5 ms·

If anything streaming makes shows like The Wire more accessible and viable as commercial successes. It's hard to keep details in your head when the show airs an

by Zircom 3y ago

If anything streaming makes shows like The Wire more accessible and viable as commercial successes. It's hard to keep details in your head when the show airs an episode once a week, and if you're tuning in for the first time you've got no idea what's going on and find something else to watch. Neither of those issues he to exists with streaming, although more and more they're switching back to an episode a week model, but rewatching episodes in between weekly releases is an option now at least.

dsr_ 3y ago
We are still in the early days of figuring out what works. One issue: media execs don't know anything except "that was profitable, so let's do it again". Have you noticed that Netflix now has fifty cooking shows, split between one-shot game shows and tournaments/"reality" dramas? "Iron Chef" worked and "Top Chef" worked, so they get cloned and slightly modified. All of these sink. For a long-form SF/F show, what hasn't been done? - two 1 hour chapters weekly - dropping 2-4 1 hour chapters at a time, rather than either single episodes or the whole season - irregularly sized episodes matching the plot - six episodes of rising tension, a flashback episode to explain backstory, and then a finale that begs for a second season (just kidding, Netflix seems to think that's optimal already)
- dleink 3y ago
  > - irregularly sized episodes matching the plot This is the one I've been thinking about for a while. I'm not sure why the MCU or Star Wars aren't doing more of this. They've kind of figured out how do to different sized plots (Daredevil vs. Avengers, Rogue Squadron) but why aren't they more connected? Why aren't they doing more multimodal storytelling. Have a big blockbuster movie, a 90 minute heist movie, a prestige tv season about politics, one about the military. Have some books about complicated stuff, a video game about the actiony parts, tiktok and instagram as storytelling devices instead of martech, etc.

by Zircom 3y ago

dsr_ 3y ago

We are still in the early days of figuring out what works. One issue: media execs don't know anything except "that was profitable, so let's do it again". Have you noticed that Netflix now has fifty cooking shows, split between one-shot game shows and tournaments/"reality" dramas? "Iron Chef" worked and "Top Chef" worked, so they get cloned and slightly modified. All of these sink. For a long-form SF/F show, what hasn't been done? - two 1 hour chapters weekly - dropping 2-4 1 hour chapters at a time, rather than either single episodes or the whole season - irregularly sized episodes matching the plot - six episodes of rising tension, a flashback episode to explain backstory, and then a finale that begs for a second season (just kidding, Netflix seems to think that's optimal already)

dleink 3y ago
> - irregularly sized episodes matching the plot This is the one I've been thinking about for a while. I'm not sure why the MCU or Star Wars aren't doing more of this. They've kind of figured out how do to different sized plots (Daredevil vs. Avengers, Rogue Squadron) but why aren't they more connected? Why aren't they doing more multimodal storytelling. Have a big blockbuster movie, a 90 minute heist movie, a prestige tv season about politics, one about the military. Have some books about complicated stuff, a video game about the actiony parts, tiktok and instagram as storytelling devices instead of martech, etc.