3 ms·

I wonder why story quality in movies such a toss-up? They got screenwriters, producers, and editors, right? You think movie studios should had managed to figu

by kiba 10y ago

I wonder why story quality in movies such a toss-up? They got screenwriters, producers, and editors, right? You think movie studios should had managed to figure out 'consistent quality' by now.

skyrw 10y ago
Isn't that a bit like asking why hasn't microsoft managed to figure out "consistent bug-free software' by now.
- kiba 10y ago
  By consistency, I mean a certain standard of quality, not that it's bug-free. There's a certain level of quality that firms like Google and Microsoft wouldn't be caught dead writing. If the same movie studio produce garbages between blockbusters, then I am wondering what's the hell wrong with their quality control process.
  - dpitkin 10y ago
    I might suggest that Wave and Vista are obvious projects Google and Microsoft wrote and below a standard of quality, and akin to a bad movie from WB. Google+ and Windows 8 could be considered bad sequels.
    - nneonneo 10y ago
      I don't think either Wave nor Vista were poor quality products, same way I don't think Glass nor Phone were poor products. The engineering on all of these is fine for the most part. Sure, there are bugs, but not really any more than usual. The real problem is that nobody really wanted these products in the first place. For Wave, most users didn't seem to figure out what Wave was actually useful for (and it didn't help that Google wasn't sure either). For Vista, people liked XP and dragging them kicking and screaming into a software upgrade turned out to be really hard. Vista set the architectural foundation for future Windows releases, and Microsoft had an obligation to take people off of what was then a 5-year-old operating system - much like OS X 10.0 attempted to do. Nobody seems to pay much attention to the fact that 10.0 was incredibly buggy and took quite some time to bring up to a usable state.
    - justinlardinois 10y ago
      Vista was just bad marketing. After that whole fiasco Microsoft did market tests where they presented consumers with a "new version" of Windows that was actually just Vista, and they got a positive response. And even if you don't believe that story completely, the fact that Windows 7 wasn't all that different from Vista and yet got just as popular as XP was says a lot.
      - Throwaway23412 10y ago
        >the fact that Windows 7 wasn't all that different from Vista Say what now? I don't know if you remember but Vista had really high hardware requirements. When Vista came out, it was fundamentally unusable for me. Hardware requirements is literally the first section of criticism in Vista's Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_requirements_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_require...): >For example, Mike Nash (Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management) commented, "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine" because his laptop's lack of an appropriate graphics chip so hobbled Vista. Windows 7 made substantial performance improvements in comparison to the widespread hardware incompatibilities that Vista had.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
They'd rather die. And there's many a slip between the cup and the lip. There's too many moving parts - Huston shot "Sierra Madre" on something approximating 16MM on tripods with only tequila for accessories. When digital gets to the "16MM" phase, but with people who learned the agonizing details in the studio system 'we'll have it again. Oh wait...
- aerovistae 10y ago
  wait what
- Animats 10y ago
  In the 1990s, when I was working on animation software, I was told something like that by a major Hollywood director. He'd directed some of the early films that had both animation and live acting. The costs were high. What he really wanted was to get the overhead down, so he could make first-rate films for about $20M. At the time, "Reboot", the first all 3D cartoon, was being cranked out at one episode per week by 30 people. He was hoping the technology would let him produce feature films with a similar sized staff. The idea was to pull in set models from a "digital back lot", green-screen in the actors, and go. The technology didn't deliver that. Instead of a cast of thousands of actors, we now need thousands of animators. Look at the credits for any action movie today. There's just too much custom modeling, artwork, move matching, and manual editing of the edges of clipping paths. (The last two are outsourced grunt work and likely to be automated soon.) Viewers wanted photorealism, and that requires as much detail work as set-building. People have tried to do CG action features on the cheap. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" was supposed to be one. But that cost $70 million, and only made $54 million. (The semi-noir look didn't help. Done better, it might have been a franchise like Captain America.) Iron Sky (budget $10M, box office $8.1M) almost a decade later had much better effects; the CG isn't as obvious. Other than low-budget horror features, most notably "Paranormal Activity", there haven't been many successful low-budget action movies in recent years.
bennesvig 10y ago
There are so many moving parts that it's so easy to screw up. An amazing script can get ruined by a bad director, actors, editor, executives with bad notes, etc. Also, I'm sure with so much money involved, people are more likely to meddle in the director's vision so you get too many cooks in the kitchen.
jedberg 10y ago
Sunk cost fallacy. A director shoots bad material, they don't go back and start over. They make due with what they have because of what they've already spent on it. Disney does the opposite. Look at what we've heard about the Rogue One -- the studio felt that it was good but not great and sent them back for a whole bunch of (expensive) reshoots. Pixar does the same. If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again.
- manarth 10y ago
  > "If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again" Sometimes twice! http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-2-was-deleted-twice-once-by-technology-and-again-for-its-own-good/#gref http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-...
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again. WB dies that too, but they can't seem to do it right. In the aftermath of Batman v Superman flopping, WB panicked and asked Ayer to "punch up" Suicide Squad adding more humor and faster pacing - this included reshoots. SS wasn't originally meant to be a blockbuster, but an end of summer fun movie
- aidenn0 10y ago
  FWIW according to the Rogue One filmmakers, the reshoots were planned for and fit in with the already planned shots. Nothing like what happened with Toy Story 2.

