Abandoning the distinction between theatrical films and television

Sad Professor

I came across this in an article Roger Ebert has written about how sequels are killing the movie business. It's not that long and is well worth reading, but there's one bit in particular that jumped out at me.

[Paul Schrader] informed me that grown-up films and creative projects were "over" in the new Hollywood, and that many of his friends are turning to long-form television.

He emailed: "The quality of theatrically released films has been dropping so precipitously in recent years that the Academy Awards are no longer a fair gauge of audiovisual entertainment. Several decades ago audiences could expect a film such as The Social Network every week; now we are lucky to have one or two a year. Add to this the fact serious dramas have more or less migrated to television, and it's clear that the Oscars have become progressively less relevant. Last year arguably the best male performance of the year (Al Pacino in You Don't Know Jack) was not eligible for the Oscars."
[...]
Schrader had some pointed advice for me: "A veteran film critic—by this I mean you, Roger—should take it on himself by unilaterally abandoning the distinction between theatrical and nontheatrical films in year-end best-of lists. All long-form audiovisual entertainment, released on any distribution platform, would be eligible for consideration. The Academy, of course, would regard this as a nightmare. It would downgrade the 'specialness' of theatrical films. But this is all happening anyway. Why not get ahead of the curve?"

While I understand where he's coming from, I completely disagree with Schrader who I think is obviously past it. But is this the future of cinema? It seems a lot like where we're headed. As Ebert mentions in the article, there is already Home Premium on the horizon which proposes that films should be available on demand within 60 days of their theatrical release.

What are the consequences of removing the distinction between cinema and television? What happens when films are no longer made to be seen theatrically?

pickarooney

The distinction in size between the average cinema screen and the average television is a lot less than it used to be. Personally I don't enjoy the cinema "experience" much any more - I'd rather watch uninterrupted with a good pair of headphones. A film like The Social Network gains nothing from being shown on a big screen, IMO.

mikhail

The distinction is not so much about the size of the screen as money and time frame. Television has always been the poorer relation, but you can do a good bit more on a budget now.

However, the big difference was that television was traditionally very episodic. That meant that you could only tell a twenty minute or forty minute story on TV, compared with a 2 or 3 hour movie. That's why we have The Godfather and Police Squad! at the same time. These days, we have The Other Guys and The Wire. While TV remains quite episodic, there are shows like Lost and The Sopranos which have made arcs mainstream.

David Simon has described each season of The Wire as being like a novel. This summer, look forward to Battleships, a Hollywood blockbuster created from a cheap board game.

bonerm

Regarding preference to form, I think best film will always always beat television/serial purely because an idea becomes diluted as it's spread over many hours. Even the best tv shows are such in large part because of the serialisation format and familiarity you establish with characters. They are not metrics of the quality of the program itself. So for instance you could not take any two hours of The Wire and say it's better or more rewatchable than Chinatown imho. So in that regard I think film will always be better than TV.

Regarding venue, as home technology becomes more functional and portable I do think cinema becomes increasingly less appealing. I believe it will be finished or will at least become a marginal pursuit in generations to come. Theatrical gimmicks like 3d are just delaying the inevitable. You can just look into the history books to see how the home television destroyed the cinema. The technology we have today will just take that process to the next level.

S.M.B.

bonerm wrote: »

Regarding preference to form, I think best film will always always beat television/serial purely because an idea becomes diluted as it's spread over many hours. Even the best tv shows are such in large part because of the serialisation format and familiarity you establish with characters. They are not metrics of the quality of the program itself. So for instance you could not take any two hours of The Wire and say it's better or more rewatchable than Chinatown imho. So in that regard I think film will always be better than TV.

I think a long standing TV series is always going to have logistical issues which can result in a less than ideal product but I wouldn't consider it's ability to serialise a story to be a downside in any way.

johnny_ultimate

I'm of the opinion that television and film are two very distinct artforms these days. No film will ever have the depth and scope of the Wire (perhaps the one show out of the many, many great ones that truly utilised the many storytelling hours available by creating something astonishingly vast), but it's still a masterful art being able to create something special in 60-180 minutes. It's like a short story vs a novel - the story should dictate the form it takes. The Wire needs 50+ hours, the best films can do wonders in an hour and a half.

