5 ms·

I feel like this will happen if you watch 74 movies a year that you've never seen before. Even when I had time to engross myself in international cinema in the

by imbnwa 5y ago

I feel like this will happen if you watch 74 movies a year that you've never seen before. Even when I had time to engross myself in international cinema in the mid 00s with none of today's level of distraction I wasn't hitting 74 a year and that was with Netflix DVDs and a membership with a few private BT trackers and DC++ on top (of course one had to wait hours to days to pull things down). I think that the real ceiling for quality content, film or no, is the writing and there's no way to generate more high-quality writers on demand. Editing? You can walk down a street in Brooklyn and find an editor no problem. Cinematography? Art schools produce tons of people who are good at taking pretty pictures. But there's only one Charlie Kaufman. There's only one Aaron Sorkin. There's only one Quintin Tarantino. There's just the Coen Brothers. No amount of art school or trial and error can make you a compelling writer. So we're at a point where there's an abundance of people who can help you make a movie technically, an abundance of people who will finance a movie, an abundance of people who will act in your movie (everyone I remember from the 90s is still available as an actor on top of everyone else trying to be one) but just not an abundance of good writers and that'll probably always be true.

jldugger 5y ago
> I think that the real ceiling for quality content, film or no, is the writing and there's no way to generate more high-quality writers on demand. Pretty sure there's a decent number of writers out there in the world beyond the handful you mentioned, and plenty more trying to break in. For example, somehow you failed to mention any women writers.
hashhar 5y ago
What makes the writers more special than cinematographers, audio engineers, set designers, editors. Each of these skills can be learned and each of these also have some level of personal creativity and discovery that can't be learned and is intrinsic to a person.
- socialist_coder 5y ago
  If you have a bad writer, no amount of good other stuff can salvage your movie. Not true for the other roles.
  - tkgally 5y ago
    I basically stopped watching movies a long time ago—I was never much of a cinephile to begin with—but last week, out of either boredom or curiosity, I streamed a Hollywood blockbuster from the 2000s that I had read about somewhere. What struck me most was how the action scenes, editing, costuming, sets, casting, and acting all seemed—to my nonexpert eye—to have been carefully and professionally done, while the storytelling was horrible: implausible, unnatural, and full of obvious holes. The story didn’t need to be great literature, but it should not have been hard to make the pieces fit together in a way that made sense. I don't know whether to blame the writers, the director, or the commercial motivation for making the film. This particular movie was obviously intended to lead to spinoffs in video games and other forms of merchandising, and that may have influenced the editing in a way that garbled the story.
    - underwater 5y ago
      There has been huge trend from the audience towards overanalysing plots and story details. Specifically, to analyse them independently from the emotional and storytelling aspects. Jump onto reddit and you see everyone ripping apart the details of Star Wars, the Marvel Universe, Chris Nolan films, etc. I think that this is a mistake. The point of the plot is to support the story. It doesn't matter if it's logical if it makes you feel something powerful. The plot needs to be strong enough to hold up during the running of the film when the viewer immersed in the story.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    >If you have a bad writer, no amount of good other stuff can salvage your movie. no, if you have good actors they can make your bad writing in some ways standable. There is the whole "so bad it's good movie" which is generally because the actors manage to make the badness bearable. Con Air and The Rock were not written by a writer as good as the ones you mentioned but they did have the right actors to make those movies really enjoyable for a lot of people. I would submit the actors salvaged those movies.
tsimionescu 5y ago
I don't think writing is special compared to other arts. Sure, there are many editors and cinematographers, but there are very few who can actually make an interesting edit, or interesting cinematography. Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who know how to write for film (being a great novelist doesn't mean you'll automatically be great, or even good, at writing a great screenplay).
- imbnwa 5y ago
  > Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who know how to write for film There's cool editing and shooting on reddit filmmaking subs not to mention the super competitive music video market for cinematographers and editors > Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who know how to write for film I feel like this is what I indicated as well.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > There's cool editing and shooting on reddit filmmaking subs not to mention the super competitive music video market for cinematographers and editors There's cool writing on reddit writing subs as well. Nice snippets do not a great whole movie make, in any part of the art form.
FourthProtocol 5y ago
Almost anything can be learnt, including writing well. Unfortunately, today’s incentive for anything is money, and Hollywood is no exception. And so we've fed a diet of trite, banal, and contrived writing because it fits the now-established recipe for box office returns.
1980phipsi 5y ago
Agree 100%. There are only so many good writers out there. Notice who the writers are on your favorite TV shows and then what happens to the quality of said TV show when the writers switch to other projects.
TheCoelacanth 5y ago
I think the bottleneck you're describing isn't "writing" but creators who will be trusted with a $X0 million budget without excessive oversight. Sorkin or Tarantino get the leeway to create something without executives second-guessing every little decision, most people, even very talented people won't. There are tons of talented writers producing things, but in a less expensive medium. The cost to produce a novel is literally 0.1% of a Hollywood movie. There is a lot more freedom to work there than when you're spending tens of millions of dollars.

