They have carried out the first round of strikes of that new “fashion” of mass protests that seems to be emerging in the United States. The emblem industry, the seal industry, the suppliers of the beloved soma, trembled to think how they could piece together the pieces of the huge scaffold If the elementary curries, the ones that make the wheel spin Chinese shadow mechanismthey stopped doing it:“Paying scriptwriters poorly and mistreating them is almost a tradition in the industry,” says Paco Fox, director and film popularizer from Algeciras. For this reason, many of them live off the “royalties” –amount for creation, reproduction and image rights– that are obtained when you sell a production to another market or exhibitor.
Happens that the platform exhibition –“it’s the West, friend”– destroyed this income under a business policy that shielded audience data: Among other things, a platform or a private channel cares pretty little how much you watch. As if you die: What matters is that you pay, the content is the bait. It’s not the first time it happens: The previous massive strikes in the American film industry occurred when domestic formats began to proliferate, for the same reason. “They don’t give the data because everyone in the business has gone to a loss, and it would scare away investors: “Warner sold itself to Discovery+ because it had a billion-dollar debt, and let’s see what happens to Disney,” explains Fox. Its mechanics are similar to those of other large krakens, such as Amazon: go out at a loss to take over the market, because their muscle allows it.
Y all the eggs have been put in this same, wobbly, basket: “With the pandemic, Disney and Warner took advantage of the moment to skip the cinema window and put their productions directly on the platform.” The windows are the life cycles of a production, starting with what until not so long ago was the most profitable (the big screen), then moving on to DVD, pay or platform, open TV, white dwarf star and black dwarf star. .
A specific solution that, however, ended up becoming chronic: “The current model of platforms with a residual in cinema is not sustainable As much as accountants may be excited to know the weekly income.”
“It is very clear that those who manage the old ones majors They are people who came from administration without any love for the legacy or for cinema, That’s why they talk about content instead of movies. Netflix has people from Silicon Valley behind it, while the big companies were born because there were people behind them who were at least somewhat interested in cinema.”
The screenwriters have ended up winning: the union -the Writers GuildWhat wonderful words: guild, regalia– you will receive viewing data confidentially. “Although issues also come into play here, such as, for example, from when is it considered a complete viewing“, he points out Carles Montiel, industry director of the South Series Festival, which will be held in Cádiz this next week.
Regarding AI related to narrative (GPT Chat and surrounding areas), Montiel remembers the Propp features and the famous hero’s journey: it was relatively easy for a machine to unravel the mechanism that works behind a story – at the UCA, for example, there are programmers who can estimate the perfect structure of a story – because It is what has always worked, since the great-great-grandfather of cinema, since shadows and fire. “They are also tools that help create better stories,” he adds. But after, You have to put content to the wickers: the wickers by themselves do not lead you anywhere. On the other hand, and also regarding this topic, European legislation is more protective of the author. Right now, for example, they are working on a law that adapts to the times we are in.”
The agreement of the scriptwriters has also tied up, preventively, the issue of Artificial Intelligence:“It was suspected that The robot could make the basis of the story and the scriptwriter could limit himself to polishing it. and to do things that the machine still doesn’t control much, like humor. What it would have meant even less royalty”, explica Fox. Through this agreement, the writers win over the AIs completely: They can’t be forced to use them and if they are given an AI text to rewrite, that won’t count as ‘author’.
AI can continue playing tricks to the dubbing and, also, to the extras: They pay you once, they scan you and goodbye, very good. “Everything –Fox insists– to save costs, with the respective bonus that the administrators are going to get for saving money according to the debt for which they bought.”
For Carles Montiel, the positive thing about the arrival of a phenomenon like platforms is that it ends up “giving the opportunity for a local production can be available anywhere.” For better and worse, the audiovisual industry has entered a less delimited field: “The star system has stopped being Hollywood, and has expanded to soccer players or influencers. On the other hand – he continues – it may be produced with a lower budget, using technology, with a increasingly refined virtual elaboration, which comes from the world of video games.”
However, the platforms seem to have run into their oxygen limit: we cannot be paying subscriptions, in effect, all at the same time, everywhere. Discovery+ and HBO Max have already announced that they are going to begin operating jointly. “Some talk about a platform bubble because we have already reached a level where it is more difficult to grow in subscribers –Montiel admits–. We may possibly see more mergers or purchases by the big technology companies, which are also involved there.”
The desire to save in productions is understandable because the hole is conclusive: “The case of Netflix, which has to present at least a couple of new releases a week; or Disney+, which has opted for high-budget fantasy franchises: a type of movies and series that cost a lot of money.”
For Fox, “What I have called the era of franchises should end now to moderate the costs of film and series production. If you look at the highest-grossing movies from the early 90s, they were around mid-budget. But with exorbitant budget movies it’s like with football viewing sales: it’s very expensive, but you can’t live without it.”
“I think that the normal thing – he continues – will be that The platforms that survive end up moderating their content. A24, for example, the independent production company of Everything at once… He signed actors and scriptwriters as soon as the strikes began. In this sense, “Independent and European cinema can move better, like tiny dinosaurs, if they have the support of the studios.”
While, the exhibition in theaters tries to transmute lead into gold. In the province, there are two complexes (Bahía de Cádiz, in the capital, and Bahía Mar, in the Port) that are in the process of being transformed into ‘premium’ cinemas. In the case of the center of Porto, when the cinemas reopen their doors they will be managed by the company Artesiete; The works in the rooms of El Corte Inglés will reduce the capacity from 3,000 to 1,000 seats, but with wider and reclining seats. Within the city of Cádiz, Multicines Al Andalus resists with small-format theaters and an outlet for cycles such as Campus Cinema.
Yelmo opened its premium theaters in Bahía Sur after years of closed cinemas while Puerto Real continues to be one of the few towns in the Bay without cinemas, and without the prospect of having them. since the Sasián cinema closed its doors in the early 2000s. Only the Principal Theater has occasionally projected films on the big screen. All this, although the city once had a Film School and is now its headquarters at the UCA. Outdoor cinema meetings, with proposals such as Cinema under the stars, from the Ateneo Republicano, has had fifteen years of resounding success; while the family cinema in Plaza de Jesús has alternated completely full nights and others with empty seats.
Curiously, on a cinematographic level, this summer has not featured the heroes or the animation, but the pink mushroom, “because we are talking about two productions, Oppenheimer y Barbiethat they have not gone out of budget”, says Paco Fox, who, however, is not very optimistic about it: “Surely the lesson they learn is that they have to make stories about dolls.”
A myriad of new productions every week, different platforms, series made to be seen on two screens, Artificial Intelligence creatures and limited time. Just the opposite of how the business was fifteen years ago: For many, the sense of the exceptional has been lost. Magic in cinema has suffered the same fate as romanticism in football: “The expectation line It is something that some series exploit: Instead of giving you all the chapters at once, we give them to you little by little and, in that time, you do not unsubscribe –indicates Carles Montiel–. For me, the sense of exceptionality comes with the collective.” Accompanied, he assures, the emotion is greater. “There is a lot of talk about the liturgy of cinema, but it is true”.
“Today, we compete with many other forms of entertainment and the cinematographic experience has been devalued. Cinema, with platforms, has been touched as an exceptional work. It’s one more thing. The abundance and ease of access has devalued cinema, taking it to a category of consumption, as happened to music.”
2023-10-01 04:18:45
#crisis #screens #cinema #cinema
