I”m in.The thing that few know about me is that I am life long film and history of Hollywood geek.Just finished this book which makes some great connections between the changing dynamics and how creativity has shifted from film to TV as the model has changed from a balanced P & L for each film to basically a creative platform (ala Amazon) to drive interest for a completely different economic model.A bit super geeky on the Sony email leeks for most but to me, like candy.https://www.amazon.com/Big-…
I don’t see how ‘traditional’ Hollywood won’t be decimated by binge worthy Netflix type viewing. It is just such a better addictive delivery system. I know it also creates so much opportunity. But not in the way it has in the past.I just got done watching La Casa De Papel (Money Heist) on Netflix the 2nd season. The 1st season was good the 2nd season was so good I was depressed when it ended. [1] Simultaneously I was watching Casino (DeNiro/Pesci/Stone) as well and honestly as much as I liked that film (I have seen it many times) it didn’t hold my attention like the binge series did. I actually (on Netflix) moved away from movies. Why? Because the same time I put into deciding if I like a series if I do I will end up with 6 to 12 hours of watching vs. only 2 hours for a movie. Then it ends. And if it’s good I want it to go on forever and not end.I recently taped a few old series on DVR. The Fugitive, Night Gallery, Twilight Zone. Started to watch them when exercising. I don’t have a high bar for exercise entertainment. I stopped watching. Wasn’t near entertaining enough my taste had been perverted. And I liked those and thought they were great when growing up.[1] And this has happened before. It’s like losing a girlfriend where you think you will never love again.
There is a new Hollywood. It’s just different.The director driven film and the writer/producer driven episodic series is a huge, endless fascinating discussion that I have with screenwriter friends ongoing.You might like the book.My move to podcasts during exercise has changed my life and my principal way of consuming news, keeping up with crypto, digging deep into movies. Highly recommend it.
I really should. But I still haven’t gotten around to reading Neil Gabler’s “An Empire of Their Own” which my ex wife bought and read when we were married (a long time ago). I always wanted to read that.This is one of the problems with living in nowhereville. There aren’t any people to discuss books like this with.There is a famous (HBO as well as feature film) documentary producer that I have done some work for. He literally said to me ‘so when are you going to come up … we can meet in NYC from shitville where you are at?’. I wasn’t even insulted. Because it’s so true. Funny story when I was having my first phone conversation with him he insisted on copies of all emails that I sent to others so he could review. (I was on the treadmill at the time). I said ‘sorry it’s a creative process and I don’t share that and I won’t do work for you if I have to’. (In so many words). I knew that as a creative type he would understand. And he did. It was funny actually. He backed down. Ok no problem.
Just reread An Empire….Great saga.Many friends today in the film industry were in the audio piece back when I did CREAF and I connected the audio piece of the film world with the game industry.I’ve never let go of those contacts.And there are more than one client in the crypto world connected back into the storytelling profession.I guess like attracts like.
The quality and experience of in-theater viewing is increasingly becoming marginalized by new delivery systems and players. Convenience and price of OTT trumps the aesthetics and richer sensory experience of in-theater for the masses. Theaters, like cable TV, increasingly are under duress, though a cable operator still has last mile control, while theaters have abso no protection. Did you see the financials on Movie Pass? Huge losses. Although a great deal for consumers, I never understood how their biz model could possibly work.
Yup.This particular book is rich in numbers that most came out of the Sony breach.And addresses in great detail the topics you touch and the platforms for creativity.Author has a bunch of podcast interviews to check out.
They just need to return to live music đ
That math, unfortunately, doesnât work anymore. Venues are too small, artists too greedy. Just think how often theaters are at capacity, a rarity, sans the occasional blockbuster. Iâm surprised some artists havenât jumped on the unplugged, storytelling concept like Springsteen on Broad (which is awesome, btw). That math might work in theaters cause itâs just plug nâ play w/ an acoustic. No large crews or crazy roadshow production expenses. It could create incremental theater rev, too. Patrons are willing to pay a premium for intimacy. Wouldnât work for a one night gig, but a weeklong residency (for the right group of artists) could make the math work.
