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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Topic: Movie theaters are 'strangling the movie business
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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 10-09-2016 05:23 PM
^^Interesting question. The (surprisingly specific) rules don't mention four-walling, which I suppose means it's OK:
All eligible motion pictures, unless otherwise noted (see Paragraph 9, below), must be:
a. feature length (defined as over 40 minutes),
b. publicly exhibited by means of 35mm or 70mm film, or in a 24- or 48-frame progressive scan Digital Cinema format with a minimum projector resolution of 2048 by 1080 pixels, source image format conforming to ST 428-1:2006 D-Cinema Distribution Master – Image Characteristics; image compression (if used) conforming to ISO/IEC 15444-1 (JPEG 2000); and image and sound file formats suitable for exhibition in commercial Digital Cinema sites. (Blu-ray format does not meet Digital Cinema requirements.)
The audio in a Digital Cinema Package (DCP) is typically 5.1 or 7.1 channels of discrete audio. The minimum for a non-mono configuration of the audio shall be three channels as Left, Center, Right (a Left/Right configuration is not acceptable in a theatrical environment). The audio data shall be formatted in conformance with ST 428-2:2006 D-Cinema Distribution Master – Audio Characteristics and ST 428-3:2006 D-Cinema Distribution Master – Audio Channel Mapping and Channel Labeling,
c. for paid admission in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County,
d. for a qualifying run of at least seven consecutive days, during which period screenings must occur at least three times daily, with at least one screening beginning between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. daily,
e. advertised and exploited during their Los Angeles County qualifying run in a manner normal and customary to theatrical feature distribution practices.
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 11-04-2016 10:05 PM
While I completely agree that theatrical windows are too short, that a film must play in a theater to be "real" and that Hastings is full of crap, the problems with the theatrical business are mostly different than the music business.
The music business is in trouble because first they didn't respond to consumers and their desire for digital music which opened the door to illegal downloads. But once they started licensing to Apple's iTunes and other such sites, the problem became that the industry changed from an album market back to a singles market. In the pre-Beatles 60's, the singles market worked because an act would go into the studio and record 3 tracks in a session and the 45 would hit the market two weeks later. But today, acts spend months on a song recording and mastering in different studios, different producers, etc.
And then there were other factors such as the decline of music radio and the consolidation of the music industry to just three majors (in the U.S.).
The problem with letting music be distributed by everybody everywhere, frequently for nothing is that it devalues the music. The average person no longer thinks music is worth paying for. If you send movies down similar distribution routes and have them available on every single $8 a month streaming service, then major movies don't really seem any different than some minor clone movie.
While there has been a revival of the LP market, it's mostly hype. In 2015, just 16.9 million LPs were sold in the U.S. In the first six months of 2016, just 8.4 million LPs were sold.
Adjusted for inflation, the U.S. music industry is now just a third of its former peak. That includes downloading, streaming and licensing.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-05-2016 11:12 PM
I think the music industry is a disaster and I think the movie industry is heading in that direction.
The music industry is a disaster for several reasons, the biggest one being lack of healthy innovation. When music labels were smaller, more independent, etc., they were more adventurous and took greater chances with the kinds of music they would produce and distribute. There was much greater levels of risk and reward to the music labels in taking that approach. But customers benefited greatly from it. Look back at any period from the 1950's through the early 1990's and it will be easy to spot the huge shifts in music styles and the performers tied to those periods.
For the past 20 or so years the music industry has been in a very bland, predictable, boring rut. We can thank the giant media companies who own all the significant music labels for that. These companies figured they could get away not innovating by monopolizing the industry and taking away choice from consumers. They assumed customers would still keep buying just as much music or even foolishly believing customers would buy even more of it, now that their professional decision makers were now making music the right way.
Compound this with the bland situation on radio. Just like music labels, very few radio stations are independent. Their play lists are tightly controlled. Listener requests? Screw all that. Oh, better yet, let's have fake listener requests. Some radio stations actually do this. "Payola" may be illegal, but the record companies and radio stations found a way around that by paying middle man consultant operations who then pay the radio station companies. That helps keep anything radically new, especially anything independently produced, from hitting the airwaves.
