Soderbergh on the "State of Cinema" at SFIFF

[David.rhsc]

Summarized here:

http://provideocoalition.com/eescob...eklyNews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=050213

Brief, but interesting read. Particularly the bits about fixed marketing costs, and lack of talent development at the studio level.

 

[Ernest Worthing]

I went through his speech just two days ago. Interesting, indeed. But people like him are exactly what we need. Instead of retiring, he should keep on working. Perhaps use crowdfunding.

 

[ShockingMind]

Yeah agree really interesting piece. Disappointing to see comments on a lot of websites criticizing him for not having 'solutions' to these problems and even worse anger at his defense of Creativity costing money from what are obviously torrent downloaders.

Is he retiring from the business completely or just from directing films, the amount of films he's had an influence in is staggering.

 

[David.rhsc]

Yeah agree really interesting piece. Disappointing to see comments on a lot of websites criticizing him for not having 'solutions' to these problems and even worse anger at his defense of Creativity costing money from what are obviously torrent downloaders.

Is he retiring from the business completely or just from directing films, the amount of films he's had an influence in is staggering.

Yeah, not the response I expected either. Especially since he did suggest a solution, the problem is no one is willing to pay for it.

Coincidentally, I just watched "A Life In Pictures" about Kubrik (available on You Tube, so no excuses IndieTalkers), and what Soderbergh says he would do with a large amount of money and a handful of indie directors is basically similar what Warner's approach to retaining Kubrik was - at least if the former Warner Exec is to be believed.

I don't really know the details of his "retirement," but most folks at his level don't really retire completely if memory serves correctly. I'd really like to see him get a few takers on this "would be" studio of his and for him to sign his short list of directors mentioned in the article. If he doesn't want to take part in production any more, that's cool. But it would be great to have his sensibilities at the executive level.

 

[sonnyboo]

Coincidentally, I just watched "A Life In Pictures" about Kubrik (available on You Tube, so no excuses IndieTalkers)

Uh, how about the excuse that this is an illegal copy?

I bought my copy with the DVD set and the Blu Ray set.

 

[DDK]

Sorry, but I think all of this is a load of nonsense. It all smacks of selfish indulgence and nostalgia. On one hand he decries the nature of the business and on the other he defends as his inherent right as a film-maker to people's money. Hypocritical at best, disingenuous at worst.

 

[David.rhsc]

Uh, how about the excuse that this is an illegal copy?

I bought my copy with the DVD set and the Blu Ray set.

Touche'

YT removes illegal clips all the time, did not occur to me something that well known would slip though the cracks in its entirety.

 

[2001 Productions]

I bought my copy with the DVD set.

Me too.

I agree with everything Soderbergh said. Of course he didn't present a solution, because there is no solution, per se. Audiences vote with their ticket purchases. And the vast majority of moviegoers who actually make the effort to attend a theater have demonstrated that they want big, blockbuster genre pictures. The studios are huge corporations and are operated accordingly. They are beholden to shareholders.

If audiences ever tire of watching the same shit over and over and over, perhaps someday the pendulum will swing back toward more "adult" fare. But I'm not holding my breath.

The Kubrick situation isn't really a fair comparison. Kubrick was one-of-a-kind. His films, while controversial and expensive, had staying power and lent an air of dignity to Warner Bros., even if they took a while to make their money back. Few (if any) filmmakers in history have enjoyed that kind of studio support. Woody Allen does, to an extent, though his movies are much cheaper to produce.

And Soderbergh himself is also able to do the kinds of films he does on the basis of his reputation, and his ability to attract top-tier talent.

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

On one hand he decries the nature of the business and on the other he defends as his inherent right as a film-maker to people's money. Hypocritical at best, disingenuous at worst.

The two are entirely unrelated. He never says that making a business of making films is a bad thing - just that the current state of the industry is unbalanced because the business side of it is completely drowning out the filmmaking side. He's certainly not calling for an elimination of that business side, in fact he actually does suggest an alternative business approach for a studio - focus on nurturing a pool of talent with a focus on long-term aggregate profitability rather than the current short-term, 'safe' blockbuster mentality.