Not that it would get me to go to movies but they should allow you to pay more for better seats. Just like the airlines do. Just like hotels do. In advance or at the theater.Along those lines I will predict that restaurants will do a similar model eventually. You pay for a reservation in advance and/or can pay for a better table. (Like bribe in a nightclub but without the maitre’d)Only reason it’s not done (and it’s probably done somewhere) is that it has no social proof in the restaurant business.
A lot of movie theaters are upgrading to plush, biz class type seating. Some have remote Lazy-boy recliner functionality. They donât charge more, theyâre just trying to upgrade the viewing experience. Makes sense, and unlike airlines, theaters rarely are at full capacity. There are what I consider âbig screen type movies,â but theyâre few and far between these days. Donât understand why theater chains (e.g., Regal, AMC) arenât more aggressive w/ their pricing strategies and rev share agreements w/ studios, given inroads from so many new players. Profits in concessions anyway.
People with money to burn are looking for ways to burn that money and separate themselves from everyone else. As such it makes sense to segment the market and take their money and give them something (either placement or comfort) that others are not getting. Even if you end up comping them (as Casinos do) by claiming that what they are getting is worth more. The way I look at it and I have done quite a bit of work with pricing strategies.
The emergence of the luxury cinema experience, complete with reserved seating and vibrating chairs has brought me back to the movie theater. I love going to the movies now. I take the kids nearly every month.Also, this sounds impossible, but they’re offering food that’s downright yummy (albeit totally unhealthy, ha!).I’d say the sad thing is that it’s getting turned into something that low-income people can’t afford, as a result.
I’d say the sad thing is that it’s getting turned into something that low-income people can’t affordYou know we will differ on this. I will say it’ s not sad because it’s entertainment and it’s not essential in any way to go to the movies. People did just fine before movies even existed. Kids did just fine before there were smartphones. There are other ways to entertain yourself. That’s w/o even getting into what people spend their money on that leaves them with no money for paying for movie tickets. (Vices and poor life choices etc.)Just like if you have money you can have a second home and a nicer car and live in a nicer neighborhood. This, by the way, is the exactly the type of thing that actually drives a great deal of people to get out of poverty. Dreaming of having certain material things and being able to live in a nice place. Now of course many people are disadvantaged and simply aren’t in a position (by no fault of their own) to ever leave where they are at or earn a living that allows them to have nicer things and experiences. But that is a different story entirely. Unfortunately life is not fair in many ways.I could offer one example of both of my cousins whose father died when they were in elementary and middle school. They were raised in a super super small house in an ok but not great section of the city. But all they saw was that we lived in a single family home in a better (but not rich section). They were always jealous of that. But both worked really hard and after going to mediocre colleges (no tuition given mom being poor) ended up in business and did pretty well. Not super rich but enough to retire and live in a great place before retirement age. There is no question in my mind that growing up poor, and not having, and that adversity contributed to their success later in life. And I don’t think that is an unusual story either.
I didn’t know we’d disagree. But I agree: we disagree đ
so in the coming brave new world of decentralised self sovereign data custody what will we each of us do to preserve the digital footprint of who we were and what we did as the first generation on the networked interwebs? will those who come long after we are gone get to know what it was like to grapple with this new technology, or will the realities of this challenging experience be lost forever? how do we preserve it?
