Crystal Ball: Film in 25 Years
Submitted by lukeprog on Sat, 07/24/2004 - 02:40
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- More budget, more gross, more spectacle - Of the top 20 highest grossing films ever, 11 were made in the last three years alone. This can be attributed to studios' uber-blockbuster mentality and the inflation of ticket prices. As grosses increase, so will budgets. We've reached a stage where it's possible to to put anything on the big screen, it's only a matter of cost. Whereas the $150-$200 million movie was an anomaly, there have already been 3 $150+ million movies this year.
- Traditionally animated films will die off - an obvious prediction, but a noteworthy one nonetheless. Disney and Dreamworks have quit making them, and the last several traditionally animated movies have failed at the box office, while computer animated films are the most reliably successful genre ever. Anime will continue to succeed in Japan and elsewhere for years, but it, too, will run out of steam as Japanese and American cinema (and culture) continue to merge. 2D animated films will become a rare stylistic choice, as black & white is today.
- Independent films will enumerate - it's always getting cheaper to shoot and edit high-quality films. Thousand-dollar software has replaced million-dollar hardware. The upcoming Collateral was shot entirely on a digital camera: can you tell? Probably not. Special effects, image manipulation, and 3D animation are cheaper, easier, and faster and things will continue to move in that direction. All of these factors will allow for amateur auteurs to shine without studio budgets.
- NC-17 will lose its stigma - before 2003, a studio had not released a single NC-17 feature for six years. In the last year alone there have been four: The Dreamers, Young Adam, and High Tension, and A Dirty Shame. Production companies are more daring now, willing to risk financial profit for freeing the NC-17 rating from its stigma, and audiences are beginning to feel more comfortable about seeing an NC-17 film. In 25 years, studio-released NC-17 features number a dozen a year.
- CGI will replace environment, props, and actors - not completely, mind you, but the process will become more popular. In the Star Wars prequels, Sky Captain, Immortel, Casshern, and the upcoming Sin City, almost all the environments and props are CGI. In The Matrix: Reloaded, during Neo's fight with dozens of Smiths, the environment, props, and human actors were all replaced with computer-generated counterparts to allow the 'camera' to move with absolute freedom. Panic Room replaced things like cofee pots, chairs, and banisters with CGI counterparts for a memorably long and free-moving shot of thieves entering the house. As directors continue to seek new ways to make films look exactly the way they want them to, they'll replace more and more physical elements with their more flexible computer-generated counterparts, including actors.
So, do people think I'll be right? Anyone got any other predictions?
"Of the top 20 highest grossing films ever, 11 were made in the last three years alone" - Yeah, but that's mainly due to inflation and population growth. I think big-budget blockbusters are pretty much a constant. I don't think this is growing.
Traditionally animated films will die off - I agree with you here.
Independent films will enumerate - Good point here. It's just getting cheaper and easier to make indies.
NC-17 will lose its stigma - I really don't see this happening unless there's a whole overhaul of the MPAA rating system (which is something I'd actually really like to see nonetheless).
CGI will replace environment, props, and actors - I actually think such CGI overuse is a phase Hollywood is going through. I think there is enough backlash against CGI that Hollywood will begin to tune it down soon enough. Directors will realize that making a freakin' CGI coffeepot just robs the shot of its character. And besides, I think it's still cheaper to just buy a real coffeepot.
Once again, I'm up way too late.
Even adjusting for ticket growth, the 'highest domestic grossers' list is overwhelmingly scewed to the last 5 years or so. And, while the population has increased, the population that watches movies in the theater has decreased since the 1930s do to competition from television, video/DVD, and now the Internet. There are just so many more options now than going to a cinema.
Yes, I'd definitely like to see an overhaul of the MPAA ratings system - it's always been screwed up, but then when you change what each ratings category really means without 'offically' overhauling the system, it's all just a big mess. We'll have to see how A Dirty Shame does in theaters. You're right, there's quite a chance it will bomb. I made the guess that NC-17 will lose its stigma because, well, virtually everything else has in the last 30 years.
I can only hope CGI overuse is a phase. Sky Captain failed miserably at the box office, and I'm beginning to think Sin City will as well, so those two failures could tell studios that audiences like real coffeepots better. Still, I think that as animation improves* and we're less able to tell the difference between real and fake, heavy CGI use won't necessarily rob a picture of its heart. I also think the Pixar movies have shown that films can have tremendous heart with nothing but CGI... what's your response to that?
Oh, yeah, well if you're going to make an animated movie, I have no problem with 100% CGI. I just object to creating, like, a CGI clock on the wall in an otherwise live-action shot. Perhaps I wouldn't be able to tell, but dammit, it's the principle of the thing.
Hehe, okay. If I couldn't tell, I wouldn't mind. The result is what's important to me with movies.
Now, I could definitely tell the coffeepot in Panic Room was fake, but I enjoyed the shot quite a bit, so if CGI props continue to look more realistic, I'm betting it'll to get to a point where I won't be able to tell the difference and I'll appreciate the dynamic camerawork it enables.