| Author |
 Topic  |
|
|
Matrixprime
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
USA
69 Posts |
 Posted - 02/17/2006 : 10:27:23 PM
|
Ken:
Something from your B-Fest 2005 write up stuck out to me, the general comment that you're the 'old tyme person', etc.
I don't think its that (and mind all of ya, this is just my opinion) - but the problem is that the kind of movie we normally think of just doesn't come out anymore.
I think the biggest reason is that the industry is self aware. These films were done before they could see ongoing financial benefit (from DVD/VHS sales). There wasn't as much thought to the long term for these films. Plus, now there are sections in movie stores for Cheesy Films, Cult Films, etc. Films that would generally fit the criteria are being intentionally made for it.
Unfortunately, with few rare exceptions like Battlefield Earth its a law of diminishing returns.
I'll give you a quick comparison. I'm 28 years old, and from when I was 8 until I turned 24 I collected comics. I collected a lot of titles from all the various publishers. In the beginning, the stories were interesting and well written. As the industry became aware of the potential financial windfalls for collectors, they stopped regulating on story and started regulating for profit. Because of that they didn't know when to stop. Several years later everyone was doing lengthy crossovers.
The most obscene I can think of now was Image, which twice in two years did a story arc that crossed through ALL of their titles for several months straight. I was collecting Gen13 at the time, and in a years time, the story was so different and incomprehensible to me (I didn't collect anything else from them then) that I cancelled my subscription.
Infinity Gauntlet was probably one of THE best crossovers, and one of the earlier ones, but its the best illustrative example I think. It did so well, Marvel did another crossover Infinity War. The story was almost as good, but there were more 'related' issues, and where in IG those side issues weren't really essential to the story, they were more so in IW. Then, Marvel beat a dead horse with a halfbaked Infinity Crusade the following year,with even more related issues that were even more important to following the story. Blech.
So, you ain't the 'old man', I think you're feeling the loss I felt when the comic industry shifted away. At least in your case, though, you're LOOKING for the bad apples (in a good way, of course).
Any other thoughts?
Bah Weep Granna Weep Ninny Bahn - Universal Greeting
Est Solarus Oth Mithas - Solamnic Knight Pledge
And now its me too:
http://matrixprime.blogspot.com |
|
|
Bobby-G
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
904 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2006 : 01:56:09 AM
|
Yeah, I think you are right about the "self awareness" of the film industry. In the past you could have some awful film maker over reaching his talent and his low budget and unwittingly make a classic of "bad" entertainment. There really seems to be a need for the film makers to honestly be trying to make a good movie for it to work as "bad; Now you have manufactured "bad" (Oddly, it takes a someone with real talent to purposely make a bad film well, if a hack does it, it's just plain bad).
Rob |
 |
|
|
TimLehnerer
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
USA
95 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2006 : 08:39:00 AM
|
I'd say that there are several factors at work--one of them being the skyrocketing cost of making movies. Ed Wood could make a film for under 200,000 dollars (adjusted for inflation, I think that works out to roughly 3 million bucks in today's currency). No studio would make a film for three million today, because you can't get the production values and stars that guarantee foreign sales for three million dollars.
Which brings me to factor number two: Movie studios are inherently conservative (not in the political sense, but in the financial sense). They want proven things. They want movies that are as close to a guaranteed sure thing as possible. This is not to say that this is an inherently bad position for a movie studio to take--if I were an investor in Disney, I'd certainly rather that they made profitable movies. Sadly, in order to make "guaranteed sure thing" movies, you have to focus group them and test every story beat to make sure that as little film content as possible offends people; generally, the tendency with a GST type movie you don't want to please the entire audience, you just want to avoid pissing any of them off.
Which results in movies that are as tepid as three-hour-old bathwater. If you don't have anyone making movies where they try to reach for the stars, you don't have anyone making berserk, run-right-off-the-cliff films like ROBOT MONSTER or PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.