.We lose our institutional memory and, thus, our history because the past is written about by people who did not live it.The first draft of history used to be the front page of the great newspapers. Alas, that is no longer a reliable source.The other day I was talking to someone and I mentioned I’d been in business before the advent of the personal computer. He, literally, could not imagine that.I showed him an ancient Toshiba laptop which had 64K for the software and 64K for the files. I compared that to our phones.I recall the introduction of air conditioning in the South. Few people understand that impact. Places like Houston — inhabited for 8 months of the year — became cities. Home ceilings came down to lower heights.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
I had two of those Toshiba’s as well. Small LCD screen at the top iirc. I didn’t even need two I just thought they were cool.Attached (posted these before) punchtape I have circa 1975 from a teletype in high school. Other photo is from a tape drive used in the college computer center (capacity under 100mb entire tape most likely). … https://uploads.disquscdn.c… https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Ha ha, nice. Near the start of my career, I’ve used magnetic cartridge tape drives that were 80 MB, 200 MB or so in capacity (approx.). Once wrote a utility in C on Unix to do multi-volume backup and restore of data across multiple such tapes, when the backup data sizes exceeded one tape drive. Good fun. Had to use Unix ioctl() calls, etc., apart from normal read() / write() calls. A bit gnarly and not well documented, at the time, at least. Required some detective work, but it was fun and also that kind of thing was part of my work as a system engineer then.Edit: The tapes were like the ones shown here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…I think this was the technology before DDS / DAT (Digital Audio Tape) drives, which I also used later on HP Unix machines. They (DATs) had much higher capacities, in the GBs.Wrote a cool shell script on HP-UX machines that had DATs for backup, when one server’s tape drive failed. The script ran on this server and remotely executed the backup on another server whose drive was working, using a combination of commands in a pipeline, involving remsh (remote shell), tar at both ends of the pipeline – i.e. a tar process on one server to backup the files and send the data across the network, and a tar process on the other server (with the working tape drive) to read that same backup data sent across, and write it to the tape drive. Worked well and solved the issue for a few days until the hardware engineer came and replaced the faulty tape drive.
Wow, Houston was not habitable for 4 months a year? Must be pretty hot. Never been there, but a friend who went to Plano, TX, said it was like Bombay in climate.Just checked, in Google:https://www.google.co.in/se…and it shows it is 250-odd miles between the two. So I guess similar weather. Also saw that Houston is near the sea, which may also account for the weather.
.Plano has regular ice storms in the winter. It has only snowed a handful of times ever in Houston. Though there were three sets of flurries this winter. It doesn’t last a day.Houston is humid as Hell.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Houston is like Chennai most of the time: Hot, Humid, and Sweaty. But more like Bombay when it rains.
Welp, you hit on one of my fascinations this week: silent films. Will have to fund this one.When I lived in San Francisco, I never missed the yearly Silent Film Festival. It’s so beautifully curated and produced. There’s nothing like seeing a restored silent film at the Castro with the big Wurlitzer coming up out of the basement to play the soundtrack. http://silentfilm.org/ It starts May 30 this year, for anyone who might be in town then â treat yourself! (Not to mention the crowds that show up in their 1920’s outfits. Good fun.)For me, silent film is both a time machine and an unmatched art form that creates a generous space for the viewer to fill in the empty spaces. Silent films aren’t what a lot of people think. They aren’t stodgy or stuffy or prim. They can be quite raw and bawdy and profoundly human. They were, of course, before the introduction of Standards and Practices.Great choice đ
I’ve seen a few silent films as a kid – Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, etc. Good stuff.>They were, of course, before the introduction of Standards and Practices.You hit on the secret of why they are good đ As a popular ThumsUp [1] ad went:”Nothing official about it.”[1] Indian soft drink.
One of my favorites I saw at the film festival is “The Crowd.” Deeper and more touching than just about any sound film I’ve ever seen. Highly recommended :)I own DVD’s of all of Chaplin. He was a genius. Pretty sure he executed the first photo bomb https://www.youtube.com/wat…Forgive me: I get giddy talking about silent film, ha!
No problem, good stuff, and thanks for sharing.
the big Wurlitzer coming up out of the basement to play the soundtrackThis is one of the key things that makes many reality tv shows work. The music that livens up an otherwise unremarkable dialogue (or enhances it).
I love your Funding Friday posts. I just backed this one they crossed their $35k funding threshold. Yay!
