Movies, Broadband and Television
Posted on March 7, 2008
Filed Under What's New |
Some time ago as broadband began to bite George Lucas said “We don’t want to make movies. We’re about to get into television. As far as Lucasfilm is concerned, we’ve moved away from the feature film thing, because it’s too expensive and it’s too risky.
I found this interesting at the time but it has hardly been cataclysmic. What seems equally to be the case is that television companies are exploiting hits more than before. I mean in Prison Break the same old plot told every week with the same level of verve. Take no risks with narrative.
“I think the secret to the future is quantity, because that’s where it’s going to end up.” Lucas said that too.
But the future is also in nostalgia. broadcasters are trying to stand out in the broadband long tail by using their budgets to recapture the past of boomer viewers (see Mad Men).
Lucas thinks that the American public is abandoning movie going - but a year or so on there’s no evidence they are abandoning movie watching in the kind of numbers that would worry me. I think it is a worry that television reworks the past the way it does and movies are also at it, rewriting the post-war period up to the 1970s.
The trickle of Hollywood directors who see alternatives to the 90 minute movie that are more workable and as glamorous as the theatre, who see that broadband gives them a pathway to viewers is yet to grow into a stream.
I still go back occasionally to Dan Myrick’s Venice Strand a great, great movie even though I can only see it on my Zen. And it’s great because made at low cost he can afford to go back to old fashioned movie values. No tired, repetitive plot lines. It’s a creative liberation for viewer and director (but there are no oscars here).
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