Cheap brought down an industry

Jon O'Brien · June 12

Video mucked up the whole film industry. Yes, all those digital 'cinema' cameras (haha). "Cinema" ..... yeah, right. And the digital projectors, too.

Filmmakers everywhere became infected by a strange bug. It's called cheap-itis.

Everything now has to be cheap, or it's not a goer. It's not democratic. Or something.

Imagine, if you will, an entire world of classical musicians who decided that cheap plastic violins are the only way to make classical music now. Along with cheap plastic flutes, and cheap plastic drums, and cheap plastic clarinets, cheap plastic double basses. Cheap plastic everything.

Guess what? The orchestras and soloists sounded cheap and plastic. But everyone was happy. Even though the music was .......... not ...very good.

As the guy says of the cooked chicken, in 'Eraserhead': "Big as your fist!"

Filmmakers sold out to cheap. But let us not forget: they did so willingly. They were happy to be the purveyors of a mediocrity that had once been called an art.

Because, you know, it was now ............... cheap!

Hoor--ay!

The audiences faded away.

It was the cheap-itis that did it.

Simon Wyss · June 12

With cinema only the film base may be plastic.

Tyler Purcell · June 12

Actually, Television (now web streaming) killed the cinema.

You can trace all of these issues back to the Japanese camera companies stealing/buying designs from engineers globally to make low-cost video imaging devices. Once the market was flooded with easy to use devices and color TV's, that was kind of the end. Sure the quality wasn't there back in the 80's and 90's, it only took 20 years to get 1080i/60 out of it.

Young people today complain all the time about new technology and how everything we own is disposable, but it was even worse back then. Sure, camcorders were serviceable, but formats were changing every few years, especially in the 80's and 90's; Betamax, VHS, Video 8, Hi-8 soon Laserdisc and then DVD. Television itself also became better with cable and satellite, so there was always something on. Then the final nail in the coffin; the internet.

Once you can be a "self distributor" of content, it's over.

People saw the Canon 5DMKII as just another stills camera, but I saw it as the end. Even though it was a 50Mbps 1080p MPEG, it was the first camera to be low cost enough and easily adapted to PL lenses, with 24/25fps shooting on a big imager. That camera officially democratized cinema for everyone, especially when 1080p was so easy to work with at the time and could be self distributed easily. This opened doors for people who couldn't afford to shoot film or high end digital video, so suddenly the market was flooded with other cameras similar and now, well... here we are.

Democratization is a good thing and bad thing. When everyone can do what everyone else can, then it's way harder to stand out. When everyone is vying for your eyes, then you have to have to make what everyone else is to compete. Proof of how bad it is right now; there are fake film festivals to scam people out of money because everyone is so desperate to get their projects seen by an audience. Many distributors take 99% of the profits and give the filmmakers a hand shake and an Amazon gift card for the filmmakers hard work. Labor is seemingly worthless in this industry unless you're one of the very lucky few who have NOTHING in your life to do but be on set for 16hr days, 365 days a year. This is all because we have democratized everything down to the point where a 14 year old in high school with a cell phone can make cinematic looking images with their friend and using AI, can manipulate their footage to look like a studio film. Ya don't need a script for a 3 minute YouTube video, but the fancier it looks, the more eyes you'll get. The more views, the bigger the channel and if you keep making the same slop, you may make a few dollars on the back end. In a world where creative jobs are disappearing by the 1000's each month, web streaming is really the last bastion for so many filmmakers and it's horrible to see.

Also, the idea that film will save the industry is hogwash. Film will be too expensive for anyone without a 6 figure salary or serious budget very shortly. As cameras get older, parts less available, fewer and fewer young people wanting to work in a shop and learn the trade, the whole thing will die. New cameras will cost too much money due to global inflation and reliability long-term. Rental houses will be the last place you can find good cameras within the next 15 - 20 years. Still cameras are also in trouble, even though we are seeing more techs out there, anything with a built-in meter is expected to be non-serviceable in the coming years. As the price per 36 exposures raises to $20 - $25/roll, the demand will also drop off. People are already complaining about $15/roll and saying they can't afford it. So can you imagine when it goes up $10 bux? New film companies won't change anything, the raw materials required to make film are going up precipitously. The companies can't do anything about it. Heck, the new Wolfsen/OWRO stock's are MORE than Kodak per foot. I imagine if Illford gets into the business as well, they'll probably also charge Kodak's prices.

