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Bolek
May 1, 2003

Type in “death of the mid budget film” or any variation thereof into Google and you will see endless lamentations about the bygone era where Hollywood made Adult movies for Adults.Films that weren't micro budget, masturbatory art projects nor teeth shuddering tentpole blockbusters from which no one could escape hearing about. I cant be sure as I haven't followed this trend in thinking too long but I suspect it gained a lot of prominence after Stephen Soderbergh's moanfest in 2013 about difficult it was to get financing. Other established directors like Stephen Spielberg or actors like Dustin Hoffman echo these concerns. But I want to see, and I'm hoping more industry savvy people here will help, if this is actually true.

What's cited as the mid budget range seems to cover a rather huge range of figures, anything from 10 million to 60, to 90 to this bizzare utterance

quote:

Inception is an instructive example of what a smart, mid-budget movie can do if given half a chance. And Inception, quite frankly, wouldn't even have been made had not Christopher Nolan -- a proven big budget director -- been attached. "This shortsighted death-spiral of the original, mid-budget film has continued even amidst some great original-film success stories, like Inception, which Warner Brothers made as a favor to Christopher Nolan for the Batman films—a favor, that is, that grossed $825 million worldwide," wrote Zachary Wigon last year on this blog.
but it seems like a concept that is firmly held. Personally I don't think the figures matter as much as this perception that a certain kind of movie is missing. An R rated drama like the Insider or something? A historic piece? Who knows.

Now, you could approach this quantitatively, rounding up a representative list of movies from a sampling of studios from the last 30 years, and comparing the frequency of a movie made in a certain budgetary range to now (for all I know it may have been done already) but I sure as poo poo cant be bothered to do so for a post and I don't think that would actually illustrate the point as well as it would seem.

The cost of making a movie has changed dramatically. Not just in terms of equipment and film stock no longer being a variable but also he talent, both directorial, photographic, and of actors that draws from a much richer vocabulary that is now more readily accessible than ever, at younger and younger ages, with nothing like the barriers that used to be in place before the craft could be practiced. If you've even a passing interest in film I do not need to rattle off an endless list of movies that had budgets way south of 20 million dollars that look absolutely gorgeous and would, at least visually, put anything made 25 years ago to shame.

I hope at this point I've revealed my cards as someone who is rather optimistic for the future of film so people that have a rather grim outlook on it (Red Letter Media I'm looking at you)are not gonna in me a receptive ear.

So I guess I have several questions:
*Have "mid budget movies", whether ones of scope or actual budget, declined in such a dramatic way as is stated?
*Is this a perception of less advertising for types of movies that are still readily made and available but are simply overshadowed by tent poles?
*Is the concept totally outmoded in a radically different production and distribution market?
*Should we give a poo poo as long as the supply of great movies from more and more diverse sources is growing at a faster rate than ever?

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Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe
Paul Thomas Anderson is the first guy I thought of when I read the OP. The highest budget he's had was $32 million for The Master, and There Will Be Blood cost 25 million.

Justin Godscock
Oct 12, 2004

Listen here, funnyman!
I recall it was the summer of 2013 when this narrative really took off because there were a bunch of 200M+ bombs that happened like The Lone Ranger and White House Down. The argument there was that was it really necessary to spend that much on them? The Lone Ranger built a literal functioning railroad and who knows why the gently caress a Tom Clancy-esque action movie needed that much spent. Spielberg has the most right to argue against it because he's probably made more money than any other director in Hollywood yet I can't recall any of his films crossing the 125M mark. Even Jurassic Park cost 75M in an era where mega-movies were starting to cost 100M.

I think Hollywood is smartening up, though, Deadpool cost 58M and made 780M+ meaning Fox could have blown up the budget and still made bank. Secret Life of Pets cost 75M and is made by the Despicable Me people (meaning safe as gently caress) and made 834M worldwide.

People got so distracted by the "are mid budget movies dying?" thought that the real issue was Hollywood spending stupid amounts of money expecting a billion-dollar franchise to blossom and it took a few bombs to stop 200M cheques from being written.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
They spent 200+ mil on White House Down? What the gently caress?

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe
Olympus Has Fallen made less money but cost half as much so it got a sequel.

Terrorist Fistbump
Jan 29, 2009

by Nyc_Tattoo
This obsessing about film budgets has been around for a while and it never seems to hold up to reality. I read an article in Newsweek about a decade ago about the "resurgence" of the mid-budget film as a concept in Hollywood. Apparently, the blockbuster hadn't yet taken over completely as we had all feared. Cheap films like Coach Carter were doing what Sahara couldn't: turning a moderate but respectable profit! Of course, the mid-budget film was never "dying" to begin with, and it still isn't in any meaningful sense of the term. Lots of them are still being made and are still making decent money.

