Only Way to Save the Movie Industry is to Give Up On Your Dreams
nofilmschool.com
nofilmschool.com
One thing she notes is that the number of film schools in the US is approximately equal to the number of individuals employed full time in Hollywood (the "real" movies industry).
That's right, each school, on average, contributes one person total to the industry (course, it's not a matter of averages with a very few school contributing a reasonable if small number and most adding ... none, still this average shows the aggregate brutality).
Anyway, I don't know why anyone would bother with anything like an altruistic gesture towards these people, this industry etc.
That's just the talent, on any movie support staff and behind the camera talent will be at least 5x the number of on screen talent, sometimes even 100x more.
Or it doesn't, and they make it out of vanity reasons, or because "soon, I'll have my big chance...".
Sure, a lot of it is contract work, with lulls between jobs, but they're making income equivalent to a very solid middle class income.
It seems most common in the movie industry to be employed on a short, fixed-term contract (for the duration of one film, say) before moving on to the next thing.
Does that count as full-time employment for the purposes of this stat? I'm guessing not.
Is this a bad thing? Probably not (although reasonable to argue). In any case, it's different than traditional employment: so employment can't be measured using traditional figures.
Theater ticket prices continue to go up regardless of the type of film. Indie flicks also cost no less than AAA titles in home video. Traditionally, low-cost inferior alternatives compete against the more expensive well-established products on the basis of price. Why aren't indies trying to undercut AAA titles on price to increase their volume?
Instead, indies compete for a niche. Niche customers (at least, the ones you want) aren't bargain hunters, but people who pay for their idea of quality.
My theory is that there's some audience for any half-competent film. The world is a big place, with a lot of variety and a lot of different tastes. If your film isn't truly awful, then there's some subset of people out there who want to see it. Long tail audiences for long tail filmmaking.
The trick is they don't even know it exists. It's the same with apps and with music and with self-published novels. Matching audience to creative work for the million niches is the real trick that needs to be figured out.
The systems we have now (app store, amazon, netflix, spotify, etc) all fail at it in general. Machine learning (as currently applied any way) doesn't really do it.
Self-published novels are doing a bit better than the other media at matching output to demand. That's partially because of a faster feedback loop, partially because Amazon are smart cookies, and partially just because they need to earn back a lot less to be profitable.
I'd be interested in talking more about this issue, actually - my email address is in my HN user info.
I had high hopes that social media sites would make it easier to find new stuff, but it seems their business model of selling advertising is actually in direct conflict with building tools to discover new media. Apple might have had a chance with Ping, but they bungled it so badly.
I would imagine that someone will either make their money from linking media to audience or find a revenue source that doesn't conflict.
However, there is a secondary issue, and that is of appetite. Appetite for novelty. We seem to often crave more of the same, rather than taking a chance on something unfamiliar. I do this too, for example I only go on Crunchyroll to watch Naruto-related shows, despite there being a large selection of other shows I could watch. What can be done to help open people up to new experiences?
As much as I dislike people banging on about how great things were in the 1960s, the one factor that does seem to be markedly different about that time was an openness to novelty within the masses. Logically there's no reason that can't happen again, but I don't know how it'll emerge.
In fiction, it's often easy to identify what people want to read / watch / consume - a Joss Whedon fan wants "stuff like Buffy", a 24 fan wants "more 24". You're in the Naruto niche.
This is niche identification, just like in non-fiction - where as I mention in a comment above, you can target down to tiny niches.
The difference in fiction is that it's illegal to target those niches because of copyright-created monopolies. I can't say "OK, ZenoArrow wants more Naruto" and make some without getting extremely sued.
I'm not sure what to do about that, but it's an interesting identification of the problem.
This also explains why new fiction is so hard to launch - you're creating a new niche, something that's traditionally randomly successful and very difficult.
(The traditional solution, of course, is either to license popular IP - not really doable for indies - or to base your fiction on a niche that's not copyright-protected. Hence the number of Sherlock Holmes-based films, TV shows, and books, for example - the Sherlock Holmes niche is actually available.)
Whilst licensing popular IPs is one way to reliably bring in an audience, I wouldn't say it's a long term solution for healthy, diverse culture. Reusing older source material is certainly popular right now though, Sherlock Holmes is a strong example of that. Furthermore, older material can be reused in creative ways (e.g. Sample-based music, reimaginings of universes such as Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, etc...).