 

[DDK]

The two are entirely unrelated. He never says that making a business of making films is a bad thing - just that the current state of the industry is unbalanced because the business side of it is completely drowning out the filmmaking side. He's certainly not calling for an elimination of that business side, in fact he actually does suggest an alternative business approach for a studio - focus on nurturing a pool of talent with a focus on long-term aggregate profitability rather than the current short-term, 'safe' blockbuster mentality.

Of course they're related.

The distribution models he would like to enforce and retain are entirely rooted in the mentality he's supposedly fighting against. Regional coding isn't about quality, it's entirely about controlling markets and staggering releases. BluRay pricing is outrageously high and is still based off a business and distribution model from before there were even cassette tapes. He would keep all of that, a system that is designed to milk profits, and yet complains that the studios are making too much money. All he wants is a bigger slice of the pie and the ability to make whatever he wants to make, however he wants to make. Sorry bub, the world doesn't work like that.

He has an estimated net worth of $40 million. He's made a fortune and a career off of the very business model he's complaining about. And he hasn't done a damn thing to change it and even says he doesn't want to.

What's more, where are the stats? It's all supposition. Indie film-making has NEVER been as big as it is now. Hell, many people say that indie is dead solely because it's been taken over by the big studios. So it's not dead, it's thriving, it's just that the big studios are making money from it now.

It's all just blow-hard rhetoric from a multi-millionaire who can get just about any gig he wants to, wherever he wants to, and he's crying that nobody respects his artistic integrity even though he sold out years ago. He has more than enough capital, more than enough ability, more than enough contacts and people that he could make his own studio and use alternative distribution methods to bypass the big studios and do things exactly the way he wants to and still make mega-profits. Only he doesn't want that, he just wants to complain about the status quo while maintaining the status quo.

 

[David.rhsc]

Me too.

I agree with everything Soderbergh said. Of course he didn't present a solution, because there is no solution, per se. Audiences vote with their ticket purchases. And the vast majority of moviegoers who actually make the effort to attend a theater have demonstrated that they want big, blockbuster genre pictures. The studios are huge corporations and are operated accordingly. They are beholden to shareholders.

If audiences ever tire of watching the same shit over and over and over, perhaps someday the pendulum will swing back toward more "adult" fare. But I'm not holding my breath.

That is the other half of the problem. I'd like to think that if more "cinema" (to borrow Soderbergh's definition) were given proper production and marketing budgets (and the same "star power" as blockbusters) that the audience would come. Maybe that's just not to be.

The Kubrick situation isn't really a fair comparison. Kubrick was one-of-a-kind. His films, while controversial and expensive, had staying power and lent an air of dignity to Warner Bros., even if they took a while to make their money back. Few (if any) filmmakers in history have enjoyed that kind of studio support. Woody Allen does, to an extent, though his movies are much cheaper to produce.

Well, I'm not really trying to compare film makers here, because as you say, that's unfair in this case. The core concept is the salient point though. What Soderbergh describes is plucking key talent and essentially give them the same creative and budgetary freedom that Kubrick enjoyed. Without that kind of support and creative freedom, it's hard to see how hollywood will ever stop riding the Genre Train to Remake Town.

 

[Jack Lynt]

And part of the reality that's going on with the vote with your dollars thing, I think, is the fact that, at least anecdotally, people, family, friends, and acquaintances often say that if they're going to spend the big bucks and take the time and make the effort to go to a show in the theater, then they want to make it a spectacle --they want to really "utilize" their big screen experience by seeing a film, that is a specticale of some kind, that really benefits from the big screen viewing...and the cost of admission.

Dramas and the more arthouse or different stuff they can wait to see on their "small" screens at home.

And the truth is, while I didn't used to feel that way, since money and time don't grow on trees, I kinda lean toward that these days too.

So it's not necessarily that all of us don't care about supporting those "smaller" efforts or wouldn't like to spend more time and money seeing the non-tent poles as well. Maybe it often comes down to management of personal time and funds, not indifference.

Just another ingredient in the soup, I think.

 

[DDK]

Just another ingredient in the soup, I think.

