Of Posters And Productions

When was the last time you looked at a movie poster and thought, "Wow. I have to see that!" I'm going to wager a guess and say "a long time."

It's not your imagination. Movie posters have been crap for many years. In their defense, I don't think that they are getting worse, but that is faint praise. The days of masterpieces like Star Wars, Anatomy of a Murder, and Conan The Barbarian are seemingly long since dead. We have a few stars shine through, some with real staying power like the Saul Bass-inspired Precious, which had a magnificent poster that dramatically communicates information about the movie.

Many have argued that it is because Photoshop has eliminated the need for true artists to paint posters. Others have said that the financial focus has shifted within movie studios to short video clips for social media. Others still say that in an era of iPads and Android, the movie trailer has become the new poster. I think there is truth to all of these things, although they are not the whole story. And in many ways, it doesn't matter. Something that could, should, be beautiful and artistic, usually isn't.

This is a painful thing for me. I love movies. I also love all of the ancillary elements of the movie experience. I love the DVD case, I love watching old copies of movies on old hardware. I love movie trailers. And I especially love movie posters. They are an art form that has laid dormant for far too long, and I think that their fall mirrors the fall in vision in the modern movie industry.

In a way that isn't entirely metaphorical, the poster represents the decline of Hollywood — a decline from an industry that produced experiences to a industry that produces noise. The poster represents the decline of the industry from something great albeit incredibly flawed, to something that shovels out as much lowest-common-denominator stuff that it can, every year, year after year. It is not simply flawed; what it is is bad.

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I'm no curmudgeon. In most ways, the world of today is better than the world of yesterday. Most of the time, when someone says "back in my day," they're about to say something stupid. I'm saying "back in my day," but not really. Because this wasn't back in my day! It was before my day! I'm arguing this from the perspective of someone who doesn't have an emotional stake in a position. I am an impartial third party.

Perhaps I'm giving myself too much credit. I do have some investment in the era. I grew up during the transition. The 1980's were the beginning of the end for a great period of cinema that directly followed the fall of the Hays Code and preceded the rise of Eisnerian High Concept production. Every filmmaker who lived during this transition talks about it, be it Spielberg, Lucas, Redford, or Beatty. They lived it.

Some of them take the curmudgeon route, but others are pragmatic about it. They lament what was lost while celebrating what was gained. My concern is that some of the things that were lost were incredibly valuable and have no analog in today's industry to act as a replacement.

For example, we no longer have B-movies. Today's analog for that is television. The money-making tripe that was once ground out onto the big screen to fund the big budget "jewel" productions has shifted to money-making tripe on the small screen. It's simply a different form of the same stuff. I'd argue that old B-Movies may have had more artistic merit to them than today's television, but that's a subject for another article.

Similarly, movies today have shorter lifespans in theaters, but make a lot of money on home media that didn't exist. Indeed, the home media revolution has been a savior to some movies that would have otherwise been forgotten after failing in the box office. The "cult" movie would not exist if not for home media. That is a great thing.

But something was lost that has not been replaced, and it is hard to nail down. I suspect that it's hard to nail down because there is nothing there to nail... giggle... It is, in fact, many things all interacting with one another to cause change in the industry, and one of the side-effects is a drastic loss of quality and innovation in big-budget media.



http://www.cracked.com/article_19903_9-actors-who-do-exact-same-thing-every-movie-poster_p2.html?wa_user1=4&wa_user2=Movies+%26+TV&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=companion

There are some movies that go against this grain, and I appreciate them. While I didn't like the movie Inception, I did appreciate its craft. But what struck me about it wasn't the movie, but the reaction to it. People were shocked that a movie this daring would get made. They were doubly shocked that it was a big success; it earned over $800 million worldwide.

All the while, I was shocked that other people were shocked! It showed how far the industry has fallen when Inception is called daring, and when everyone is surprised that a well-written, well-acted, inventive movie, gasp, does well!

You'll notice that after Inception, its poster and BWAAA sound were stolen by everyone ever.

