Thought study: What happens if piracy becomes legal?

[General Zod]

You can't count on recorded media sales to make up for low ticket sales (then because recorded media didn't exist, now because they're too easy to copy). At best, all you can really count on selling is the experience of watching the movie on a big silver screen, and by itself that isn't worth very much. So the movie's gross income potential is limited, and you have to make the production budget equally limited, which means a lot less in the way of special effects and super-high-paid actors.

Which is something I had tossing about in my head at the outset; I'd expect that the people who would lose the most in such a world would be the geeks, because you could turn out an average romantic comedy that's still a good movie on a shoestring budget if you had to, but it would be impossible to make Avatar without it coming out like the second coming of Harryhausen.

SyFy manages to produce movies with reasonably acceptable FX for $1-2m per film, but the biggest hurdle there would be finding competent writers and directors.

[General Zod]

The beauty of the scenario would be everyone plays on a level playing field. So the good directors can work with the lower budget or they can not work at all.

Big budget films aren't necessarily out of the running either. I'm pretty sure Star Wars and Gundam both made (and still make) a lot more money selling toys and whatnot than actually selling the movie. That angle is still a possibility.

With the right marketing campaign you could still draw crowds to the theater. Plenty of people are more willing to pay money for an "authentic" experience than some cheap knockoff.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, what really dies isn't any specific genre; it's CGI. CGI is what's inflated the production costs for summer blockbusters and science fiction in the last decade or so. There were good SF movies in the '60s and '70s that were produced for manageable budgets, but we might have to go back to that standard of special effects quality to make movies in a no-DVD-sales environment.

Of course, all the graphics geeks would scream their heads off at this point.

[Kanastrous]

Although I have to admit that the posited death of high-gloss big-budget sci-fi/action geek-pleasing content thanks to piracy enabled by people who are frequently themselves big-budget sci-fi/action fan geeks is pleasingly symmetrical. Let the motherfuckers develop a taste for romantic comedy.

Runaway paydays for producers, directors and talent (plus the proliferation of 'producer' titles themselves) have a much greater impact than filling digital artist chairs. You can sometimes pay a full production-and-post crew's salaries (with $$$ left over) for what just one of the marquee actors, the director, or senior producers will pocket on the project.

[starfury]

Although I have to admit that the posited death of high-gloss big-budget sci-fi/action geek-pleasing content thanks to piracy enabled by people who are frequently themselves big-budget sci-fi/action fan geeks is pleasingly symmetrical. Let the motherfuckers develop a taste for romantic comedy.

Seems similar what I posted about Video Game piracy and that Games meant for the graphic loving enthusantist gamers tend to be by far the one most hurt by both Piracy on the PC end and used games on the consoles side. this seems to be the movie version of the same trend, as Avatar bashing was quite popular among these geeks anyway, now they get their wish and suffer romantic comedy instead.

[General Zod]

Although I have to admit that the posited death of high-gloss big-budget sci-fi/action geek-pleasing content thanks to piracy enabled by people who are frequently themselves big-budget sci-fi/action fan geeks is pleasingly symmetrical. Let the motherfuckers develop a taste for romantic comedy.

Seems similar what I posted about Video Game piracy and that Games meant for the graphic loving enthusantist gamers tend to be by far the one most hurt by both Piracy on the PC end and used games on the consoles side. this seems to be the movie version of the same trend, as Avatar bashing was quite popular among these geeks anyway, now they get their wish and suffer romantic comedy instead.

Because the BBC totally hasn't done any other genre but romantic comedy on a shoestring budget or anything . . .

[Kanastrous]

As an aside, having done both optical/motion control/miniature/etc VFX work and having moved over some years ago into digital production, the idea that going back to optical-type VFX production would save any $$$ or make production any cheaper is illusory. I can't think offhand of anything you can do using old-school optical techniques that you can't do at least as cheaply and efficiently - and it will almost always be easier, cheaper and more efficient because major-budget production is revision-driven and revising a digital comp (for example) is *much* faster and cheaper than re-executing the same comp optically. Not to even mention the advantages derived from a digital workflow throughout production, even on non-VFX-laden projects.

Minute-for-minute of on-screen VFX shot time and in terms of element-for-element complexity those '60s and '70s movies were much more expensive at the bottom of the VFX budget line than the digitally-produced projects today. Not to mention that some things are fundamentally impossible using the older technologies: whatever your opinion of the storytelling qualities of, say, Avatar, in purely technical terms it could not be done without the more newly-developed techniques.

[Kanastrous]

Because the BBC totally hasn't done any other genre but romantic comedy on a shoestring budget or anything . . .

I find that - story and writing being comparable - a VFX-heavy show done on a shoestring budget is a qualitatively different experience for the viewer than one executed on a major budget. Although to some viewers I figure it probably doesn't matter.

[General Zod]

Because the BBC totally hasn't done any other genre but romantic comedy on a shoestring budget or anything . . .

I find that - story and writing being comparable - a VFX-heavy show done on a shoestring budget is a qualitatively different experience for the viewer than one executed on a major budget. Although to some viewers I figure it probably doesn't matter.

