The Manifest

Hollywood is about to implode. People have said it for years but it is finally happening. Don’t believe me? Wait five more years and see what happens to the major movies studios. They are turning into marketing machines dependent on tent-pole films. Studios are becoming nothing more than mere distribution companies with enough money to plaster the world with posters and billboards.

I’m no expert, but I’ve done a bunch of research and read a ton of articles just before writing this for the sole purpose of not sounding like a complete moron. I could do the whole MLA thing below, but I’ll probably forget. Don’t take anything I propose too seriously, I am just exercising my brain to figure out if what I am thinking is even possible or likely to happen.

What I am thinking is that the traditional studios are going away. A studio back in the day would do everything in house. If you didn’t already have a multi-picture deal in place, you would pitch the studio your treatment or script and they would decide whether to do it. They would then attach a few of their in-house screenwriters to the project to pen the script, or if it already had one, they’d hire one of their contracted directors. The studio would finance the whole thing and shoot it with their cameras on their backlot. It was a major operation that required a ton of infrastructure. Many of them also owned their own theaters, but this was made illegal in a landmark Supreme Court case in 1948. This is often referred to as the end of the “Golden Age” in the studio system.

After the “Golden Age,” starpower was more sought after. Films made per year dropped from 700 to about 300, due to countless flops being made. Financiers would demand star actors, directors and writers in order to mitigate the risk and ensure a financial success. Combined with the advent of television, constantly changing technology and new “mini-major” studios like Miramax and New Line, the major studios slipped slowly into a more financial/distributor role, taking an active role in a limited amount of films per year.

As technology changed, so did films. With smaller film camera that didn’t require a crane to move around, filmmakers began hitting the streets. This opened a whole new array of affordable possibilities. You could feasibly shoot inside a house although it would most likely not give you the luxury of being able to control the lighting and shots perfectly. Thus many of the big blockbusters remained on the traditional soundstage.

Then there was VHS. You could now purchase and watch any movie you want at home. You could also rent it. BOOM! Distribution goes nationwide. The one screen theater in your town didn’t screen Jaws because Monty Python’s Holy Grail was still playing? No problem. Now you can watch it at home, in your underwear.

Movies could make more money and therefore the average budget increased. But if budgets increase, so does the risk of failure. Movie stardom is reaching its all-time high. Stars are making more money than anyone else. Wait a damn second. What? Jim Carrey got $20 million on the $47 million Cable Guy. Hmmmmm that’s not gonna last.

The vast majority of people go to see movies for two reasons: Characters and Story. Thats the reason why you could depend on that name at the top of the poster to tell you whether or not you should see it. They put the name at the top of the poster because you already know the character and therefore know what you are buying into. Sylvester Stallone? He was in Rocky, hell yeah I’ll check out Rambo.

Now the studios are thinking, we can’t pay our actors nearly half the production budget. We have to find characters and stories the audience is already familiar with. And now studios are only producing the summer tentpoles, which has become movies based on comic books, teenage pop-fiction, and even children’s action-figures. All the rest of films are being co-financed with the Major studios with distribution and marketing deals. Soon enough there will be only distribution money coming out of the studios.

All of the Majors are multi-national conglomerates focused on profit. Distribution is where the most money can be made. It’s not exactly a secret. You already have the end product. It really takes the guessing and risk out of the equation.

But with new distribution outlets, like Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, etc. It is becoming easier for production companies to bypass the studios entirely, leaving the Majors to serve primarily as marketing machines. Movies can also be produced for way less due to digital cinema cameras, smaller crews and tax incentives that pay for as much as 40% of your budget. It’s an interesting and crazy time to be a filmmaker.

My guess is that in the near future, production companies are going to be acting much like mini “Golden Age” studios. Self-financing projects that are developed in-house and using talent that they have fostered. You are already starting to see it. How many of the same people do you see in Adam Sandler movies? Judd Apatow’s comedies? Christopher Nolans films? These new mini’s are also going to figure out new ways of distribution to get their films on the big screen in addition to your iPod nano. It’s only a matter of time.

The difference is going to be in marketing power. The Majors have the infrastructure and dough to back it up. But with a couple hits on the right blogs in addition to a few tweets from everyone I know, my movie name is in front of a million people in no time. If its good, it will spread. Fast.

To wrap up, I have no idea how this helps me. Through this little experiment I was hoping to have some more insight as to what I would need to do to create films I want to make. I guess you just need to make stuff. Good stuff, not just any stuff. Try to make good stuff. Decent stuff is better than no stuff, I guess. Just don’t make bad stuff. Well, you can make bad stuff, just don’t promote it. Write it off as a loss if you can. It’s a good learning experience. This tangent has gone way too long. New paragraph.

Make stuff. Right. I guess it’s really as simple as that. It’s easier than ever to make the damn stuff. Half the films at Sundance this year were shot on a $5000 DSLR. They were probably edited on a computer that is not much better than the one you are looking at right now. (yeah… I’m assuming this hasn’t been printed, pretty clever, huh?) So it’s not THAT expensive.

Remember: story and characters. You probably aren’t going to be able to do a movie on Superman anytime soon, but Pixar seems to always be able to get around the barrier of familiarity and tell unorthodox stories about new characters that become memorable to everyone in the audience.

I’m hoping we see a ton of new creative films produced and self-distributed then pushed out to the masses by the masses. We need a new “Pixar Studios” in the live-action space. I think I’d like to create something where the Studio’s name is at the top of the poster.