3 ms·

> the vast majority of people who want to be actors suck at being one. It's difficult to reduce the dimensionality of people down to one continuous variable, l

by dpwm 8y ago

> the vast majority of people who want to be actors suck at being one. It's difficult to reduce the dimensionality of people down to one continuous variable, let alone one binary variable; though some actors, I will concede, could almost manage this. There's few objective criteria we can actually define a good/suck scale on. Acting quality is very subjective. I tend to find unknown European actors far more convincing than many big name US actors who are chosen to play basically the same character over and over again and perform the same limited two-or-three facial expressions from the set of {happy, sad, angry, confused}. As we've come to learn recently through scandal, performance on screen may not always be the first consideration of some studio execs. If you're talking financially, that's great: we have an objective measure. If the whole point of being an actor is to make money for themselves, then I can tell you who the great ones are. To the studios though, perhaps it's the actors that will pull in the crowds but not cost too much that are the best. In other words, the amount of money they are expected to make for the studio. Let's look at the games industry. To be a successful games developer we think we can probably agree on what is good. But to a manager I should imagine a good games developer is someone who helps ship on time and doesn't come to their door telling them what nobody else dares tell them that the bugs that QA found are deep, hard to fix and morale is low. Again, if we define by earnings tor the individual I'm not even sure where pays well. If we define developers by money they are expected to make for the studio, I'd imagine EA and King employees must be pretty high up.

pandaman 8y ago
As Hollywood was originally mentioned, I did not think it needs clarifying that I am talking about professional careers. Of course somebody could be an amazing actor playing Santa at the mall from the point of view of children sitting on his lap. > If we define developers by money they are expected to make for the studio, I'd imagine EA and King employees must be pretty high up. It depends on employees, both EA and King own multiple studios and have thousands of people working on projects, which don't make a dime of profit. However, on a studio scale you will notice that studios making successful games repeatedly do not have many horror stories about them and if you look into credits for those games you will see the same individuals working on such games for many years.
- dpwm 8y ago
  > As Hollywood was originally mentioned, I did not think it needs clarifying that I am talking about professional careers. The majority of Hollywood actors are good at being Hollywood actors. Much of that seems to be more about maintaining an off-screen presence. For some reason many are celebrated. My point is that they may have fantastic careers and be household names, but that does not seem to correlate to acting ability. > Of course somebody could be an amazing actor playing Santa at the mall from the point of view of children sitting on his lap. I was not talking about actors playing Santa at the mall. I was talking about professional actors that are relatively unknown because they act in non-Hollywood productions. Few of these actors would be of interest to Hollywood. If you look at European actors careers, they make a fraction of the money of their Hollywood counterparts but seem to have a multiple of the ability. I have watched some play different characters, all very different, to the point where you wouldn't recognise them by the character they play. They are believable as that character and bring the character to life. I struggle to say this about even the more respected Hollywood actors, because they are often cast to be very similar to the character they were in something else. There are actors that do buck this trend to avoid becoming typecast. To me, acting is a skill where you try to bring a character to life. It involves understanding that character, feeling what they feel, portraying that feeling on camera. This is something that is lacking in Hollywood productions. > It depends on employees, both EA and King own multiple studios and have thousands of people working on projects, which don't make a dime of profit. Indeed. But this is true of Hollywood. There are films with big name stars in it that have been complete flops. Blade Runner 2049 had Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford in it, both successful actors, but made a loss. Alcon entertainment, the main production company, certainly has overall commercial success. > However, on a studio scale you will notice that studios making successful games repeatedly do not have many horror stories about them and if you look into credits for those games you will see the same individuals working on such games for many years. The phenomenon you describe to me would in fact suggest that it is less down to individuals than the studio attracting the right people or at least not rejecting them. Perhaps people who are more passionate about making good games can't suffer being in a team that is churning out bad games. I'm not sure this is simply down to the one-dimensional projection of the people being bad developers. You can be passionate about development and have limited development skill. I'm not sure it's necessarily better to have the technical skills and be dispassionate.

by dpwm 8y ago

pandaman 8y ago

As Hollywood was originally mentioned, I did not think it needs clarifying that I am talking about professional careers. Of course somebody could be an amazing actor playing Santa at the mall from the point of view of children sitting on his lap. > If we define developers by money they are expected to make for the studio, I'd imagine EA and King employees must be pretty high up. It depends on employees, both EA and King own multiple studios and have thousands of people working on projects, which don't make a dime of profit. However, on a studio scale you will notice that studios making successful games repeatedly do not have many horror stories about them and if you look into credits for those games you will see the same individuals working on such games for many years.

dpwm 8y ago
> As Hollywood was originally mentioned, I did not think it needs clarifying that I am talking about professional careers. The majority of Hollywood actors are good at being Hollywood actors. Much of that seems to be more about maintaining an off-screen presence. For some reason many are celebrated. My point is that they may have fantastic careers and be household names, but that does not seem to correlate to acting ability. > Of course somebody could be an amazing actor playing Santa at the mall from the point of view of children sitting on his lap. I was not talking about actors playing Santa at the mall. I was talking about professional actors that are relatively unknown because they act in non-Hollywood productions. Few of these actors would be of interest to Hollywood. If you look at European actors careers, they make a fraction of the money of their Hollywood counterparts but seem to have a multiple of the ability. I have watched some play different characters, all very different, to the point where you wouldn't recognise them by the character they play. They are believable as that character and bring the character to life. I struggle to say this about even the more respected Hollywood actors, because they are often cast to be very similar to the character they were in something else. There are actors that do buck this trend to avoid becoming typecast. To me, acting is a skill where you try to bring a character to life. It involves understanding that character, feeling what they feel, portraying that feeling on camera. This is something that is lacking in Hollywood productions. > It depends on employees, both EA and King own multiple studios and have thousands of people working on projects, which don't make a dime of profit. Indeed. But this is true of Hollywood. There are films with big name stars in it that have been complete flops. Blade Runner 2049 had Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford in it, both successful actors, but made a loss. Alcon entertainment, the main production company, certainly has overall commercial success. > However, on a studio scale you will notice that studios making successful games repeatedly do not have many horror stories about them and if you look into credits for those games you will see the same individuals working on such games for many years. The phenomenon you describe to me would in fact suggest that it is less down to individuals than the studio attracting the right people or at least not rejecting them. Perhaps people who are more passionate about making good games can't suffer being in a team that is churning out bad games. I'm not sure this is simply down to the one-dimensional projection of the people being bad developers. You can be passionate about development and have limited development skill. I'm not sure it's necessarily better to have the technical skills and be dispassionate.