by kiba 10y ago

I wonder why story quality in movies such a toss-up? They got screenwriters, producers, and editors, right? You think movie studios should had managed to figure out 'consistent quality' by now.

skyrw 10y ago

Isn't that a bit like asking why hasn't microsoft managed to figure out "consistent bug-free software' by now.

kiba 10y ago
By consistency, I mean a certain standard of quality, not that it's bug-free. There's a certain level of quality that firms like Google and Microsoft wouldn't be caught dead writing. If the same movie studio produce garbages between blockbusters, then I am wondering what's the hell wrong with their quality control process.
- dpitkin 10y ago
  I might suggest that Wave and Vista are obvious projects Google and Microsoft wrote and below a standard of quality, and akin to a bad movie from WB. Google+ and Windows 8 could be considered bad sequels.
  - nneonneo 10y ago
    I don't think either Wave nor Vista were poor quality products, same way I don't think Glass nor Phone were poor products. The engineering on all of these is fine for the most part. Sure, there are bugs, but not really any more than usual. The real problem is that nobody really wanted these products in the first place. For Wave, most users didn't seem to figure out what Wave was actually useful for (and it didn't help that Google wasn't sure either). For Vista, people liked XP and dragging them kicking and screaming into a software upgrade turned out to be really hard. Vista set the architectural foundation for future Windows releases, and Microsoft had an obligation to take people off of what was then a 5-year-old operating system - much like OS X 10.0 attempted to do. Nobody seems to pay much attention to the fact that 10.0 was incredibly buggy and took quite some time to bring up to a usable state.
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    Vista was just bad marketing. After that whole fiasco Microsoft did market tests where they presented consumers with a "new version" of Windows that was actually just Vista, and they got a positive response. And even if you don't believe that story completely, the fact that Windows 7 wasn't all that different from Vista and yet got just as popular as XP was says a lot.
    - Throwaway23412 10y ago
      >the fact that Windows 7 wasn't all that different from Vista Say what now? I don't know if you remember but Vista had really high hardware requirements. When Vista came out, it was fundamentally unusable for me. Hardware requirements is literally the first section of criticism in Vista's Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_requirements_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_require...): >For example, Mike Nash (Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management) commented, "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine" because his laptop's lack of an appropriate graphics chip so hobbled Vista. Windows 7 made substantial performance improvements in comparison to the widespread hardware incompatibilities that Vista had.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

They'd rather die. And there's many a slip between the cup and the lip. There's too many moving parts - Huston shot "Sierra Madre" on something approximating 16MM on tripods with only tequila for accessories. When digital gets to the "16MM" phase, but with people who learned the agonizing details in the studio system 'we'll have it again. Oh wait...

aerovistae 10y ago
wait what
Animats 10y ago
In the 1990s, when I was working on animation software, I was told something like that by a major Hollywood director. He'd directed some of the early films that had both animation and live acting. The costs were high. What he really wanted was to get the overhead down, so he could make first-rate films for about $20M. At the time, "Reboot", the first all 3D cartoon, was being cranked out at one episode per week by 30 people. He was hoping the technology would let him produce feature films with a similar sized staff. The idea was to pull in set models from a "digital back lot", green-screen in the actors, and go. The technology didn't deliver that. Instead of a cast of thousands of actors, we now need thousands of animators. Look at the credits for any action movie today. There's just too much custom modeling, artwork, move matching, and manual editing of the edges of clipping paths. (The last two are outsourced grunt work and likely to be automated soon.) Viewers wanted photorealism, and that requires as much detail work as set-building. People have tried to do CG action features on the cheap. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" was supposed to be one. But that cost $70 million, and only made $54 million. (The semi-noir look didn't help. Done better, it might have been a franchise like Captain America.) Iron Sky (budget $10M, box office $8.1M) almost a decade later had much better effects; the CG isn't as obvious. Other than low-budget horror features, most notably "Paranormal Activity", there haven't been many successful low-budget action movies in recent years.

bennesvig 10y ago

There are so many moving parts that it's so easy to screw up. An amazing script can get ruined by a bad director, actors, editor, executives with bad notes, etc. Also, I'm sure with so much money involved, people are more likely to meddle in the director's vision so you get too many cooks in the kitchen.

jedberg 10y ago

Sunk cost fallacy. A director shoots bad material, they don't go back and start over. They make due with what they have because of what they've already spent on it. Disney does the opposite. Look at what we've heard about the Rogue One -- the studio felt that it was good but not great and sent them back for a whole bunch of (expensive) reshoots. Pixar does the same. If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again.

manarth 10y ago
> "If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again" Sometimes twice! http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-2-was-deleted-twice-once-by-technology-and-again-for-its-own-good/#gref http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-...
sangnoir 10y ago
> If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again. WB dies that too, but they can't seem to do it right. In the aftermath of Batman v Superman flopping, WB panicked and asked Ayer to "punch up" Suicide Squad adding more humor and faster pacing - this included reshoots. SS wasn't originally meant to be a blockbuster, but an end of summer fun movie
aidenn0 10y ago
FWIW according to the Rogue One filmmakers, the reshoots were planned for and fit in with the already planned shots. Nothing like what happened with Toy Story 2.