Comments (Archived):
I”m in.The thing that few know about me is that I am life long film and history of Hollywood geek.Just finished this book which makes some great connections between the changing dynamics and how creativity has shifted from film to TV as the model has changed from a balanced P & L for each film to basically a creative platform (ala Amazon) to drive interest for a completely different economic model.A bit super geeky on the Sony email leeks for most but to me, like candy.https://www.amazon.com/Big-…
I don’t see how ‘traditional’ Hollywood won’t be decimated by binge worthy Netflix type viewing. It is just such a better addictive delivery system. I know it also creates so much opportunity. But not in the way it has in the past.I just got done watching La Casa De Papel (Money Heist) on Netflix the 2nd season. The 1st season was good the 2nd season was so good I was depressed when it ended. [1] Simultaneously I was watching Casino (DeNiro/Pesci/Stone) as well and honestly as much as I liked that film (I have seen it many times) it didn’t hold my attention like the binge series did. I actually (on Netflix) moved away from movies. Why? Because the same time I put into deciding if I like a series if I do I will end up with 6 to 12 hours of watching vs. only 2 hours for a movie. Then it ends. And if it’s good I want it to go on forever and not end.I recently taped a few old series on DVR. The Fugitive, Night Gallery, Twilight Zone. Started to watch them when exercising. I don’t have a high bar for exercise entertainment. I stopped watching. Wasn’t near entertaining enough my taste had been perverted. And I liked those and thought they were great when growing up.[1] And this has happened before. It’s like losing a girlfriend where you think you will never love again.
There is a new Hollywood. It’s just different.The director driven film and the writer/producer driven episodic series is a huge, endless fascinating discussion that I have with screenwriter friends ongoing.You might like the book.My move to podcasts during exercise has changed my life and my principal way of consuming news, keeping up with crypto, digging deep into movies. Highly recommend it.
I really should. But I still haven’t gotten around to reading Neil Gabler’s “An Empire of Their Own” which my ex wife bought and read when we were married (a long time ago). I always wanted to read that.This is one of the problems with living in nowhereville. There aren’t any people to discuss books like this with.There is a famous (HBO as well as feature film) documentary producer that I have done some work for. He literally said to me ‘so when are you going to come up … we can meet in NYC from shitville where you are at?’. I wasn’t even insulted. Because it’s so true. Funny story when I was having my first phone conversation with him he insisted on copies of all emails that I sent to others so he could review. (I was on the treadmill at the time). I said ‘sorry it’s a creative process and I don’t share that and I won’t do work for you if I have to’. (In so many words). I knew that as a creative type he would understand. And he did. It was funny actually. He backed down. Ok no problem.
Just reread An Empire….Great saga.Many friends today in the film industry were in the audio piece back when I did CREAF and I connected the audio piece of the film world with the game industry.I’ve never let go of those contacts.And there are more than one client in the crypto world connected back into the storytelling profession.I guess like attracts like.
The quality and experience of in-theater viewing is increasingly becoming marginalized by new delivery systems and players. Convenience and price of OTT trumps the aesthetics and richer sensory experience of in-theater for the masses. Theaters, like cable TV, increasingly are under duress, though a cable operator still has last mile control, while theaters have abso no protection. Did you see the financials on Movie Pass? Huge losses. Although a great deal for consumers, I never understood how their biz model could possibly work.
Yup.This particular book is rich in numbers that most came out of the Sony breach.And addresses in great detail the topics you touch and the platforms for creativity.Author has a bunch of podcast interviews to check out.
They just need to return to live music đ
That math, unfortunately, doesnât work anymore. Venues are too small, artists too greedy. Just think how often theaters are at capacity, a rarity, sans the occasional blockbuster. Iâm surprised some artists havenât jumped on the unplugged, storytelling concept like Springsteen on Broad (which is awesome, btw). That math might work in theaters cause itâs just plug nâ play w/ an acoustic. No large crews or crazy roadshow production expenses. It could create incremental theater rev, too. Patrons are willing to pay a premium for intimacy. Wouldnât work for a one night gig, but a weeklong residency (for the right group of artists) could make the math work.
