what happens if SOPA passes?

Things Exploding II

it's a shame they had to piss all over things exploding by making such an unworthy sequel.

looking for The Beach Boys' L.A. Light Album

found this on rapidshare via a filestube search, fwiw

Also worth bearing in mind, if i'm the CEO of Sony or Universal, i'd be thinking "a vast percentage of my revenue is reliant on two services (iTunes and Spotify) that pay me next to nothing and are, ultimately, looking to replace me in the future:". If they think the adele.rar problem has been solved, i'm sure they're going to look into the feasibility of taking all their music off those services and providing their own, in-house replacements.

they did try that more than a few times about 10 years ago as i recall, and it got them nowhere.

Yeah, something is still there but afaik not enough people have been using it.

Hopefully even they understand that a common shopfront/cloud/whatever is the only way to make it work.

The one they had before was dreadful, though. They'll have learned lessons. The technology has developed as well. At the very least, they're in a much stronger position to negotiate on price - driving up costs to the end user.

Book publishers are terrified of Apple / Amazon and the idea of direct-to-consumer sales. It's not such a huge issue with music at the moment but it might be in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwjy6IUaqUc

All I can say is that your typical 30-second commercial in the year 2012 tends to be more impressive visually than the bulk of movies that were made even 20 years ago. Costs have to go down.

found this on rapidshare via a filestube search, fwiw

Hmmm, I'll look again tonight, but I found some rapidshare links in the same way, but they were all dead.

tons of results for it on $1$k

I hate to burst all of your bubbles, but most moviegoers want to see Things Exploding II, not Uncle Banh Mi Who Can Remember Past Lunch. Things Exploding II is what's being pirated en masse, and it's what studios are arguably losing money on due to piracy. If you don't care, that's fine, but let's not confuse taste with economics.

Hurting 2 otm

I haven't used s1sk in forever.

i think the point is that the $200m blockbuster will probably go away in 10 years (or be made for much less), while there will always be decent-to-great movies made in the $2-20m range?

i mean if widespread piracy is going to stop Avatar II or Bad Boys III from getting made, who really suffers there

We all suffer if Bad Boys III never gets made.

well people who work in certain industries in hollywood that depend on high budgets (special effects, etc.) suffer

Americans will forget the blockbusters of yore as they come to better appreciate the depth and poignance of George Clooney midlife crisis pictures.

it's not really fair to say that with DYI electronics people could make avatar or even j. edgar. in fact it's wrong. you can make a reasonably nice-looking movie for cheaper than ever before. but not one with big sets, big stars, extras, fancy CGI, etc.

Consumer-level 3D packages are pretty damn powerful. Blender -- which is open source and completely free -- has actually been used to make entirely CGI movies. All it takes is some training and the willingness to wait for renders.

...and the willingness to wait for renders

this eliminates a good chunk of the population.

A good chunk of the population probably wouldn't decide to make a CGI movie from the get-go.

I get stuck on this same point in re music a lot, and it goes even moreso for movies -- there is a lot more to creating a film (or an album) than the technology used to make it. Yes, maybe there are cheap cameras and cheap CGI programs that do what expensive ones used to, but where are you going to get top quality cinematographers? Where are you going to get storyboard artists and programmers and trained actors and all that sort of thing? Where are you going to find the time it makes to create something really good, polished, etc.? How do you imagine everyone involved feeding and clothing themselves while working on a film full-time? Or do you think great films will be made in spare time by people with day jobs? And how do you expect these films to be brought to market? I keep waiting for there to be a single great DIY film that reaches a large audience solely through word of mouth, with no publicity, no marketing, etc.

that's not gonna happen as long as they're competiting with movies w/ $100 million marketing budgets and there's one theater in town

and, when a DIY film does get some word-of-mouth traction, it ends up w/ a marketing budget

reaches a large audience solely through word of mouth, with no publicity, no marketing, etc.

I don't see how this is possible. Maybe through the internet something like that could happen in a decade or so, but marketing is pretty much everything in the world of movies.