There are many great movies made every year, but very few in the vein of the Hollywood greats. Most of the daring, inventive, grand pictures are produced by small studios. They usually fail, but they are at least trying. I am also hoping that a resurgence of quasi B-movies will emerge, giving studios increased revenue flow and moving some of the focus away from the "tent-pole" releases.

This isn't happening, but perhaps Spielberg and Lucas will be proven correct. If Hollywood actually collapses at some point in the next few years, they may be forced to conjure up a better business model.

The logic behind that terminology was once sound. The "tent-pole" release would hold up the rest of the release schedule by providing hype, advertising, and getting people into theaters. But the tent-pole logic only works when there are things to hold up.

Today, we have become so entirely focused on the big releases, that if a single one fails, a studio's entire fiscal year can be hosed. That is not a tenable business model! And with every ridiculous cycle of the movie industry, their problems get more complex and expensive.

Freedom from this theatrical samsara will, I think, come in the moksha of cheap cinema equipment. It is the reason why I am so furious with Canon for abandoning the D-SLR video revolution in favor of their super-expensive line of cinema cameras. They did it out of greed, and as a result, the EOS 5D Mark III is barely an upgrade as regards video from the then-over-three-year-old 5D Mark II, which launched the cheap video revolution.

While Canon is daft and is leaving it behind, other companies are not. Sony, Blackmagic, and Panasonic are all taking of the mantle dropped by Canon. With free programs such as Blender 3D available, and computers powerful enough to run both it and video production software like Adobe's After Effects and Premier, the world of grand, polished, cheap productions is, I think, nearing a golden age.

It is odd, that as the trailer has risen in quality and importance, the poster diminished.

Indeed, it is important to understand what I'm about to argue. I'm not saying that movies from years ago were better or worse. I'm saying that the industry today is different from the industry of yesterday, and because of that, the products are different. 

Where is the drama?! Where is the design?! I understand that posters don't carry the marketing importance that they once did, what with the internet turning trailers into a medium all their own, but come on Hollywood! Back in the day, even horribly crappy films had good posters. Look at the poster to the right for the less-than-B movie, Curucu: Beast of the Amazon.

We simply don't have posters like that, anymore. Every year, we have a handful of posters that really stand out. 300 harkened back to the days of B-movie posters with its hilariously over-the-top "Prepare for Glory!" tagline. Walk The Line was also worthy of note for being boldly designed. But those are the exceptions... Very much the exceptions.

While I don't like most of James Cameron's work, I think that there is a good reason why his movies do so damned well in the box office; they harken back to an era of Hollywood where a studio brought all of its financial abilities to bear on a "jewel." There was a belief, gummed up as it was with many stupid ideas, that a studio shouldn't just make box-office fodder. That is what the B-movies were for. The movies, the real movies that everyone really cared about, would be epic productions where every element of the film was intended to wow, impress, and win awards.

For example, adjusted for inflation, the most expensive movies of all time include Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, a variety of other boilerplate blockbusters, Avatar, Titanic, and finally, Cleopatra. Cleopatra was a Brobdingnagian undertaking. It nearly bankrupted Fox and was the very embodiment of its era. That film would never get made today. Granted, it could be argued that it shouldn't have been made back in the 60's, as well, but that's beside the point. The important point is that a movie with a budget like that wouldn't get made unless it had product-placement opportunities^X and a PG-13 rating.^X

Cameron doesn't give a shit. He makes movies to make movies. And when he does that, he brings everything. He busts out makeup, and special effects, and the best technology of the time. Whether he entirely succeeds or not is unimportant. He's doing what they once did in Hollywood and his box office receipts speak for themselves. His movies are the only movies of the past fifteen years that are either in, or anywhere near, the top-ten all time box office takes.