I think the chances of an original film made for $40 million and not targeted at kids or teens ending up in the box office top 10 are lower than they were 15 years ago, but that doesn't mean that kind of film is dead, just that it's been eclipsed by the big-budget franchise movie in economic importance, something that started with the rise of the blockbuster way back in the late 1970s. Whether that points to a similar eclipse in cultural importance or whatever is highly debatable but not something I really care to get into.

Magic Hate Ball
May 6, 2007

ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this
dumb movie now

smart movie then

we dumb now

they smart then

wha happen???

Thirsty Girl
Dec 5, 2015

Magic Hate Ball posted:

dumb movie now

smart movie then

we dumb now

they smart then

wha happen???

hey!

wha happen???

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy
Having exactly as many hard stats to back this up as most of the doomsaying articles on the subject, I also feel like there's a sense of belt-tightening that's led to a lot of these nebulous "mid-budget movies" being made cheaper. You look at something like The Gift, and it has all the hallmarks of that handsomely-made mid-budget 90's domestic thriller archetype, but in 2015 it was made by Blumhouse for $5 million. I legit couldn't tell you what would've been improved about the movie by just nudging it up to that mid-budget range

I think the big thing to ask with pieces like this, and this might actually have a good answer that I'm overlooking, but what kinds of films actually aren't getting made anymore because of this trend? Like, what can you point to and say "something like this would never get made today", after eliminating movies that would get made but on somewhat higher budgets and movies that would get made but on somewhat lower budgets

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

Jenny Angel posted:

I think the big thing to ask with pieces like this, and this might actually have a good answer that I'm overlooking, but what kinds of films actually aren't getting made anymore because of this trend? Like, what can you point to and say "something like this would never get made today", after eliminating movies that would get made but on somewhat higher budgets and movies that would get made but on somewhat lower budgets

I think back in the mid-90's(and obviously going back much earlier than that), studios were more willing to sink larger amounts of money into bringing together bankable stars for more serious movies targeting adults. Just as an example, Heat cost $65 million. Obviously a pretty significant percentage of that went to Pacino and DeNiro's salaries, and I just don't think studios trust the current crop of stars enough to make that kind of investment unless the property itself justifies it(superheroes, best selling novels, etc.).

Today, Heat would probably be made on a much lower budget, and it may not have been cast with two mega stars on the level of 1995 era Pacino/DeNiro. Either that, or they'd go completely all in and blow up the budget to hundreds of millions like White House Down did. So that's not really a "somewhat higher/lower" budget, I think the difference would be pretty huge if a movie like Heat were to be made today.

Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!
So if they made Heat today, it would be LA Takedown? :haw:

Magic Hate Ball
May 6, 2007

ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

Jenny Angel posted:

I think the big thing to ask with pieces like this, and this might actually have a good answer that I'm overlooking, but what kinds of films actually aren't getting made anymore because of this trend? Like, what can you point to and say "something like this would never get made today", after eliminating movies that would get made but on somewhat higher budgets and movies that would get made but on somewhat lower budgets

Part of it's probably just that the past always looks better, but there's also a shift in style of movie. I'm sure when most people talk about the "mid-budget movie", they have the Orion Pictures logo spinning around in their head, but I think it's also just because we're in a different cinema culture. The 80s mid-budget heyday was more of a post-New Hollywood ripple that fed off the brief "in" phase of intellectualism and public artsiness - everyone who was everyone had an Umberto Eco novel on their coffee table and a miniature Rothko print in their bathroom - whereas we're now in a more post-mumblecore "aesthetic" semi-improv phase. I think it has a lot more to do with the death of a type of movie than the death of a certain range of budget, but it's not false that belts are tighter in general, especially among the younger class of filmmaker, and the fire is fed by the overall upstart-poor-millennials vs megalomaniac-wealthy-boomers narrative.

Thirsty Girl posted:

hey!

wha happen???

Bolek
May 1, 2003

Magic Hate Ball posted:

Part of it's probably just that the past always looks better, but there's also a shift in style of movie. I'm sure when most people talk about the "mid-budget movie", they have the Orion Pictures logo spinning around in their head, but I think it's also just because we're in a different cinema culture. The 80s mid-budget heyday was more of a post-New Hollywood ripple that fed off the brief "in" phase of intellectualism and public artsiness - everyone who was everyone had an Umberto Eco novel on their coffee table and a miniature Rothko print in their bathroom - whereas we're now in a more post-mumblecore "aesthetic" semi-improv phase. I think it has a lot more to do with the death of a type of movie than the death of a certain range of budget, but it's not false that belts are tighter in general, especially among the younger class of filmmaker, and the fire is fed by the overall upstart-poor-millennials vs megalomaniac-wealthy-boomers narrative.




