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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: Anyone else not on here much anymore?
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-26-2011 03:12 PM
The thing is that people who are NOT doing anything illegal can and HAVE BEEN raided by the government based on information gained from "alternate" sources.
People who use the computer a lot use more electricity and pay higher electric bills. Rightly so. But if the government targets you and raids your house because you use more than 95 KWh per month, suspecting you grow dope in your basement, that is wrong.
If you go on Facebook and say innocuous things, the government or anybody else can use that information against you regardless of whether you actually do anything wrong. Just saying something like, "Smoking marijuana is fun," can get you busted.
Worse, there are no apologies and they take little or no action to correct their behavior. They still use unreliable information to harass people just because they think a crime MIGHT HAVE been committed.
This doesn't even consider the fact that other people who are even more unscrupulous and even less accountable can do anything they want and are, for the most part, are above the law. (Or "below" the law.)
The idea of Facebook as a place for people to connect and share is all right but the way they collect data about users, the underhanded way they use it against users and the total lack of responsibility for security of that data is terrible.
The risks are not worth the rewards.
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Michael McGovern
Film Handler
Posts: 57
From: New Britain, CT, USA
Registered: May 2008
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posted 05-30-2011 09:43 PM
The reason this board has been slowing is that the face of the business has changing. If you work for one of the chains, and you primarily do projection, by the fall you'll have two choices, swap over to operations management, or file for unemployment. From what I hear, the studios are hoping to phase out 35MM entirely by next year, although I'll believe that one when I see it.
Business at the theater level is in a decline, while home viewing, particularly on the digital distribution front is booming. The studios are already planning for the day when they can avoid the theater as a distribution channel altogether. First it's a one month delay for an overpriced PPV release, next it's a two week delay. Before long Transformers 4 debuts on PPV and Netflix the same day as it's theatrical release, and then it's all over.
I made this comparison in a different thread, but I still say it's totally apt. When I was a kid we would play video games at the Arcade. Sure, we had video games at home, but if you wanted to play the newest, best games, with the best quality graphics, you had to go to the arcade to do it. It was big business too, games like Pac-Man, Galaga, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, etc made millions in coin-op revenues alone, easily as much as a blockbuster film. Then, maybe six months down the line, after a successful run in the arcade, you might be able to play the games on your Nintendo, but they would be of inferior quality, because the technology in the arcades couldn't be recreated at home at a reasonable price.
This is the way things were for years and years, but then things changed. Slowly the technology of your home video games improved to the point where they met and eventually exceeded that of the games in the Arcade. People stopped going to the arcades, because they were rendered mostly irrelevant. Soon after, the video game producers skipped the arcade as a distribution channel altogether, and shortly after that Arcades as we knew them were extinct, or at least almost completely marginalized.
The arcades of today only exist to serve a very specific market like families and children, and they mostly feature rigged carnival games, and not video games. True arcades were driven out of business not because of any bad business decisions by the operators, but because the content providers abandoned them, and found greater profits by selling direct to the consumer. The few retro arcades left are operated by people who have a passion for that business, and not by people looking to make a profit, because there aren't any profits to be made.
We in the movie business are going to become the arcades of tomorrow. We are at the mercy of the movie studios, and if they decide that it's time to cannibalize the theater business, then there's not much that Regal, or AMC, or NATO is going to be able to do to stop them.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-30-2011 09:54 PM
quote: Michael McGovern
Business at the theater level is in a decline, while home viewing, particularly on the digital distribution front is booming. The studios are already planning for the day when they can avoid the theater as a distribution channel altogether. First it's a one month delay for an overpriced PPV release, next it's a two week delay. Before long Transformers 4 debuts on PPV and Netflix the same day as it's theatrical release, and then it's all over.
Home viewing might be booming, but that doesn't put money in the studios' pockets. Sales does that, and sales are in the toilet. Digital sales (downloads and streams) are nowhere near where DVD used to be, and they're not growing at the rate DVD is falling. The whole reason they are doing this PVOD thing is to boost the sales they've lost by letting people rent movies from glorified pop machines.
Sad to say, there's no way that's going to work. They're going to have to tweak the mixture further. The really sad thing is, they COULD make more money by making the video window much longer. More people would go to the movies and they'd make more money in film rent, then they could cash in again when the video comes out. But since the whole industry is apparently being run by 23-year-olds, it'll probably go the other way.
Your comparison to arcades lacks one huge parallel to the movie biz: The arcades never appealed to anybody except teenagers. Of course most movies are marketed to the 15-24 age group, but there is still a huge chunk of the business much older or younger than that. Arcades, once you were out of high school you stopped going there -- I know, I grew up in the arcade era -- but movies can become a lifelong habit. I have people at my theatre tonight that have been coming here for over 60 years. (True story! And they're wearing 3-D glasses!)
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Michael McGovern
Film Handler
Posts: 57
From: New Britain, CT, USA
Registered: May 2008
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posted 05-30-2011 10:10 PM
Well the biggest problem that studios are facing in regards to home sales is that Redbox came along and diluted the value of the home viewing experience, and they're doing everything in their power to get away from that. People became programmed to accept the idea that it shouldn't cost any more than 99 cents a day to watch a movie, and Netflix with their endless supply of content isn't helping either.
The current distribution model is going to require a lot more tweaking, and you're going to have to change consumers perceptions on what your content is worth, but they will figure it out eventually. Joe consumer can now go out and buy his 1080p television set with his blu ray player and surround sound speakers, and will surpass the quality of your average Megaplex with their poorly lit picture, broken speakers, and varying sound quality.
A combination of high prices, both at the box office and concession stand, and a movie going public that is getting increasingly more ignorant of how to behave in a movie theatre setting, along with shortening release windows are going to kill our business. People would much rather go out, spend the money on a quality meal, then go back home and watch a movie on their home theater setup, and it's not only the economy that's to blame, it's a permanent shift in consumer behavior.
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