by imbnwa 5y ago

jldugger 5y ago

> I think that the real ceiling for quality content, film or no, is the writing and there's no way to generate more high-quality writers on demand. Pretty sure there's a decent number of writers out there in the world beyond the handful you mentioned, and plenty more trying to break in. For example, somehow you failed to mention any women writers.

hashhar 5y ago

What makes the writers more special than cinematographers, audio engineers, set designers, editors. Each of these skills can be learned and each of these also have some level of personal creativity and discovery that can't be learned and is intrinsic to a person.

socialist_coder 5y ago
If you have a bad writer, no amount of good other stuff can salvage your movie. Not true for the other roles.
- tkgally 5y ago
  I basically stopped watching movies a long time ago—I was never much of a cinephile to begin with—but last week, out of either boredom or curiosity, I streamed a Hollywood blockbuster from the 2000s that I had read about somewhere. What struck me most was how the action scenes, editing, costuming, sets, casting, and acting all seemed—to my nonexpert eye—to have been carefully and professionally done, while the storytelling was horrible: implausible, unnatural, and full of obvious holes. The story didn’t need to be great literature, but it should not have been hard to make the pieces fit together in a way that made sense. I don't know whether to blame the writers, the director, or the commercial motivation for making the film. This particular movie was obviously intended to lead to spinoffs in video games and other forms of merchandising, and that may have influenced the editing in a way that garbled the story.
  - underwater 5y ago
    There has been huge trend from the audience towards overanalysing plots and story details. Specifically, to analyse them independently from the emotional and storytelling aspects. Jump onto reddit and you see everyone ripping apart the details of Star Wars, the Marvel Universe, Chris Nolan films, etc. I think that this is a mistake. The point of the plot is to support the story. It doesn't matter if it's logical if it makes you feel something powerful. The plot needs to be strong enough to hold up during the running of the film when the viewer immersed in the story.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >If you have a bad writer, no amount of good other stuff can salvage your movie. no, if you have good actors they can make your bad writing in some ways standable. There is the whole "so bad it's good movie" which is generally because the actors manage to make the badness bearable. Con Air and The Rock were not written by a writer as good as the ones you mentioned but they did have the right actors to make those movies really enjoyable for a lot of people. I would submit the actors salvaged those movies.

tsimionescu 5y ago

I don't think writing is special compared to other arts. Sure, there are many editors and cinematographers, but there are very few who can actually make an interesting edit, or interesting cinematography. Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who know how to write for film (being a great novelist doesn't mean you'll automatically be great, or even good, at writing a great screenplay).

imbnwa 5y ago
> Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who know how to write for film There's cool editing and shooting on reddit filmmaking subs not to mention the super competitive music video market for cinematographers and editors > Similarly, there are many writers in the world, but only a handful of really great ones, even fewer great writers who know how to write for film I feel like this is what I indicated as well.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > There's cool editing and shooting on reddit filmmaking subs not to mention the super competitive music video market for cinematographers and editors There's cool writing on reddit writing subs as well. Nice snippets do not a great whole movie make, in any part of the art form.

FourthProtocol 5y ago

Almost anything can be learnt, including writing well. Unfortunately, today’s incentive for anything is money, and Hollywood is no exception. And so we've fed a diet of trite, banal, and contrived writing because it fits the now-established recipe for box office returns.

1980phipsi 5y ago

Agree 100%. There are only so many good writers out there. Notice who the writers are on your favorite TV shows and then what happens to the quality of said TV show when the writers switch to other projects.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago

I think the bottleneck you're describing isn't "writing" but creators who will be trusted with a $X0 million budget without excessive oversight. Sorkin or Tarantino get the leeway to create something without executives second-guessing every little decision, most people, even very talented people won't. There are tons of talented writers producing things, but in a less expensive medium. The cost to produce a novel is literally 0.1% of a Hollywood movie. There is a lot more freedom to work there than when you're spending tens of millions of dollars.