This vision and sense of grand, award-worthy entertainment is something that Hollywood lost long ago. When this happened is an academic question, but I think that the emergence of television had the most to do with it. B-movies shifted from being viewed in theaters to being seen on TV. Revenue streams changed. Today, the internet is changing the business even more, and while the industry should be ecstatic about these developments, they stagnate. They refuse to advance.

I await the day that the industry realizes that they are stupidly ignoring the fantastic and profitable possibilities inherent in modern technology. Then, maybe then, they will forget their increasing obsession with lowest-common-denominator, big-budget, PG-13 garbage, and bring us all back to a day when the images that didn't move were themselves a grandly artistic promise of drama, romance, and adventure.

I don't know how much of it has to do with the technologies necessary to make posters. Movies were once products made with hands. If you wanted a monster, you had to go all Creature From The Black Lagoon on an actor. If you wanted a space ship, you had to build that spaceship. CGI effects have completely changed the way that films are planned.

So it goes with posters. Now, with Photoshop


That is why fewer movie tickets are sold per capita today then in the past.SUP3SUP That is why less food is sold at theaters. That is why not a single movie from the past fifteen years is in the top-ten all-time movie box office list, Avatar included. The last movie to crack the top-ten was Titanic, which is #6 or #7, depending on data. And the last movie before that was E.T., fifteen years before that.

At the same time, the inflation-adjusted biggest opening weekends top-20 list is entirely made of films from the past ten years.⁴

The inflation-adjusted climb is what we should be seeing as population increases. Theoretically, people want to see movies. The more people we have, the more tickets that should be sold. But we aren't seeing that. Instead, movie ticket sales have been more-or-less flat, with a slow drop over the last decade, for the past thirty years.

The movie industry is thus becoming increasingly dependent on massive "tent pole" releases to suck up as much of the limited number of tickets as possible.

This further explains the ballooning budgets of films as time goes on. Again, this list on Wikipedia shows that the inflation-adjusted cost of movies is dominated by movies from the past ten years. Of the top 36 films, only six were made before the year 2000. It's more money, chasing fewer customers, thus amping up the stakes of the game.

Movies are costing more, earning less, being seen by fewer people, all the while movie theaters can barely turn a profit. Why?

Because they lost focus on value. Instead of giving more for the same price or lowering the price, movie ticket prices have wildly exceeded inflation. Movie food is so far beyond inflation as to be comical.SUP5SUP As time has gone on, the value of going to movies has done nothing but go down.

The stupidity of this is further illustrated by the emergence of the first truly successful attempt at 3D since they first started trying to make 3D a thing back in nineteen-fifteen. An industry focused on value would have seen the increase in 3D and thought "wow! Here's a great way to increase value!"

Of course, instead, they kept value the same or actively lowered value yet again by increasing prices for 3D. This is, again, the reason why 3D sales continue to drop. We see big success with Avatar, which was essentially a tech-demo, and fan favorites like Titanic and The Lion King, which succeed because of the novelty of seeing something that is already loved in a new way. 3D was, and always will be, a gimmick, and Hollywood is doing nothing to prevent this.

It's not all gloom and doom in Hollywood, though. There are a few who "get it." For example, Arclight Cinemas in California has been doing nothing but grow since its inception in 1997. They understand that what a theater is, no matter the state of the movie production industry, is a venue. That necessarily has value because most people cannot afford to have a theater at home.

And even if they did, going out to the movies has value. It's a cultural and social experience. Just because I can make great coffee at home doesn't mean that I don't like going to a cafe.

i forgot
My favorite era is absolutely the 1960's with the 1980's and their hilariously over-the-top drama coming in second. But for the purposes of this post, I'm going to focus on the 1960's and the inspiration to the brilliant posters produced.

The assholes of yesterday were the same assholes that we have today. The difference is where they derive their egos. In the past, being seen as great artists and patrons was the ego fuel that drove behavior. Today, it is money. Every now and then, cracks of the old ego shine through, such as when Michael Bay described his pain about the critical railing that Armageddon received. But mostly, it's all money, all the time.

