Disney+ coming November 12th

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by lawrenceRaider

What do you think of the consolidation of all the various studios into what is currently the Big Four? Good/bad/indifferent?

It's an interesting time in the entertainment business and in discussions with people in nearly every aspect of the industry, it's a bit scary.

You've got old school directors like Scorsese and Coppola slamming "Comic Book Films" as not being "Cinema", there are streaming wars and studio consolidations that will change how business is done (and unfortunately, will also dictate wages, which are going down all over town) and there's technology available (e.g, LED systems on set doubling for Blue & Green Screens) which in theory, should benefit the directors, cinematographers, gaffers and actors but in some ways is doing the opposite.

The Justice Department has been asked, by the studios of course, to reverse what are known as the "Paramount Consent Decrees", which is a Supreme Court decision in 1948 that regulated how movie studios distribute films. That law prevented the Studios like Disney, Warners, Paramount, et al, from owning movie theaters. The ruling made it illegal for the studios engage in "block booking" and circuit dealing (the lone exception being the Disney owned El Capitan Theater, which also doubles as Jimmy Kimmel's studio).

The studios have already begun dealing direct with the customer through streaming, with more to follow (NBC's Peacock and WB's HBO Max are on deck, both of which debut next year). Allowing these same studios to own and operate movie theater chains would be yet another step in the direction of the type of monopolization that ruled Hollywood from the turn of the 20th Century, which was not a good era for 95% of the "talent" in terms of wages, profit participation, etc.

That system was essentially in place for more than half a century and it wasn't until George Lucas, who couldn't find financing or a studio for the original Star Wars movie, took things into his own hands and self-financed, created ILM and Skywalker Sound, kept all of the merchandising and set his own Distribution Rates, that the industry began to change.

I may or may not have talked about the "Race to the Bottom", something that began around 2014 and has become rather egregious in the past two years, but it's become rampant. What that means is that people are so willing to "establish" themselves that they'll work for next to nothing and in many cases "For Free", just to get a gig. Sure, the music isn't composed or produced as well as in the past, commercials look "cheap" because they hired underqualified gaffers (the people that set the "lighting" on sets for each scene), cinematog's and directors because budgets have become so restricted due to these massive takeovers and "budgetary restructuring". The problem with people that engage in that practice is that they've set their own rate, "Cheap or Free", while the rest of us, in some cases, take less work so that we don't "Under Value" our work.

I was talking to a close friend this whose company parent company was purchased 2 years ago but just recently, was acquired by Private Equity Groupy that's buying up studio space from Hollywood to Manhattan Beach to Long Beach, who have zero experience in the entertainment business, and just look at the business as an equitible asset. Netflix has a massive amount of debt yet there's a new 13 story building that's nearly finished which sits across the street from their existing building on Sunset, with another campus set to open next year that's about a mile west and just south of Sunset on Cahuenga & Delongpre. Netflix is notorious for underpaying animators, composers and others in the business while never revealing, to anyone outside of a few in the company, how many times each series or film is streamed, which makes it clearly impossible to pay everyone according to union and guild rates, let alone, us composers.

My apologies for the verbosity so in a word, I would say "Bad".

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

It's an interesting time in the entertainment business and in discussions with people in nearly every aspect of the industry, it's a bit scary.

You've got old school directors like Scorsese and Coppola slamming "Comic Book Films" as not being "Cinema", there are streaming wars and studio consolidations that will change how business is done (and unfortunately, will also dictate wages, which are going down all over town) and there's technology available (e.g, LED systems on set doubling for Blue & Green Screens) which in theory, should benefit the directors, cinematographers, gaffers and actors but in some ways is doing the opposite.

The Justice Department has been asked, by the studios of course, to reverse what are known as the "Paramount Consent Decrees", which is a Supreme Court decision in 1948 that regulated how movie studios distribute films. That law prevented the Studios like Disney, Warners, Paramount, et al, from owning movie theaters. The ruling made it illegal for the studios engage in "block booking" and circuit dealing (the lone exception being the Disney owned El Capitan Theater, which also doubles as Jimmy Kimmel's studio).

The studios have already begun dealing direct with the customer through streaming, with more to follow (NBC's Peacock and WB's HBO Max are on deck, both of which debut next year). Allowing these same studios to own and operate movie theater chains would be yet another step in the direction of the type of monopolization that ruled Hollywood from the turn of the 20th Century, which was not a good era for 95% of the "talent" in terms of wages, profit participation, etc.

That system was essentially in place for more than half a century and it wasn't until George Lucas, who couldn't find financing or a studio for the original Star Wars movie, took things into his own hands and self-financed, created ILM and Skywalker Sound, kept all of the merchandising and set his own Distribution Rates, that the industry began to change.

I may or may not have talked about the "Race to the Bottom", something that began around 2014 and has become rather egregious in the past two years, but it's become rampant. What that means is that people are so willing to "establish" themselves that they'll work for next to nothing and in many cases "For Free", just to get a gig. Sure, the music isn't composed or produced as well as in the past, commercials look "cheap" because they hired underqualified gaffers (the people that set the "lighting" on sets for each scene), cinematog's and directors because budgets have become so restricted due to these massive takeovers and "budgetary restructuring". The problem with people that engage in that practice is that they've set their own rate, "Cheap or Free", while the rest of us, in some cases, take less work so that we don't "Under Value" our work.

