As some of you have noticed I've stopped writing about what the industry is like or doing for a long while now. I put up my white flag and decided just to blog what pleases me rather than what irritates the shit out of me; and it has to be said that the film industry - both here and over in America - was giving me the major shits at every turn. I've given it half my life, I iwsh not to waste the other half trying to recoup what I cannot get back.
Anyway, today, I just want to show you a link here form Pleiades. Cutting straight to the chase...
One aspect of the modern world that has also changed is that people now have damn big TVs, and don't feel all that much of a need to venture from their home, especially when the popcorn prices are so high. But while studios and distributors can wear the flack for screwing around consumers by not having same time international releases, on this score it is the exhibitors who deserve the blame.
Last year there were reports of Universal Pictures "risking the wrath of cinema operators by launching new tests of premium video-on-demand (VoD). Universal suggested it would shrink the release of the film Tower Heist on VoD" to only 21 days after being released in cinemas - and this VoD was being done only in two cities in the US - Atlanta and Portland, and they were going to charge $59.99 for the privilege. It was a "test" to see how the strategy went. How did it go? Well it didn't. The exhibitors reacted by threatening to completely ban the film from their cinemas - and not just in Atlanta and Portland. When a studio the size of Universal Pictures can be made to back down from a test that would get its product to consumers faster, you know there are problems with the industry.
The same exists in Australia where any independent producer game enough to suggest trying a bold strategy of releasing a film in cinema and online at the same time will be a producer who does not have a film released in a cinema.
Murdoch may think that the pirates are the problem, but a look at the industry shows it to be a tired, aging Frankenstein that created a monster, chose not to feed or nurture it, and then blames it when it goes and dines elsewhere.
Murdoch may think SOPA will save his studio, all it will do is further alienate an audience that is treated like it has not aged past 19, doesn't have access to the internet or owns 40 inch plasma TVs, and like they don't have a hell of a lot more choice on how to spend money than they did 30 years ago.
The key for the industry is: Don't make crap, and don't treat your audience like crap either. Can't be that hard.
You'd be surprised at how hard it is for the willfully obtuse. Or perhaps not.
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