In the end, the death of the cinema is our own fault. We spent the money to see certain things and they listened. So many good films, never even made it to wide releases globally and many sat on physical media before anyone see's them. As more studio's collapse every year, you see them back pedaling and it won't save them. The independent releasers like A24, can't make up the slack, it's too costly. Many already green-lit projects are being pushed right this second, the money just isn't there outside of the big Hollywood blockbusters with guaranteed box office. Na, the whole thing is collapsing and it's happening so fast, by the time anyone reacts, their cites multiplex will be gone. It's already too late. The retro cinemas like New Bev and Vista here in Hollywood, are basically what will remain. Playing mostly older movies and some first-run stuff. I wish the future was smaller indy movies making a comeback, but I just don't see it. I see full-on collapse of both cinema AND web streaming before anything really changes.

Giray Izcan · June 12

5 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Video mucked up the whole film industry. Yes, all those digital 'cinema' cameras (haha). "Cinema" ..... yeah, right. And the digital projectors, too.

Filmmakers everywhere became infected by a strange bug. It's called cheap-itis.

Everything now has to be cheap, or it's not a goer. It's not democratic. Or something.

Imagine, if you will, an entire world of classical musicians who decided that cheap plastic violins are the only way to make classical music now. Along with cheap plastic flutes, and cheap plastic drums, and cheap plastic clarinets, cheap plastic double basses. Cheap plastic everything.

Guess what? The orchestras and soloists sounded cheap and plastic. But everyone was happy. Even though the music was .......... not ...very good.

As the guy says of the cooked chicken, in 'Eraserhead': "Big as your fist!"

Filmmakers sold out to cheap. But let us not forget: they did so willingly. They were happy to be the purveyors of a mediocrity that had once been called an art.

Because, you know, it was now ............... cheap!

Hoor--ay!

The audiences faded away.

It was the cheap-itis that did it.

I get what you are saying but when it comes down to it, film becomes prohibitively expensive - especially 35 but even 16 is. I wanted to shoot a personal project, a short film, and shooting this 12 pager would have cost 10-15k in film stock related expenses alone in 35 and around 10k for s16. I do not edit in camera or cut corners just to shoot film hence unrealistic low ratios would not be something I want to do. I had been a part of projects with said low ratios and more or less every single one of them suffered from not having enough footage to yield a nice edit.

Aristeidis Tyropolis · June 12

2 hours ago, Giray Izcan said:

I do not edit in camera or cut corners just to shoot film hence unrealistic low ratios would not be something I want to do. I had been a part of projects with said low ratios and more or less every single one of them suffered from not having enough footage to yield a nice edit.

Aki Kaurismäki and many like him have at most a 3:1 ratio. He shoots only film obviously.

Werner Herzog has been yapping about the same for years. Yes, in some scenes you might need more - but, going for coverage all the time is not healthy and reaks of mediocre craftsmanship - plus it's a drag for all involved.

I don't agree with all that doom and gloom, but I acknowledge there are cost issues currently plus the macroeconomic situation.

My prediction is that film sales for stills will continue their meteoric rise and product expansion by other vendors as evident by the sales we see. People clearly want it over many other things. I have personally invested in home scanning and have at this stage reduced my cost in half for stills as I shoot a huge amount.Many, many others are doing the same with mirrorless setups and/or dedicated machines - that market is very robust.

As for motion picture If any productions are pulled I doubt that it's just because of film stock cost.

We've been through this discussion before, we all have our position - I maintain that there's plenty of good to come (globally) in the film world despite the headwinds.

This will be proven I think in Q4 in the Kodak ir sales.

NC400 is in fact cheaper here compared to Kodak.