Yea I think the nostalgia aspect is almost always underappreciated. I read something the New Yorker's Richard Brody said about how the gems of the past get sort of plucked out and presented as a zenith of the craft and things that are made outside that milieu are then compared against this made up standard that never existed. He said it was akin to comparing modern writing to the time of Shakespere and complaining that it wasn't in iambic pentameter. A good point I think, if I'm not butchering it is that is.

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy
On that note, one of the reasons I love watching random episodes of Siskel & Ebert is that it provides some perspective for just how many utterly ephemeral movies have come out every year for decades now

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours

Jenny Angel posted:

On that note, one of the reasons I love watching random episodes of Siskel & Ebert is that it provides some perspective for just how many utterly ephemeral movies have come out every year for decades now

Yeah same. And it's especially enlightening when they spend like 7 minutes on a movie that has zero footprint today, like Reversal Of Fortune.

FreudianSlippers
Apr 12, 2010

Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

It's a bit like when people complain about pop music these days being so bad compared to the 60s or 70s or 80s not realizing that there was just as much horrible mind numbing stuff back then but it's just been forgotten and all the good stuff people remember is the stuff that stuck out. Like people used to actually listen to Kenny G.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
Or when people claim straightfacedly that movies were better in the 90's. I would love to know what that's based on.

Magic Hate Ball
May 6, 2007

ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Yeah same. And it's especially enlightening when they spend like 7 minutes on a movie that has zero footprint today, like Reversal Of Fortune.

Has anyone in the last twenty years actually seen Witness? It's just "that barn movie" now.

Jenny Angel posted:

On that note, one of the reasons I love watching random episodes of Siskel & Ebert is that it provides some perspective for just how many utterly ephemeral movies have come out every year for decades now

I really enjoy his sub-two-star reviews of movies I've never heard of featuring big-name actors from the 70s and 80s (remember the 1988 noir-comedy-western "Sunset", starring Bruce Willis? no? anyone?).

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Yeah same. And it's especially enlightening when they spend like 7 minutes on a movie that has zero footprint today, like Reversal Of Fortune.

Realtalk, I don't know that it'd be remotely feasible at all, but I'd love a thread where people draw random Siskel & Ebert episodes, watch every movie reviewed on that episode, and discuss them both in context with each other and with Siskel and Ebert's analysis

Hat Thoughts
Jul 27, 2012

Jenny Angel posted:

Realtalk, I don't know that it'd be remotely feasible at all, but I'd love a thread where people draw random Siskel & Ebert episodes, watch every movie reviewed on that episode, and discuss them both in context with each other and with Siskel and Ebert's analysis

I think if you were doing this best bet would be at least doing a little legwork to ensure that all the movies' in each episode are available in some form. I imagine some of that stuff has so little demand it'd be difficult to get even through uhhhh illegitimate means

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer

Jenny Angel posted:

Having exactly as many hard stats to back this up as most of the doomsaying articles on the subject, I also feel like there's a sense of belt-tightening that's led to a lot of these nebulous "mid-budget movies" being made cheaper. You look at something like The Gift, and it has all the hallmarks of that handsomely-made mid-budget 90's domestic thriller archetype, but in 2015 it was made by Blumhouse for $5 million. I legit couldn't tell you what would've been improved about the movie by just nudging it up to that mid-budget range.

I feel like sometimes I notice the effect of these super-low-budgets on the aesthetics, though it's tied into a deliberate minimalism and austerity that's kinda the rage now. Like, Midnight Special has a small cast and very nondescript locations and basic sets- it has a Spielbergian vibe to it, but feels stripped down to the bare minimum required to tell the story. Ex Machina has the feel of a stage play at times (though the effects probably did eat up the budget pretty quickly), Morgan has the same vibe, it's like to get these kinds of movies made you have to come up with the most simple way of realizing the premise.

Like I said, though, I can't be sure, since that may just be the style. But it feels like economics is affecting how these movies get made and the aesthetics that become fashionable.

If I could think of something that's a contrast, I'd actually point to The Nice Guys, which when I saw it struck me as the kind of movie that doesn't get made much anymore. The budget was enough to get a few names, some impressive stunts, some interesting settings and setpieces, etc., but it wasn't a tentpole picture. (Of course it also didn't do very well at the box office.) Obviously they were able to get it made, and you can argue it's a unique film in some ways, but it feels like a solid "B" production and I think that's what people talk about. It has a certain messiness. It has room to breathe.

