What will come
1) Here and Now recently had a segment on what makes media items popular. Unsurprisingly, the answer was that it should be familiar yet a little different, and repeated often. But the way that something is distributed is more important than the quality of its content. I can't believe that fanworks didn't get included in this discussion since I would think it's the very definition of the theory.
Fanworks have always been with us but being able to make them visible and share them easily online has made all the difference in both participation rates and a wider awareness of them as a creative genre. Plus this is also clearly true:
"There are all sorts of ideas that are scandal, scandal, scandal and then they have this moment of public consecration, and after that they become culture."
Fanworks haven't gotten there yet but I completely believe it's coming. One only has to look at how many different fanworks have gone viral or had huge successes of some kind to see that it'll eventually happen for the genre in general. I particularly liked this quote, which comes from the end of his first chapter:
"[A]udiences are hungry for meaning, and their preferences are guided by the interplay between the complex and the simple, the stimulation of new things and a deep comfort with the familiar."
I wouldn't say all fanworks show evidence of a hunger for meaning, but I do think that a lot of them do offer an interpretation of the canon that reveals a meaning which was imparted to that creator. Also, the complex combined with the simple describes, I think, a lot of very popular entertainment that is latched onto by all ages because its varying levels of complexity allow for it to be enjoyed by many groups. And obviously, a sequel (or fanwork) is both new and familiar.
I thought it was intriguing that resistance to new musical styles also has a solution.
"Repetition is the god particle of music...repetition has this powerful amazing trick of turning cacophony into music."
I can testify to that, as music that I disliked at the time still has a patina of nostalgia when I hear it now.
2) I saw the documentary "Casting By" by accident last week on Netflix. I'd heartily recommend it. While I felt the ending was abrupt, I think it spoke to both women's roles within the industry and why, for many reasons, we need more female directors. It also provided a really interesting commentary on how the process of making movies has evolved in the past century.
The focus was on two people, Marion Dougherty and Lynn Stalmaster, divided by the country as well as gender. I don't know if the doc wanted to back away from the focus on women and thus included Stalmaster's history or if Dougherty's death precluded more material. But it seemed very clearly to me to have this issue at its center.
I do wish the doc had talked more about her process and what specific things she passed on to her long list of mentees. Perhaps that's considered proprietary but however much insight and hunches may have played in her work, that's not something you can teach. In short, I wouldn't have minded yet another hour going into still more depth. But the story as is doesn't lack interest. If anyone else has seen it I'd like to know what you took away from it.
3) I recently watched The Martian and The Huntsman: Winter's War. Both have well deserved reputations. The Martian was a movie with a lot of different angles but it avoided doing two things which was unusual -- angsting and romances. I actually found it a little odd that there was only a reference to his parents near the end with no suggestion he had any relationships of note outside of those with his crewmates. I didn't mind the absence of a romantic storyline at all, but other than moments of frustration or grim acknowledgment, Mark seems awfully sanguine about his horrifying situation. This doesn't seem very relatable.
It might be fairly realistic about the type of people who'd be sent to Mars, but given that we only encounter most of them briefly and not in the process of training it makes Mark seem very disconnected from not just other people but even himself. Personally I was glad we didn't have obligatory montages about Mark brooding or (as would be typical for an earthbound story) drinking. That was refreshing. But there was also obviously so much plot that any real characterization was absent from most of the parts.
It did make me think, however, that it's a rare portrayal of someone who is obviously very optimistic and can-do without an effort at ironic distance. Personally, broody heroes bore me and I'd much rather see problem solvers in action. But Hollywood seems to love them, as if misery is a masculine thing. I'd like to see a happy medium where someone can seem down for pretty clear reasons (that are work related instead of, say, a loved one being fridged) while not having that take over their characterization.
I also couldn't help comparing it to a fic I read in the past month that was a follow-up to a shorter one about astronauts on the space station. In this story they were training for a Mars mission and at first it was all rather interesting. Then the main character started falling apart emotionally for relationship reasons and being afraid he'd be cut from the program. All I could think was "You should be cut from the program! Get a grip!"
