The end of Hollywood?

Commander Max

Sr Member
I keep thinking about this, although I don't think Hollywood will disappear entirely. There are such changes going on, the way movies are produced and distributed are very much a thing of the past. I'm looking forward to the day when these changes take hold in a big way. It will make the time after SW came out look like nothing happened.

Other areas of entertainment have faced the same thing. Namely the hobby most of us enjoy, I remember a time when the only place to see the underground of sci-fi props was the cons. You paid $25-35 bucks a day, and went straight to the dealers room. At least that's what I did.
Today I have no idea about any cons going on anywhere, expect in Comic Con(in SD Calf.) and Wonderfest. Both of which I will never attend. Mainly because it would be more of a hassle, and I get any product I'm looking for here, e-bay or contact a friend and make a trade.

Now to bring this back around I look at Hollywood the same way. Why go to a theater and pay to see something that really doesn't appeal to me. When I have access to what I will enjoy watching, and have the freedom to get up and go the bathroom(without missing anything). Of course there is the rest of the issues with movie theaters. Why go I can get a world of entertainment without ever leaving the sofa. Of course I miss out on the theater experience, but I can recreate that as well.

Now here is the thing that is really going to effect the future of entertainment. I ask a friend of mine(a lot of you know Steve Neil), about this subject not only did he agree. But he told me how you could do it.
Go get yourself a really good 1080p camera(he even said the make and model) really good lighting rigs, some really good computers and of course software. The unbelievable part was the the price about $1000 for the camera plus another $1000 for the lighting, so the computers and software are going to be the biggest expense. I'm sure that can even be brought down.
Why would you need millions of dollars and all sorts of other things when all you need is a garage, and a lot of gumption.

You don't even need a good idea for a film, just go have fun. But this is what gets me thinking, there are a lot of guys out there who had a career in Hollywood, or did all of the schooling but didn't get anywhere. Those with the dream of making it in entertainment now have a very solid chance. Even those working in Hollywood have a chance to do original stuff, without any studio interference. Or offer their services to those who want to make their own stuff.

There really is a huge opportunity here, I can't wait to see it.

What do you guys think?
 
You can make the best indie film ever.
You can write the best novel ever.

But without distribution........

I walked through Target's book section this morning. They have the usual suspects, all 'top ten' authors. And pretty much nothing else.
Go to Amazon. Any idiot can upload a kindle book (I've done it) but it sure is hard to discover new talent because the publishers focus on the names that can sell several hundred thousand copies.
Million Dolllar Baby, even with names like Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman, or Gran Torino made money, but did it so slowly I believe they may be the slowest films to reach one hundred million in box office ever. They now focus on the quick buck, get a few hundred million out of Michael Bay's latest explosion fest before people figure out how bad it really is.

But on the other hand, I've seen a few of these low budget indie art films with fantastic reviews.....and they suck. Do they get reviewed that way simply because the big studio didn't make it? Hmm.
 
I guess when you put ZERO stock in anyone else's review of a movie like I do, none of this even matters. It's great not to be a TV/Movie advertising zombie.

....and every generation claims the end of Hollywood is coming.

Not gonna happen.

Someday some of you will realize that it is YOU that has changed. Hollywood keeps shooting for the same age group and I am sorry to say you aren't in that group anymore.

You need to adapt, or you will rarely like any modern movies.
 
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That was a FASCINATING read! Need to think about it a bit to decide how I feel about it, but my initial thought is to look at this like I look at a number of industries that have fallen. If you refuse to budge and refuse to change with the times, sooner or later, someone will come along and replace you. There was a time when unions served a purpose, but they have become very greedy and bloated and refuse to change... and one by one, they have eventually become antiquated and have been replaced, all because people refused to budge and refused to change with the times. That is what seems to be happening here.

Having been in those shoes, I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on this, Willie.
 
Hollywood is effectively dead though what you may mean is professional production being dead. A lot of movies and television shows are being made in Canada, New Zealand, Europe etc instead of Hollywood because they priced themselves out of the competition. Sure, some will always be made there, but it's not the powerhouse it used to be. But with the further development of internet distribution, home computers powerful enough to do CGI work, and high quality cameras available, sure, anyone can make a film as long as they have good ideas and at least some amount to invest in it.
 
Thanks alienscollection.com for posting that. Like Art I find it just as interesting.

The only thing I don't think will survive is the traditional channel idea. If Netflix and other streaming services are any indication. A channel having a broadcast schedule will be another thing of the past. I remember reading somewhere that the Nelson rating system was having trouble because of TIVO. People were watching shows at their leisure instead of when the shows were broadcast.