Aapo Lettinen · June 12

I think the days of narrative hollywood-style filmmaking are pretty much over. It is not looking good for short films either, even indie ones if it is a script trying to imitate Hollywood style stuff or is otherwise unoriginal.

The real issue is that with today's technology and AI nonsense it has become painfully obvious that pretty images don't have any value. Like, at all. Look at those current blockbuster movie trailers. It is all crap. You watch the pretty images standard sound effects nonsense and feel absolutely nothing.

I rarely watch feature films anymore, mainly just short films of under 20 minutes. Most of them are crap too but there is more hope because they don't need to compensate so much to try to attract audience.

Documentaries are still good. And they are the last fortress of resisting AI and other nonsense because people only watch them if the stories and at least most of the materials are real. Even if using AI to visualize something everything else still needs to be real or people would not watch it at all.

Short documentaries funded cleverly, and super artistic short films. Forget the feature length narrative cinema, it only has potential for one good movie a year anymore

Edited June 12 by Aapo Lettinen

Aristeidis Tyropolis · June 12

4 minutes ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

think the days of narrative hollywood-style filmmaking are pretty much over. It is not looking good for short films either, even indie ones if it is a script trying to imitate Hollywood style stuff or is otherwise unoriginal.

The real issue is that with today's technology and AI nonsense it has become painfully obvious that pretty images don't have any value. Like, at all. Look at those current blockbuster movie trailers. It is all crap. You watch the pretty images standard sound effects nonsense and feel absolutely nothing.

I agree - it's sad to see so many livelihoods being turned upside down, but my reading of this is that the downfall started quite a long time before A.I. Ultimately as you said you can't really have "one more polished rom-com" without it being relegated to some streaming bunch of others exactly like that, there's not gonna be a "Something about Mary" any time soon again. Plus the studios are basically averting any type of risk for the most part, bar some small exceptions.

As for the bland feeling it's everywhere, it's difficult for film makers to create a new "Paris, Texas" or a "Stalker" or a "Chungking Express". Not just because of budget but I believe there's a certain kind of numbness permeating people (and filmmakers) that they need to overcome, it's like a self-supporting feedback loop of being afraid to express deeper things - but I still think it's possible and the bold still exist.

I am a huge fan of documentaries as an avid cinephile and viewer but also as part of my ongoing project on 16mm.

There's alot of undercurrent counter culture movements that many times propel the medium forward and I believe we'll get many of those by young people resisting what's happening now with how things are right now, at least that's my positive reading of it.

We are already seeing alot of complaints by non-technical viewers about how things (the grey mush) are lit recently and about the excessive formulaism evident in all blockbuster films.

Jon O'Brien · June 12

I think I got that quote from 'Eraserhead' wrong. Oh well. I pretty much got the spirit of it.

Btw, I'm not personally saying that it's the end for making feature length narrative movies. I still think the industry can recover. I'm describing what happened to the film industry these last few years.

I know some of you who regularly read this site are sick of my film vs digital posts. I promise, I'm just about done with what I have to say on the topic. Maybe this is my last post on it. I felt I wanted to give a final comment on what is the flattest few years ever of the global cinema film industry (that is, movies for theatrical release).

Edited June 12 by Jon O'Brien

Tyler Purcell · June 13

3 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

I know some of you who regularly read this site are sick of my film vs digital posts. I promise, I'm just about done with what I have to say on the topic. Maybe this is my last post on it. I felt I wanted to give a final comment on what is the flattest few years ever of the global cinema film industry (that is, movies for theatrical release).

I spent the entire day at the top lab globally talking to their amazing staff and at the very end of it all, I realized the only reason they are in business is due to the top guys. If they didn't have the Christopher Nolan's and the PTA's, film would be dead.

The reason the smaller labs stay afloat is because everyone else wants to imitate what the top guys do.

Period.

So shoot film whilst ya can.

Karim D. Ghantous · June 13

17 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

The audiences faded away.

It was the cheap-itis that did it.

You're not wrong. But I don't think it's that simple. Awful scripts are a problem. As is recycled IP ad nauseam. I will pay to see Empire Strikes Back in a cinema, but I won't pay to see a new SW film. I don't want it and I don't need it.