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy

Maxwell Lord posted:

Like I said, though, I can't be sure, since that may just be the style. But it feels like economics is affecting how these movies get made and the aesthetics that become fashionable.

I think you're right both about this and about your The Nice Guys point. On the one hand, current aesthetic trends mean that if you want to code a character as a sinister, controlling rich guy, it makes sense to give his home a spare, severe style like Nathan's home in Ex Machina, and so on. And that's certainly easier on production budgets. But if you want to make a period piece like The Nice Guys, you don't exactly have that luxury

But like, you mention that The Nice Guys specifically had some major stars, a meticulous period aesthetic, and a number of splashy set-pieces. One of the movies they reviewed in the last random episode of Siskel & Ebert I turned on was this thing, which had a budget that would translate to a little under $90 million today and none of those things outside maybe "some major stars" in the form of Kilmer and Sorvino. For all the talk about how budgets are ballooning out of control, it really does seem that mid-budget range was a result, at least in part, of blowing up theoretically simpler productions to these levels

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours

Magic Hate Ball posted:

Has anyone in the last twenty years actually seen Witness? It's just "that barn movie" now.

Yeah, because it's one of my mom's favorite movies, so I've seen it a billion times. I didn't realize until a couple years ago that it was directed by Peter Weir, which makes a hell of a lot of sense in retrospect.

Samuel Clemens
Oct 4, 2013

I think we should call the Avengers.

FreudianSlippers posted:

It's a bit like when people complain about pop music these days being so bad compared to the 60s or 70s or 80s not realizing that there was just as much horrible mind numbing stuff back then but it's just been forgotten and all the good stuff people remember is the stuff that stuck out.

Romanticising the past and lamenting that the current cultural output can't compete with the glory days is a common occurence in all art forms, but it seems to be especially pervasive when it comes to music. I don't know why. Maybe most people just have stronger emotional ties to songs than they do to films or books.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

Samuel Clemens posted:

Romanticising the past and lamenting that the current cultural output can't compete with the glory days is a common occurence in all art forms, but it seems to be especially pervasive when it comes to music. I don't know why. Maybe most people just have stronger emotional ties to songs than they do to films or books.

I think with books, the people that actually read regularly understand that there's genre trash (and generally always has been) and there's still legit stuff coming out.

With films, it's specifically limited to their childhood. Like very few people looks at [random 1930s film] and says "why can't stuff be like that anymore". More likely they'll say "why isn't this in color".

With songs, I think it's that your parents are more likely to play their old stuff all the time, plus there's a consistent output of "popular songs are terrible".

well why not
Feb 10, 2009




Witness rules and it's popular enough to have been namechecked in Orange Is The New Black, so it isn't completely forgotten.

10 Cloverfield Lane fits the 'mid budget' tier pretty well.

Wandle Cax
Dec 15, 2006
Witness the film is the first google result for the word "Witness"

The_Rob
Feb 1, 2007

musicals are garbage
I watched witness In a screenwriting class and it was very good.

Magic Hate Ball
May 6, 2007

ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this
This thread is full of weirdos.

Tenzarin
Jul 24, 2007
.
Taco Defender

well why not posted:

10 Cloverfield Lane fits the 'mid budget' tier pretty well.

That movie had to be named Cloverfield to be made, that's low.

al-azad
May 28, 2009



Concerns like this are always USA-centric and Hollywood focused which completely ignores all the production happening in the other 90% of the world where most studios don't have 50+ million to spend on a 90 minute movie.

I understand why because most English publications are concerned about Hollywood, but it's like wondering aloud why no one outside of Disney/Pixar/DreamWorks is producing animated movies when a new Japanese or European title hits Walmart as frequently as a Disney, Pixar, or DreamWorks 100-million plus blockbuster.

Big Bad Voodoo Lou
Jan 1, 2006

Magic Hate Ball posted:

I really enjoy his sub-two-star reviews of movies I've never heard of featuring big-name actors from the 70s and 80s (remember the 1988 noir-comedy-western "Sunset", starring Bruce Willis? no? anyone?).

I've never heard of Sunset, but I just looked it up, and it sounds right up my alley. I wish it was streaming somewhere legal, for free.

Big Bad Voodoo Lou fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Oct 9, 2016

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord
They still make tons of mid budget movies. They just release them on AMC or HBO as 6 part miniseries because movie theaters are from an age when people didn't own good quality televisions and now just exist for certain types of movies that actually benefit from being show in a format that is best for consuming spectacle like big epic action movies you can watch on a giant screen.

