5 ms·
What you're talking about is already happening, but we still call them "tv shows." A great recent example is The Queen's Gambit. It's adapted from a novel, whic
by scott_s 6y ago
What you're talking about is already happening, but we still call them "tv shows." A great recent example is The Queen's Gambit. It's adapted from a novel, which "normally" would become a movie. But instead it became a 7 episode miniseries, which allowed for much more character development than a 2-hour movie. Game of Thrones is the obvious example of something that also could have instead been several movies.
I think what we're discovering is that movies, as a medium, are for narratives that can be told in under 3 hours. If your narrative requires longer, or you just want to be able to have more time to develop characters or worlds, it's better to create a show.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI loathe the new format where there’s an extra hour or two of fluff to pad Netflix’s statistics about how much content they have. Although I guess it existed with old style TV too to enable them to sell more ad time. There’s character development, and then gratuitous time wastage. At least we can skip past it nowadays, or just opt out of watching it. Pendulums swing from one extreme to the other, as always.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago"fluff" padding is much worse than "can we get an extra season or three out of this show", IMO. [ EDIT: d'oh, I meant to write this in reverse, as "fluff padding is much less bad than .... oh well. ] I prefer stories to be told that already have a beginning, middle and end at their outset, not just some fingers-crossed "we might get 5 seasons, we can decide how it unfolds once we get to season 3" stuff that has dominated way too much TV. Granted, the purely episodic shows (e.g. Star Trek, LA Law and the like) are immune to this, mostly. But give me more True Detective, where the story ending is known before they even start filming, and the only question is "do we get to try another story?"
- lotsofpulp 6y agoDefinitely, I like to know the writers have the whole story mapped out prior to even starting the show before investing time into it. I got burned once by Lost when I was much younger, and hope to not make that mistake again.
- toyg 6y agoLost was a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the traditional network-tv system. And it’s a shame, because some of the storytelling was remarkable.
- wombatpm 6y agoLost I can forgive. Magic Island answers a lot of questions. Battlestar Galactica on the other hand? Cylons had a plan my ass.
- dylan604 6y agoGrowing up as a kid, the original Battlestar was just this cool sci-fi series with robots. I didn't know about all of its religious overtones. The rebooted version was dripping in it, and got tiresome.
- laumars 6y agoI never understood why people stuck with Lost. I stopped watching about 3 episodes into season 3 when it became obvious that the writers where just making shit up with no attempt at an explanation. Season 2 was really good, added a lot of mystery and it started to feel like something was happening, then season 3 went off a whole other tangent. At that point I turned to my wife and said “they’re dead, this is all just made up from one season to another. You can watch it without me in the future.” And guess what, 7 series later it’s revealed that they were all dead. No shit. I might not have been the target audience though. People often go nuts for JJ Abrams and I’ve honestly hated almost everything of his I’ve watched. So I’m likely just not the kind of person he is targeting.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
- dylan604 6y ago>"fluff" padding is much worse than "can we get an extra season or three out of this show", IMO. You're kind of close. They would fluff the seasons to get the episode count to 100 as soon as possible. 100 episodes was the magic number to qualifying for syndication. Syndication is where the money used to be made on content. Ask Jerry Seinfeild or the cast from Friends. Syndication is no longer the holy grail. You are making your content for the syndication platforms from the beginning now. This has allowed for the freedom to use enough episodes to tell your story correctly, and then getting out of the way. No more bottle episodes.
- scott_s 6y agoI think you're discounting the in-season requirements that the networks had. They would usually require on the order of 23 episodes for a season, and sell advertiser time during those episodes months in advance. Hence the prevalence of "clip shows": we promised the network x episodes, we only really have been able to make x-1 full episodes, so let's create an episode that is mostly clips from other episodes.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoI miss episodic TV shows.
- RobRivera 6y agoThe fly episode of breaking bad comes to mind.
