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Are there too many films being made?

Started by George White, November 30, 2018, 06:57:19 AM

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George White

More films have been made in the last two years in the US than there have been between 1930 and 1980. https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video&release_date=2017-1-1,2019-12-31&countries=us&page=1&ref_=adv_prv
The reason the imdb has become further reliant on pro.imdb is because there's lots of really small indie filmmakers whose films will never get  a decent release, student or amateur filmmakers using it and logging in their films and thus creating a massive log.
I often wonder would an amateur Imdb or a student Imdb or a non-union Imdb sector help.

I remember Matthew Sweet said no amount of British films would be made greater than the quantity made doing the Quota Quickies era, but with DV, that's been beaten.

Over 7000 horrors made this decade https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video&release_date=2010-1-1,2019-12-31&genres=horror&countries=us&page=1&ref_=adv_prv
Over 3000 sci-fi https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video&release_date=2010-1-1,2019-12-31&genres=sci_fi&countries=us&page=1&ref_=adv_prv
Surprisingly less action than horror https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video&release_date=2010-1-1,2019-12-31&genres=action&countries=us&page=1&ref_=adv_prv
C.7,700 thrillers too. https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video&release_date=2010-1-1,2019-12-31&genres=THRILLER&countries=us&page=1&ref_=adv_prv
Only 3000 family too. Though in TV, I suspect  A much higher number https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video&release_date=2010-1-1,2019-12-31&genres=family&countries=us&page=1&ref_=adv_prv


https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video&release_date=2010-1-1,2019-12-31&genres=&countries=in&page=1&ref_=adv_prv India's film industry now looks very small, by comparison.

sevendaughters

still not enough. you're not meant to watch them all. quicker/more efficient filmmaking tools like DV and FinalCut means that a film that doesn't "break out" may still find enough of an audience within a smaller, better targeted crowd to make it worthwhile be that financially or in terms of being part of a conversation.

Icehaven

There's been quite a few films from the last 10/15 years or so that have either been on random channels late at night or turned up when trawling for something to download that have left us wondering how the hell we never heard of them before. So while I don't know about 'too many' it does mean, much like it's been with music for ages now, it's increasingly easy to miss great films simply by not hearing about them because there's just so many being made.

checkoutgirl

I've often thought too many are being made. Too many low quality films and too much of this or that. For instance the last 5 to 10 years have seen a superhero boom but is that good for the overall health of quality output? Doubtful. We make more films than ever but the best decade for films is still the seventies.

Similarly we make more music than ever but the best decade for music was the sixties.

People will inevitably argue with this but it's true. For now ever and always.

George White

c.24,000 made between 1990 and 2009 https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature&release_date=1990-1-1,2009-12-31&countries=us&page=1&ref_=adv_prv   
34,000 made this decade.
To be fair, most of these may exist only as imdb entries.

Sebastian Cobb

Too many films with super heroes these days I reckon.

Queneau



bgmnts

It is odd how there has been no film crash, like there was for the oversaturated video game market in 1983.

olliebean

Certainly not enough high-budget effects-driven superhero pornos.

Shit Good Nose


greenman

How many have had the word "Shark", "Volcano" or "Staring Casper Van Dien" in them?

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: checkoutgirl on November 30, 2018, 07:29:42 AM
Similarly we make more music than ever but the best decade for music was the sixties.
What if you're a fan of heavy metal, rap, synth, or any other genre that didn't exist back then?

There aren't enough things set in the eighties.

Mango Chimes

Quote from: bgmnts on November 30, 2018, 10:50:55 AM
It is odd how there has been no film crash, like there was for the oversaturated video game market in 1983.

(In America.)

There's nothing to crash because the high volume isn't driven on making a profit on sales. Amazon, Netflix et al are shitting these things out at a loss in order to compete for streaming monopoly. People actually watching any individual film isn't important.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

That doesn't seem all that sustainable a business model. People sign up to Netflix etc. for the must see watercooler type stuff. A ton of inoffensive filler films probably won't drive anyone to cancel their subscription, but it's not going to entice any new customers either.

Noodle Lizard

I have a lot of opinions on this, but I'll only bore you with a couple.

Yes, as has been mentioned, the "ease" of making a film has improved exponentially, to the point where feasibly anyone could make one more or less for nothing and with little formal training.  Even compared to the "oo anyone can do it now" indie wave of the early 90s, it has become significantly easier and cheaper.  There are also a fuck-ton of easily accessible platforms for releasing/distributing your film now, which didn't really exist until perhaps a decade ago.  You don't even need to get DVDs made!