From some other articles I have read on this subject(which got me thinking about this in the first place). Say that some of the studios are resisting streaming. Telling companies like Netflix they can't even put the title in the Queue selection before the release date. Plus they delay the availability of titles to rental services. To give people a chance to buy the disks, before they can rent them(which doesn't make a lot of sense to me).

Change is the only constant, but how many of us ever thought we would see the end of newspapers, and magazines. Much less vinyl records, cassette tapes, even cd's. But the music is still there. Which is part of the point, an end to Hollywood means they are loosing their dominance. Part of the proof is the diminishing audience for their product(theater attendance is dropping, it's been dropping for over a decade). But not people's craving to be entertained. Hollywood has to face a great deal of competition, in some cases they can work with it(like video games). But they have to compete for time in places like social media and the net in general.

Once the streaming system establishes itself(it's still very new), distribution of independent shows will only grow and cost fractions of what anything Hollywood puts out. I'll bet it will get to the point where it will cost next to nothing to put a show on a streaming network, just like Youtube(if not Youtube itself).
 
"Hollywood" died in the early 80's when the big corporations thought they could run and market films as they did with Coke and McDonalds. In the 90's everyone got greedy and LA quite literally chased the industry away. Everyone wanted money for everything to the point it was cheaper to take it anywhere but here. Louisiana was the hot spot for sometime now they are too feeling the greed as incentives are dropping like flies.

"Films" are not regularly made anymore. Instead its all formula driven, marketing based, butter churned stories with plot's that are paper thin with a $40 to $200+ million dollar budget attached. Its crazy when an actor gets millions to do a movie and its flushed out, dull or just eye gougingly bad. This is a main factor in ticket prices being what they are. No longer are a night or weekend at the movies anywhere near affordable for a family or a teenager on a date. Your at the $50 mark just for two tickets, two drinks and a popcorn...

I can go on and on about how things have changed from "I have everything minus the camera and sound" to "I have camera and sound yet I know nothing of what it takes to make a movie" with the indie scene.

Those who think the movie industry is invincible and will succeed are somewhere off in make believe land. The music industry imploded, the automotive industry near died, the US and other countries economies are down, audience attendance is way down yet ticket prices keep rising to offset the financial gains. Why would anyone pay to see movies that are just rehashed, repackaged and regurgitated? Sheeple seem to be the only ones out there still being asses in the seats for the mindless dribble. Its the type of stuff that makes people believe movies like "Drive" are original, a masterpiece, best film of the year... It may in fact be compared to its competition and thats whats wrong with the industry and why its destined to fail.
 
The only thing I don't think will survive is the traditional channel idea. If Netflix and other streaming services are any indication. A channel having a broadcast schedule will be another thing of the past. I remember reading somewhere that the Nelson rating system was having trouble because of TIVO. People were watching shows at their leisure instead of when the shows were broadcast.

I fully agree with this. Roku and devices like it are the future, everything on demand, no regular broadcast schedule. I've cancelled my cable television at this point and am just going with Netflix and Hulu Plus right now with some Roku devices. **** the cable companies.
 
I completely agree, the chances of getting noticed are a lot better these days if one were to put their nose to the grindstone and become organized. I got myself a Canon T3I DSLR, A 10 ft x 10 ft green screen with lighting kits, an external sound recorder, and final cut pro. The possibilities are endless.
 
I think a new age of small independent film makers will be coming about. At some point a distribution system will be in place to help the films get out there. We'll see good and bad just like we did back in the late 60s and 70s when the small film makers popped up. To be honest anymore I'd rather watch a Roger Corman movie than anything from a big studio.
 
The issue again comes down to quality when dealing with the home made indie product. Its a needle in a universe of haystacks finding that one product that is presentable. Then you have the "system" holding those people back. Industry people fear change on all levels of the food chain. The moment someone gets in and changes on thing or thinks outside the box, that person is either looked down upon or becomes a massive success. Not often is it anywhere in between.
 
I think a new age of small independent film makers will be coming about. At some point a distribution system will be in place to help the films get out there. We'll see good and bad just like we did back in the late 60s and 70s when the small film makers popped up. To be honest anymore I'd rather watch a Roger Corman movie than anything from a big studio.
I think it's already here. All you would need to do is make a site and have the video available for download or use one of the video services(like Youtube?).

I do think there will be services to help host films. Once people realize there is a market for it. Right now people will have to do the marketing work themselves, I don't think that it would be all that hard. But the audience will be small.

I was watching the original Land of the Lost, I kept thinking a show on that level would not be all that difficult today. With today's technology it certainly would look better.