I'd rather have decent writing with fewer VFX; in other words not Avatar. But that's getting off topic.

[Guardsman Bass]

With the right marketing campaign you could still draw crowds to the theater. Plenty of people are more willing to pay money for an "authentic" experience than some cheap knockoff.

Those are extremely expensive, though, unless you offset the marketing costs with endorsement deals (i.e. Burger King pays for a $50 million advertising campaign if you have merchandise and other stuff they can use to sell their hamburgers). That's good for series like the Transformers, where you have an existing brand that can be merchandised to death. Not so good for new films that aren't part of a franchise.

Well, what really dies isn't any specific genre; it's CGI. CGI is what's inflated the production costs for summer blockbusters and science fiction in the last decade or so. There were good SF movies in the '60s and '70s that were produced for manageable budgets, but we might have to go back to that standard of special effects quality to make movies in a no-DVD-sales environment.

Many of the gigantic CGI-fests would be SOL, for sure, particularly if they're not part of an existing franchise that can generate a lot of merchandise. However, you might seem some borderline films that survive. Look at the movie Skyline - if you could keep your CGI costs down in that range for a film, and then try and keep acting costs down, I think you could maybe make a profit through a combination of theater showings and online channels with ads (assuming the theater business survives getting ravaged by the loss of customers now able to watch movies the same day or week that they come out).

Runaway paydays for producers, directors and talent (plus the proliferation of 'producer' titles themselves) have a much greater impact than filling digital artist chairs.

That would be a mildly amusing side-effect of this scenario: all the figurative bloodletting and brutal competition as the major actors compete for a much smaller number of big pay-out roles. Not so great for the actors below them, though, who then get pushed even further down the ranks in terms of opportunities.

[Kanastrous]

That would be a mildly amusing side-effect of this scenario: all the figurative bloodletting and brutal competition as the major actors compete for a much smaller number of big pay-out roles. Not so great for the actors below them, though, who then get pushed even further down the ranks in terms of opportunities.

I doubt you would see that: once the model of the huge-ass insane headliner payday starts to slide, all of the studios will cut their offers and the number of 'big pay-out' roles will drop to zero. Or, more accurately, the definition of what's considered a big pay-out will simply have some zeroes lopped offa it, for everybody.

[Simon_Jester]

Although I have to admit that the posited death of high-gloss big-budget sci-fi/action geek-pleasing content thanks to piracy enabled by people who are frequently themselves big-budget sci-fi/action fan geeks is pleasingly symmetrical. Let the motherfuckers develop a taste for romantic comedy.

Or, more likely, for stuff made on roughly the same budget as early-series Dr. Who and the Star Trek original series... such material can be good, but it's far from guaranteed.

Runaway paydays for producers, directors and talent (plus the proliferation of 'producer' titles themselves) have a much greater impact than filling digital artist chairs. You can sometimes pay a full production-and-post crew's salaries (with $$$ left over) for what just one of the marquee actors, the director, or senior producers will pocket on the project.

That's a possibility. But remember that piracy will affect all big-budget movies alike. If hiring two or three big-name movie stars costs fifty million dollars, that's going to kill your movie about as effectively as spending fifty million dollars on graphics.

The salaries will have to go down, simply because no one is likely to be willing to offer the lead actress twenty million to make a movie that may only make a profit of fifty million to begin with.

(numbers are arbitrary, meant to illustrate, not to be confident predictions).

[MKSheppard]

Although I have to admit that the posited death of high-gloss big-budget sci-fi/action geek-pleasing content thanks to piracy enabled by people who are frequently themselves big-budget sci-fi/action fan geeks is pleasingly symmetrical. Let the motherfuckers develop a taste for romantic comedy.

To be honest, if it results in smaller productions with a tighter, more coherent storyline and less of an emphasis on "if we pay $65 million to Ben Affleck our success is assured!" and more on using the lower tier actors who can still act, but are unknown enough that they become the role, rather than the other way around; I'm fine with that.

[Patrick Degan]

smaller productions with a tighter, more coherent storyline

Which describes some of the best SF and horror films ever made. In the current environment, a true gem like The Legend Of Hell House would never even get considered by a studio. Or they'd make a hash of it like the pathetic remakes of The Haunting and The Wicker Man.

[Kanastrous]

Absence of limitations being the enemy of art, and all.

[Ford Prefect]

Big budget films aren't necessarily out of the running either. I'm pretty sure Star Wars and Gundam both made (and still make) a lot more money selling toys and whatnot than actually selling the movie. That angle is still a possibility.

Mobile Suit Gundam, as a franchise, is basically one of the few shows on Japanese television which does not primarily make its money out of DVD sales. Gunpla absolutely dominates the market and accounts for literally 90% of all plastic model sales in Japan. I can't really speak about other markets, but for a show in Japan to survive on merch it would need to be pretty outrageously popular. That said, there's definitely scope for using merchandise through special edition releases. Quite recently some friends of mine purchased the blu-ray special edition of the OVA Black Rock Shooter, mostly because it came bundled with the storyboards, illustrations by the character designers and a pair of limited edition petite nendoroids of the main characters. Sure, you could get a blu-ray quality rip online, as well as some of the extras like character commentaries or BD/DVD only episodes, but the other stuff? Not everyone wants that kind of thing, of course, but that's more an issue of marketing rather than a fundamental problem.