One thing I had trouble believing was that crowds the world over would be waiting to see if an astronaut could be saved and that there was no debate over the amount of money being spent for one human life. This is a very different era from Apollo 13 and there are a lot of things claiming people's attention. I don't doubt the feeling of NASA assuming there will be brickbats swung no matter what decisions they made, but the idea that the world would be on the edge of their seat to find out if a rescue would work? It seems like wish fulfillment in this era of anti-intellectualism.
I wouldn't call Huntsman awful (though anyone watching it for Colin Morgan would be disappointed as he has 1 line and not even 3 minutes on screen). But it wasn't particularly impressive.
It also made me think that what likely would make Chris Hemsworth happiest would be playing more comedic roles. I suspect his part in Ghostbusters got him some of his best reviews and he seemed most engaging in the few scenes where he got to banter in this film. One thing's for sure -- neither action nor serious roles are doing him any good career-wise. He's yet to head up a movie that wasn't Thor (which sells itself) and have it be a success.
I am, however, amazed that the costume designer and make-up artists for this and its prequel didn't get an Oscar for their work. What fantastic looks! Definitely a highlight of the films. The make-up and hair people didn't even get a nomination for Snow White even though there were only 3 nominees at all!
I was surprised given his small part that Colin Morgan got as high a billing as he did. He must have a good agent.
4) Speaking of Colin Morgan's agent, there's the final season of The Fall. I was glad it didn't veer into Stella being under Spector's spell the way it started to look at the end of the previous season. However, I get the feeling that they didn't know what to do with the storyline if it didn't go there. Going over procedure doesn't make for exciting TV but the whole issue of what was going to happen to Spector's wife was left completely hanging.
I thought that the key phrase for the season was her exasperated eruption that Spector was an agent of destruction for everyone whose path he crossed. This got played out pretty clearly. But the way things ended seemed anticlimactic in the final 15 minutes.
I was amazed Colin got 3rd billing given his role was relatively small even within the large cast. I suppose it's connected to his being a returning character and having at least an appearance in every episode. I thought the show was going to branch out more into the people assisting in the investigation. But instead the show went into depth about medical procedures.
Despite my sometimes disgust with the show or dissatisfaction with the ending, I have to say that it was gripping when it was clicking along and that Anderson's performance was certainly a highlight.
5) Read an article in Vanity Fair'sHollywood issue about how it's the next industry about to be disrupted by tech, following the music, journalism, and publishing industries.
I agreed with the overall proposition but took issue with certain statements.
"The same waste and bloated budgets exist across the entire industry. To put the atrophy into perspective, a single episode of a typically modest television show can cost $3 million to shoot and produce. By comparison, a typical start-up in Silicon Valley will raise that much to run a team of engineers and servers for two years."
I guess it depends on what you pay your tech staff and how big a project you're launching. But I suspect the bloat is going to be shrinking noticeably. Actor salaries, for example, are, in general, on the decline. Although the popularity of pseudo-reality shows is diminishing, they were responsible for smaller salaries in a number of areas too. But I just don't see that it's possible to run live-action productions with half the staff, especially if you're shooting on location where things like security and transportation people get added to the mix.
Of course if films become, essentially, digital animation rather than real world films then the "stand around and wait" aspect of film-making will definitely change. What won't though is very large groups of people working on that project. Anyone ever sit through the credits scroll on an animated picture?
"In the 1950s, the movies were the third-largest retail business in the U.S., surpassed only by grocery stores and car dealerships. Look what Silicon Valley has already done to the other two sectors."
Actually I'm not sure what they're referring to grocery wise as I think inroads in groceries are small, profit margins are poor, and as physical stores I can't see them ever going away. Wal-Mart has done more damage to traditional groceries than Amazon, for example. That could change in time but I'd say it's going to be impossible to disrupt groceries completely. Even industries that got decimated and revamped long ago, such as travel agencies, still exist 20 years later. Full-service brokerage firms continue to exist even if online trading changed the market considerably.
However, I think the point remains that the film industry in particular is in trouble. Home tech keeps getting better and cheaper even while movie theater prices continue to climb. If you have very little money you're not likely to go to the movies and the most cost-effective form of entertainment is a video game as it's very long-form entertainment (unless you're a very slow book reader, and even then you can use your library!)