Magic Hate Ball
May 6, 2007

ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this
The kind of kid budget movie most people lament the death of is also the kind most people wouldn't go out of their way to the cinema to see nowadays, which is why we're getting Netflix originals.

Terrorist Fistbump
Jan 29, 2009

by Nyc_Tattoo
Mid-budget movies have been #1 at the box office for 6 of the last 8 weekends.

NeuroticErotica
Sep 9, 2003

Perform sex? Uh uh, I don't think I'm up to a performance, but I'll rehearse with you...

The costs to make a movie have both gone down, and gone up.

Sure, you're not paying for film, processing, rushes, transportation, etc. you're still paying for a DIT, endless backup solutions, archiving, QC, etc. For a "mid-budget" film, the costs are negligible. In fact, for a while, you could go to Technicolor, Deluxe, etc. and get insane discounts on their film suites because they weren't being used at all. With it you'd get an old guy who'd been coloring film since before your parents were born and you'd pay him a rate so low that you felt really bad for it, but he'd take it. Now those labs are being shut down. It's a real shame.

Here's the three biggest hurdles to making a mid-budget film:

1.) Scaling - When you're making a microbudget film most of the time you're calling in favors. If you've ever worked in the creative field you know the conversation "I'll get you for the next one" and all of that. Your hands are tied. You don't have any money. The project is just scraping by and always in danger of collapse. However, when you do a larger budget film, what you can pay is regulated by union contracts. In some cases it also requires you to hire certain amounts of people - people you may or may not need/want. With this comes certain other budget pitfalls, the higher the budget the more destructive going over time on a single day can be. SAG has a number of penalties that you are required to pay your actors for a number of things (Like using a fog machine, non-continuous days, etc). You're also going to need just a larger amount of people, and more skilled people since you have a lot riding on the line. This all costs money. A lot of money. It's easy to think that a higher budget will give you more resources, more freedom, but often the budget is just as tight and as constricting as a microbudget.

This comes to a big problem when it comes to the creative side, as when a budget needs to come down it leads to a shorter shoot. That leads to a lot of problems for a filmmaker, he has less time with his actors to develop/find the character, they can't explore the space in a way, a scene has to be shot in the most basic/easiest of manners because clock's ticking. Any filmmaker would prefer more days and less money. Some actually go for it. Not many.

2.) Marketing - The biggest cost to making a movie is marketing it. No question. I get frustrated when people argue that with social media that it's easier to get the word out about a movie because, I can assure you, it is not. (these people also just advise you to "make something go viral"). It's really tough to get people to be aware of a film and even harder to get them to be excited about a film. Awareness matters, but it doesn't drive dollars. "Oh yeah, I've heard of that movie but I don't know what it's about". Film fans are particularly hard to reach because the streaming services don't serve ads when you watch a movie, or maybe one or two pre-rolls. Most people have wised up to the fact and use that time to go get a drink from the kitchen, go to the bathroom, put a sock on the doorknob, what have you, before it starts. If you're looking for intelligent film fans you'd think you could just cater to the internet, but most of them have ad-block. How do you reach a potential audience? Their attention is splintered a million ways and so much is about looking at reduced/no ads. There is some hope in that studies are showing that people don't mind ads when watching on a streaming service, but, they're looking at a reduced amount (I know the ads on Hulu seem like they're forever and every time you load it up the number of ads seems to go up, but it's still less than broadcast). As ubiquitous as they seem, twitter and facebook reach only certain types, and those are the types that are going to seek out new movies to watch. Your casual viewer says "man they don't make movies like they used to", they still do, but nobody has any solid ideas of how to reach him. And because they don't, they won't make 'em like they used to.

3.) Box Office/Ancillaries - The last few years the total box office returns have been going up and down, yo-yoing back and forth, generally at the same general area. Not great, but fine. With inflation, even worse, but not completely terrible. That's when you look at the numbers overall. Unfortunately these gains/losses are pretty much held in the tentpoles. Last year was up, but that was because of the new Star Wars movie. It might have been responsible for the increase itself, who knows. Your movies that are mid-range and lower, have been declining. A big part of this is that theater owners have to book their movies month in advance. They want to maximize butts in seats so they go with the big blockbuster. Of course they would, you would too. The problem comes with over the last 15-20 years that a tentpole film would take up one or two screens in a theater. Now they take up 7. They push out the small ones because they can't afford to lose. Then when a tentpole underperforms, they have empty houses. They can't switch to a mid-budget, and basically everybody is unhappy.