The issue again comes down to quality when dealing with the home made indie product. Its a needle in a universe of haystacks finding that one product that is presentable. Then you have the "system" holding those people back. Industry people fear change on all levels of the food chain. The moment someone gets in and changes on thing or thinks outside the box, that person is either looked down upon or becomes a massive success. Not often is it anywhere in between.
I think this sort of thing is negated in the current climate, because people have a very different idea of what is presentable.

I think this stuff is just going to seem to come out of nowhere, but has been going on all along. I can't help but think of the Plinket reviews. Regardless of what you would think of them, they are independent productions in their own right.
I remember a bunch projects around 2000 where people were making their own crossover sci-fi battles by mixing a bunch of sci-fi ships. Most were horrible but a few were done well. These projects were done on what are now antiquated computers.

The system is going to resist no matter what. It's like when home schooling and charter schools were becoming popular. The teachers unions resisted as much as they could, because they didn't want to face change/competition. Eventually pros in the industry are going to find greener pastures. Because eating is a lot more important than union membership/loyalty. If there are a bunch of independent filmmakers, there is a market for teaching as well as consulting to these projects(much less books, websites, webinars). That would pay far better than any Hollywood project.
 
Here's my two cents. This is based on my opinion. And if you don't want to hear it, then I recommend you bypass this one:

There are two reasons why Hollywood is dying, and is on the verge of being dead. The two is as followed:
1. Failure to adapt: One of my teachers back at Full Sail told us a story once with a moral. This story involved a casting director who had been in the industry for over 30 years. When he met her, he noticed she still used a Polaroid camera, despite the fact that the film was no longer available for it. She was opposed to using digital cameras, especially when they first came out. Until he showed her the newer digital cameras and how easy it was to take the picture, to view them and how easy it was to save them in comparison to Polaroid snaps. After that, she bought herself a digital camera to use, realizing how much money she wasted on buying the stock for the Polaroid camera when she could have gotten it much sooner and saved a lot of money. Moral: If you don't adapt, you lose more in the long run. The drawback is that there are a lot more people in the film industry who are stubborn and refuse to change with current trends in technology.

2. Crap In, Crap Out: This is a quote from one of my instructors named Jose, who is an independent producer who recently released a movie and he is one of the people responsible for the Naked Filmmaker YouTube channel. When talking about Film Director Influences, he explains that "If you go and watch only the most recent, explosion filled action film and that's all you have, I mean, you don't have a whole lot to play with here. Crap in, crap out. I'm not saying that all action films are crap, but most are. Let's be honest. Go out and explore." The fact is that most film directors nowadays are more concerned with making movies "that look cool." In fact, this is a true story, I was the assistant to the art director for a 35mm short film that sort of mimicked the thriller style of Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The two guys that written the script were selected as the directors for the project. When our teacher, who was also our producer, asked them, "What is the motivation behind the killers' actions? Why are they doing what they are doing?" They're answer: "Because it's in the script." And to make matters worse, Hollywood is accepting films that are utter crap because it's like a Big Mac: it's fast to cook and easy to sell. And if its a film that remotely works, they'll end up taking it and watering it down to appeal to what they consider is the mindless audience (a good example is the prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing, which we all know that they not only replaced all of the sequences that involved practical effects with complete CG creatures because Universal thought "it didn't look modern enough", but the fact that the writer confirmed that Universal cut out a lot of the scenes which would have made the audience care about the characters in the same manner as Carpenter did). The whole system of Hollywood is nowadays more concerned about making a quick buck that they're making films that allows them to live "paycheck to paycheck, week by week" (so to speak), instead of making a product that not only appeals to the audience, but can continue to make revenue back for them after its left the theater and has reached DVD/Blu-Ray, and even with Internet distribution that could draw interest in your movie (especially if its a good and solid one).

The only filmmaker I can think of that has distributed an entire motion picture onto the Internet is Sebastián Gutiérrez and his film Girl Walks Into a Bar, for free. Not exactly the greatest film, but its better than most of the recent slapstick stuff released by Hollywood. In fact, when it was originally available in the YouTube Screening Room, it got over 1 million views (this was before YouTube Screening Room discontinued showing it and the production company itself continued to show it on YouTube on their own channel, getting an additional 632,837 views. Though the film was intended for view on an international release, but its been blocked in the UK, Canada and the rest of the world and is only available to view in the U.S. right now. Granted, you have to sit through commercials, the commercials are brief and you still have a full movie to watch.

But the big issue is the lack of story. Basically, Hollywood has come to another point in history where its been before. It's doing nothing but "studio films", like it did in the 1960s. What the current studio system needs, as I've said before, is a second Counter-Culture movement, and the studios need to start trusting in the filmmakers to tell the stories they come up with the way they want to, because they know deep down it'll work their way, and not the way that a bunch of suits think it will.