Now, as with many things, this "democratisation" of the art form sounds far better than it actually is.  There's very little quality control, and while the presence of arbiters in the past may have resulted in some great films never seeing the light of day, for every one of those there are a few thousand utterly worthless films.  Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but it's also diluted the market significantly, which in some ways makes it harder for decent films to get attention than before.  Because filmmaking used to be a really, really difficult and expensive thing to accomplish, chancers would give up quickly, and the product (good or bad) was often the result of people who had practically dedicated their life to it, and actually having a finished product would get you studio/distributor attention pretty quickly due to the comparative scarcity.  Now there's less incentive to bother when almost anyone can (and does) do it.  Granted, I'm in an industry town, but you could step onto the street and spit in any direction and hit someone who calls themselves a filmmaker now.

On top of that, the value of films now is practically zero unless you're already established.  Even independent films which do find a wide audience (usually through a lot of work/connections at Sundance etc., same as before) don't make a lot of money.  I'm pretty sure I read that Sean Baker (Tangerine, Florida Project) and the bloke who made The Witch basically made fuckall off it, despite the wide attention/acclaim.  The highest-reachable goal for a new filmmaker really isn't that high anymore, and since decent films are still costly and time-consuming and troublesome to make compared to music, for instance, the appeal has probably worn off somewhat for people who work really hard but don't already have the right connections. 

The studios, especially, are more conservative than ever, and more rigidly-adhered to the simplest cost/profit formula.  As a result, the only credits you're likely to see on big-budget/big-release films are likely to have already been established in the industry quite a while ago.  They don't really take many risks with new directors/writers etc. anymore, except for occasionally hiring an "indie" director to helm a big-budget thing by name only (see the Jurassic World movies).  Then you have production companies like Blumhouse showing up, capitalizing on low-cost/high-return/quick-turnaround projects, which is a very smart business model, but the quality is often very poor.  Then you have films like Hereditary and many of those "indie horror" movies that came before it, which are fueled largely by courting the correct festival buzz and subsequent clickbait headlines.  There are a lot of films, a lot more films, which sounds good in theory - "more stuff!"  But there are myriad factors which I think are contributing to an overall lack of quality compared to when it was harder. 

Kind of like when Netflix or whoever give an esteemed filmmaker/writer/comedian "free reign" over a project, with no studio interference, or when artists crowdfund something for similar reasons.  It sounds lovely, but the result is usually flabby and self-indulgent compared to their work for "the man".  It's one of those things which shouldn't turn out that way, but almost always does.


P.S.  I have a feeling Netflix will fail sooner or later.  They're pretty careful about not revealing their cost/return statistics, but I can't quite see how it's a sustainable model unless they drastically slow down their output, which in turn will lose them their sole source of funding (unlike Amazon, HBO etc.).  I could be wrong about that, mind you, but they paid $20m for Ricky Gervais's new standup special.  I really can't see that making them anywhere close to $20m back in new subscribers, but there must be someone pressing the buttons.

greenman

I do wonder Noodle that as with music whether this "democratisation" you see in the net era actually ends up being more exclusionary based on wealth. The cost of making films might have reduced but its still significant and more of the burden of that cost is on the film maker with less in the way of openings or funding for up and coming directors.

George White

www.podnose.com/jaffaville/005-semipros  Very good from our own Ocho and Mooncat about the new phenomenon of "the semi-pros".

https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video&release_date=2010-01-01,2017-12-31&online_availability=US%2Ftoday%2FAmazon%2Fpaid,US%2Ftoday%2FAmazon%2Fsubs,GB%2Ftoday%2FAmazon%2Fpaid    A few of the semi-pros - 1/6 of all feature cinema made in the US  https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video&release_date=2010-01-01,2017-12-31&countries=us


22,000 horror shorts/features/films made this year in the US https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,short,video&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=horror&countries=us
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,short,video&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=romance&countries=us 15,486 romance, surprisingly
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,short,video&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=thriller 44,780 thrillers, 24,000 American
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,short,video&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=drama&countries=us 85,939 drama in the US, 18,558 feature/video
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video,short&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=comedy&countries=us 64,142 inc. 15,935 film/video, US comedy
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video,short&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=sci-fi&countries 12,436 US films/shorts, 21,689 sci-fi in all https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video,short&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=crime&countries 18,515 crime, 9,665 US
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video,short&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=fantasy 23,742 fantasy
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video,short&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=history 9,607 history
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video,short&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=war 5,048 war, 1,507 features
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video,short&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=mystery 20,460 mystery, 5,817 features/videos
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature,video&release_date=2010-01-01,2020-12-31&genres=family 6,852 family features from the world
My great fear is all this stuff will not be documented, once the great history ofindie film is written. Because there's literally almost a million of them.