As for theatrical releases, I still very much favour going to the cinema, no matter the scale of the film. Even with a good TV and sound system, there is nothing like going to the cinema IMO. It's just my stubborn point of view, I guess. Oh well. There is much fantastic art to be consumed both on TV and in the cinema, and I can only hope it stays that way. Like we divide magazines and books, it'd be a shame if the film / TV distinction is lost, and I can't imagine it will be.

stevenmu

It's a bit like saying "music is crap these days, lets lump it in with photography". Ok, so maybe the distinction between film and tv isn't quite that extreme, but it's still there and the quality of film or the lack thereof doesn't blur the line at all imho.

The Mad Hatter

Funny enough, he seems to forget it, but Ebert has already started to do this. One of his Picks of 2010 was Channel 4's amazing straight-to-TV Red Riding Trilogy; another was the straight-to-YouTube animation Sita Sings the Blues.

BlitzKrieg

What are the consequences of removing the distinction between cinema and television? What happens when films are no longer made to be seen theatrically?

The distinction between cinema and film I'd argue from experiance goes alot deeper then simply the medium its delivered on, though it is still a big factor.

One key aspect I'd say that has been clearly affecting films already is that they each have their *stars* and I dont mean the actors. I mean in film the director is pushed as the lynchpin of pulling a good film together, he's the vision, the driving force and the darling of cinema theory and film as an art medium.

In contrast in television its the writer/s who is considered the driving force, lynchpin and key to a series success.

how much is put behind the writers for the success of many of todays top shows.

Joss Wheden is a household name as a writer (despite directing a number of episodes and the serenity movie)

Ronald D Moore also because he's a writer.

Go look on any tv forum and you'll see the success or failure of a tv series will always be laid at the feet of the writers.



The problem noticeably is that writing for television is clearly better then writing for film. I met the writer of sherlock holmes last year in a Q+A and he told me that the project gets passed on to so many other writers after his final draft and the finished product that he finds it hard to recognise the film beyond the story framework.

In television the writer stays involved right through production as they develop each episode.

Its a better job.

And the better writers are opting for it over writing for film.

The quality of script in the average blockbuster has f*cking nosedived because of this.

The only saving grace of film was that for the most part television is censored but thats now gone with showtime and HBO.

Film though still has the edge with directing. With the restrictions of television series having a defined look established the freedom and control writers enjoy are not extended to directors who have to follow a show bible. While in film directors are expected to stamp their own distinct style to the film.

Consider Boardwalk Empire who had Martin Scorsese define its look by directing the first episode. The expected consistency pretty much restricts all directors of the following episodes and it becomes part of the show's bible.


On the whole mass sequel issue.

I'd draw a distinction between franchising and sequels. I'd say something like The Hangover 2 is a sequel. While Transformers 3 is a franchise and the difference in my mind is one is building on the success of its prequel to draw the audience in again while the other is ignoring that its prequel is a hated bloated piece of **** that almost everyone hates and that it is relying on the fact that there is an X% of the population that will go see anything with transformers written on it because its an established part of their life.

Franchising = religion.

Its a mental programming that makes you ignore logic. its a product hitting a cultural standard that it becomes iconic to a demograph and you can live of that demograph indefinately. its like the entertainment equivilent to Ayn Rands social parasites.

I dont hate franchising because there's a franchise everybody loves. Its like I said like a modern religion its a piece of your moral/social base. You genuinely draw some sort of bizarre comfort from characters and stories in the product.

Sadly it also makes a definite statistic and therefore a safe bet. If hollywood is in trouble it can persist by relying on the numbers that x% will always go see a transformers film. Galvasean will ensure there'll be transformers movies always. Just like I can ensure the continued existence of sonic the hedgehog games.

