You’d think with all the collapse in the “Film Business” we’d have a whole lot more experimenting going on. Or at the very least the encouragement for experimentation. Why is it that everyone wants to keep doing it “business as usual”. It’s broken! Those days are over! The sky has fallen! Dust yourself off and let’s begin something new! Stop sniveling.
It is a different business now than what it used to be. There is no U.S. acquisition market for films, even if the movies are good. Library value as an asset is a thing of the past (or at least libraries being something you could base easily predictable cash flow or resale on is over). People don’t want to pay to see movies — unless they are the sort of culture (including niche culture) unifying event film. It is truly hard to get people’s attention when they are overwhelmed with the plethora of choices — we are a world of distraction and rapid attention shift. It is even more difficult to get people to talk about good stories, even when more are told and made than ever before. Everything requires more work and more thought than it used to.
Which is not to say that the art and industry of film is over. Far from it. It is just a different business.
