Posted by joozio 1 hour ago
I really found it hard to sympathize with the author at this point. If you're in a crunch you don't need to pay a maid to clean.
here is an archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260511122830/https://serjaimel...
(Side-note: I have created htmlpipe which archives archive.is pages on archive.org so I am more than happy to answer if someone has any questions about it and I have an submission of a blog regarding it too if someone is interested but yeah, enjoy the article now!)
What a wonderful dystopia we're building.
1) general decline in wages
2) only short-term work being available
3) streaming platforms never pay the way Hollywood/Broadcast TV did: bad pay, but with a share of show profits for decades afterwards. Now just bad pay
So it was generally about getting their pay increased. Instead, the strike lead to a big decrease in pay that Netflix and Skydance (Paramount) are blamed for.
There’s the ever-increasing restrictions and cost of shooting in California and the huge incentives other localities offer to film and even commercial (advert) projects. My friend just flew the whole production to Louisiana to shoot a 30 second commercial because of the incentives.
There’s the fact that even if a new show or movie is good, it is competing not only with other new stuff but also with the entire back catalogue of everything ever made that is instantly available for viewers.
There’s streaming rights, that never paid as much as traditional TV even though it had broader reach.
There’s competition with phone / social platforms that continue to optimize their content and algorithms with shorter feedback loops and more additive content, against trad production which takes a ton of money and time and upfront cost.
Anyway, right around '10 the industry was really stressed. The financial crash was 2 years in, and the recovery was more propaganda than reality. The productions were chasing a Hollywood market that the population did not have the disposable income to support. Then in all that stress, the Me-Too movement starts. Rumors and murmurs at first, but soon a tsunami of women from the entertainment industry sharing their institutional abuse and choosing to leave the industry entirely. My wife was one, an Academy Award winning filmmaker, famous for children's media.
That line in time of Hollywood films going bad? It is when the women that were silent in their abuse chose to leave the industry enmasse. What replaced them were clueless men and women okay with the abuse, and the reduced quality of Hollywood is a reflection of the quality of their intellects.
Many european countries are constantly releasing movies with low budget but far better in terms of character work, plot, etc.
Asia is killing it as well, with south korea having golden era hollywood quality, Japan being consistently decent and China starting to develop a world-friendly industry...
I mean, I understand and somewhat share some of the criticism, but it has to be said that Hollywood used "wigs, makeup, and so on" from its very beginning. Movie stars were always supposed to be "more" than everyday mortals. The only real aberrations of modern hollywood are plastic surgery and deeply unnatural body types (stick-thin women and dehydrated steroid-pumped men), mostly because they are abused to the point of absurdity.
Coincidentally, I'm doing the same thing with movies, TV shows and games, and 2010 still feels too modern for me. I try to make it before 2005.