This has resulted in an odd dichotomy. Everything in America is being distilled. The middle class is being broken into the haves and the have-nots. The technology world, the toy world, the clothing world — it is becoming impossible to find quality in the middle-ground. You either pay a fortune for quality, or wallow in crap with everyone else.

In the Hollywood of old, award winners were frequently the box-office kings of the year. Look at The Sound of Music, Casablanca, All About Eve, On The Waterfront, Around The World in Eighty Days, etc. Today, award-winners are almost never blockbusters. In the last thirty years, best picture has broken $200 million only three times: Forrest Gump, Titanic, and The Lord of the Rings.

The story actually gets worse when you take inflation into account.

A few considerations with the chart. Movies before the Eisnerian Shift were frequently given multiple releases. As such, comparisons to modern movies aren't entirely accurate. It's for this reason that I relied on Titanic's original box office take of $600 million to determine its current IA amount.

But post-Eisner, most movies received a single release, so this chart is comparable. The red lines are the important things to watch. As we near today with Argo on the left side of the chart, the red lines get smaller. In fact, aside from the incomparable Lord of The Rings win, Best Picture films are the worst-performing they have ever been in history. If I found some way to accurately compare older films, this chart would undoubtedly still hold.

Even the recent addition of 12 Years a Slave does little to alter the general landscape of the data. It has earned $187 million.

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3: http://www.the-numbers.com/market/ This trend holds even though during this 17-year span, the US added fifty million people to its population.

4: These numbers are difficult to parse since no one has ever made a definitive list. Wikipedia has an original table of data showing record-setters and the inflation-adjusted revenues. Look at the climb in inflation-adjusted values. From 1975 to 1983, the real numbers climb while the inflation numbers remain relatively flat. Return of the Jedi spikes the numbers which again remain flat until Batman, six years later, spikes the numbers yet again. The Lost World causes the next big spike, which pushes the inflation numbers above $100 million and they have been climbing ever since. The Avengers broke $200 million in 2012. If the trajectory holds, we will see our first $250 million opening by the year 2018. The next Star Wars movie, perhaps?

5: http://gizmodo.com/5169552/movie-theater-popcorn-it-really-is-that-expensive


X: One of the most egregious examples in recent memory is the lumbering beast of product placement known as The Avengers films: Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. Acura had purchased placement of their cars in Iron Man 2, but had not yet been cleared in Thor. So when a bunch of Acura cars rolled on screen during the first prints of Thor, the Acura logos on various vehicles were mysteriously edited out. In later versions, like those on the DVD, Acura's placement plan was fully paid for and all of the logos were magically back.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2141624/International-companies-banking-product-placement-The-Avengers-shatter-box-office-records.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Or perhaps the absolute poochscrew that was Sahara, where scenes were not allowed to be removed because they contained product placement for alcohol companies. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-movie15apr15,0,6005119.story?page=3&coll=la-home-headlines

X: http://www.the-numbers.com/market/MPAARatings/Rated-R.php This isn't your imagination. Both the output and success of R-rated films has been on a downward trend for the past twenty years.

Ultra Mega Super Turbo: A New Cafe

I am Kickstarting a new cafe. I need your help. I need this cafe to be scattered far and wide. I want as many people as possible to know about it. This is my shot, and I'm damn proud of it.

You can go directly to the Kickstarter page here.

More Boxtrolls Goodness!

I'm not posting very often, and when I do, it seems to always be about The Boxtrolls, but I don't care... see what I did there? No? Watch the trailer.



I'm gearing up to be pissed this September when The Boxtrolls — a film that will undoubtedly have more creative spark in the first ten minutes than all of Frozen — will open to less than half of what Frozen opened to. I am actively angry that Frozen did so well in the box office. It wasn't very good.

I suppose that I should avoid being too angry. I was equally angry when Avatar became the #1 movie of all time and the #16 movie inflation adjusted, in spite of having a storyline so cliched and racist that I nearly left the theater. And don't even get me started on The Sound of Music being the #3 of all time, inflation adjusted. And what's Titanic? I think it's #6, or thereabouts.

