greater numbers.

Don't think this is true. If you consider a lot of self-produced Youtube clips as C-movies, there are way more today. And audiences have voted for what they want: they want more lower-production-cost movies in their exact niche than academic film-art blockbusters like Ben Hur.

Sure, if you consider a lot of self-produced Youtube clips as C-movies. But I think historically B-movies were paid for by Hollywood studios (but given shoestring budgets). It's hard to imagine a time in history where the 50's and 60's didn't dominate with B-movies.

Perhaps with the collapse of the drive-in, the matinee, there has not been a compelling business model for the studios to finance B-movies for decades now.

>academic film-art blockbusters like Ben Hur

Wat

> There’s something seriously brainwashed about looking at what’s at offer today and still concluding that because the Sopranos exists we’re still producing good content.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

The Wire

You're the Worst

The Good Place

Too many decent-to-great sitcoms and sketch-comedy shows to list.

Ditto adult animated shows.

Justified

Evil

Several great limited series (e.g. The Haunting of Hill House)

I could keep going. The last couple decades have given us a lot of really good shows since The Sopranos. I watch a fair amount and still have a backlog of probably-great stuff I haven't gotten to yet (including, actually, The Sopranos!) and continue to stumble on shows I've never even heard of that turn out to be really good.

The Wire was made within the window I was talking about. From about 1995 to about 2005.

The rest is a list of mediocrity.

So, point not made.

Clerks - $27,575 [0]

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - $56,000 [1]

Butt Boy - $100,000 [2]

The Blue - <$100k [3]

Call Me Brother - <$100k [3]

Frances Ferguson - <$100k [3]

Greenlight - <$100k [3]

Love in Dangerous Times - <$100k [3]

Man in Camo - <$100k [3]

I'm going to stop now but I hope I've made my point. I've watched many of the above. I've heard about most of the above.

Your tone is pretty snarky so I'm not sure if it's worth responding but here is a list of TV shows, all within the last decade, that I believe are exceptional and not limited to "just the Sopranos":

* Chernobyl

* Rick and Morty

* True Detective

* Fargo

* Severance

* 1883

* Mindhunter

* Westworld

* The Knick

* The Peripheral

* Succession

* Years and Years

* Orange is the New Black

* Halt and Catch Fire

* Insecure

* Watchmen

* Atlanta

This is only from 10 minutes of searching. You'll note that many of them are produced, directed, written and star high profile artists. The subject matter that they deal with can be done at a pace and care that's impossible to do with a 2-3 hour movie. The quality of the above series or mini-series was virtually non existent, maybe with some very few exceptions, before 2000 and only began to pick up pace in 2000 to 2010.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks_(film)

[1] https://byrdtheatre.org/news/2019/10/a-girl-walks-home-alone...

[2] https://www.cautionspoilers.com/film-reviews/butt-boy/

[3] https://musiccitydrivein.com/2021/02/19/film-threat-award-th...

You forgot "Primer".

With a budget of $7,000

Is Primer good? I only watched it twice, I don't know the story.

Slow build. May require multiple viewings or internet searches to understand.

Probably the most clever time travel film I have seen.

I mean who can forget Butt Boy

Exceptional…

Watchmen…

Lol

Watchmen was amazing, so I don't understand the issue. Each individual episode was carefully, and cleverly, crafted. We were watching several other popular shows at the same time, and the contrast was really apparent, with Watchmen in a completely different league.

The series, not the movie. The series is excellent. On paper, should have been bad. Is instead very, very good.

Chernobyl is terrible. Anti-nuclear and anti-soviet propaganda disguised as a "true story". I can't stand movies and TV shows who claim to be historically accurate while being almost completely made up.

Rick and Morty is also bad. After two episodes I was already bored of the shtick.

Fargo is by far the best series on that list. Seasons 1 and 2 are incredible.

> After two episodes I was already bored of the shtick.

Highly suggest to reconsider. It explores many previously unexplored concepts later on. The beginning was ugly, especially if you liked Back To The Future.

> Democratized? It’s more centralized than ever.

I don't know who is right here, but I'll provide an anecdote.

I know someone that wrote and directed a movie that had a very well known actor (you've heard of him) and had a limited run in theatres. Through that process I go to know a bit about the industry itself and it was very much a good old boys club where you absolutely had to play ball. Things like processing the formats was done with extremely expensive systems and if you tried to go around them no one would respond to you.

I don't know if it's better now, but I can imagine it is.

> Democratized? It’s more centralized than ever.

What 'centralized' in a world that now has 'creator economy' as a thing.

> Also, giving more projects $5m is not a victory if the cost of a proper production is $20m.