I haven't really seen a full-length film but I've seen lots of short films (anywhere from a few mins to half an hour) made by competent people, technically good-looking, good-sounding, inventive with camera work and cuts, storyline, etc. All made for exactly 0 dollars.

Without a doubt having professional experience is a huge boon to such a project, but natural talent and inclination counts for something too.

I haven't really seen a full-length DIY film

Hurting its not like movies are going to suddenly gross $0 on opening weekend

And if they do, and the entire movie system collapses, DIY filmmakers can hire the top quality cinematographers/storyboard artists/actors/etc at super low rates. They'll be looking for work.

Birdemic was made for only $10,000 - how can these people complain?

And if they do, and the entire movie system collapses, DIY filmmakers can hire the top quality cinematographers/storyboard artists/actors/etc at super low rates. They'll be looking for work.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, January 25, 2012 11:18 AM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well that's something to cheer... /sarcasm

I hate to burst all of your bubbles, but most moviegoers want to see Things Exploding II, not Uncle Banh Mi Who Can Remember Past Lunch. Things Exploding II is what's being pirated en masse, and it's what studios are arguably losing money on due to piracy. If you don't care, that's fine, but let's not confuse taste with economics.

no bubbles were burst over here imo

All made for exactly 0 dollars.

nothing is made for 0 dollars fyi

what about love

also studios aren't losing money so much as they are simply making less. the "loss" of hypothetical, potential sales isn't the same thing as theft, and the fact that copyright law (and CW) elides that distinction is deeply problematic

what about love

http://www.grammy.com/files/imagecache/photo_gallery_full_size_image/news/heart_5.jpg?1316032808

Also, what Shakey said. If nothing else, "time spent doing love/vanity project X" is "time not spent earning $$$ doing something else."

also studios aren't losing money so much as they are simply making less. the "loss" of hypothetical, potential sales isn't the same thing as theft, and the fact that copyright law (and CW) elides that distinction is deeply problematic

― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Wednesday, January 25, 2012 2:21 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't think copyright law really "elides that distinction." There's a reason it's called "infringement" and not "theft," -- you're not stealing, you're infringing on a private legal right. I agree that illegal downloads:lost sales is not a 1:1 ratio, but this avoids the fact that it's clearly not a 1:0 ratio either.

Cinema attendance is not showing any signs of dying anywhere in the world afaik

xp: ha I was going to say, if there is one venue that you can usually count on to be irritatingly precise and pedantic in its use of language, it's the field of law

Also marketing is how you stand out from the pack, whatever the pack is, so $0 marketing is silly unless you're lottery-level lucky xp

the accounting is further vexed by the fact that some illegal downloads actually lead to sales (discovering a new artist) and that "sales" is vaguely defined (did a DL prevent a DVD sale or a movie ticket sale?)

Cinema attendance is not showing any signs of dying anywhere in the world afaik

cinema attendance has been declining for years

I really should ask you before stating any revenue facts

digital reproduction has made the whole ontology of content/copyright so ~weird~ that I think that the solution will have to be a wholesale revision on what copyright really means, and whether it's even useful

fucking otm

/Cinema attendance is not showing any signs of dying anywhere in the world afaik/

cinema attendance has been declining for years

and DVD sales have been booming, yes? like isn't that how studios make their money now?

imo copyright has to exist, but in its current form it's being exploited by too many opportunists xp

and DVD sales have been booming, yes? like isn't that how studios make their money now?

― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Thursday, 26 January 2012 06:54 (14 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Profits are certainly healthy, I've read more times than I can count that Hollywood had its highest grossing year ever.

as far as we know, for the foreseeable future people will pay for 'the experience' of seeing something in a theater. perhaps it's a little hard to judge how much they value that experience, because if you want to see avatar II the week it comes out, you don't have the choice to rent it or see it in theaters. but even outside of the short-term exclusivity thing, people do seem to be willing to pay a certain premium for the theater-experience.

hollywood always has its highest grossing year ever cause they don't adjust for inflation iirc

not 'always' but it's not strange for numbers to get bigger over time in a country w/ population growth and any amount of inflation