So mid-budgets are making less up front, and that used to be... well, not fine, but more acceptable. Because a good film could "find it's audience". Zoolander, Fight Club, Big Lebowski, etc. You know the type, you talk about them all the time here. The DVD market was so incredibly lucrative that these films just lived there. Really did great. Direct-to-DVD always was a condemnation of a movie's quality, but it was a viable business model. Around 07-09 this market started to decline. A couple of reasons why. There was one study that said that people only had so much shelf space in their house, and that once they filled it up, they didn't want to buy a new set of shelves, nor did they want to throw out the DVDs they already purchased, so they just stopped buying new ones. It sounds weird, but there's a lot of merit to it. I'd always see the plastic still on a movie I was excited to buy and hadn't watched two years later... didn't put me in the mood to buy new ones. People also stopped seeing them as collector's items. There's few limited runs - what am I collecting a copy of Snatch for? If I need one it's in every house on the block! So people slowed down buying DVDs, and things got really bad. But then streaming came along. Streaming was just the knock-out blow to home video. Why would I pay $20 for a movie I've seen already when I can pay $8 and watch anything? It was great for the consumer, terrible for anybody who wanted to make any money off of their product. These movies that found their audience on DVD were now finding their audience on Netflix, but their audience wasn't paying near the same amount. So, the producers, the studios, etc. don't get the rewards for their labor. Even in a "successful" film. The studio can now make 5-7 mid-budgets that will die at the box office, make them no money in success, or make another Transformers movie that nobody wants, but will pay to see opening weekend in 3D because of the CG. It's a no brainer on their end.

Maxwell Lord posted:

I feel like sometimes I notice the effect of these super-low-budgets on the aesthetics, though it's tied into a deliberate minimalism and austerity that's kinda the rage now. Like, Midnight Special has a small cast and very nondescript locations and basic sets- it has a Spielbergian vibe to it, but feels stripped down to the bare minimum required to tell the story. Ex Machina has the feel of a stage play at times (though the effects probably did eat up the budget pretty quickly), Morgan has the same vibe, it's like to get these kinds of movies made you have to come up with the most simple way of realizing the premise.

Yeah. This is where it suffers. If you go back and watch a random 70s movie, they're going all over the place! Multiple cities, all sorts of locations - many that are not necessary, they just decided to shoot the conversation in a museum! Nowadays if you want to get a movie made your best bet is opening with "so it takes place in just one location" or if you really want to juice it "So it takes place in just one room".

Bolek
May 1, 2003

NeuroticErotica posted:

The costs to make a movie have both gone down, and gone up.

Sure, you're not paying for film, processing, rushes, transportation, etc. you're still paying for a DIT, endless backup solutions, archiving, QC, etc. For a "mid-budget" film, the costs are negligible. In fact, for a while, you could go to Technicolor, Deluxe, etc. and get insane discounts on their film suites because they weren't being used at all. With it you'd get an old guy who'd been coloring film since before your parents were born and you'd pay him a rate so low that you felt really bad for it, but he'd take it. Now those labs are being shut down. It's a real shame.

Here's the three biggest hurdles to making a mid-budget film:

1.) Scaling - When you're making a microbudget film most of the time you're calling in favors. If you've ever worked in the creative field you know the conversation "I'll get you for the next one" and all of that. Your hands are tied. You don't have any money. The project is just scraping by and always in danger of collapse. However, when you do a larger budget film, what you can pay is regulated by union contracts. In some cases it also requires you to hire certain amounts of people - people you may or may not need/want. With this comes certain other budget pitfalls, the higher the budget the more destructive going over time on a single day can be. SAG has a number of penalties that you are required to pay your actors for a number of things (Like using a fog machine, non-continuous days, etc). You're also going to need just a larger amount of people, and more skilled people since you have a lot riding on the line. This all costs money. A lot of money. It's easy to think that a higher budget will give you more resources, more freedom, but often the budget is just as tight and as constricting as a microbudget.

This comes to a big problem when it comes to the creative side, as when a budget needs to come down it leads to a shorter shoot. That leads to a lot of problems for a filmmaker, he has less time with his actors to develop/find the character, they can't explore the space in a way, a scene has to be shot in the most basic/easiest of manners because clock's ticking. Any filmmaker would prefer more days and less money. Some actually go for it. Not many.