Not that it would get me to go to movies but they should allow you to pay more for better seats. Just like the airlines do. Just like hotels do. In advance or at the theater.Along those lines I will predict that restaurants will do a similar model eventually. You pay for a reservation in advance and/or can pay for a better table. (Like bribe in a nightclub but without the maitre’d)Only reason it’s not done (and it’s probably done somewhere) is that it has no social proof in the restaurant business.
A lot of movie theaters are upgrading to plush, biz class type seating. Some have remote Lazy-boy recliner functionality. They donât charge more, theyâre just trying to upgrade the viewing experience. Makes sense, and unlike airlines, theaters rarely are at full capacity. There are what I consider âbig screen type movies,â but theyâre few and far between these days. Donât understand why theater chains (e.g., Regal, AMC) arenât more aggressive w/ their pricing strategies and rev share agreements w/ studios, given inroads from so many new players. Profits in concessions anyway.
People with money to burn are looking for ways to burn that money and separate themselves from everyone else. As such it makes sense to segment the market and take their money and give them something (either placement or comfort) that others are not getting. Even if you end up comping them (as Casinos do) by claiming that what they are getting is worth more. The way I look at it and I have done quite a bit of work with pricing strategies.
The emergence of the luxury cinema experience, complete with reserved seating and vibrating chairs has brought me back to the movie theater. I love going to the movies now. I take the kids nearly every month.Also, this sounds impossible, but they’re offering food that’s downright yummy (albeit totally unhealthy, ha!).I’d say the sad thing is that it’s getting turned into something that low-income people can’t afford, as a result.
I’d say the sad thing is that it’s getting turned into something that low-income people can’t affordYou know we will differ on this. I will say it’ s not sad because it’s entertainment and it’s not essential in any way to go to the movies. People did just fine before movies even existed. Kids did just fine before there were smartphones. There are other ways to entertain yourself. That’s w/o even getting into what people spend their money on that leaves them with no money for paying for movie tickets. (Vices and poor life choices etc.)Just like if you have money you can have a second home and a nicer car and live in a nicer neighborhood. This, by the way, is the exactly the type of thing that actually drives a great deal of people to get out of poverty. Dreaming of having certain material things and being able to live in a nice place. Now of course many people are disadvantaged and simply aren’t in a position (by no fault of their own) to ever leave where they are at or earn a living that allows them to have nicer things and experiences. But that is a different story entirely. Unfortunately life is not fair in many ways.I could offer one example of both of my cousins whose father died when they were in elementary and middle school. They were raised in a super super small house in an ok but not great section of the city. But all they saw was that we lived in a single family home in a better (but not rich section). They were always jealous of that. But both worked really hard and after going to mediocre colleges (no tuition given mom being poor) ended up in business and did pretty well. Not super rich but enough to retire and live in a great place before retirement age. There is no question in my mind that growing up poor, and not having, and that adversity contributed to their success later in life. And I don’t think that is an unusual story either.
I didn’t know we’d disagree. But I agree: we disagree đ
so in the coming brave new world of decentralised self sovereign data custody what will we each of us do to preserve the digital footprint of who we were and what we did as the first generation on the networked interwebs? will those who come long after we are gone get to know what it was like to grapple with this new technology, or will the realities of this challenging experience be lost forever? how do we preserve it?
