The Future of filmmaking

C

Crownom

Hello.

I'm a young amateur filmmaker who is thinking of going to the university of film production and is inspired by filmmaking. Nonetheless, when I look to the level of film piracy today, the dropping sales of films, films in cinemas- eveything is being downloaded online for free and some people are complaining that it's hard to break-even. I know that the passion can keep me going and I'll (hopefully) create interesting and amusing movies. The question is: can you imagine/predict the future of the filmmaking industry 5+ years later? How will the money be made if more and more people decide to download movies instead of go to cinemas/buy them. Will it become unprofitable and hardly "survivable" profession?! :huh: What are the opportunities, what to expect? Or is it not a good path to choose.

So, please, let me know what you think/predict, what are your thoughts about it and/or I'm just being paranoic? :lol:
Nevertheless, thanks in advance!
 
I keep going on the faith that people still want to see professionally produced content.
If there is no way to monetize content and make a profit on it going forward then it will go away and people will be stuck watching kitty videos and bad zombie films made in somebody's back yard. I don't think people REALLY want that.
 
Gonzo_Entertainment said:
I keep going on the faith that people still want to see professionally produced content.
If there is no way to monetize content and make a profit on it going forward then it will go away and people will be stuck watching kitty videos and bad zombie films made in somebody's back yard. I don't think people REALLY want that.
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Well that's what will eventually will happen. We can't help it? Can we?
 
I don't believe so, Crownom. Just think of people in general... if that DOES happen (kitty videos and bad zombie films), SOMEONE is going to step up and produce a decent film for all the people thirsty for something with taste.
I'm usually not optimistic or pessimistic, but more along the line of common sense (is there a word for that?). And I sincerely doubt people are going to stop watching decent movies, and willing to pay for them.
 
A friend who is an independent filmmaker in Texas has a production distributed by Maverick and was initially horrified to find a torrent download of that feature. However, he came to terms with it as "Free advertising" and believes it is helping to sell more copies of his production if people like what they see.
 
Here's the thing to remember about piracy and downloading - it's primarily threatening large established industries and empires that were built on exploiting scarcity due to the limits of physical media production and distribution. That scarcity is gone now and their business model is crumbling beneath them. In fact, they aren't really too concerned with the illegal downloading side of things - their biggest fear is that an easy paid download system would destroy the current system of release and format windows that they use to extract the maximum profit from their product, slashing their profit margins.

This doesn't mean there isn't money to be made - it's just not going to be enough to continue propping up the existing players. And if history is any indication they also won't be willing or able to adapt their businesses to the new reality - Kodak is a prime recent example in a different but related industry. New players will come up from below with more efficient business models - I wouldn't be surprised if it's companies like Amazon, Apple, Youtube, Netflix, etc deciding to invest more into producing original content, driven in no small part by the hassles they've faced with licensing content from the big studios. This is likely to mean that there will be more opportunities than there were under the old system, and those opportunities are more likely to be accessible to people who aren't already part of the current system.

So personally I'd say the future still looks bright for young media creators, perhaps brighter than it ever has - but that's because you're wading into a future that hasn't been written yet.
 
I think the Major film companies will continue to make money and films. The question is how this effects the up coming film makers. I think people will need to learn how to adapt to the environment. It may make things harder for struggling film makers to break into payed films. The interesting thing is technology is also giving better equipment to indie film makers to use like the DSLR cameras and sound recorders etc... I think sooner or later better cameras that are real big budget cameras will be available for affordable prices.

I think 3D films is just a fad and probably will go away sooner or later.

I think we may have ipod like players that store all the movies we own and tv shows we own. Then we can arrage them and play them through our tv. Probably download through internet like ipod. I think the Ipods are all ready getting close. But we need HD video and HD audio surround.

In the future if piracy gets too high they could quit selling dvds or blurays and downloads. They could instead do everything Ondemand rental style like Comcast has.
 
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Another thing that should be improved is fighting AGAINST piracy. The government should hire more 'tracking' companies, increase fines and threaten all the uploaders. Why should we go around it if we can directly strike?! Then, the price of Blu-rays, CDs etc. should go down half in price or even more. Then there would equality between the filmmakers and the audience. Right?
 
Crownom said:
Another thing that should be improved is fighting AGAINST piracy. The government should hire more 'tracking' companies, increase fines and threaten all the uploaders. Why should we go around it if we can directly strike?! Then, the price of Blu-rays, CDs etc. should go down half in price or even more. Then there would equality between the filmmakers and the audience. Right?
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Dream on.....If one thing wil happen, is that it wil increase the prices of DVD's And Blu-rays.
 
Anyway, I think it is put few effort to stop it. If it really was a big problem, companies would start tracking you, then would show up to your house, scare you with fines, police etc. and you won't be downloading movies for a while then... :D But I see it is needed to get worse for these things to happen.

Any more opinions?
 
I like to think people who pirate movies wouldn't buy them if it wasn't free to begin with. Like if Facebook started charging a monthly fee, I wouldn't use it anymore.