Brundle-Fly

Every time I look at the Netflix home page and trending menu there always seems to be a load more new series starting. It's like the annual Edinburgh Fringe brochure. There is too much being put out there. I wish it would just stop for a bit, let the snow settle. No more new music, films, books, shows, documentaries, recipes for a year. No, fuck it, five years!

chveik

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on December 20, 2018, 05:55:51 PM
Every time I look at the Netflix home page and trending menu there always seems to be a load more new series starting. It's like the annual Edinburgh Fringe brochure. There is too much being put out there. I wish it would just stop for a bit, let the snow settle. No more new music, films, books, shows, documentaries, recipes for a year. No, fuck it, five years!

90% is shit too, according to Theodore Sturgeon, it's not worth the trouble

George White

#21
It seems this is mainly videos.
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature&release_date=2000-01-01,2019-12-31&countries=US&sort=moviemeter,desc Just under 50,000 FILMS not videos made in the US between 2000,2019.
Street Trash's Kristin Keating was in You're Not Getting Out Alive by Kevin Cunningham and Kristine Hipps, alongside Creed's Gerard "Awesome Movie" Yelverton's fat-man religious parable A Man of God - the story of Stephen Thatcher, the least popular films made in the US, of 50,000 films made this century.
Still a giant number compared to 32,000 films being made in the previous seventy years. Though some features are actually shorts. https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature&release_date=2010-01-01,2019-12-31&countries=us&sort=runtime,asc Some shorts listed as features by Nickelodeon's Conor O'Kelly Lynch and SNL's Jordan Cody Brandon. At least 1001 of them are shorts. https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature&release_date=2010-01-01,2019-12-31&countries=us&sort=runtime,asc&start=1001&ref_=adv_nxt like the UCLA's Couch Destruction.


10,834 films made for US TV in the 2000s.  13,198 made in the next 9 years. A little less saturation. And that includes shorts.
https://www.imdb.com/search/title?title_type=feature&release_date=1930-01-01,1999-12-31&sort=runtime,asc&start=101&ref_=adv_nxt Less than 100 shorts pre-1999 are listed as features.

Post-2000, about 1000 US shorts are about an hour. And four over an hour. One, the Blackout with Maria Alexandra, from Alita Battle Angel, the other Boundaries by
Erin Sullivan (of Should I Do It? with Ron J Rock from Nathan Fillion's the Rookie), and stars: Univision's Adele Kuforiji (shorts such as Doghouse, Dinner Theatre, the brain themed Always with her friend Bethani Mosher - behind Zooey with  Boxtrolls' Ryan Harriss and Taylor Piedmonte, the villain in Skeet Ulrich's Escape Room), Natalie Perez-Benitoa (Heather Garden, Popstar - Never Stop Never Stopping)
Bethani Mosher's Always also featured Mosher's friend Rake "RAWMIX" Aksad, who was in the shorts of Kenny "Bash" Grimble jr, plus Smoke and Mirrors and its webseries Unfair and Ugly with Raghuram Shetty (of Adult Swim's Decker and youtube lesbian Webseries Twenty with James Franco associate Lee Coc), andHBO's Silicon Valley's Kausar Mohammad.  https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7997818/?ref_=rvi_nm He's in American Double, a film by Dino Antoniou, who was in Gotham and Human Target.
Mosher is close friends with Piedmonte, Kuforiji and Aksad.

Phil_A

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on December 01, 2018, 05:36:50 AM
P.S.  I have a feeling Netflix will fail sooner or later.  They're pretty careful about not revealing their cost/return statistics, but I can't quite see how it's a sustainable model unless they drastically slow down their output, which in turn will lose them their sole source of funding (unlike Amazon, HBO etc.).  I could be wrong about that, mind you, but they paid $20m for Ricky Gervais's new standup special.  I really can't see that making them anywhere close to $20m back in new subscribers, but there must be someone pressing the buttons.

I agree, I think at some point the bubble has to burst with Netflix. They've already over-saturated their own service with so much content. Just a constant, endless barrage of STUFF coming at you day and night that no one person could possibly absorb. There's a huge risk of alienating viewers with too much choice and no way to judge that what you're watching is going to be worth your time. If they carry on like they are at the moment, at some point their wobbly Jenga tower of a subscription model is probably going to topple and bring the whole lot down.