I believe that Hollywood has actually forgotten how to make movies. They have the money and the people and the IP, but they don't know what they're doing anymore. It's ironic because the chain is unbroken - it's not as if Hollywood stopped existing for 20 years and then had to restart.

14 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Sure, camcorders were serviceable, but formats were changing every few years, especially in the 80's and 90's; Betamax, VHS, Video 8, Hi-8 soon Laserdisc and then DVD.

That's one reason I loved the '90s - diversity of technology.

7 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

Documentaries are still good. And they are the last fortress of resisting AI and other nonsense because people only watch them if the stories and at least most of the materials are real.

I intend to make at least two documentaries, assuming I can get the money. I'm confident about that. The only thing I can't control is whether or not cinemas think my projects are worthy to be shown.

I also think that the future of cinema is IMAX. Film or digital, it doesn't matter. You can't easily replicate that in your house. The budgets won't have to be huge, either. The format is the effect. Fewer cinemas, all IMAX, showing a diverse range of films intermittently. They will even have intermissions. Films will be shown, they will make way for other titles, and then come back, etc.

Tyler Purcell · June 14

19 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

That's one reason I loved the '90s - diversity of technology.

It was a very cool time to be around.

I remember the flying erase head on Video 8 and Hi-8 being a game changer for home video editing. I really loved my Hi-8 stuff, if DV hadn't opened up the ability to edit non-linearly, I would have stuck with that Hi-8 rig forever.

Jon O'Brien · June 14

21 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

I also think that the future of cinema is IMAX. Film or digital, it doesn't matter. You can't easily replicate that in your house. The budgets won't have to be huge, either. The format is the effect. Fewer cinemas, all IMAX, showing a diverse range of films intermittently. They will even have intermissions. Films will be shown, they will make way for other titles, and then come back, etc.

My wife and I went to see Jaws at an IMAX style huge screen cinema, in Katoomba last year. I thought the screen was going to be too big but actually I enjoyed myself. It was cool. I do prefer a traditional cinema, you know, with the curtain and all that. I used to love the theatricality of the moment before the main feature when the curtains would close briefly as the projectionist put the anamorphic lens on the projector and you could hear the motorised black screen edges move apart as the screen widened for cinemascope, and you knew, wow, the main show was about to start. I must have been a bit of a nerd. But I loved the movies.

Tyler Purcell · June 14

14 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

I do prefer a traditional cinema, you know, with the curtain and all that. I used to love the theatricality of the moment before the main feature when the curtains would close briefly as the projectionist put the anamorphic lens on the projector and you could hear the motorised black screen edges move apart as the screen widened for cinemascope, and you knew, wow, the main show was about to start. I must have been a bit of a nerd. But I loved the movies.

Dang, I never remember a theater even having curtains where I grew up.

I wanna say it wasn't until I was an adult and moved to Los Angeles, that I finally saw a curtain opening and it was the Cinerama Dome. Since then, Quentins theaters both do it and the American Cinematheque tries.

Mark Dunn · June 15

15 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Dang, I never remember a theater even having curtains where I grew up.

I wanna say it wasn't until I was an adult and moved to Los Angeles, that I finally saw a curtain opening and it was the Cinerama Dome. Since then, Quentins theaters both do it and the American Cinematheque tries.

Yeah, probably the Lawrence of Arabia re-release in 1989 at the Odeon Leicester Square. The curtains closing over the 'Intermission' subtitle.

Edited June 15 by Mark Dunn

Jeff Bernstein · June 15

3 hours ago, Mark Dunn said:

Yeah, probably the Lawrence of Arabia re-release in 1989 at the Odeon Leicester Square. The curtains closing over the 'Intermission' subtitle.