Also little kids, or commoners pirate movies because they lack the sufficient funds from there parents to purchase the content.

Obviously this response isn't fact, just thoughts. And I agree with ItDonnedOnMe with the business model, great post, I actually didn't think about that. I also noticed Youtube and facebook and other new sites aren't really making money off the content itself but the content is making money for them (ads or likes).

EDIT: Also a nice subliminal message in this post lol. Can you see it?
 
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Lace your current film, which will inevitably be pirated, with promotions of your next film.
Keep the chain going until someone big enough to afford proper attorneys can break the chain.

If you're small time anyway there shouldn't be quite such the adherence to puritanical ways.

Piracy is going to affect how we construct stories.
If this is what the pirate-pricks want, then...
 
rayw said:
Piracy is going to affect how we construct stories.
If this is what the pirate-pricks want, then...
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Yeah... But they're not aware of that. When the movies will be getting more and more boring they will say "such booring movies nowadays, they used to make better ones earlier etc." and they won't do anything about it. Then someone will create a REALLY good film and they will wait for someone to upload it.
What I mean is that they won't notice that they're the cause of this problem.
 
Okay... who says movies are going to get more and more boring? And you have to remember, not EVERYONE is going to pirate the movie.
I think you worry too much man haha.
We can't control the future, and we can't control piracy. So really all we can do is take it one day at a time.
 
Crownom said:
Another thing that should be improved is fighting AGAINST piracy. The government should hire more 'tracking' companies, increase fines and threaten all the uploaders. Why should we go around it if we can directly strike?! Then, the price of Blu-rays, CDs etc. should go down half in price or even more. Then there would equality between the filmmakers and the audience. Right?
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Wrong. I think this is a big part of the problem with discussing the future of media - the big existing players have done a fairly good job convincing the general public that piracy is actually a big problem and that it needs to be dealt with through government action/intervention.

The price of CDs, DVDs, etc isn't high because of piracy. It's high because of a simple business concept - it always costs more to get a new customer than to sell to an existing one. The next logical step in that thought process is that it's more profitable to charge an existing customer more than to try to find a new customer at the current price. Now this has it's logical limits, of course - if you tried to charge $100 for a CD a lot of customers will just stay away. But if you raise the retail price of a CD by $0.50-$1 each year you can steadily extract more profit from the same size market - this is the exact strategy major record companies followed through the late 80's and 90's.

The problem is you can only do that as long as there isn't a comparable alternative that is significantly cheaper. As long as music & movie distribution required a significant investment in production, storage, and delivery infrastructure the only people who could compete in the market were a few big players who could then shape the market in their best interests. Piracy existed, but was a small portion of the overall market so it could be safely ignored.

In the late 90's, when the internet started becoming a practical method to distribute media, suddenly the control those big players had over distribution was threatened. The rise of online music piracy was simply an early indicator that the business model was changing - that there was a simpler, cheaper way of delivering media and customers would choose it when possible. iTunes proved that a new business model could be built on this emerging technology, but this new business model involved much lower margins on individual sales - the opposite of the previous trend towards extracting higher profits per sale. The massive infrastructure that the incumbent players have built up simply cannot be sustained in a high-volume, low-margin market where almost anyone can compete.

They're doing their best to fight this - holding licensing agreements for their existing catalogs of popular material as leverage against the startups. That's only a stalling tactic though, and it's leaving an opening into which new players can step up. Technology has made it cheaper than ever to produce high quality content, and there's a generation coming up who are used to watching original content from independent creators on youtube, etc.

There's a big difference for creators though. The old model was that many people wanted to do it professionally, and very, very few succeeded - but those who did became rich and famous. In this new emerging media world there are likely to be a lot more people who are successful, but for most it will be fairly moderate success. So the question becomes - are you looking to make films so you can be a big, famous hollywood director? Or do you just want to do it because you love making films? If it's the first choice it's as hard as it ever was, if not harder. But if it's the second option there's a better opportunity than ever to do what you love and make a living at it. The one thing that hasn't changed in either case is that it's going to be a lot of hard work, so you need to be sure that it's what you really want to do.
 
Crownom said:
Hello.

I'm a young amateur filmmaker who is thinking of going to the university of film production and is inspired by filmmaking. Nonetheless, when I look to the level of film piracy today, the dropping sales of films, films in cinemas- eveything is being downloaded online for free and some people are complaining that it's hard to break-even. I know that the passion can keep me going and I'll (hopefully) create interesting and amusing movies. The question is: can you imagine/predict the future of the filmmaking industry 5+ years later? How will the money be made if more and more people decide to download movies instead of go to cinemas/buy them. Will it become unprofitable and hardly "survivable" profession?! :huh: What are the opportunities, what to expect? Or is it not a good path to choose.

So, please, let me know what you think/predict, what are your thoughts about it and/or I'm just being paranoic? :lol:
Nevertheless, thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

You think the current situation is bad? You weren't around during the 1980's, when so many people said we were going to die in a nuclear holocaust. And that was nothing compared to the two world wars.

Pursue your dream and pray it will all turn out well.
 
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