Distribution avenues have dried up as well--late night TV is the domain of the infomercial rather than the crummy monster movie (I saw this happen in real time, and it saddens me). Drive-ins are gone. Disney cleaned up the 42nd Street movie pits in New York City. Direct to Video is the new drive-in, and to succeed as a DTV film you usually need gore and/or nudity that would be unthinkable for the kind of classic B-film that I tend to prefer. I don't doubt that if they could have gotten away with it, Ed Wood and Phil Tucker would have put nudity in their films (see: Ed Wood's final dozen or so movies) but they didn't because they couldn't at the time, so that's what I think of when I think of B flicks.
There are other factors at work as well, but basically the stuff that got made in 1956 is going to be different than the stuff that gets made in 2006. In some ways this is a positive (imagine 1956's LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS) and in others it's pretty retrograde. |
|
|
|
KurtVon
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
387 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2006 : 2:53:11 PM
|
I'm not sure I buy the whole "skyrocketing costs of making a movie" line. I mean, at the time Ed Wood was making films the most expensive part of a film was the cost of the film itself. Actors were (and for the most part still are) dirt cheap, even the semi-professionals, and sets could be made by anyone with half a talent. I've done costuming, I know how easy that is.
Thanks to digital, the cost of film isn't even an issue anymore. A decent digital camera, a few lenses, some pro-grade lights and an editing workstation would probably barely peak at $150,000. I mean, that's a lot for a filmmaker, but adjusted for inflation the equipment went from the most expensive part of the operation to almost as cheap as the actors.
In fact, if anything the cost of the whole process has pretty much inverted. In the '60s you laid out a fortune for the film, and then shopped it around looking for return on your investment. Today the film costs little to make and it's the shopping around that kills the profits.
If I was going to site a difficulty in a no-talent hack getting a production out to the public nowadays it would probably be the trouble of getting the thing released, not made.
|
|
|
|
The Warden
Minister of the Sacraments of Jabootu
USA
44 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2006 : 10:33:16 AM
|
The problem is that there are two definitions of a b-movie. Ken is sticking to the purist definition -- the b-movie was an inexpensive movie supposed to run as the bottom half of a double-feature. They were cheap, short, and genre-driven. Many were quite bad, some were quite good. We now sometimes think of b-movies and bad movies as synonymous, but they aren't. Anyway, seems like B-Fest has changed from a b-movie festival to a bad movie festival. Not quite the same thing, and frankly it is perfectly possible that the organizers and 80% of the attendees don't recognize the difference anyway.
Just a thought.
--The Warden --
=====================
www.prisonflicks.com
===================== |
|
|
|
KurtVon
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
387 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2006 : 11:04:52 AM
|
quote:
Originally posted by The Warden
The problem is that there are two definitions of a b-movie. Ken is sticking to the purist definition -- the b-movie was an inexpensive movie supposed to run as the bottom half of a double-feature.
Well, at first B-movies in teh classical sense were still being made, just to fill out the "fallow" screens at the multiplex. But with studios getting used to having a film played on five screens in the same theater even that loophole is being closed (as well as justifying rooms the size of a broom closet -- "We'll just show it in 20 auditoriums!!")
But again, this is more an issue with the cost of distribution than the cost of making. DTV seems to be the last bolt-hold of the classic B-movie.
Maybe Digital Cinema will help reverse the trend -- the distribution costs are only a bit more than just securing a venue. Hell, if you have the time to waste you can do the encoding on your home computer. I don't know if this will help, but I'd like to think so.
---
"The easy way to tell is monkeys have a tail and apes don't."
"What's the hard way?"
-- Actual conversation with my daughter
|
|
|
|
BrainFromArous
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
USA
102 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2006 : 12:22:21 PM
|
Agreement on two points:
(1) Making a B-movie on purpose is an almost certain road to failure. The whole camp/absurdist charm of these things depends on people playing it straight. That doesn't mean it can't be genuinely funny - Tremors was good, and funny - but a film can only wink at the audience so many times before they feel like poking it in the eye.
(2) The rise of multiplexes and the end of independent venues. If you listen to DVD commentary tracks and read movie mags, you'll hear everyone from Al Adamson to John Carpenter to Larry Cohen to Sam Raimi to David Cronenberg to John Waters identify this as the main reason why you no longer see the kind of films they loved to make.
**********************
Boards don't hit back.
(Bruce Lee) |
|
|
| |
Topic |
|
|
|
Forum Locked
Topic Locked