Sad Professor

Some really good posts. I've always found this topic interesting. So many people actually draw almost no distinction between cinema and television, aside from the size of the screen and the money involved. I've always found this bizarre.

As I understand it, the modern theatrical film basically evolved from silent cinema and it remains an essentially visual experience, where as television originated in theatre, and despite some cinematic influences, that's what it still is for the most part: filmed theatre. This is why the director is so important in film, while on television he is basically just a hired hand who makes sure the actors hit their marks. There are exceptions in both cases, of course. I've seen some very cinematic tv shows and some very stagey films.

I just worry that once you take film out of the film theatre the language of the medium will change. It already has to large extent, but there's a big difference between a film that is being made to be watched on a large screen with surround sound that absorbs the viewer and cant be paused, and something that is made to be watched on a significantly smaller screen. Generally speaking, camera angles, sound design, cinematography and music are done very differently in television than they are in films. The setting in which they intended to be viewed has a lot to do with this.

johnny_ultimate

That's an interesting point about directors. TV does feel more like a 'team effort' a lot of the time - it's way many series can feel clogged with filler. When you have so many different people involved, the quality doesn't always remain consistent.

But there's a handful of auteurs out there in television, and not just the creators who provide a rough story outline and maybe write the series opening / finale. I'm working through the West Wing at the moment, and I was amazed at the amount of full writing credits Aaron Sorkin gets. I'd say maybe 80-90% of the episodes have Sorkin as the sole / joint writer, which is crazy. That's maybe 19 episodes a year, and there's a lot of dialogue in the West Wing! Similarly, Larry David feels like in full control of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Both of these series often have 'directors for hire', but very much feel like the writer has a lot of control over the overall show. Joss Whedon, Shawn Ryan (of the Shield), David Chase, David Simon, J.J. Abrams etc... - they all clearly had a hand in the vision of their respective TV shows, but from episode to episode it feels more like a group effort.

It's certainly harder to credit an achievement on a single person on TV. It's easy to praise a Coen Brothers film, a Christopher Nolan film etc - a film is far from an individual effort, but ultimately it is the writer / director who gets a lot of the credit. TV lacks that - often the creator carries the publicity load, but it makes it harder to make an overall evaluation. It's changing - you can certainly comment on the auteur characteristics of Larry David, Aaron Sorkin, the Wire crew (who now have a body of work including The Corner, Generation Kill and Treme), even Joss Whedon who is less responsible for the entire season arc than the others. It's interesting to see how it will go though - TV personalities don't always get the credit they deserve, which is certainly a distinction from cinema (that said, it isn't every day you hear the sound designer or cinematographer get any sort of credit :pac:).

pickarooney

It wasn't too long ago that an actor moving from film to television was invariably struggling for work or at the end of his career. The upward step was always from television to film.

While the trend hasn't exactly been reversed, there's no longer a stigma associated with working in television after working in film (or at the same time). I could be talking through my arse but it seems that TV salaries have been steadily increasing in the last decade while film fees have stagnated. I'd wager the top TV stars earn more than the top film actors these days. There are a number of actors earning north of 200 grand a show for a 24 episode season. That's good, regular money that would appeal to even the top of the Hollywood A-list.

don ramo

id say each has its own pros, and actor/actress that gets 3-5 million a film, has to leave there family for 4 months to shoot the film, they could end up making 2 or 3 films a year, or they can stay in one city for several years and earn say 3 million a year for 7 months work, at the most, and possibly fit in a film aswell, more time, less money, but there mostly at home,

actors with families are probably more likely to be on TV, its not down to failing as a film actor/actress just simple life choices, they want to be around there family, id say gary sinise and forest whitaker probably chose the tv path for those reasons,

but at the same time with the golden age of cable tv on top of us, a lot of actors are simply switching from film to tv simply for the storys they can tell, steve buscemi, dustin hoffman (hell be in HBOs luck later this year) william h macy, sean bean, all actors that have been in great films, i dunno if its by choice of by lack of decent films role, but id side with the later, there all good actors and probably could have there pick of roles, but they cant pick whats not there,