But the big reason why that Hollywood isn't willing to accept it is as Freddie Wong explains it best to someone who asks about it at a pizza party here in this video (start at 2:20, end at 3:15): http://youtu.be/5LmbP8uEGBM
 
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This is OT but it seemed like the place to post this.
I've always loved going to the movies for that theater experience. For the majority of my life, if two weeks went by and I didn't go to a movie it was unusual.
That's pretty much gone for me now. I go to maybe 7 movies a year if that. I mean, why bother? I own a 50" flatscreen, blu ray, climate control, surround sound, all the food I want, pause for potty breaks, a very comfortable sofa, I can watch a movie in my boxers and for the cost of my movie going experience I can OWN the movie in six months. And despite what Mic thinks, I DO listen to reviews as I usually agree with them (I'm no sheep, but there is a REASON it gets bad reviews) so it gives me an opportunity to see if I should buy it or not.
I just haven't found any real reason to spend a small fortune for the wife and I to go to the movies for the "experience" when my home experience is much more enjoyable. :unsure
 
I'm the same as Funky. Nice large screen, nice place to watch from. I'm over 6', so for many years, I was crammed into seats too small for me.

Now, I have all I need at home, and with the distribution being what it is, the availability of newer movies has been halved or even quartered.

The last film I saw in the theatre was Toy Story 3, with my kids.

Before that? Iron Man 2 I think.

I have been out to the movies less than 6 times in the last few years.

And when I do see the next 'big blockbuster' I generally am 'meh' about it.

Definitely a change from from teen years, where I was out every weekend, so see new movies.

My $.02 worth on this.
 
This is timely.
AMC Entertainment Ends 2011 With A Thud - Deadline.com

The exhibition chain reports this morning in an SEC filing that it had a $72.8M loss in the last three months of 2011 — more than double its $32.8M loss in the quarter a year ago — on revenues of $557.3M, down 7.6%. Attendance fell 8.7%. With a decline in the number of 3D and Imax films which come with higher ticket prices, patrons on average paid 1.4% less to get in than they did a year ago. Admission revenues at theaters open a year or more were down 9.7%. On top of that, the company took a $17.8M impairment charge on its RealD stock holdings, and lost $11M paying off and modifying its debt. There are no analyst forecasts because AMC isn’t publicly traded: It’s owned by investment funds led by J.P Morgan Partners, Apollo Management, Bain Capital, The Carlyle Group, and Spectrum Equity Investors. Last year they filed paperwork at the SEC to take the company public, but that effort’s been on hold. At year end, AMC had 347 theaters with 5,048 screens. The filings come as AMC disclosed that it has taken out new loans to help it buy up to $160M of the outstanding $300M from Senior Subordinated Notes due 2014 on which it’s paying 8% interest.
Ouch!

Funky Jedi your post is very much on topic.

Theaters were a piece of Hollywood, they were the windows into that fantasy world. The only place where you could see all of the neat stuff they put out.

Theaters were once attractions unto themselves.

Now theaters are the place to see a film first, then it's on to video.
 
Ironic, perhaps, that the home theater experience is exactly what ruined the theater theater experience. Or, more precisely, people used to watching movies at home. My wife is one of those "Let's go see the newest, most popular movie on the busiest night at the busiest time" people. I loathe the general moviegoing public because they act like they're at home watching TV.

I prefer to see movies on special occasions with like-minded people, like seeing "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "Mad Max" at the Egyptian with a group of people who are there to see those movies, and not because they had nothing else to do or it's the new Michael Bay actionganza or whatever. For me that's a rewarding communal experience. Otherwise, yeah, I'll watch it at home.

But I suppose that speaks also to mic's point about age: the big Hollow-wood movies are aimed at that teenage boy demographic and I'm no longer in it.
 
I guess when you put ZERO stock in anyone else's review of a movie like I do, none of this even matters. It's great not to be a TV/Movie advertising zombie.

....and every generation claims the end of Hollywood is coming.

Not gonna happen.

Someday some of you will realize that it is YOU that has changed. Hollywood keeps shooting for the same age group and I am sorry to say you aren't in that group anymore.

You need to adapt, or you will rarely like any modern movies.

Very true!
 
....and every generation claims the end of Hollywood is coming.
I never heard anybody in my generation say that(I'm in my mid 40's).
We grew up on the entertainment machine, it appeared as solid as death and taxes.

I never said Hollywood will go away, only that it will have a much smaller market share.

Besides who would have ever thought newspapers becoming irrelevant.
 
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