At least Titanic was melodramatic spectacle. I'll give it that. It was maudlin, inane, and so cloying as to again nearly make me leave the theater, but at least it was spectacle. The same could be said of Gone With The Wind, which is far and away the #1 movie of all time, inflation adjusted. No other movie even comes close. And while we look back on it fondly, it's not a great movie. It's an event, certainly, but it's not great. This truth is magnified when viewed on its own merits in comparison to other films of the age. It has aged very poorly while other great films have aged well.

So, in conclusion, the viewing public is comprised of tasteless swine. Q.E.D.

Drops mic.

"Breadwinners" Is Nickelodeon's Limp Hail Mary

Nickelodeon is in the shitter. They have managed ratings increases over the course of the past year, but are still far below their ratings of a few years ago. Their money-making goliath is still Spongebob. Their new shows are flopping with both audiences and critics. And if the resistance to Legend of Korra is any indication, their executive ranks are filled with the sort of borderline-retards that one would expect of executive ranks at a company that sells ADHD-addled retrograde social concepts to children who are slowly being turned into diabetics by the breakfast cereals that are Nickelodeon's primary ad buyers.

It reminds me of the scene in Big, where Tom Hank's character is in an executive meeting for the toy company at which he has managed to get a job, and he dismantles the stupid idea of another executive, an idea to compete with Transformers with buildings that turn into robots. It is a shockingly stupid idea, and yet the executive doesn't realize that. Even when faced with the simple question of "why is this fun?" he is unable to answer. He is the perfect representation of an executive that doesn't actually have any abilities. All he can be is an "executive." As such, he can be the "executive" of anything. Why bother learning about it?

And so we come back to Nickelodeon. They are executives who can be executives and that is it. They don't understand their shows or their market. They understand charts and numbers and believe, with all the weight of their degrees and breeding behind them, that this is somehow real. They are the ones who truly understand things. Not these foolish artists. The people who actually create things are nothing more than interchangeable grunts.

Media executives are the money-sucking parasites of the media industry. No one is paid more to do less aside from investment bankers.

But I digress, as I'm known to do. This is about Nickelodeon's attempts to not be horrible.

I have to admit, I was expecting something different considering all of the hype Nickelodeon has been churning up. I was expecting something of Spongebob or Korra caliber. Instead, I got a show that was obviously animated with a Wacom tablet, Illustrator, and Flash. At least this helps to explain the strongly negative reviews of the show. This is some crazed, spastic, hyperactive shit. I don't mean shit in that this show is shit, I mean that this show is some shit. And I have now seen it.



As I mentioned, the show is getting very poor reviews. I'm not surprised. This is a web short. It was intended to be a web short. It feels like a web short. It wasn't even a terribly successful web short. But Nickelodeon damned the torpedoes and ran full speed ahead with it in a desperate attempt to find... anything. It is manic in a way that Spongebob could only ever hope to be. If children today are truly riddled with ADHD, shows like this are causing it. Hell, this show cannot slow down because it is set to a beat that is inspired by electronic music such as dubstep.

The funny thing is that this reminds me of old Fleischer shorts — a noble pedigree indeed. Just as with Betty Boop, the characters of Breadwinners bob up and down at all times to the music. Everything is alive. This should be a good thing, but instead the show just appears unfocused and manic. Importantly, even the Fleischer shorts were never intended to be seen in quick succession. They were four-minute doses of madness that showed before feature films.



The above video is a comparison between the original video and the Nickelodeon version. In case you wanted evidence that Nickelodeon is still just as moronic as it has always been, look no further than the changes made. For example, when Swaysway smacks Buhdeuce around, in the Nickelodeon version, he is using a piece of bread. That may seem like a random change, but it fits in perfectly with Nickelodeon's bizarre and idiotic conservativism; with the toast, no direct, violent physical contact is taking place. Similarly, both uses of the word "die" and its variants have been removed. "Die a fiery death" was changed to "end up roast beef." And "We didn't even die once" was changed to "we're still alive still."