I was talking to a close friend this whose company parent company was purchased 2 years ago but just recently, was acquired by Private Equity Groupy that's buying up studio space from Hollywood to Manhattan Beach to Long Beach, who have zero experience in the entertainment business, and just look at the business as an equitible asset. Netflix has a massive amount of debt yet there's a new 13 story building that's nearly finished which sits across the street from their existing building on Sunset, with another campus set to open next year that's about a mile west and just south of Sunset on Cahuenga & Delongpre. Netflix is notorious for underpaying animators, composers and others in the business while never revealing, to anyone outside of a few in the company, how many times each series or film is streamed, which makes it clearly impossible to pay everyone according to union and guild rates, let alone, us composers.

My apologies for the verbosity so in a word, I would say "Bad".

Interesting. I love streaming, but we outside the entertainment industry never really think much about how it has affected the average layman worker inside it. That sucks.


Sometimes i feel like with all these streaming content options, there is too much content. Its over saturated which leads to the 'race to the bottom' which you mentioned.
Lots of great content out there, but a ton of bad content too. Its just filler.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

Interesting. I love streaming, but we outside the entertainment industry never really think much about how it has affected the average layman worker inside it. That sucks.


Sometimes i feel like with all these streaming content options, there is too much content. Its over saturated which leads to the 'race to the bottom' which you mentioned.
Lots of great content out there, but a ton of bad content too. Its just filler.

I've worked for very large corporations my whole career.

All of the consolidation of big companies into a huge conglomeration is really bad for consumers. In tech, Facebook shouldn't have been allowed to buy Instagram and Google allowed to buy Youtube. It's stifled innovation. Made it 10X harder for a start up to get a foot hold. We, the consumers, got the shit end of both of those deals. Just look around, whats happened since we allowed those mergers? They haven't done or launched any big original content or ideas.

Same with the entertainment industry, Allowing all these compaines to merge has only got us super hero movies, serial action movies and any other mass appeal movie. The bigger the corporation get, the less risk they take. Inovation is out the window.

On the surface you'd think that the consumers having more streaming options would benefit the consumer, But, as usual, these huge conglomerations do whats best for them and don't do any invocation. They want all the money from their content exclusively for themselves. In this case, more streaming choices is really bad for the consumer's entertainment dollar due to the exclusivity of the content to specific platforms.

[underEJ]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

It's an interesting time in the entertainment business and in discussions with people in nearly every aspect of the industry, it's a bit scary.

You've got old school directors like Scorsese and Coppola slamming "Comic Book Films" as not being "Cinema", there are streaming wars and studio consolidations that will change how business is done (and unfortunately, will also dictate wages, which are going down all over town) and there's technology available (e.g, LED systems on set doubling for Blue & Green Screens) which in theory, should benefit the directors, cinematographers, gaffers and actors but in some ways is doing the opposite.

The Justice Department has been asked, by the studios of course, to reverse what are known as the "Paramount Consent Decrees", which is a Supreme Court decision in 1948 that regulated how movie studios distribute films. That law prevented the Studios like Disney, Warners, Paramount, et al, from owning movie theaters. The ruling made it illegal for the studios engage in "block booking" and circuit dealing (the lone exception being the Disney owned El Capitan Theater, which also doubles as Jimmy Kimmel's studio).

The studios have already begun dealing direct with the customer through streaming, with more to follow (NBC's Peacock and WB's HBO Max are on deck, both of which debut next year). Allowing these same studios to own and operate movie theater chains would be yet another step in the direction of the type of monopolization that ruled Hollywood from the turn of the 20th Century, which was not a good era for 95% of the "talent" in terms of wages, profit participation, etc.

That system was essentially in place for more than half a century and it wasn't until George Lucas, who couldn't find financing or a studio for the original Star Wars movie, took things into his own hands and self-financed, created ILM and Skywalker Sound, kept all of the merchandising and set his own Distribution Rates, that the industry began to change.

I may or may not have talked about the "Race to the Bottom", something that began around 2014 and has become rather egregious in the past two years, but it's become rampant. What that means is that people are so willing to "establish" themselves that they'll work for next to nothing and in many cases "For Free", just to get a gig. Sure, the music isn't composed or produced as well as in the past, commercials look "cheap" because they hired underqualified gaffers (the people that set the "lighting" on sets for each scene), cinematog's and directors because budgets have become so restricted due to these massive takeovers and "budgetary restructuring". The problem with people that engage in that practice is that they've set their own rate, "Cheap or Free", while the rest of us, in some cases, take less work so that we don't "Under Value" our work.

I was talking to a close friend this whose company parent company was purchased 2 years ago but just recently, was acquired by Private Equity Groupy that's buying up studio space from Hollywood to Manhattan Beach to Long Beach, who have zero experience in the entertainment business, and just look at the business as an equitible asset. Netflix has a massive amount of debt yet there's a new 13 story building that's nearly finished which sits across the street from their existing building on Sunset, with another campus set to open next year that's about a mile west and just south of Sunset on Cahuenga & Delongpre. Netflix is notorious for underpaying animators, composers and others in the business while never revealing, to anyone outside of a few in the company, how many times each series or film is streamed, which makes it clearly impossible to pay everyone according to union and guild rates, let alone, us composers.

My apologies for the verbosity so in a word, I would say "Bad".

****ing great post!!

I will add that there is a shot at some improvement coming if all the guilds back each other on new media renegotiations which will begin next year for the first time since we've seen what a monster has evolved. Some of our artists in the new media arenas are getting severely cheated, but they do it to grab the experience and get good lead credits and then try to parlay that into a lateral move to the traditional arenas. Problem for them is, the list of people waiting for lead opportunities on features is decades long at this point because the volume of production in that space was replaced by new media.

Something has to give.