Z

Quote from: bgmnts on November 30, 2018, 10:50:55 AM
It is odd how there has been no film crash, like there was for the oversaturated video game market in 1983.
Asides from groups like Netflix and Amazon just flinging money at the industry atm, there's also things like MoviePass and free ticket incentives (I've gone to like 20 films for free this year due to my health insurance plan)... I think there's a lot of gimmickry and loss-leader stuff propping up the industry right now and some pillar is gonna go down.

Netflix is in a bit of a tricky position, they're basically in a race to firmly establish themselves before all the other major producers outright focus on killing them. They've been okay at making current hits but I'm less sure they've made any long term cash cows? Films or shows that that'll permanently hold some level of value to bring a steady consistent return after the initial bump, and they need that kind of content for when the others try to stick the knife in.

Think the most likely thing at this point is Netflix eventually being part of one of the increasingly grim, increasingly huge mergers. Disney buying them for a slightly underwhelming amount or something like that.

greenman

Just in terms of amount of content of course TV has been in the situation for decades were nobody could ever follow it all or even a significant fraction of it. Beyond rivalry with the studio's getting into their own streaming services(rumours Apple are looking at buying Sony's entertainment division, I suspect for that purpose) I suspect at some stage me might see the bottom fall out of "cinematic series" in favour of the real thing. Especially the idea of actually rewatching content rather than constantly having to consume something new I suspect might pick up again.

It feels to me that a lot of whats on Netflicks/Amazon isn't really taking that much of a risk, backing more ambitious up coming directors making films from the start that could give them content with long term value seems like the direction to go to me. I mean its not really even about budget given how expensive a lot of these series are relative to non blockbuster films.

George White

Another  problem is films with no year listed.

Cory Hart from Dallas/Homeland and Variety's Bindelstiffs' Matt Tramel were in Jeff Peoples' Czech Beautiful.   As well as this, Tramel was in Sharad Kant Patel and Sebastian Matthews' Somebody's Darling with Paul Galvan, Jessa Settle and Fred Parker jr, an aintitcool favourite.  Peeples also worked on the shots Make it Rain, Spoiled Rotten, Imprint, Fury, Connect, all shorts.and Morgue and Stein, like Connect, by Judy Garlow, who worked on a short, Osprey and Malcolm McDowell's Sanitarium. Another Jeff Peoples/Peebles worked on Jason X and a film with no year - Truth Seekers with Jackie Goldston from the Adam Sandler film Blended.

George White

Another ballooning of content is all those true-life cheap docudramas about celebs, often shot in places like Dallas.
For example, Alan Brent, the Frank Dobson-alike hanging technician in The Execution of Gary Glitter was in a Jack the Ripper doc with Funimation/Barney actor Nathan McAllister and Nathan Myers who was in a Bedtime Story with John Untalan, star of Anchor Bay's Sorority Party Massacre, Kiwi and Benny, and Digital Getdown with Star Trek's Cazimir Milostan. Myers was also in Renegades with Kevin Sorbo's the Pertinent Thief costar Kyle Roark. (and his felt tip beard https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6156476/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm Nathan D Myers also made a film called Aria Appleton,  another called Clinn Rippy, and played Nick Nolte and Simon Napier Bell in Reelz TV's the Price of Fame. Myers knows Asla Soter, a friend of Asylum starlet Jamie Bernadette. Myers played a character called Nathan Carter in Shayne Edwards' Prodigal with Pete's Dragon actress Augustine Frizzell, granddaughter of country singer Lefty.



The Price of Fame featured actors as Gerry Anderson vet David Tomblin.  Funimation anime voiceover vet Chris Gardner was Prince Charles.  Walker Texas Ranger/Funimation's Richard Olsen as Conrad Bain

Sherilyn Fenn actress Hannah Mathes was in shorts Have A Nice Trip, X men spinoff The Gifted and a short called Apocalupsis, and Marvista's 8 Days.

Also in these series were Nerdly's Alex Giuffreda and Jeffrey Gray who was in Tamron Hall, The long Road Home for Nat Geo, High Moon with Sean Patrick Flanery from Young Indy, Chad Michael Collins and


There aren't enough action blockbusters that aren't part of a series.

thenoise

The difficulty is getting your films seen - and not just chucked at the end of a long list of tripe on a streaming service (or rotting away on YouTube).

As it's cheaper than ever to make movies, I'd like to see local film companies much like theatre companies team up with local cinemas and make a couple of films a year. This would provide a genuine audience and feedback for up and coming filmmakers rather than dumping it on YouTube for their family and friends to watch once. Also it would provide a bit of genuine choice for people who want to watch something other than the latest man/womanchild fantasy superhero bollocks, or a remake. Or some posh idiot's stupid homemade zombie film on YouTube.

bgmnts