Are Our Expectations Too High?

[Thousanth]

The thing is people will go to a poetic film and to a mindless borg film. Its almost impossible to predict what will sell.
Unfortunatley for every 1 person who wants great acting and poetic plots there are 3 who will be content to be assaulted by special effects.
As long as thats so we will continue to get 6 brainless flicks for every 1 film with even a decimal of intelligence.
No major Hollywood studio wants to through their full weight behind an Amelie, beacuse if they shoot and miss they'll have a long fall to the bottom.
Why take chances? Go with a Pearl Harbor. Put a few big names under its belt, helm it with a big name director, market it as the thrill ride of the century, a patriotic masterpiece wave some flags and kill the bad guys, you have 200 million easy.
Forget being blown away fy great acting and a terrific script, there's ILM, use it.

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"Welcome to the Black Lagoon - Please wipe your feet."

[Matt J Heaton]

Thats it. I blame the audience.

Hollywood mostly gives what people want and people still go and see films like Pearl Harbor despite knowing its a bad film. After all, they couldn't have missed the reviews.

I'm just glad there are directors like Joel Coen out there.

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[Thousanth]

Well Matt the audience is partly to blame. You said it yourself, Hollywood gives us what we want, if we didn't go to see crap less and less crap would get made

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"Welcome to the Black Lagoon - Please wipe your feet."

[thepreacher_naric]

The thing is Hollywood gives us what Hollywood wants us to see. Hollywood presents us with a product that they know is enjoyable to a majority of the public. The rest of us can suffer.


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The pay-off from struggle is the most sweetest revenge.

[Krazzymannn]

The main reason we hate big budget movies is too many turn out bad. Just more of the same crap the majority wants to see. But, I've been pondering my love of low-budget film for awhile-and I realized, just as many bad low-budget movies get made, but no one picks them up, they dont get distrubituion, and I dont see them. Thats why there is this illusion that low-budget films are always higher quality than big-budget "hollywood" films. This is why we can also overlook the flaws in the better low-budget films, we see a major flaw, and somthing like "They did a pretty good job, for the money they had" gets said. I hope I dont appear too cynical.

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[Krazzymannn]

The main reason we hate big budget movies is too many turn out bad. Just more of the same crap the majority wants to see. But, I've been pondering my love of low-budget film for awhile-and I realized, just as many bad low-budget movies get made, but no one picks them up, they dont get distrubituion, and I dont see them. Thats why there is this illusion that low-budget films are always higher quality than big-budget "hollywood" films. This is why we can also overlook the flaws in the better low-budget films, we see a major flaw, and somthing like "They did a pretty good job, for the money they had" gets said. I hope I dont appear too cynical.

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[Davis]

That's a really good point. Since low budget films are such a risk, only the eff-ing great ones get distributed, like Memento, Mariachi, Pi, yadda yadda, so it looks like low budget films are proportionately better. Someone said there's like a 6 to 1 ratio of crap films to good stuff, I bet the same holds true to indie films, we just never see the 6 crap ones coz they can't get distributed.

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[Matt J Heaton]

I would imagine the smount of bad low budget films exceeds the amount of bad Hollywood films. In fact it probably exceeds the amount of Hollywood films made altogether.

Think of how many awful made in Vancouver straight to video or cable movies there are out there and then add the ones that didn't even make it that far.

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[twister!]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Davis:
Someone said there's like a 6 to 1 ratio of crap films to good stuff,


That's a bit generous I'd say it's more like 100 to 1.



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[Ralph Snart]

I think a number of things.

Number of things 1

It easy to lose track of your origional vision once you have a budget of over say $100.00

It is easy to lose track of your origional vision period.

A good movie (full length) is one that you do not really want to watch in the first place but find yourself enjoying for whatever reason.

Titan AE comes to mind.

At our or at least my level. I use the "Flowers For Algernon Concept"

In that with little or no budget if you have designs on making the next great epic and doing most of the work yourself, you are either in the mensa society or a loon.

If it can not be broken down to an effective five page short story.

Not screen play but short story......



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