This is partly what I was referring to by saying he wants to stick to an outdated paradigm of distribution. Netflix, iTunes, YouTube are all paving the way towards a new paradigm of distribution that organisations like the MPAA and RIAA are spending literally billions of dollars trying to fight against instead of embracing and using to their advantage, all because they want to cling to the status quo and are scared of change and a loss of control.

The future isn't about maximising profits on every sale. It's about microtransactions on larger volumes through greater market penetration. The old business model wants to make a large percentage off a limited volume whereas the new paradigm will be about making a small percentage off of a large volume. Breaking down regional divides and border restrictions, eliminating DRM and the mentality behind SOPA/PIPA/CISPA and every version of them that has come before, and embracing new methods of reaching larger markets through digital distribution and consumption via a greater range of devices.

Pirating thrives not because people want to steal but because the restrictions and pricing and distribution that is in place is felt to be unfair and unreasonable as the trend shifts away from physical copies to digital media. If people like Soderbergh really want to change things, then they will charge a reasonable amount for their movies, put it up on a fast digital distribution platform like iTunes or Netflix, and allow it to be accessed easily from anywhere there is an internet broadband connection and a device that can present it. Instead of charging $30 per movie on BluRay a month after it comes out in the cinemas and having one person buy it for every 1,000 that downloads it illegally, they could put it out immediately and charge $1 for it and get 1,000 people downloading it legally for every one person who gets it illegally.

People will still go to cinemas to see movies, it's just that what they see and the experience that they get on going will have to evolve and adapt to the new market. Higher quality screens, better seating, cheaper candy. Cinema-going will be more about the experience than it was in the past. Ironically, this will make it lean towards what it was originally. The dying model of the cinema is all about getting the crowds in whereas the new model will be more about making the experience worth the price-tag.

 

[jax_rox]

Dramas and the more arthouse or different stuff they can wait to see on their "small" screens at home.

I think this is a large part of it.

When tickets are $20each +$1 per pair of 3D glasses, + candybar. You're generally seeing a movie with at least one other person, if not a whole family - a trip to a movie can quite quickly add up in cost.
When it comes down to it - if you have the choice between The Hobbit or the new Star Trek film, are you going to see that, or are you going to see (for the same price, perhaps less $1-2 for 3D glasses) the new foreign film Rust and Bone, or even a film like 'Performance'?

Indie films, and smaller drama pieces, foreign films and the like are not going to be too much of a different experience whether you pay $20 for the ticket, or rent the movie for $6 at a DVD shop, perhaps $5 online in a month. And they're not the sort of movies that your friends will be talking about around the water cooler or playground (ie: did you hear any non-film folk say 'hey man, did you catch Beasts of the Southern Wild over the weekend'?)

But you will pay for the big movies. The tent-poles. Our local real IMAX cinema charges $45(!) for Hollywood IMAX movies like Star Trek or The Hobbit. But people will pay for it. There are those who don't even know films like Rust and Bone and Performance exist, let alone that they're currently playing in cinemas.

But whose fault is it?

The old business model wants to make a large percentage off a limited volume whereas the new paradigm will be about making a small percentage off of a large volume.

Pirating thrives not because people want to steal but because the restrictions and pricing and distribution that is in place is felt to be unfair and unreasonable as the trend shifts away from physical copies to digital media.
Instead of charging $30 per movie on BluRay a month after it comes out in the cinemas and having one person buy it for every 1,000 that downloads it illegally, they could put it out immediately and charge $1 for it and get 1,000 people downloading it legally for every one person who gets it illegally.

That's all well and good, but what is a fair price? Do we charge $1 per film? Do we now need to sell hundreds of thousands more copies than we used to to make the same amount of money?
You're assuming that a film's audience isn't finite. There's an assumption being made that if films were cheaper, then many more people would go see it. Indeed, perhaps some would. But enough to justify a dramatic price drop?

Let's say 10,000 people download a movie. 5,000 buy it for $30.
You decide to change things up and sell it for $1. That same 15,000 people will still download/buy the film. Except, instead of making the $150,000 off the 5,000 Blu-Ray purchases, you're making $15,000 off the 15,000 $1 purchases. I don't really see the logic in it - the same amount of people see your film, and you make 10% of what you would have made.