Is there any objective definition of that 'proper'. Rhetorical question, obviously, for there isnt.

> it seems like you’re under the impression that a good film can be made with $100k.

It doesn't seem like it. It is like that. Many movies like Paranormal Activity, Parasite were made with low budgets.

> Give that, it doesn’t surprise me that you’re one of the ones who are looking at what’s being served as tv shows and actually enjoying it.

Yeah, people are actually enjoying TV. That shouldnt be a big surprise.

> If you ask me, “the golden age of TV” is a meme based on a handful of shows

How is that any different from the golden ages of cinema in which unending series of rehashed crap were produced to profit off of audiences that had no alternative but to pay for them.

...

Its much better for things to be distributed, democratized and in the hands of more people than small cliques of profiteering feudal lords monopolizing them and deciding what happens. Especially regarding content.

Filmmaker here - Parasites budget was in the 10 million range. Paranormal Activity's initial budget was in the 15K range (tiny, even when it was shot 15 years ago), a further 200k was spent on post production and reshoots when it was picked up by a major studio. This doesn't count the many millions both had spent on marketing - which is often up to twice a productions shooting and post budget.

High end filmmaking has gotten 'cheaper', in that you can use virtual production to simulate environments etc. And undoubtedly shooting 'digital' is cheaper than film development. Although nowhere near as much cheaper than you might think, once the cost of a DIT and professional colour grade is thrown into the mix. However the standards of both independent film and TV production are enormously higher than they were 15 years ago.

It's not that it's impossible to make something cheaply - I'm involved in the kino kabaret movement, where amateurs and professionals alike join together to make effectively zero budget films over a weekend.

However - the cost of producing a decent film has not dropped to a few thousand. Quite the opposite. Given the high production value of contemporary indies, it's inarguably more difficult now to make something that will play festivals and sell to distributers for an 'ultralow' budget.

Moreover, lots of the budgets you see quotes are as low as they were because the film was effectively subsidised by a small production company. In other words, everyone worked for free and used borrowed gear, often worth hundreds of thousands. For reference a fully kitted out Arri Alexa 35 or LF is over 90k euro to buy, and over 1k per day to rent.

A decent budget for a short film is in the 40 - 50k range, once everyone is actually getting paid for their time. Couple of million dollars / euros would be a low budget film, with favours pulled in and everyone working for less than half of their rates for commercial work.

> High end filmmaking has gotten 'cheaper', in that you can use virtual production to simulate environments etc. And undoubtedly shooting 'digital' is cheaper than film development.

That proposition would mean that the reason why majority of the last decades' top budget movies were rehashed crap was because of the exorbitant profit margins and exorbitant money paid to stars rather than anything related to the movies' production. So it was just a case of capitalism hollowing out things for profit like in any other field.

> However - the cost of producing a decent film has not dropped to a few thousand.

I don't think anybody ever made that argument. What people say is that things became much cheaper and therefore democratized. Which is in line with what you said.

> I don't think anybody ever made that argument.

The original post in this thread advocated for making hundreds of indie films vs one film for twenty million.

> That proposition would mean that the reason why majority of the last decades' top budget movies were rehashed crap was because of the exorbitant profit margins and exorbitant money paid to stars rather than anything related to the movies' production.

It's more complicated than that - at the top end film budgets are vastly higher than they were a decade ago. Regularly topping 200 million. But more importantly, studios have making far fewer films and pining their success as a business on a 'super' hit driven model. This is almost a separate industry than film at this point, with grosses in the multiple billions before merchandising is taken into account. It's not really what the original article is about - they're talking about hit 'indie' films, in the 20 million ball park.

Arguably the issue with movies of the last decade has been the creation and duplication of transmedia franchises at the expense of making standalone original films.

$20M / 100 = $200k

> The original post in this thread advocated for making hundreds of indie films vs one film for twenty million.

That doesn't mean that each indie film would cost $10k. Not that someone couldnt pull off a good movie like that for $10k. However, more people being able to make movies from $10k or whatever low amount would mean more chances of good movies being made.

> But more importantly, studios have making far fewer films and pining their success as a business on a 'super' hit driven mode

Yeah. Profit maximization instead of risk taking. The same problem everywhere - gaming industry has been consolidated in the hands of few big companies which started making endless rehashes of previously successful games to suck out more money from gamers instead of making new things. Profit maximization. Capitalism.

> Democratized? It’s more centralized than ever.

Those aren’t opposites. In a democracy, if everyone is allowed to post political pamphlets in the town square, the central location of the square doesn’t mean it’s not a democracy.

I would agree, but right now that square is more akin to being owned by several private companies, each with their own policy which can (and will) throw you out and bar you for any reason they deemed fit.