2.) Marketing - The biggest cost to making a movie is marketing it. No question. I get frustrated when people argue that with social media that it's easier to get the word out about a movie because, I can assure you, it is not. (these people also just advise you to "make something go viral"). It's really tough to get people to be aware of a film and even harder to get them to be excited about a film. Awareness matters, but it doesn't drive dollars. "Oh yeah, I've heard of that movie but I don't know what it's about". Film fans are particularly hard to reach because the streaming services don't serve ads when you watch a movie, or maybe one or two pre-rolls. Most people have wised up to the fact and use that time to go get a drink from the kitchen, go to the bathroom, put a sock on the doorknob, what have you, before it starts. If you're looking for intelligent film fans you'd think you could just cater to the internet, but most of them have ad-block. How do you reach a potential audience? Their attention is splintered a million ways and so much is about looking at reduced/no ads. There is some hope in that studies are showing that people don't mind ads when watching on a streaming service, but, they're looking at a reduced amount (I know the ads on Hulu seem like they're forever and every time you load it up the number of ads seems to go up, but it's still less than broadcast). As ubiquitous as they seem, twitter and facebook reach only certain types, and those are the types that are going to seek out new movies to watch. Your casual viewer says "man they don't make movies like they used to", they still do, but nobody has any solid ideas of how to reach him. And because they don't, they won't make 'em like they used to.

3.) Box Office/Ancillaries - The last few years the total box office returns have been going up and down, yo-yoing back and forth, generally at the same general area. Not great, but fine. With inflation, even worse, but not completely terrible. That's when you look at the numbers overall. Unfortunately these gains/losses are pretty much held in the tentpoles. Last year was up, but that was because of the new Star Wars movie. It might have been responsible for the increase itself, who knows. Your movies that are mid-range and lower, have been declining. A big part of this is that theater owners have to book their movies month in advance. They want to maximize butts in seats so they go with the big blockbuster. Of course they would, you would too. The problem comes with over the last 15-20 years that a tentpole film would take up one or two screens in a theater. Now they take up 7. They push out the small ones because they can't afford to lose. Then when a tentpole underperforms, they have empty houses. They can't switch to a mid-budget, and basically everybody is unhappy.

So mid-budgets are making less up front, and that used to be... well, not fine, but more acceptable. Because a good film could "find it's audience". Zoolander, Fight Club, Big Lebowski, etc. You know the type, you talk about them all the time here. The DVD market was so incredibly lucrative that these films just lived there. Really did great. Direct-to-DVD always was a condemnation of a movie's quality, but it was a viable business model. Around 07-09 this market started to decline. A couple of reasons why. There was one study that said that people only had so much shelf space in their house, and that once they filled it up, they didn't want to buy a new set of shelves, nor did they want to throw out the DVDs they already purchased, so they just stopped buying new ones. It sounds weird, but there's a lot of merit to it. I'd always see the plastic still on a movie I was excited to buy and hadn't watched two years later... didn't put me in the mood to buy new ones. People also stopped seeing them as collector's items. There's few limited runs - what am I collecting a copy of Snatch for? If I need one it's in every house on the block! So people slowed down buying DVDs, and things got really bad. But then streaming came along. Streaming was just the knock-out blow to home video. Why would I pay $20 for a movie I've seen already when I can pay $8 and watch anything? It was great for the consumer, terrible for anybody who wanted to make any money off of their product. These movies that found their audience on DVD were now finding their audience on Netflix, but their audience wasn't paying near the same amount. So, the producers, the studios, etc. don't get the rewards for their labor. Even in a "successful" film. The studio can now make 5-7 mid-budgets that will die at the box office, make them no money in success, or make another Transformers movie that nobody wants, but will pay to see opening weekend in 3D because of the CG. It's a no brainer on their end.


Yeah. This is where it suffers. If you go back and watch a random 70s movie, they're going all over the place! Multiple cities, all sorts of locations - many that are not necessary, they just decided to shoot the conversation in a museum! Nowadays if you want to get a movie made your best bet is opening with "so it takes place in just one location" or if you really want to juice it "So it takes place in just one room".
Effort post appreciated.

So lets say we accept this as the state of the industry today, the questions I have from the OP remain:

quote:

*Is the concept totally outmoded in a radically different production and distribution market?
*Should we give a poo poo as long as the supply of great movies from more and more diverse sources is growing at a faster rate than ever?
And I'd like to also add another one. Are we correct to look at the financiers as indistinguishable from any other investors in any other field, following (at least arguably) rational investment principles? Aren't movie backers a more gambling prone bunch, more in the vein of restaurateur than mutual fund manager?

NeuroticErotica
Sep 9, 2003

Perform sex? Uh uh, I don't think I'm up to a performance, but I'll rehearse with you...

Bolek posted:

Effort post appreciated.