While these don't qualify for the pantheon of great examples of television censorship, they reveal a company so utterly crippled by idiotic, corporate tampering as to be barely functional. No wonder Homestar Runner repeatedly rejected Nickelodeon's entreaties.

It reminds me of an episode of Behind Closed Doors With Joan Lunden where she profiled Domino's Pizza (trust me, I'm going somewhere with this). Amazingly, the shake-up of the company that was to come in a few years was presaged by the show. In one part of the episode, she sits in on a meeting between Domino's marketing executives (the worst kind of executives) and the team from the advertising company that is producing a television commercial.

In the commercial, a very small dog is attacking a man's leg and making over-the-top sounds, as though a bear were mauling a couch. After the viewing of the prototype commercial, one of the executives leans forward at the table and says "are we sure we want to have that level of violence in the commercial?"

Uhhh... what?

My father worked in corporate America for a long time. One of the things that he noticed is that people sitting in a meeting will lean forward, produce words, then lean back, place their hands in their lap, and relax, confident that they have just done "work." Of course, they haven't. Only someone with an MBA could ever believe that this was work. Work requires actual work, not simply asking stupid questions like some over-paid, wannabe Socrates.

In these meetings, sometimes actual work would get put on the table, be it a project, simple task, or something requiring actual insight and research. When this happened, those surrounding the table would physically push away from the table. The idea of real work was literally repulsive and caused actual, manifest behavior.

I saw this in the video of the Domino's executives. I actually saw it. They did it on camera. It blew my mind. I honestly did not believe that people this useless existed in the real world. But exist they do, and they get their fingers into everything.

As such, when you see changes that seem bizarre and pointless, that is their handiwork. The executives make these changes because they are hard to argue against because they make little sense and yet can be couched in terms that make them appear rational. It also lets them make changes without spending too much time or energy, thus allowing them to run about, infecting projects.

Changes for the sake of changes to appear as though they are doing work. It's the raison d'être of the media executive.

This show does nothing but confirm what Marc Summers said about Nickelodeon: the network is going into the dumper. Just as with Symbionic Titan's cancellation at Cartoon Network, all that Nickelodeon cares about is selling garbage. They don't care about quality. They don't care about positive change. They care about selling junk based on terrible shows. All they want to be is a mechanism to suck up money from a population.

In its current state, Nickelodeon is destined to die.

In late January, the CEO of Bayer said that "We did not develop this medicine for Indians. We developed it for western patients who can afford it." He is an executive in the truest American sense. Compare that to George Merck, then CEO of Merck, in 1929.

We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been.

One chases quality, and expects that profit will follow; the other simply chases profit. One is a leader, innovator, and pioneer; the other is an overpaid bean counter with a fancy degree. One is worthwhile; the other should simply be euthanized.

It's time to euthanize Nick. Time to make way for something better.

The Boxtrolls Is The Best Movie You Won't Go See When it Comes Out

How do I know that? Because almost no one went to go see Coraline or Paranorman when they came out. Instead, people will go and see Frozen or some equally overstuffed piece of claptrap. Make no mistake, there is more creativity, soul, spirit, and artistry in a single frame of Paranorman than in the whole of Disney's work from the past fifteen years. I say that with the deepest respect and admiration for those who work at Disney, and to be fair to them, the failings of Disney's work are not their fault. It is the fault of the soulless pieces of executive garbage that run the corporation.

So, yeah. Go see The Boxtrolls.

Betty Boop Logo

Here's a high-res Betty Boop logo.

Another Random Betty Boop

It's been awhile since my last post. Life has a tendency to get in the way of such things. But here's another Betty Boop vector. As with all of them, if you would like an editable vector .png file that's openable in Illustrator and Fireworks, send me an e-mail. I can't post them in Picasa or on Flickr since both services mangle your images when you upload them. They are absolutely not left untouched.