The dying model of the cinema is all about getting the crowds in whereas the new model will be more about making the experience worth the price-tag.

I've covered this in past topics - I agree with you, the 'experience' of cinema is hardly worth the price tag at a lot of cinemas these days.

 

[DDK]

Let's say 10,000 people download a movie. 5,000 buy it for $30.
You decide to change things up and sell it for $1. That same 15,000 people will still download/buy the film. Except, instead of making the $150,000 off the 5,000 Blu-Ray purchases, you're making $15,000 off the 15,000 $1 purchases. I don't really see the logic in it - the same amount of people see your film, and you make 10% of what you would have made.

Do you know what the most torrented show on the internet is these days?

Game of Thrones.

And yet, it's still hugely successful and making HBO tons of money. Literally millions of people are not paying for it and getting it illegally just hours after each episode airs. HBO is pretty expensive and very restrictive. But what if they could access those millions of people and charge less per episode? Instead of reaching a small market through their subscription cable service, they suddenly reach the entire world, instantly. Millions of sales instead of just hundreds of thousands.

That's why they're moving to HBO GO. This is why Netflix is becoming the largest provider of online digitally distributed content in the world. It's why Warner Bros. have pulled all their content from Netflix and are now trying to compete with them through their own online service.

The big companies have combatted piracy on the assumption that people are stealing because it's free. But most people just want easy to access and reasonably priced content. What constitutes reasonably priced will be a matter for the market to decide, but what it isn't is what the current pricing and distribution scheme is, because people are pirating instead of paying. Netflix has proven this by recently showcasing data garnered from ISP's where torrent traffic has dropped massively in direct proportion to Netflix uptake in those areas where Netflix recently expanded to.

Soderbergh is just like all the people he's complaining about. He wants to make more money off less volume and he wants to restrict and control people's access. Supporting the current paradigm and blaming everyone else for stealing doesn't help his cause. Providing content in a manner that the market demands rather than trying to cling to outdated business methods will give content producers far more freedom and studios far less power. When anyone can create quality content and distribute it at a profit without kowtowing to corporate demands, the market will expand exponentially and diversity of content will be the new requirement rather than the outlier.

If Soderbergh really cared about artistic integrity and new talent, he'd recognise that things are changing and work towards empowering content producers towards those ends, not bulwarking and blaming the consumer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h2dF-IsH0Ihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMj_P_6H69g

 

[jax_rox]

And yet, it's still hugely successful and making HBO tons of money. Literally millions of people are not paying for it and getting it illegally just hours after each episode airs. HBO is pretty expensive and very restrictive. But what if they could access those millions of people and charge less per episode? Instead of reaching a small market through their subscription cable service, they suddenly reach the entire world, instantly. Millions of sales instead of just hundreds of thousands.

That's why they're moving to HBO GO

That's all well and good, and I agree with this to an extent, but it's very different to the way movies and movie distribution works.

The big companies have combatted piracy on the assumption that people are stealing because it's free. But most people just want easy to access and reasonably priced content.

I'm tempted to agree with you, but you can't denounce an assumption, and then make an assumption yourself. There's too many assumptions here How many people is 'most' people? How you you know, conclusively, that that's what they want?

What constitutes reasonably priced will be a matter for the market to decide, but what it isn't is what the current pricing and distribution scheme is, because people are pirating instead of paying.

This gets back to my argument from before - you can sell things cheaper, but if you sell it cheaper, then you have to sell a lot more, just to make the same amount of money. Using my earlier example, if you sold a movie to those 15,000 people for $10 each, then you'd make the same kind of money. But that's assuming every single one of those people wanted to see the movie enough to want to pay $10 for it. As it is, whilst I'm sure they'd download/purchase it for $1, there's still going to be those who would rather not spend $10, and would instead rather download it for free.

 

[Cracker Funk]

Ahhh, the sky is falling!!!

Oh, wait. Actually, the Hollywood system continues to churn out just as many awesome movies as it ever has, both indie and studio.

By the way, what world is Soderbergh living in, in which he thinks that fewer "action/sci-fi/fantasy" films are being made each year? WHAT?! We're in the golden-fucking-age of sci-fi!!!