Yes, Mark! I, too, saw the Lawrence of Arabia re-release, at the old Century City Mall beside the Twin Towers—a freaky place to fry. Also Empire of the Sun at the Chinese Theater (where someone who only looked like Steven Spielberg stood near the head of the line; and finally, after much hedging, did another man approach him and ask, “Are you Steven Spielberg?”, and the rest of us saw the inquisitor depart abashed); and 2001 in the balcony of the Cinerama Dome. But even the modest Swansea 4 Theater, a complex of four or five dinky auditoriums inside a shopping mall—the Swansea Mall, standing beside my hometown of Somerset, Massachusetts, which faces, over the river, the city where Lizzie Borden performed her murderous work in 1892—had screens with curtains. So sometimes I saw the humorous situation of the show beginning with the celluloid projected onto the rippling curtains, still closed. I hear now the thrilling sound of the curtains opening!

And I recall a humorous recollection by William Friedkin’s editor regarding the Chinese Theater in 1977 : When our trailer faded to black, the curtains closed and opened again, and they kept opening and opening, and you started feeling this huge thing coming over your shoulder overwhelming you, and heard this noise, and went right off into space. It made our film look like this little, amateurish piece of s**t.

Jon O'Brien · June 16

It's been 24 years now, since 'Attack of the Clones.'

It's been 13 years in Australia since Deluxe shut down.

We've been patiently waiting for the new dudes in town, the new crop of filmmakers, with their new toys, to make cinema release feature movies that rival what went before.

Now ........... come on. Enough is enough.

Let's face it.

How much longer do we have to wait for these new people to find their feet in the industry? To make great movies?

Folks, it isn't going to happen. George's dream to revolutionise the film industry hasn't worked. We just got cheap.

Edited June 16 by Jon O'Brien

Geffen Avraham · June 16

Shooting Star Wars on the F900 and F950 was a mistake in my opinion, but I think the late 2000s era of digital cinematography was promising! David Fincher's Viper pictures, Slumdog Millionaire on the SI-2K, Apocalypto on the Genesis were beautiful.

But those cameras required immense skill to use - more than a film camera. Anthony Dod Mantle had to work around the SI-2K's extremely limited dynamic range, but won the Oscar with it - and he deserved it!

The Alexa may have just been too good, that you no longer needed to think before you shoot. Skyfall showed what the Alexa could do, but frankly Deakins could shoot something on a Flip camera and it would still look gorgeous.

Edited June 16 by Geffen Avraham

Jeff Bernstein · June 16

RELAXED THOUGHT. I think I may know somewhat of where the good Jon O’Brien is coming from. Let’s take the new movie Obsession (2026) and compare it to, say, Halloween (1978). Now, there is no one on earth who will assert that Obsession is a more technically proficient film than Halloween. ☛ And that is all the point I wanted to make just here. Back in the day, that is to say, the 1970s, we young ones absorbed culture—in this case, the TECHNICAL ARTISTRY of even low-budget features such as Halloween—through, so to speak, osmosis. Technically, shot-by-shot, Halloween sophisticated its audience. Scrooby, for one, is all the better nowadays for having unconsciously absorbed an atmosphere of “culture” back in the 1970s. ☛ It’s all gone, but Scrooby keeps putting the diamonds on the velvet anyway.

Edited June 16 by Jeff Bernstein

Ross Yeandle · June 16

Unengaging stories, repetition of the same old properties, why would I go to the cinema to see a poorly executed CGI version of Predator or Jurasic Park or Alien or Star Wars or Indiana Jones or Star Trek or Halloween or.....blah blah

Anyway we're doing are bit for 'Ordinary' people who who want to shoot on film.

We now service and restore Arriflex and Bolex cameras at affordable prices.

www.shotonfilm.co.uk.

Keeping film alive.

Aapo Lettinen · June 16

You need to be super original and super nostalgic and traditional but also fresh at the same time.

Everything has been already done trillion times and the golden days of cinema have long been over. Now we are observing small shimmering flashes of light in the darkness, hoping to still see a glimpse of something meaningful every now and then. It is like a requiem for cinema before it is put to eternal sleep and replaced with dull meaningless "content".

The golden days of modern cinema were around 1980 to 2004 or 2005, after that everything went to garbage and the magic started to disappear rapidly. I think the issue was mainly about movies becoming too self aware and too technically competitive "spectacles" with too little humour and way way way too much vfx and virtual characters. It happened before digital revolution but digital made it even worse.