.We lose our institutional memory and, thus, our history because the past is written about by people who did not live it.The first draft of history used to be the front page of the great newspapers. Alas, that is no longer a reliable source.The other day I was talking to someone and I mentioned I’d been in business before the advent of the personal computer. He, literally, could not imagine that.I showed him an ancient Toshiba laptop which had 64K for the software and 64K for the files. I compared that to our phones.I recall the introduction of air conditioning in the South. Few people understand that impact. Places like Houston — inhabited for 8 months of the year — became cities. Home ceilings came down to lower heights.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
I had two of those Toshiba’s as well. Small LCD screen at the top iirc. I didn’t even need two I just thought they were cool.Attached (posted these before) punchtape I have circa 1975 from a teletype in high school. Other photo is from a tape drive used in the college computer center (capacity under 100mb entire tape most likely). … https://uploads.disquscdn.c… https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Ha ha, nice. Near the start of my career, I’ve used magnetic cartridge tape drives that were 80 MB, 200 MB or so in capacity (approx.). Once wrote a utility in C on Unix to do multi-volume backup and restore of data across multiple such tapes, when the backup data sizes exceeded one tape drive. Good fun. Had to use Unix ioctl() calls, etc., apart from normal read() / write() calls. A bit gnarly and not well documented, at the time, at least. Required some detective work, but it was fun and also that kind of thing was part of my work as a system engineer then.Edit: The tapes were like the ones shown here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…I think this was the technology before DDS / DAT (Digital Audio Tape) drives, which I also used later on HP Unix machines. They (DATs) had much higher capacities, in the GBs.Wrote a cool shell script on HP-UX machines that had DATs for backup, when one server’s tape drive failed. The script ran on this server and remotely executed the backup on another server whose drive was working, using a combination of commands in a pipeline, involving remsh (remote shell), tar at both ends of the pipeline – i.e. a tar process on one server to backup the files and send the data across the network, and a tar process on the other server (with the working tape drive) to read that same backup data sent across, and write it to the tape drive. Worked well and solved the issue for a few days until the hardware engineer came and replaced the faulty tape drive.
Wow, Houston was not habitable for 4 months a year? Must be pretty hot. Never been there, but a friend who went to Plano, TX, said it was like Bombay in climate.Just checked, in Google:https://www.google.co.in/se…and it shows it is 250-odd miles between the two. So I guess similar weather. Also saw that Houston is near the sea, which may also account for the weather.
.Plano has regular ice storms in the winter. It has only snowed a handful of times ever in Houston. Though there were three sets of flurries this winter. It doesn’t last a day.Houston is humid as Hell.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Houston is like Chennai most of the time: Hot, Humid, and Sweaty. But more like Bombay when it rains.
Welp, you hit on one of my fascinations this week: silent films. Will have to fund this one.When I lived in San Francisco, I never missed the yearly Silent Film Festival. It’s so beautifully curated and produced. There’s nothing like seeing a restored silent film at the Castro with the big Wurlitzer coming up out of the basement to play the soundtrack. http://silentfilm.org/ It starts May 30 this year, for anyone who might be in town then â treat yourself! (Not to mention the crowds that show up in their 1920’s outfits. Good fun.)For me, silent film is both a time machine and an unmatched art form that creates a generous space for the viewer to fill in the empty spaces. Silent films aren’t what a lot of people think. They aren’t stodgy or stuffy or prim. They can be quite raw and bawdy and profoundly human. They were, of course, before the introduction of Standards and Practices.Great choice đ
I’ve seen a few silent films as a kid – Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, etc. Good stuff.>They were, of course, before the introduction of Standards and Practices.You hit on the secret of why they are good đ As a popular ThumsUp [1] ad went:”Nothing official about it.”[1] Indian soft drink.
One of my favorites I saw at the film festival is “The Crowd.” Deeper and more touching than just about any sound film I’ve ever seen. Highly recommended :)I own DVD’s of all of Chaplin. He was a genius. Pretty sure he executed the first photo bomb https://www.youtube.com/wat…Forgive me: I get giddy talking about silent film, ha!
No problem, good stuff, and thanks for sharing.
the big Wurlitzer coming up out of the basement to play the soundtrackThis is one of the key things that makes many reality tv shows work. The music that livens up an otherwise unremarkable dialogue (or enhances it).
I love your Funding Friday posts. I just backed this one they crossed their $35k funding threshold. Yay!