Comments at Dreamwidth
.
Fanworks have always been with us but being able to make them visible and share them easily online has made all the difference in both participation rates and a wider awareness of them as a creative genre. Plus this is also clearly true:
"There are all sorts of ideas that are scandal, scandal, scandal and then they have this moment of public consecration, and after that they become culture."
Fanworks haven't gotten there yet but I completely believe it's coming. One only has to look at how many different fanworks have gone viral or had huge successes of some kind to see that it'll eventually happen for the genre in general. I particularly liked this quote, which comes from the end of his first chapter:
"[A]udiences are hungry for meaning, and their preferences are guided by the interplay between the complex and the simple, the stimulation of new things and a deep comfort with the familiar."
I wouldn't say all fanworks show evidence of a hunger for meaning, but I do think that a lot of them do offer an interpretation of the canon that reveals a meaning which was imparted to that creator. Also, the complex combined with the simple describes, I think, a lot of very popular entertainment that is latched onto by all ages because its varying levels of complexity allow for it to be enjoyed by many groups. And obviously, a sequel (or fanwork) is both new and familiar.
I thought it was intriguing that resistance to new musical styles also has a solution.
"Repetition is the god particle of music...repetition has this powerful amazing trick of turning cacophony into music."
I can testify to that, as music that I disliked at the time still has a patina of nostalgia when I hear it now.
2) I saw the documentary "Casting By" by accident last week on Netflix. I'd heartily recommend it. While I felt the ending was abrupt, I think it spoke to both women's roles within the industry and why, for many reasons, we need more female directors. It also provided a really interesting commentary on how the process of making movies has evolved in the past century.
The focus was on two people, Marion Dougherty and Lynn Stalmaster, divided by the country as well as gender. I don't know if the doc wanted to back away from the focus on women and thus included Stalmaster's history or if Dougherty's death precluded more material. But it seemed very clearly to me to have this issue at its center.
I do wish the doc had talked more about her process and what specific things she passed on to her long list of mentees. Perhaps that's considered proprietary but however much insight and hunches may have played in her work, that's not something you can teach. In short, I wouldn't have minded yet another hour going into still more depth. But the story as is doesn't lack interest. If anyone else has seen it I'd like to know what you took away from it.
3) I recently watched The Martian and The Huntsman: Winter's War. Both have well deserved reputations. The Martian was a movie with a lot of different angles but it avoided doing two things which was unusual -- angsting and romances. I actually found it a little odd that there was only a reference to his parents near the end with no suggestion he had any relationships of note outside of those with his crewmates. I didn't mind the absence of a romantic storyline at all, but other than moments of frustration or grim acknowledgment, Mark seems awfully sanguine about his horrifying situation. This doesn't seem very relatable.
It might be fairly realistic about the type of people who'd be sent to Mars, but given that we only encounter most of them briefly and not in the process of training it makes Mark seem very disconnected from not just other people but even himself. Personally I was glad we didn't have obligatory montages about Mark brooding or (as would be typical for an earthbound story) drinking. That was refreshing. But there was also obviously so much plot that any real characterization was absent from most of the parts.
It did make me think, however, that it's a rare portrayal of someone who is obviously very optimistic and can-do without an effort at ironic distance. Personally, broody heroes bore me and I'd much rather see problem solvers in action. But Hollywood seems to love them, as if misery is a masculine thing. I'd like to see a happy medium where someone can seem down for pretty clear reasons (that are work related instead of, say, a loved one being fridged) while not having that take over their characterization.
I also couldn't help comparing it to a fic I read in the past month that was a follow-up to a shorter one about astronauts on the space station. In this story they were training for a Mars mission and at first it was all rather interesting. Then the main character started falling apart emotionally for relationship reasons and being afraid he'd be cut from the program. All I could think was "You should be cut from the program! Get a grip!"