Yes practical effects disappearing was one of the reasons why everything lost its meaning. Scripts have always been bad but at least it was handcrafted garbage in the past and the miniature effects were absolutely adorable 😄 when everything went too serious and made with computers and was only there to create "wow" effect it did not work out anymore. It became painfully obvious that most of the movies really are garbage designed to grab money and run

Jon O'Brien · June 17

15 hours ago, Jeff Bernstein said:

RELAXED THOUGHT. I think I may know somewhat of where the good Jon O’Brien is coming from. Let’s take the new movie Obsession (2026) and compare it to, say, Halloween (1978). Now, there is no one on earth who will assert that Obsession is a more technically proficient film than Halloween. ☛ And that is all the point I wanted to make just here. Back in the day, that is to say, the 1970s, we young ones absorbed culture—in this case, the TECHNICAL ARTISTRY of even low-budget features such as Halloween—through, so to speak, osmosis. Technically, shot-by-shot, Halloween sophisticated its audience. Scrooby, for one, is all the better nowadays for having unconsciously absorbed an atmosphere of “culture” back in the 1970s. ☛ It’s all gone, but Scrooby keeps putting the diamonds on the velvet anyway.

Spot on. Technical artistry by osmosis.

The old tradition was broken by the new way of making films.

There's still some good filmmakers around, but they are thin on the ground. They usually film with traditional tools, using the old technical artistry, or variations on it (like real IMAX).

Jon O'Brien · June 17

11 hours ago, Ross Yeandle said:

Unengaging stories, repetition of the same old properties, why would I go to the cinema to see a poorly executed CGI version of Predator or Jurasic Park or Alien or Star Wars or Indiana Jones or Star Trek or Halloween or.....blah blah

Anyway we're doing are bit for 'Ordinary' people who who want to shoot on film.

We now service and restore Arriflex and Bolex cameras at affordable prices.

www.shotonfilm.co.uk.

Keeping film alive.

Good to know! Thanks.

Tyler Purcell · June 17

21 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

The golden days of modern cinema were around 1980 to 2004 or 2005, after that everything went to garbage and the magic started to disappear rapidly.

I remember going to the cinema quite regularly until the end of film. I'd sometimes go twice a week after work to catch up on stuff I hadn't seen. I remember the inshitification really taking hold in 2008/2009. By 2010, I was going more like once a month because there just wasn't anything worth watching. We lost film projection around the same time. Avatar pushed digital projectors into theaters fast and the bankruptcy at Kodak pushed the theaters to seek alternatives. The theaters I frequented called Arclight, were mostly film. They had Kinoton's and the projection was flawless. When they switched to digital, I felt it was all over for cinema. They were late to adopt, so I kept going until the very end of film.

I'm having a memory lapse on my last normal 35mm screening there, but I do think it was in 2013. At the time if you recall there were a lot of 3D and HFR releases, so several movies I watched were digital simply due to that.

The other thing that happened at the same time, was the introduction of BluRay and HD streaming. I feel that was kinda what forced me to back away too. I had a pretty basic DLP projector and home theater, it was good enough and titles that I was on the fence about, I'd just wait for video release before watching. I just couldn't support digital cinema that was the same quality as my 1080p projector.

Today things have changed dramatically. Arclight is closed. The repertory theaters now also run new-releases on film prints here in Los Angeles. We are seeing some big theaters being renovated for film-only projection in the future. IMAX has done 9 new permanent installs of film projectors in the US. I mean the future of film projection is looking amazing. So its just down to the content and where it's true, I've been going out more often to see film prints of new movies simply to support them, rather than caring much about the movie itself, I have seen some pretty good films I normally wouldn't go out and see due to it. Tho Disclosure Day isn't one of them. 😛

Giray Izcan · June 17

What's wrong with The Disclosure Day? I am planning on seeing that one vut didn't really look into it. I know it's the modern day ET and X-Files mix but I don't know much else about it.