Let's not forget the effect music video had on the music industry. Videos made it just as important for a performer to look great as well as sound great. Genuine artists with average looks were no longer acceptable. It's better to have a performer who can be visually marketed as a sex symbol and even better yet to have a bunch of anonymous people behind the scenes writing all their music.
The Internet seems to get all the blame for what's wrong with the music industry. The decline in innovation and gaming the playlists of radio stations were both problems before things like Napster and iTunes were factors.
These days music has largely become commoditized or even devalued, thanks to the continuing string of great ideas from big media companies. There are several streaming services in addition to iTunes, Google Music, etc. Retail music stores were the best showcase for selling music, but such stores have been failing in droves since they can't compete with Amazon (and no sales tax) not to mention Walmart, Target, etc.
Lots of people have their own big music collections in addition to all the Internet based options that are available. And they have lots of choices from those by-gone eras where popular music seemed so much better. So even if a new music act has a genuinely great new album it's actually pretty tough to sell. It's so easy to pull up a free listen of it on YouTube.
I have a pretty big collection of movies on DVD and Blu-ray. But my buying habits in recent years have falling off drastically. A movie has to be really good and have lots of repeat viewing potential for me to put a copy of it on my shelf.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 11-05-2016 11:35 PM
As a music-biz veteran (about 40 years worth), I agree with most of what's been said in the above two posts. However, one thing that must be said....innovation and responding to consumer needs and wants are great, but nothing can compete with "free." Even if iTunes and the iTunes Store had come along at the beginning of the internet, and had gotten in front of the whole download craze at a buck (or even a quarter) a song, the minute somebody figured out how to download music for free, the results would have been the same as we have today.
Interestingly, streaming is finally beginning to show somewhat of a profit for the major labels (according to Billboard), but it's a fraction of the profits they enjoyed back in the peak years because most people are either downloading music illegally, or listening for free on YouTube or no-cost streaming services; and when they DO pay, selling "songs" is far less profitable than selling "albums."
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-06-2016 05:33 PM
In the last few years the movie studios have been taking a giant shit on physical media, be it DVD, Blu-ray or Ultra-HD Blu-ray. Aside from the questionable practices in mastering audio and video the damned discs are often very bare bones affairs: hardly any extras, trailers, printed material, bland packaging, etc. There's little in the way of value added stuff to make it worth it to buy a physical copy of the movie and allow it to take up space on your entertainment shelf. Compare that to the year 2000 era when movie studios were putting a shit-ton of work into their DVD special editions of movies.
On top of that the studios are now releasing the physical discs weeks after or even more than a month after the "HD Digital" download is available to buy. The download version of movies are coming out in as little as 8 weeks after the theatrical release. Some are released even earlier. By the way, these "HD Digital" versions are basically the freaking version anyone would see on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.
Somehow the bean counters think they're going to make more money for the movie studios and parent media companies by getting rid of physical discs, retail channels, etc. In the end they're really going to be making even less. I have yet to buy a virtual copy of a movie. With release windows being so narrow it's pretty easy to wait for the movie to show up on Netflix or HBO.
I used to be really critical of streaming movie services since the video quality sucked. Internet connections in many places, even over cellular networks, have been improving in big leaps. That has allowed streaming services to close much of the gap on video quality with physical discs.
One would think Ultra HD Blu-ray would propel physical media way out ahead of what streaming services can do. But the Ultra HD Blu-ray format has, so far, been one hell of a joke. The overwhelming majority of UHD Blu-rays are not really UHD at all. They're blown up from 2K source material. So it's largely a fake UHD format. I think electronics companies and movie studios could be in for some trouble once enough home theater fans finally get wise to this bullshit. It could be the final nail in the coffin for physical media. But maybe that's what the movie studios really want.
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