One of the fundamental goals of the !trailers@lemmy.blahaj.zone community is explicitly to help surface small to medium budget films that don’t get the benefit of distribution marketing budgets.
The Red Letter Media guys just gave a glowing review to another one of these, The King Tide, whose trailer I remember posting and thinking “ok, this looks great”.
Quality, intriguing, memorable films are still being made. If you want to see them, you have to put in the work to find them.
I’m glad this article offers a solution, but is it really going to solve anything?
I fully agree that a film having a short time in theatres might seem that if affects how/when I watch it, but I don’t think just lengthening a films time in theatres would really solve the problem.
For me, if I’m going to see a film I see it opening weekend 99% of the time (maybe a slight delay if there is a personal conflict.) If I’m not seeing it opening weekend, I’m happy to just wait. Sure only having to wait a month is great for me, the consumer, but if I had to wait 6 months I’m going to just wait 6 months.
The problem, as I see it, is that there is an infinite amount of things to watch. The supply is endless. This is great for me as the consumer, but a problem if you’re a supply/film creator.
Now not all supply/films are created equal. So how do you fix that problem? How do you convince me to see The Brutalist (in theatres)?
The medium budget films are dead. I am sad modern audiences would prefer to see more coloring book chatacters and other stuff from when they were kids rather than original dramas without mass shootings or stakes that involve saving the entire country/world/galaxy/multiverse.
I think there is also an element of inaccessibility when it comes to lower budget films. Local cinemas are often dominated by long runs of the big budget action films, which can make it difficult for audiences to watch anything else. Given how badly the cinema industry is struggling, it would be in their best interests to create space for a greater variety of films or organise special “one night only” screening events. My local cinema takes part in a lot of film festivals and also runs a classic film club and special re-screenings of older films - these events always seem to attract significantly larger crowds and bring in a lot of extra revenue for them.
While walking my dog I had one of those shower thoughts: medium budget and indie film plotlines have moved over to prestige tv shows.
people who liked disney before, disney had pretty dark themes even for children movies, but they santized all thier cinema because of MCU.
My personal Disney favourite is The Fox and the Hound. It’s got stuff for kids (anthropomorphic animals and cute songs), but the main narrative is difficult to fully comprehend for a pre-teen.
Harlan Ellison once wrote about ‘fuck you’ money; the amount of money he [or anyone] needed in order to be able to survive without compromising themselves. Back in the day, if he sold one TV script he could keep survive for five or six months.
That was back in the 1970s.
And selling on script was no small feat then either
