The End of Film [Blogging Every Day #18]

My father, who was an executive at 20th Century-Fox for forty-five years, never quite agreed with the film historians who mourned the golden age of cinema and complained that the industry was now all about money. "It's always been about money" he liked to point out. True, the days of the mogul have passed, and movie studios are run by multi-national corporations - but making money has always been part of the game. Studios may not take as many risks nowadays - but even then, as it is with any corporation - if you didn't make money, you went out of business. Fox itself nearly did when it bet nearly everything on "Cleopatra" in 1963 (about $40 million then) - adjusted for 2014 dollars, it's likely the most expensive film ever made. Only through a dramatic management shift, extreme belt tightening, and the phenomenal success two years later of "The Sound of Music" did Fox survive long enough to weather the storm. Studios today will rarely take such a risk - and are even more beholden to their investors and stockholders.

With the recent announcement from Paramount Pictures that they will cease film distribution altogether, the first major studio to do so, the "film" era is finally coming to an end. Film distribution is an incredibly expensive process - creating film prints and shipping them worldwide to individual theaters has become a luxury, particularly in a time when high-definition projection has advanced so far that - for the average moviegoer, at least - it's indistinguishable from film projection. Digital distribution is much cheaper, and will win the day.

Yes, I know, there is a difference, just as there is a difference between vinyl audio, mp3 audio and so-called HD audio - but, really, only purists will squirm. Complain as you will, it's not bad at all. It won't ruin the experience, and it's not going to change. Technology will continue to improve on the digital side, while the expertise to maintain a high quality production and distribution process on film will whither away.

Many prominent filmmakers still shoot on film (an interesting article about the debate), but I suspect that this will prove to be a generational divide as time goes on. The economics of using century old technology will make the transition complete, sooner or later.

What would my dad think? Even before he retired in 1987, he spoke of the coming era of digital distribution. He recognized that once the technology was there, it was inevitable. If he were around today, he wouldn't be surprised, shocked or disappointed.

Zac Ward, a YouTuber I've become acquainted with over the last couple of years, created this video about the massive projectors that brought us thousands of films (if you must mourn....)

Movie Moguls and YouTube Subversives

I recently finished watching TCM's seven part documentary, "Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood," which traces the history of the film industry from its earliest days all the way up to the final fade out of the mogul era in the late 1960's.

While it didn't really cover any new ground, it did provide a great overall look at the evolution of the industry, and the unique personalities that built the early industry.  These pioneers - from Louis B. Mayer to the Warner Brothers, to Darryl Zanuck - not only invented (and continuously reinvented) the movie industry, but achieved success with pure tenacity.  That may sound somewhat cliche these days, but these guys (and women, the program illustrates) really did it.

For me, the most fascinating part of the program is the earliest episode, "Peepshow Pioneers"which looks at the industry in its very earliest days, from 1889 - 1907, when peepshows - those machines that individuals would peer into to view 10 or 20 second short films - became the craze.  The program reports that Thomas Edison's  studio (really, the first of its kind) produced close to a thousand of these short films in a single year.  In the beginning, these films consisted primarily of simple improvisational skits created by Edison's studio workers themselves.

I can't help think of parallels to the social media / YouTube world today, where so many are experimenting with a form of expression which is both an evolution of motion pictures, and it's own unique creation.  Of course, in those early days, a single man, Thomas Edison, who invented (or perfected) much of the technology that made the birth of the industry possible, and tried to hold onto a monopoly in the creation and distribution of content.  Today, media creation is open to all, and there are limitless variations on creating YouTube content - some for nothing more than self-expression, and others as entrepreneurial ventures.

The film industry wasn't invented by individuals from the theater world - it was created by people from unrelated worlds - or dirt poor kids  -  who created an opportunity that others may have ignored in their own sophistication.   If the social media platform does evolve, the driving forces that make it stand on its own will not, ultimately come from the existing media industries - but from the individuals who are creating audiences where none existed.

I suspect that most, if not all of the top YouTubers are individuals without filmmaking backgrounds.  Even though I'm a filmmaker, I love the subversive irony...