[Shroom Man 777]

To be honest, if it results in smaller productions with a tighter, more coherent storyline and less of an emphasis on "if we pay $65 million to Ben Affleck our success is assured!" and more on using the lower tier actors who can still act, but are unknown enough that they become the role, rather than the other way around; I'm fine with that.

Hmmm... so you're saying that the Hollywood model is so dependent on DVD sales that if DVDs and such are pirated legally, it will crumble and basically they will end up making movies that are no longer big budget extravaganzas but are much more like the movies everyone else makes elsewhere (i.e. non-American movies)?

What was Hollywood like before it became what it is today?

[Kanastrous]

In the main Shep is basically correct. The present dominant distribution model is based upon domestic and foreign box office, and pay-per-view, home-media, cable and broadcast release, each phase contributing a certain amount of revenue. It's frequently not even expected that a project will earn out in its domestic theatrical run: the other channels are required to break even or profit.

For example, Avatar's domestic box office business is reported as about US$760,507,625, or about 27% of its BO revenues. The foreign box-office take was about $2,021,699,345, accounting for about 73%. I don't have figures handy for domestic vs foreign home-video etc sales but the BO figures give you an idea of what proportion of potential sales the foreign market represents, probably mostly just as a function of how many more audience eyeballs are available outside the US vs those belonging to the US population.

Hollywood generally started becoming like this in the mid-late-1970s with the advent of the studio blockbuster. I suspect we're where we are now as a combination of the blockbuster model (ie put all the eggs in a very few gigantic baskets in the hope of correspondingly gigantic payoffs, as distinct from many smaller projects which distribute both the risk and profit to many little baskets), and the acquisition of studios by parent corporations for whom a movie studio is just another outlet for product - like tv dinners or jet engines - and issues of originality, creativity or, well, really, quality are secondary to big-noise flashy-zoomy marketing-focused dreck.

ghetto edit - one effect being, of course, that while details of character and story are dependent to a degree upon language and culture, big-noisy-flashy-VFX-y is the same in every language and rightly or wrongly studio management figures that a foreign audience - particularly in Asia, largest of foreign regional markets - will be reliably wowed by big-time VFX but probably wouldn't respond so much to an American offering that in scope and eye-candy-ness is comparable to local product. There's also the idea that big spectacle draws more people to buy theater tickets: big spectacle is, well, bigger on a big screen, than a smaller home-video one.

[Uraniun235]

Hollywood generally started becoming like this in the mid-late-1970s with the advent of the studio blockbuster. I suspect we're where we are now as a combination of the blockbuster model (ie put all the eggs in a very few gigantic baskets in the hope of correspondingly gigantic payoffs, as distinct from many smaller projects which distribute both the risk and profit to many little baskets), and the acquisition of studios by parent corporations for whom a movie studio is just another outlet for product - like tv dinners or jet engines - and issues of originality, creativity or, well, really, quality are secondary to big-noise flashy-zoomy marketing-focused dreck.

Another factor I've heard suggested is that the movies themselves have more competition. There's cable/satellite TV, pay-per-view, video rental, internet video streaming, video purchase/re-use - not to mention alternate forms of entertainment like the internet itself and video games.

[Guardsman Bass]

Hollywood generally started becoming like this in the mid-late-1970s with the advent of the studio blockbuster. I suspect we're where we are now as a combination of the blockbuster model (ie put all the eggs in a very few gigantic baskets in the hope of correspondingly gigantic payoffs, as distinct from many smaller projects which distribute both the risk and profit to many little baskets), and the acquisition of studios by parent corporations for whom a movie studio is just another outlet for product - like tv dinners or jet engines - and issues of originality, creativity or, well, really, quality are secondary to big-noise flashy-zoomy marketing-focused dreck.

Another factor I've heard suggested is that the movies themselves have more competition. There's cable/satellite TV, pay-per-view, video rental, internet video streaming, video purchase/re-use - not to mention alternate forms of entertainment like the internet itself and video games.

That's the big one. Before television, a huge part of the population (95 million Americans in 1929) regularly went to the movies each week. After television, regular theater-goers steadily declined, and nowadays most big-budget movies have to more or less create their audience through advertising, which costs a ton of money.

[Elfdart]

What you really end up with is a replay of the 1950s when widescreen and 3D first became popular, along with huge epics made specifically for those really big screens. The studios resorted to these kinds of movies and gimmicks to get people to go to the theaters rather than staying home and watching TV. The movies offered something you couldn't get on television. This was also true with exploitation films, where you could show the 3 Bs (as Joe Bob Briggs called them) in theaters, but not on TV.

I suspect the business will go full circle again with or without so-called piracy being legal. Millions of people already practice legal "piracy" by recording music off radio, waiting for a movie to play on cable or network TV, or waiting for both to turn up in used book and record stores for a fraction of the face value -none of which goes to the IP holder.