- ghaff 6y agoI guess it's another form of the medium is the message. Another effect we seem to be seeing is that streaming seems less inclined to grind out endless seasons of a show until even most of its fans just can't bring themselves to watch any longer. I expect the economics of streaming favor freshness rather than milking a cash cow through a decline when it's got little chance of bringing in fresh viewers. (Which I think is mostly a good thing while recognizing there have been good series that took a season or more to really find their rhythm and voice.)
- leetcrew 6y ago> Another effect we seem to be seeing is that streaming seems less inclined to grind out endless seasons of a show until even most of its fans just can't bring themselves to watch any longer. I expect the economics of streaming favor freshness rather than milking a cash cow through a decline when it's got little chance of bringing in fresh viewers. it's an interesting reversal of the trend. back in the '00s, it seemed like even the best tv shows had a pretty scrappy first season: obviously low budget, little chemistry in the talent. if a show managed to get enough viewers in the first season, it would get a larger budget and hit its stride in the second one. nowadays it seems to be the opposite; most shows seem to give it all they have in a strong first season, then start phoning it in for the next couple, then getting culled without remorse when the viewership drops. I'm curious whether there's an economic reason for this, or if it's all in my head.
- ghaff 6y agoI don't claim this is a complete answer but contrast broadcast and streaming. BROADCAST: Pay for pilots. Pick up some of them. You know a good chunk of shows won't make it past S1. Some won't make it that far. But, especially pre-reality show, you still have a schedule to fill with scripted TV. So you throw a bunch of mostly economical stuff at the wall and see what sticks. The stuff that does, you pick up and groom it. STREAMING: Same deal with pilots. But now your main objective is to find that hit which will net you a bunch of new subscribers. Yeah, you need filler too but that's not as big a deal. So you're probably incentivized to do more swinging at the fences. And you probably don't care about having as many slow burn series because it's all about how many new subscribers you can sign on and, especially with serialized TV (which streaming/internet has also helped enable), if you don't grab people up-front, it's probably a waste.
- notJim 6y agoI'm generally a fan of miniseries, but I wonder what pressure the producers are putting on creators to lengthen them. I loved the Chernobyl miniseries for example, but I also think it was maybe 1-2 episodes longer than it needed to be. The first and last couple were amazing, but it kind of lagged in the middle. I'm reading Dune now (no spoilers please!) and I'm really surprised they're making a movie rather than a miniseries.
- sandworm101 6y agoWatch the first movie, the one with Sting and Patrick Stewart. Don't worry about spoilers. The book and that movie are not close relations.
- notJim 6y agoPlanning to watch it as soon as I finish the book.
- sundaeofshock 6y agoPrepare to be angry. It was beautiful; no doubt about that. However, it did a horrible job translating the source material to the big screen.
- sandworm101 6y agoTranslating the source? I figured they just gave everyone their costumes, turned on the camera, and filmed whatever happened randomly.
- sundaeofshock 6y agoThat would have been a better movie…
- mrec 6y agoThe upcoming movie only covers the first half of Dune; they're hoping to make a second movie but AFAIK it's not locked in yet. Publicity seems to be keeping rather quiet about this, for obvious reasons.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> 7 episode miniseries That is still a holdover from television: predictable equally-time episodes. Why should each episode be of identical length? Why not free the production to tell each episode in a different time. An even more free form would be, for example, 16-hour non-episodic movie where the viewer is left to decide when to take breaks.
- altrunox 6y agoWell, as a watcher from series is much better to already know how long an episode already take, which is usually around one hour. And if you release something all together in 16 hours it became harder to go back to where you stopped, in case the software glitches, harder to comment with friends, which maybe would create less hype, and maybe even create a mental barrier, like, "omg, this is 16 hours long in one go!" And how are you even supposed to know when you should take a break while watching it for the first time?
- scott_s 6y agoDespite the freedom not to, many authors still break down their novels into roughly equal length chapters.
- BurningFrog 6y agoYou can think of these streaming tv shows as the Movie medium finally being liberated from having to fit between bathroom breaks.
- sircastor 6y agoI’ve wanted this approach for the Harry Potter Series. Trying to do it in theatrical film was a mistake I think.