So lets say we accept this as the state of the industry today, the questions I have from the OP remain:
And I'd like to also add another one. Are we correct to look at the financiers as indistinguishable from any other investors in any other field, following (at least arguably) rational investment principles? Aren't movie backers a more gambling prone bunch, more in the vein of restaurateur than mutual fund manager?

Thanks. I've been in the weeds with this sort of thing a bit, so... not a big deal.

Is the concept outmoded? Somewhat. Things shift around for a while. It takes a while for all the pieces to fall into place. Right now, we're dealing with the 1-2 punch of theatrical money shifting to a foreign-dominant model and the collapse of a home market. If you have a project that's going to try to make it's money heavily from theatrical distribution you're going to want something that plays overseas - so tentpoles, horror, action, etc. are in, and comedies, dramas, movies seen as typical "adult fare" are out. You'd much rather have "The Shallows" over "Everybody Wants Some!!" regardless of your taste over the movies themselves, because Shallows is going to translate cultures well, not have to live in subtitles, etc. It's also a concept that is easy to engage with people worldwide (Imagine pitching each to Japanese audiences, Brazilian audiences, etc.)

The kind of mid-budget movie I think you're really alluding to is the "movie actually made for adults" genre that's dying out. The "Kramers vs Kramers", "All The Presidents Mens", "Up In The Airs" of the world. They're the ones that are lost in the shift. If you get a star you can have some success overseas, but if you're relying on a star not liked by the international community, it's an uphill struggle (tangentially, this is why pictures with more diverse leads struggle to be made as well). The hope right now for mid-budgets is that the streaming services are losing content at a really incredible rate - so they're investing in originals, often with a theatrical release, and put up the money for them. That's great for the 20 or so projects a year that will see financing that way, but for the others... Maybe if people catch onto the library shrinkage and start building up their own libraries via VOD/iTunes/etc. that could get the money flowing again? Of course... that way is lead by piracy...

Should we give a poo poo? I will, of course, argue yes, but I genuinely believe it. You may get diverse sources of film, but, when you operate at the two budgets - low and high, you basically end up with two kinds of movies - those set in a house with maybe three outdoor scenes (usually the woods), or a two-and-a-half hour overly complicated and overly-dumb cgi bonanza. Both of them are really confining in terms of story! When you have no money, you have few options, but when you have $150M you have even less - you have to satisfy a ton of requirements from studios, overseas distributors, marketing, etc. The first thing compromised for money - story. It's not as important as being on time and satisfying the boxes.

Most of your favorite movies are mid-range projects. It's nice to go outside, follow a character through a journey, maybe wreck a car or two along the way. Look at a movie like "Clueless". Everybody loves "Clueless". It cost $12M 20 years ago, so let's just estimate $30M, even with unknown leads. That movie cannot get made today. It's weird, but when I look at "Clueless" today (and I'm just picking all these movies at random, btw, no real reason) I see a lot of big, expensive things - just the sheer number of characters in it, driving on a Los Angeles highway, all the locations, look at how many people are at that dance! Who's going to put up $30M for a movie about a teenage girl's lovelife to shoot scenes in a real mall? What other country is going to be gung ho about watching "Clueless"?

How should we look at investors This is a tough one. Investors have really changed over the years. The 80s were a loving gold mine for investing in movies because Wall Street guys just wanted to hang out with movie stars. Today... It's fragmented. On the microbudget side, that's easy - that's people wanting to buy their way into the industry. Usually a HNW (high net worth) individual, who doesn't have to work, who thinks it'd be fun to make movies. If they lose their investment it's not the end of the world, and they have a cool experience, and even in failure they'll attract attention because money is like blood in the water. On the high end? It's weird. It's an unstable, high-risk investment that returns you 30%. That's a terrible investment. You'd fire your money manager if they just returned 30%. I think a lot of investment bankers put them into clients portfolios to diversify and to tell their clients, "hey, you're in the movie biz". Investors are a wide bunch. They all have their reasons. Some are just wide-eyed dentists in the mid-west seduced with the thought of being on the ground floor of the next "Paranormal Activity". Some are sleazebags who do it to feel powerful and get close to women out of their league. Can't really reduce them down to one certain kind. Except for the biggest kind - and that's people trying to get their money out of China. When that goes bad this business is completely hosed.

Purple Monkey
May 5, 2014

:phone:Hello
What kind of budget are we talking here when we say mid budget?

Also I love my dead gay mid budget films

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computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

Purple Monkey posted:

What kind of budget are we talking here when we say mid budget?


Seems to be $10mil-$100mil.

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