I also think you make a good point about 'a Joss Whedon fan wants "stuff like Buffy"'. I think this can go beyond what someone is used to when people begin to build their identity around what they consume. There is an unwritten but obvious way that a group latches onto certain media, even in scenes that supposedly promote individualism such as geek culture. Even if culture should be identity agnostic, it frequently is not.
I should point out that although I don't always find time for the new, I know that I'd be better off if I did. Perhaps 'find time' is the key phrase, I feel so busy with/addicted to my current cultural consumption that I don't make room for finding something new. The one exception for me is YouTube, I'll happily take time browsing YouTube seeing where it takes me. Perhaps that's the one exception due to the habits ingrained in me throughout the 90s through copious TV consumption, I'm at ease that I'll not always hit the jackpot of an interesting video.
What I really would like to see is greater cultural diversity, despite my actions to the contrary. As a film maker I apologise that you'll have to deal with these issues!
Perhaps short, ambitious content could help? When I was a kid I had a Transformers video I used to watch a lot, one of the episodes was 'Call Of The Primitives'. I really enjoyed that episode, the story seemed to flow really well. When I was older I read a complaint about that episode that they had tried to fit in too much, that it was a film-like storyline in a single 20 minute episode, it struck me that maybe that's part of what I liked about the story flow, it had the ambition to throw in quite a few memorable moments in a short time frame. I don't know if there's a lesson in that, but perhaps there is.
What else do you think might help?
For movies we have IMDB.com that works well for consumer to filter out the good ones. The current app store implementations are not good enough, an independent app database with information, rating, pictures, videos and comments like IMDB would be great.
(IMDB already features video games where actors were part of the development process)
The difference is that the gate is crumbling and the price floor is being removed. A lot more people now stand to make very little doing something they love, where before they stood to make absolutely nothing. Some of the sales of the top-tier indie market will undoubtedly go down, but demand for great work from outside the studio system will never disappear entirely.
But they need to compete on an even playing field with the newer generation and not try to hide behind the old system until it falls down completely. If the developing products are reaching everyone and the quality products continue to reach only the privileged few (seriously, try watching an indie movie in a small town), the people who cling to the limited distribution model will stand to lose the most.
Well, except maybe gaming, and that's just because the actual paying market for videogames keeps growing.
I checked my think-like-the-MPAA magic 8-ball. (1) Limit, by law, the films cinemas can show to those rated G, PG, PG-13, or R. (2) Inflate the cost of applying for a rating (with a "scholarship" available to qualifying applicants).
The industry has more subtle ways of controlling theater owners.
> I checked my think-like-the-MPAA magic 8-ball. (1) Limit, by law, the films cinemas can show to those rated G, PG, PG-13, or R. (2) Inflate the cost of applying for a rating (with a "scholarship" available to qualifying applicants).
Yes, and this would be a clear example of industry protectionism, probably actionable in civil court. As an example, remember that many Silicon Valley companies are now the subject of a federal lawsuit for agreeing among themselves not to "poach" each other's engineers. The feds argue that this prevented fair wage bargaining and the seeking of professional opportunities, and they're likely to prevail in court.
"I want to prevent other talented people from making indie films or working on creative projects and developing their own independence"
Awful idea, awful attitude. It should be illegal.
If there is genuinely a glut of crappy independent movies, I don't get nearly enough opportunities to see them. I would much rather be watching novel creative works than always the next thing put out by big budget industry. Even indie film festivals often show the same indie-darling movies as many others.
But there really does need to be some way for a consumer to find what they're interested in, and for an artist to reach those who might be interested in their work. At the moment the old mechanisms seem to be vanishing, and it's not clear what will take their place.
I've seen people try forming communities with shared worlds to spark interest, new approaches using Patreon and Kickstarter, the ever unreliable flooding of social media. But the truth is that as a reader I'm finding it harder to search for things I like and as a beginning writer, I'm seeing my more advanced friends drop out of the midlist.
One of the issues with creating fiction compared to non-fiction right now, in any medium, is that it's much harder to niche down in fiction. In non-fiction I can perfectly happily make a viable living from writing to a niche of, say, "owners of cats with behavioural issues", or "Finance-focused startups in need of lead generation knowledge". In fiction, niches are much less granular - at best, you can target, say, "werewolf-based romance", and for many projects, you'll be targeting "fantasy", "hard SF" or similar huge niches with very vague requirements and significant saturation problems.
This sounds like a more likely source of the problem than too much supply.
Filmmakers need their economics to work. They also have limited access to credit. In short, it is a market that should work. Limit subsidies like guaranteed theatre runs to let the market self-correct.