Seriously, I really enjoyed Soderbergh's latest film, but he needs to chill out. All is well.

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

He would keep all of that, a system that is designed to milk profits, and yet complains that the studios are making too much money.

You're making a pretty big leap from his offhand comment that "theft is a big problem" to an assumption that he wants to keep all those technologies and approaches - those aren't the only ways to combat piracy.

He's made a fortune and a career off of the very business model he's complaining about. And he hasn't done a damn thing to change it and even says he doesn't want to.

You're clearly not familiar with the day-and-date simultaneous theatrical/tv release deal he did a few years back that studio reps were loudly proclaiming would destroy the film industry as we know it? Primarily because it eliminated windows and collapsed the whole staggered release approach, thereby destroying the "system that is designed to milk profits" as you put it. But it was also intended as a way to reduce the incentive to pirate by making the films more available everywhere at the same time, thereby reducing or eliminating the need for the technological & legal systems that have failed to have any impact.

Luckily for them, his plot failed and the movie industry wasn't destroyed - but he tried, when nobody else with his level of influence was willing to, and saying he hasn't done anything to change things suggests you just aren't really aware of what he actually has done.

He has more than enough capital, more than enough ability, more than enough contacts and people that he could make his own studio and use alternative distribution methods to bypass the big studios and do things exactly the way he wants to and still make mega-profits. Only he doesn't want that, he just wants to complain about the status quo while maintaining the status quo.

Studio 8 was one attempt, day-and-date was another. He's been trying to do what you're describing for at least the past decade. Why hasn't it worked? Probably for the very reasons he explained in his speech - it now costs a minimum of $30 million just to market a single mainstream film. It's pretty hard to step up and play at the same table with the big studios when that's the ante.

What's more, where are the stats? It's all supposition. Indie film-making has NEVER been as big as it is now. Hell, many people say that indie is dead solely because it's been taken over by the big studios. So it's not dead, it's thriving, it's just that the big studios are making money from it now.

Did you actually read or listen to his speech at all? He quoted quite a few relevant stats, like...

10% drop in theatrical admissions over the past decade. 100% increase in indie films released theatrically in that time, and a 28% drop in studio films. Yet the studio profit share has increased from 69% to 76% during that period.

So yes - there's more independent films being released than ever before. Hard to call that 'thriving' though when they're making less and less money because they're all competing for a dwindling share of the profits of a shrinking audience. And that's just the one's that actually get theatrical distribution... thousands more don't even get that each year. That's not sustainable, other than as a constant churn of failure after failure fed by a steady stream of wide-eyed youngsters who can just barely scrape together the price of a used car to finish their one indie feature that nobody will see before they move on to some unrelated career.

No, he's right. Cinema is dead, or at best thrashing about in it's final death throes. For indies, it's time to stop trying to play the game by the rules of the old guard

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

The big companies have combatted piracy on the assumption that people are stealing because it's free. But most people just want easy to access and reasonably priced content.

Actually, you're making the same mistaken assumption that the big studios do when they calculate things like 'losses' to piracy. Just because a million people download a film illegally, doesn't mean there's a million potential sales lost - no matter what the price. There's a huge psychological gulf between free and any price. You can drop the price as low as you want and you still won't convert the majority of those downloads to sales.

And as jax pointed out - dropping the price only results in losing money if you've already hit the limits of your paying market. The problem with that, of course, is that to expand that paying market is very expensive - that's where the $30+ million marketing budgets come into play.

The trick is to find the balance point between price & audience size - and then simply accept that the continued piracy (which will likely still constitute the majority of your audience) is free marketing that hopefully expands the size of your paying audience down the line.

Unfortunately the reality of this situation means many films just won't get made. The combination of maximum potential audience size and the true "reasonable price" for the film don't add up to enough to fund the film, or expend a significant marketing budget on it - at least in the current state of things where every film has to stand alone as a blockbuster hit to justify it's existence. And that means that there may not be a "down the line" for filmmakers whose work doesn't immediately provide a big return, so there's no way to take advantage of the marketing aspects of piracy and grow an audience over time.