One thing I had trouble believing was that crowds the world over would be waiting to see if an astronaut could be saved and that there was no debate over the amount of money being spent for one human life. This is a very different era from Apollo 13 and there are a lot of things claiming people's attention. I don't doubt the feeling of NASA assuming there will be brickbats swung no matter what decisions they made, but the idea that the world would be on the edge of their seat to find out if a rescue would work? It seems like wish fulfillment in this era of anti-intellectualism.
I wouldn't call Huntsman awful (though anyone watching it for Colin Morgan would be disappointed as he has 1 line and not even 3 minutes on screen). But it wasn't particularly impressive.
It also made me think that what likely would make Chris Hemsworth happiest would be playing more comedic roles. I suspect his part in Ghostbusters got him some of his best reviews and he seemed most engaging in the few scenes where he got to banter in this film. One thing's for sure -- neither action nor serious roles are doing him any good career-wise. He's yet to head up a movie that wasn't Thor (which sells itself) and have it be a success.
I am, however, amazed that the costume designer and make-up artists for this and its prequel didn't get an Oscar for their work. What fantastic looks! Definitely a highlight of the films. The make-up and hair people didn't even get a nomination for Snow White even though there were only 3 nominees at all!
I was surprised given his small part that Colin Morgan got as high a billing as he did. He must have a good agent.
4) Speaking of Colin Morgan's agent, there's the final season of The Fall. I was glad it didn't veer into Stella being under Spector's spell the way it started to look at the end of the previous season. However, I get the feeling that they didn't know what to do with the storyline if it didn't go there. Going over procedure doesn't make for exciting TV but the whole issue of what was going to happen to Spector's wife was left completely hanging.
I thought that the key phrase for the season was her exasperated eruption that Spector was an agent of destruction for everyone whose path he crossed. This got played out pretty clearly. But the way things ended seemed anticlimactic in the final 15 minutes.
I was amazed Colin got 3rd billing given his role was relatively small even within the large cast. I suppose it's connected to his being a returning character and having at least an appearance in every episode. I thought the show was going to branch out more into the people assisting in the investigation. But instead the show went into depth about medical procedures.
Despite my sometimes disgust with the show or dissatisfaction with the ending, I have to say that it was gripping when it was clicking along and that Anderson's performance was certainly a highlight.
5) Read an article in Vanity Fair'sHollywood issue about how it's the next industry about to be disrupted by tech, following the music, journalism, and publishing industries.
I agreed with the overall proposition but took issue with certain statements.
"The same waste and bloated budgets exist across the entire industry. To put the atrophy into perspective, a single episode of a typically modest television show can cost $3 million to shoot and produce. By comparison, a typical start-up in Silicon Valley will raise that much to run a team of engineers and servers for two years."
I guess it depends on what you pay your tech staff and how big a project you're launching. But I suspect the bloat is going to be shrinking noticeably. Actor salaries, for example, are, in general, on the decline. Although the popularity of pseudo-reality shows is diminishing, they were responsible for smaller salaries in a number of areas too. But I just don't see that it's possible to run live-action productions with half the staff, especially if you're shooting on location where things like security and transportation people get added to the mix.
Of course if films become, essentially, digital animation rather than real world films then the "stand around and wait" aspect of film-making will definitely change. What won't though is very large groups of people working on that project. Anyone ever sit through the credits scroll on an animated picture?
"In the 1950s, the movies were the third-largest retail business in the U.S., surpassed only by grocery stores and car dealerships. Look what Silicon Valley has already done to the other two sectors."
Actually I'm not sure what they're referring to grocery wise as I think inroads in groceries are small, profit margins are poor, and as physical stores I can't see them ever going away. Wal-Mart has done more damage to traditional groceries than Amazon, for example. That could change in time but I'd say it's going to be impossible to disrupt groceries completely. Even industries that got decimated and revamped long ago, such as travel agencies, still exist 20 years later. Full-service brokerage firms continue to exist even if online trading changed the market considerably.
However, I think the point remains that the film industry in particular is in trouble. Home tech keeps getting better and cheaper even while movie theater prices continue to climb. If you have very little money you're not likely to go to the movies and the most cost-effective form of entertainment is a video game as it's very long-form entertainment (unless you're a very slow book reader, and even then you can use your library!)
Comments at Dreamwidth
.