The Unwritten Contract

Anytime a movie is viewed or a TV show is watched, there is a transaction taking place that is not obvious. Certainly there are the obvious things like the purchase of a ticket or the purchase of an advertisers product but there is more beneath the surface.

When someone decides to view a movie, no matter how it is done or whether or not there is cash involved, they come to it with certain expectations. The largest of all is that their time is not being wasted. Unlike factors such as money, they can never recover the 90 minutes to 2 hours that they might spend watching a movie.

They take a risk every time they watch a feature film and the willingness to risk that time involves a number of other factors beyond just the time used up. For one thing, they expect to be entertained and this can take a number of forms. This might involve vicariously living the life of the hero of the story. This might mean a certain amount of spectacle although it is not just that. Sometimes the movie has to be thought provoking and at other times pure escapism is desired but one thing is for sure: the film must deliver.

Very often filmmakers and the studios under which they work forget about this unwritten contract and let other factors steer the course of their movies. A filmmaker may have some personal story about some family matter that nobody cares about except for them. A filmmaker or some other creative player may do something simply for the money without regard to whether it will create a satisfying audience experience.

Studios, for their part, may do something only because of the money involved, letting obscure foreign tax deals be the source of motion pictures rather than the desire to make good pictures. The focus solely on money can make possible sequels and series that have no creative reason to be other than the hopes for studio executives to continue cranking the cash machine.

Agents, the people who work between the studios and the creative talent, have the least interest in what the audience experiences. Their world is entirely devoted to the art of the deal, so the costs of making movies climb ever higher while the attention to quality declines. Very often the agent and the studios are partners in crime in this matter.

And what about the poor audience? To go out to the movies requires a major undertaking. Schedules have to be coordinated and money allocated - and the price of admission has climbed while the quality of theatres and the movie they show has declined. Not only is there the cost of admission but there is the cost of surrounding factors such as babysitters for those with families, dinner out, and astronomical concession prices.

If the audience chooses to stay home, as so many now do, the risk is still high. The DVDs they are likely to rent still contain the movies that they didn't go to see in the theatres and because of the way the distribution system is set up for most video stores, a lot of the choices have disappeared in favor of only the mainstream releases of the most common films. Although they no longer have to lose the time that they had formerly used up going to and from the theatre, they still have those 90 to 120 minutes of average screen time to negotiate. Even though the financial cost may be lower, they still might come up the loser if they picked the wrong film.

How can filmmakers live up to their end of the unwritten contract? The easy obvious answer is simply to make good movies but what does this involve? One thing to be aware of is that the more the movie financially costs the viewer, the more of a risk it is going to be for them to watch. Studios and filmmakers often forget this when they release movies.

In another industry, the record industry, a similar situation has happened. In the 1960's, well before the introduction of the CD or of music downloads, record albums and singles were much more affordable. It was much more feasible to check out new bands and singers because the risk was lower. Once record companies went to CDs this situation changed. There were no longer inexpensive singles widely available to check out new musical talent. The record companies insisted that you buy the whole album. What usually happened was that these albums consisted of the one or two hit singles with the rest being uninspired filler. Sales went down. Why? Despite the assertions about music piracy, the reason was they broke their unwritten contract with the buyers. In fact the buyers took the matter into their own hands with music downloads because the record companies were not looking after their needs. Now the situation is out of control for these companies and rather than seeing how they might live up to the unwritten contract, they have actually accelerated their decline with their money games and homogenizing of material.

It has happened way too often where a studio has a movie that is a real stinker and they'll over hype and do a blitz advertising campaign to get everyone to see it on opening weekend. The public sees it and word of mouth makes it sink like a rock by the next weekend. The studios hope, of course, that enough people will be suckered into giving it a profit that first weekend but this game is not the sure thing it used to be. The public has the internet now and can find out information in advance, whether the studio wants it or not. Perhaps they could simply concentrate on the movie rather than the money that surrounds it.

If filmmakers and studios could be just a little more willing to fulfill this unwritten contract, the movie business may have a chance. If they could just think a bit more about long term survival rather than short term profits, they might actually be a long term. And lets not forget the exhibitors, for it is there that the breach of the unwritten contract is most obvious. If things could just get to the point where going to the movies could once again become a satisfying experience rather than seeming like the big rip off that it has become, attendance might increase. If a potential viewer is tired after a long week at work, why not give them something at the end of it? Studios, filmmakers, exhibitors - Why not hold up your end of the unwritten contract and watch your business truly grow?

It's Not the Gear, Man!

In any city or town where there is filmmaking or television activity you are going to find them. You know the type. The kind who is obsessed with the gear, whether it be what they currently own or what they would like to get.

For those at TV stations or at video production companies the focus is going to be on the latest Grass Valley switcher or the latest and most advanced visual effects unit. For others with loads of bucks to blow, it may be the latest and greatest Arriflex motion picture camera or the last word in Varicams or CineAlta's. For independent filmmakers, the former attention devoted to Panasonic DVX-100's in all their varieties may have switched to REDs or Panasonic HVX-200s. And the story is the same: they all think that the gear they use is going to make what they produce better.

All of this gear obsession reminds me of when I was in college learning photography. At that time the camera brands everyone was lusting after were Nikons and Hasselblads. Did the photographers with these prized cameras take better pictures? Not necessarily. A lesson I learned at the time was that it wasn't necessarily the camera that made a good picture possible but rather the person behind the camera. Sure, better equipment might make it easier to take that good picture. But without someone with creativity, skill, and imagination behind the camera, the picture was likely to be nothing special. I found out then that a genius with a cheap camera could run circles around the typical well-heeled amateur ("amateur" that is, in the bad sense of the word) with the most expensive camera in the world.

