Big-budget movies (BBMs) require a lot of capital and rely on studios controlling the rate and nature of distribution of the finished product. If you're going to recoup your $300 million box-office turd, you need to move a hell of a lot of DVDs, TV licenses, foreign exhibition, Happy Meal toys, and assorted "secondary" revenues.
Let's be realistic here: Nothing anyone does is going to make it harder to get movies when you want them, where you want them, and at whatever price you feel you should pay for them (including free). And the harder you crack down on Internet movie-downloading, the more attractive you make buying pirate DVDs from criminals on the street
-- a virtually zero-risk transaction that directly displaces DVD purchases.
What's more, no one has yet successfully crowdsourced a movie that looks and feels like a BBM. There are lots of fabulous 9-minute YouTube Inc. videos, and plenty of lovely and promising machinima flicks, but no one's yet built the kind of purely escapist, high-production-value feature that we flock to the cinema to see every summer.
Now, maybe film studios can do what Magnolia Pictures is doing -- distributing day-and-date releases to satellite, pay-per-view, cinema, DVD, and foreign film outlets -- and recapture a lot of the money that is squirting between the fingers of the tightly clenched release-window fist. But if it's not enough, commercially motivated BBMs might simply die.
Note that movies as a genre won't vanish. There's plenty to love about 9-minute YouTubes and the quirky features that come out of indie production houses. There's never been a time when more moving pictures were being produced and viewed than today. Many of these things are economic propositions, and many are not -- they're a lot more like stage shows than they are like films. They cost less to produce, they reach smaller, more targetted audiences, and they represent an admirable diversity of voice and point of view. But they're not Big, Culturally Relevant Media in the way that a real classic BBM can be.
The specific, rarefied animal that is the gigantic film spectacle demands a technological reality that has ceased to exist-- just enough technology to distribute the films everywhere, but not so much technology that the audience gets to overrule your distribution decisions.
So, we may be at the end of the period in cinematic history where we can convince investors to pony up $300 million to make a sequel to a sequel to a remake of a movie adapted from a 50-year-old comic book. Which isn't to say that no one will make these things henceforth -- give it a decade or two and there may well be rich weirdos who fund these productions the same way there are lovely old codgers who can be coaxed into putting up the dough to mount 15-hour, all-singing, all-dancing Wagner operas. Not a mass medium, nowhere near as culturally relevant as BBMs are today, but still a going concern as a vanity/prestige form.
And the rest of it? The secret is "cheap": making stuff for the Net just doesn't cost as much the audiovisual material we're used to seeing. It may not be as pretty, but at the rock-bottom prices that some of this stuff gets made for, it's viable to make a slightly crummy-looking YouTube video that's the exact, perfect video for you and 38 other people who are kinked just like you.
Some of this stuff will be sustainable through donations, other through advertising/sponsorship, and others still will be conducted on a non-economic basis. If your material is super-targeted to just the right audience, there's probably an advertiser out there looking to reach them with messages that really benefit from audiovisual treatment, who'll pay you a (relative) fortune for the chance to place an ad with you.
I'm surprised that we're still making paper from trees. With all the technology available, we've yet to create synthetic paper? I mean it could involve some sort of genetic engineering and manufacturing..sheesh!!
I agree, Aleksandra82. After a thousand years, the market for books remains strong. There are still many people out there in love with this medium.
However, as others point out, loving the medium doesn't mean loving paper, necessarily. There's certainly no reason to kill more trees if we can find an alternative for book production that allows us to continue reading, writing, and editing books in a satisfying way. As a lifelong book lover, I'm open to that kind of change.
I recall having a discussion with a tv/film crew member about the future of film development. I'm referring to digital versus traditional film.."film rolling..action!" In the mid 90's many thought that digital filming would not take over traditional. I'm assuming this did indeed take place. I do know it is a significant decrease in cost of production.
What can we expect the production cost (minus crew and actors) to be for a film with a $50 million budget today in 10 years?
video embedding - the best thing since the internet sliced bread!
If books don't survive as well as you're predicting, how will it impact Barnes and Noble and smaller booksellers? I firmly believe book sales will see a decline, however will not ever become obsolete so as long as paper is available. When display technologies such as hologram projectors become ubiquitous as cell phones are today, lugging books around would almost be against logic in my opinion.
Will our education system rely on books (printed text) when interactive mediums prove their value to be higher(efficient productivity) than traditional text? Especially when costs (at least in public education) is a factor.
I have an impression that most of the people who are affraid that the book will soon disappear are those who are not engaged in the editorial business. I remember long, never-ending discussions during our seminars in journalism, culture and media, as well as in philosophy and easthetics, when all the students and professors phophetized the end of the book. The question was not if, but when. However, whenever I have a chance to talk to someone working in the field of publishing I ask about his or her views concerning the future of this business and obviously I usually expect a very pessimistic answer. But it's not happening. People who work in the business, manage new projects and release new titles are calm and relaxed. They are aware of the fact that the market changes and that they need to be more flexible, but they also know surpus value of their work lyes not in the publishing (because that's what the digital technology does), but in the editing itself. And that there will always be a need to make a book out of a text. What is more, the new technologies support the development of alternative distribution channels as well as inventing new tools of CRM. On the other hand, tax preferences support the availability of books on the market. Let us not forget that education on its higher and lower levels is still in 95% based on books... and, last but not least, most of the surveys show that there is a pretty stable group of people whowant to buy and read books no mather what. And there always is a supply where there is a demand.
I've loved reading ever since I was a kid. My mom bought me a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when I was around ten and, from then on, I was hooked on fiction. But now that I'm already grown up, I found myself having to struggle with reading amidst the many responsibilities that come with adult life.
I've had very little success until late last year. I got a PDA phone and loaded e-books (free from Project Gutenberg!) and articles from my favorite marketing Web sites onto it. Now, I could read in while quequeing, waiting for a friends to arrive, burning the few minutes left in my lunch break, etc. Nothing beats reading on paper, but I certainly couldn't carry that much paper around all the time, unlike my near-weightless Nokia. This time, I'd have to thank technology for bringing culture back into my life.
right on - travelling on a train and watching Raging Bull on a laptop makes me think "what's the big deal with this guy" and trying to remember when i saw it in the theater, i was just blown away.
Star Wars - honestly must be seen in a theater or better yet, a drive-in. Close Encounters at a drive-in is just about as chilling as Halloween in almost any medium (except iPod when it's about as annoying as a mosquito).
There are just too many great things that cannot be enjoyed fully on a small screen. For example, it's just too hard to really see the facial reactions of people when you view it on a small screen especially when they are supposed to see something "big" (like King Kong, Godzilla, and others) and both of them have to be shown together on the screen. It is also too hard to really feel the intensity of the action when it is seen on a small monitor (like Star Wars, Titanic, Independence Day, etc).
The laptop and the iPod may offer some convenience. But still convenience does not really guarantee full enjoyment or satisfaction.
I agree - watching some films on a smaller monitor or (egad) any iPod just doesn't blow the candles out on my birthday cake. Convenient? Without a doubt! Thought it possible when I was a kid (mearly 30 years ago) - not even a dream.
But I cannot watch Lawrence of Arabia on something small, likewise for greats like Star Wars, 2001, or even Rocky and The Godfather. Sometimes, the stuff is bigger than the screen and dreams happen when this occurs - it is what why I went to film school.
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