YOUNGER FOLK STILL WANT TO EMBRACE FILM

[Jon O'Brien]

18 hours ago, Simon Wyss said:

I’d rather look at film images from Ukraine made with a spring driven Eyemo, even a few days later, than what’s delivered today along the electronic chain. One cameraperson who can keep the camera on a tripod, a monopod, placed on something, and who can set focus. Today we haven’t even lip-synch reports on the telly, from TV stations where there should be technicians. It’s not about fake news, it’s nothing useful at all.

A lot of stuff getting onto the tv screen lately is pretty poor quality. Contrasty, poorly lit, cheap looking 'video-y' stuff. Who's shooting the stuff on tv lately and what cameras and other gear are they using?

Looks like video shot on a pretty small camcorder, by the nephew or niece of the director or tv station boss or somebody like that.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Jon O'Brien

[Tyler Purcell]

1 hour ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Ideally I'd love to see some more dedicated celluloid theatres in Australia.

Yea it's a big problem in Australia.

[Robert Hart]

John O'Brien. Much made-for-streaming content seems to have become audio-visual fillbelly built down to a price.

On-line streaming has been an opportunity for some worthy low budget projects to find an audience. People are enabled to view non-mainstream pieces which would otherwise not be accessible. That was what I liked about the old VHS rentals.

The 3D cinema experience was wonderful but died because the beancounters decided to cheat, shoot 2D, tart the vision up in post as ersatz 3D and charge the same premium for it. People knew when they were being got at and voted with their feet. Carboard cutout vision in layerform is fine for live wayan sukit or multiplane optical animation but as a 3D experience???

I have discovered that increasingly, I can anticipate the very next words of reply in dialogue in streaming shows. Cost-driven handheld shortcut camera stuff tends to take me out of the story.

I mean how long does it really take to set up a tripod for a car arrival, then pan follow the human to the house entry without heaving and breathing of the camera operator? That's just plain lazy timesaving and may be cost saving by elimination of a camera assistant.

When the humble public is paying for the exhibition equipment and the means of getting it from the vendor to viewer, sooner or later the same humble public is going to sense it is being dudded. 

I think over a longer term, the viewing public will tire of content being a few high quality anchors spotted through an inventory of lesser pieces and only available exclusively within that streaming channel. They will also tire of having to pay for multiple memberships just to get access to the anchor pieces, say "why bother" and take the game off the table.

The "discretionary spend" is also diminishing. Netflix is discovering this as no doubt so are the other streaming providers. Netflix's scheme of a discount service studded with ad-breaks could be a foot-shot. No one really wants to pay subscription just to watch ads when streaming providers decide to generate some more income. 

When ad-breaks become established in the accepted business plan, even more folk will churn their memberships to cherrypick the anchor pieces or bail entirely and just play with their computer games. Australia's SBS free on-line streaming service offers a good line-up of worthwhile non-mainstream product and one can live with the ad-breaks.

I am surprised that the pay-for-streaming services have not lobbied parliament to have SBS streaming shut down already. Maybe they have tried or soon will. 

I wonder what the next big thing will be? So long as we are not running around clubs in hand as gangs clad in cockrags, possumskin clocks and ho-che-min sandals following WW4 or climate catastrophe, it will be exciting to see what evolves in the future of audio-visual entertainment..

Edited September 1, 2022 by Robert Hart
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