There are many motion pictures from the past that we treasure now. Some from as far back as the silent era are still admired today. If we compare the gear that was used to make those films as well as the film stock available back then to what we have now, what they had to work with is downright primitive. But those pictures still capture our imaginations today.

It was the storytelling behind the films that really made them great. The people behind the camera really knew how to light scenes so that magic could come out from the screen. The lower resolutions and graininess of the film stocks didn't diminish the movies but in some strange way enhanced the experience. I believe it might have been David Lynch who commented that the extreme sharpness and clarity of today's cameras actually diminish the movie going experience because it becomes too real in a way. It becomes more difficult to submerge yourself in a story because it is less like a dream. If you think about it most dreams are not like being awake. There is something different about how a dream is experienced.

There have been many expensive films made with the best cameras available in the world that have sunk without a trace. Despite the advanced gear, it turned out that they weren't very good films to begin with. There have also been examples of films made with very inexpensive gear that have somehow captured our imaginations enough to make them undisputed hits. Two within recent memory (these from the horror genre) have been "The Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal Activity". With both of these films the producers turned a supposed disadvantage (home video type camcorders with their less than picture quality) into an advantage by using it as a story element.

It is also possible that, with well executed lighting, that even inexpensive cameras can look better than you would normally expect. This leaves open the possibility of more ambitious films. Of course an inexpensive camcorder is never going to look as good as a high-end CineAlta camera or something from Panavision, but it can look respectable with skillful lighting of the scene. And the lighting gear doesn't always have to be expensive professional lights. With a very good understanding of how lighting works, it is possible to substitute inexpensive lights and build home-made lighting accessories to create the look you are going for. The only major difference between your cheap light kit and the the professional variety being it will not likely be as sturdy and the lights will likely not be able to pump out as much light. With careful selection of the shots to be used, however, this problem can be overcome. One factor going for you is that today's camcorders are more light sensitive.

So, if you are a filmmaker, why not consider pushing your equipment further and paying more attention to making good movies than perpectually waiting for that miracle gear to come over the horizon to somehow magically make make you a better filmmaker?

Hollywood is Losing Its Power

A lot of us haven't noticed it yet. It's been happening quite slowly, but it is becoming more and more obvious that Hollywood is losing its grip as the center of the motion picture universe. Sure all the major and minor movie studios are still there and they still dominate the business but it is just not the same.

Was it the cheaper costs of Canada that got it started? Or the various incentive programs offered by the other states? That is just one reason. This day of reckoning has been a long time coming.

That entity called Hollywood had it pretty good for a very long time. World War I crippled its European competitors, and its great PR machine worked its wonders to make sure that talented people and all that thought they were would funnel themselves into Hollywood's gates. But what has been the cost? With everyone storming the gates to get their chance connections (who you knew) became much more important than what you knew and quality movies became more accidents than expected occurrences. Once someone did something "good enough" to meet standards, those standards took second place to whatever the current trend was.

Once the agents got their grip in the late 40's and early 50's, the end was on its way because deals then became more important than movies. The studio system took all through the 50's into the 60's to collapse. There was television, the outlawing of block booking, and finally the prohibition of the studios owning movie theatres to remove the power, leaving the studios for the most part with distribution. With their weakened state the studios became vulnerable to takeover. Studios became mere appendages to international conglomerates whose love wasn't movies but profits. To satisfy this lust for profits, movies were no longer made for everyone but for mostly males who were 15 to 25 years of age.

While the studios were being raided, there was a brief time when the executives were distracted during the 1970's where some creative experimentation could slip through. But when the conglomerates discovered how lucrative blockbusters could be, a lot of smaller movies became much harder to make.

With all talent flowing toward Hollywood, these self-appointed gatekeepers just could not keep up. More and more elaborate barriers went up in place to stem the flow. Agents found every way they could to avoid reading new scripts. Unions made the barriers to entry so formidable that it was a wonder that any new talent made it into the ranks at all.

Then came the lure of shooting in Canada. Because of government intervention, shooting became cheaper there and run-away productions became the topic of conversation. States within the United States soon followed with various incentive schemes and the flow out of established Hollywood borders had begun. But it still took a lot of money to shoot with film, so it was still mostly the established players making the films.

Then digital video happened. Gradually at first but then more quickly, independent productions began springing up shooting feature films for a fraction of the cost of those on film. But these still had to be put onto motion picture film to be shown in theatres. That barrier soon began falling away with help from the established players themselves. Thinking they could save on distribution themselves, they began lobbying theatre owners to switch over to digital projection. Why? Because they could send their films via satellite and get those expensive film prints out of their budgets. Of course this eliminated a barrier to the independents for getting their films screened.

So where are we now? Hollywood is in one of its worst periods ever. Beyond its television industries being reduced to reality TV shows and game shows, its movie industry has been so contaminated by focus group studies and executive "safe bets" that most of the films are sequels, remakes, retreads of old TV shows, and superhero films which are reaching out to more and more obscure characters as it goes on. More productions are taking place in states where government subsidies have been enacted than in the place where you expect it to be the film making capitol of the world - Hollywood.

Independent filmmakers around the country are rapidly getting up to speed on how to make entertaining and profitable movies. Once Hollywood-based distribution (and along with it the practice of "Hollywood Accounting") is displaced by distributors based elsewhere and the sharp business practices of the establishment is replaced by more sensible and fair ways, the shift of power will be well on its way to being complete.