More frustrations with the media landscape...

[malymin]

lizardfromspace @ tumblr:

Alex Kurtzman saying lower episode counts helps make "every episode count" and avoids filler since when can "we all know" which of those old Trek episodes were "spinning their wheels" when literally every story arc in the modern serialized live action Trek era has been padded to hell. Picard spent three episodes to get into space, and half a season stuck in a nebula, Picard season two has two episode's worth of plot expanded to ten hours from mostly pointless subplots, and even Disco's best season had a back half full of "okay we found them, whoops nope" episodes but uh they don't have lizard babies anymore so it's better

Just. Filler and wheel spinning from what? What plot is it distracting us from. Exploring strange new worlds and boldly going where no one has gone before is the only plot

This post was about live action, but I'm thinking about it in the context of anime, too. Something that strikes me about reboots of shows that were originally much longer is how... anemic? They can feel. Introducing the cast like a checklist; no time to have characters simply build their dynamics together in low-stakes episodes where the writers just threw ideas at the wall because a straight manga adaptation would run out of material far too fast. A lot of great moments in the original sailor moon anime just come from the writers Making Shit Up.

There are stories I would love to see retold, but not in an official capacity - not right now. Not when currently, television is binge-based, to be eaten in one sitting and forgotten instead of ruminated on between individual episode airings, shows cutting all the fat that adds the flavor because "filler is bad", and it's not even a "paid more to do less work" situation for the cast and crew. In terms of anime, the industry is still hell.

In terms of western animation and live action, streaming services have made shows shorter specifically to keep from having to pay as many royalties to cast and crew. And don't forget the entire movies that have been turned into lost media before seeing the light of day, because tax exemptions were more profitable than releasing movies - even movies for popular francises like Wonder Woman and Scooby Doo, apparently. I think new and independent stories suffer the most under the current media paradigm because they're given less chance to even be born. But Big Media Properties right now are starting to feel like... idk. Like a goose that lays golden eggs being badly taken care of for "efficiency", and then the farmer being mad that it's not laying the maximum number of eggs.

I think the goose should be confiscated.

Comments

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Something that strikes me about reboots of shows that were originally much longer is how... anemic? They can feel. Introducing the cast like a checklist; no time to have characters simply build their dynamics together in low-stakes episodes where the writers just threw ideas at the wall because a straight manga adaptation would run out of material far too fast. <<

That and tone. I usually care a lot about tone, and that has the highest failure rate in reboots. So there are very few reboots that I like at all. Compare the utterly grim Star Trek reboot with Gene Roddenberry's hopeful vision of a future written at a very grim time on Earth. While everyone else was freaking out over nuclear doom, he was saying, "Let's imagine that we survive this, and learn how to get along, what would that future look like?" And it was beautiful.

>> There are stories I would love to see retold, but not in an official capacity - not right now. <<

Yeah, I would rather they not touch the good stuff.

>>Not when currently, television is binge-based, to be eaten in one sitting and forgotten instead of ruminated on between individual episode airings, shows cutting all the fat that adds the flavor because "filler is bad", and it's not even a "paid more to do less work" situation for the cast and crew. In terms of anime, the industry is still hell.<<

Someone wondered why new shows are so less attractive to fans and rarely gain much of a following. They're not designed to do that anymore, and the above are some reasons I cited.

>> I think new and independent stories suffer the most under the current media paradigm because they're given less chance to even be born. <<

For a very little while longer, yes. But watch and wait. We're toward the beginning of where the tech is good enough for people at home to make decent films. Most of what we're seeing now is short, just a few minutes. That's okay, most things start small. Give it time to grow.

Think where the electronic publishing industry was 20-25 years ago. Now ebooks are an enormous part of the market, and most of what people read is online instead of on paper. Nobody believed it would happen -- I was one of the first folks pointing out those possibilities. It'll happen with film too, and faster now that AI is becoming more prevalent. You'll have the pleasure of watching Hollywood have a collective panic attack as the competition rises. Cry me a river, bitches.

Meanwhile, keep an eye on indie production. Sometimes Kickstarter has good ones.

Re: Yes ...

[malymin]

That and tone. I usually care a lot about tone, and that has the highest failure rate in reboots. So there are very few reboots that I like at all. Compare the utterly grim Star Trek reboot with Gene Roddenberry's hopeful vision of a future written at a very grim time on Earth. While everyone else was freaking out over nuclear doom, he was saying, "Let's imagine that we survive this, and learn how to get along, what would that future look like?" And it was beautiful.

Ah, yea. Sometimes something comes close to getting things right on paper, but the tone is all wrong.

Yeah, I would rather they not touch the good stuff.

Even the bad stuff feels like it would be better salvaged into new material in a like... era more willing to experiment. Which I don't feel like the current era is.

For a very little while longer, yes. But watch and wait. We're toward the beginning of where the tech is good enough for people at home to make decent films. Most of what we're seeing now is short, just a few minutes. That's okay, most things start small. Give it time to grow.

Think where the electronic publishing industry was 20-25 years ago. Now ebooks are an enormous part of the market, and most of what people read is online instead of on paper. Nobody believed it would happen -- I was one of the first folks pointing out those possibilities. It'll happen with film too, and faster now that AI is becoming more prevalent. You'll have the pleasure of watching Hollywood have a collective panic attack as the competition rises. Cry me a river, bitches.

I hope you're right. Unfortunately, I've seen a LOT of artists get frenzied in a moral panic about AI "stealing art" (often due to a poor understanding of how AI training data actually works), to the point of seeing people on social media rally around increased copyright protections as a "lesser evil" necessary to defeat the "greater evil" of AI image/text/video generation... which scares me. I think the ever-growing overreach of copyright is a far worse existential threat for art than machine generated images allowing for easier "forgeries" of traditional illustration ever could be.

Meanwhile, keep an eye on indie production. Sometimes Kickstarter has good ones.

True! But it's hard to find out about things by ones self... this is why I think it's good to get in a habit of making recommendations off the beaten path. Something the modern web largely disincentivizes...