Subject: Re: theatre
Wed Oct 07 10:38:52 1998



>> the actual market i'm shooting for is serialized, short-feature movies,
>> delivered as MPEGs over the 'net. 
>
>well, you'll have quite a few years to collect that pile of money when
>the 'net is growing its bandwidth capacity.
>
>uh, come to think of it, I'm not sure I know what that is. it sounds like
>soap-opera or mini-series.  sorry, don't feel insulted, I plead total
>ignorance. :)


mea culpa.. dropped into jargon without thinking. 

short-features are 3-5 minute pieces.   if a full-length movie is a
novel, these are short stories.   that's all there was back in the days
of silent movies, simply because the 'bandwidth' of the cameras and
projectors was so low.   a single reel of film would last about three
minutes, so people described movies as 'two-reelers' and
'three-reelers'.

serialized fiction is the parent genre which includes soap operas and
sitcoms.   back in the old days, it was the Lone Ranger chasing bad
guys, or Buck Rogers zipping around in his spaceship.   technically,
serialized stuff follows a single plot through ten or twenty episodes.  
the term 'cliffhanger' originally referred to the way writers would
leave things blatantly unresoved at the end of one installment, to make
sure the audience came back for the next.

back in the heyday of motion pictures, you'd see a whole gamut of stuff
along with the main feature.   there'd be a newsreel, maybe a public
service announcement or two, a couple cartoons, then half a dozen serial
installments.   the serials would draw people in every week, then they'd
sit through the movie itself, even if they didn't know what it was.

that all went away when production companies moved into the next level
of advertising and promotion.   they started doing big, expensive
movies, and paying to advertise them in the papers and on TV.   the need
for serial audiences fell away, and theatres used that time to run more
showings of the main feature, as was necessary to recover the production
expenses.

the small features were gradually edged out, and with them went the
whole community they supported.   my overall goal is to rebuild that
community both in physical reality and online.   i want to ship movies
on film, but to use cheap, low-quality film (by industry standards) so
small theatres can afford them.   then i want to do simultaneous
releases to the 'net and to video, so people can get the digital version
on their own.

the theatres would be places people could go for the social experience
of seeing the movie, and the online community would be there for the
folks who just want to lurk.   it's all no-brainer business models..
everything has already been done into the ground before.   the only
reason there's an opening is that the industry has gotten swept along in
its continual rush to be bigger and better.