> High end filmmaking has gotten 'cheaper', in that you can use virtual production to simulate environments etc. And undoubtedly shooting 'digital' is cheaper than film development.
That proposition would mean that the reason why majority of the last decades' top budget movies were rehashed crap was because of the exorbitant profit margins and exorbitant money paid to stars rather than anything related to the movies' production. So it was just a case of capitalism hollowing out things for profit like in any other field.
> However - the cost of producing a decent film has not dropped to a few thousand.
I don't think anybody ever made that argument. What people say is that things became much cheaper and therefore democratized. Which is in line with what you said.
The original post in this thread advocated for making hundreds of indie films vs one film for twenty million.
> That proposition would mean that the reason why majority of the last decades' top budget movies were rehashed crap was because of the exorbitant profit margins and exorbitant money paid to stars rather than anything related to the movies' production.
It's more complicated than that - at the top end film budgets are vastly higher than they were a decade ago. Regularly topping 200 million. But more importantly, studios have making far fewer films and pining their success as a business on a 'super' hit driven model. This is almost a separate industry than film at this point, with grosses in the multiple billions before merchandising is taken into account. It's not really what the original article is about - they're talking about hit 'indie' films, in the 20 million ball park.
Arguably the issue with movies of the last decade has been the creation and duplication of transmedia franchises at the expense of making standalone original films.
> The original post in this thread advocated for making hundreds of indie films vs one film for twenty million.
That doesn't mean that each indie film would cost $10k. Not that someone couldnt pull off a good movie like that for $10k. However, more people being able to make movies from $10k or whatever low amount would mean more chances of good movies being made.
> But more importantly, studios have making far fewer films and pining their success as a business on a 'super' hit driven mode
Yeah. Profit maximization instead of risk taking. The same problem everywhere - gaming industry has been consolidated in the hands of few big companies which started making endless rehashes of previously successful games to suck out more money from gamers instead of making new things. Profit maximization. Capitalism.
That proposition would mean that the reason why majority of the last decades' top budget movies were rehashed crap was because of the exorbitant profit margins and exorbitant money paid to stars rather than anything related to the movies' production. So it was just a case of capitalism hollowing out things for profit like in any other field.
> However - the cost of producing a decent film has not dropped to a few thousand.
I don't think anybody ever made that argument. What people say is that things became much cheaper and therefore democratized. Which is in line with what you said.