There are some interactive games which basically allow for that albeit with limitations (not endless). I suppose an example is Mass Effect. But even a game like CoD single player is basically a story plus a FPS. Though its scripted with only one path, not multiple like you prefer.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (another Bioware IP) might be an even better example -- the story swings rather dramatically on how you play the game, with the potential to kill (or save) multiple characters.
You get 30+ hours of ad-free gameplay (that's > 60 half-hour TV shows), PLUS the chance to replay and experience a new story. (Good) RPGs are the best bang for your buck entertainment-wise.
Haven't played it (nor Mass Effect, actually) though heard good things about it. I have played SWTOR which is also BioWare and from what I heard from people who've played ME series you can feel that. If you play the class storylines, you end up with a more diverse MMORPG than something like WoW which is practically the same for every class -- until the last expansion, Legion, but still not comparable to SWTOR. SWTOR's user interface was laggy though (not sure if it still is) which made competitive PvP a joke. The raids were lackluster as well. But the stories, I can recommend those. Not to say the WoW storyline of Legion wasn't epic; but only once IMO. Not enough diversity.
Yeah, they dropped the ball a bit on SWTOR. I'd have loved to see a single-player KOTOR 3. Ah well, Bioware's slowly dying, so it's up to new companies to innovate on the stories.
Interactive movies have been around for quite a while, and they work OK on DVDs, yet they never became very popular. Or, as far as I know, made for great works for art.
It's hard enough writing a single good plot, let alone multiple plots that have to branch from each other. Plus it's much more expensive (many more scenes filmed per show), and it kills the shared experience between viewers.
That's even harder, because it prevents shows from filming episodes in advance. TV series don't make each episode each week; they go to a location and might take scenes from episodes 5, 8 and 11 on a single day. Plus they need a buffer for when there are problems with an actor, or a set, or the weather, etc. And of course, it comes with its own plot writing challenges.
Maybe it could work for something with a small cast and with only studio locations, but even then it's a big risk.
I could see Netflix testing the water with a short interactive movie, but the complexity and cost of doing interactive TV shows must be quite high, especially if there's multiple episodes.
Call me odd man out here, but I can't imagine wanting that. My input could probably improve a bunch of shows I consider 'bad', but if I think that, it's usually because of either lazy exposition or predictable plot lines. For shows I consider 'good', it's hard to imagine my input making them better, or on the chance that it did, it seems like it would ruin my enjoyment of it.
Past that, since democratizing the plot would almost certainly yield a regression to the lowest common denominator, it seems like a really fun way to ruin quality television.
Obviously you can't fix incompetent creators with options given to you by the creators, but I don't think that's the only possibility here. Ithink the most useful possibility for a technique like that would be a "customize your experience" kind of thing. Maybe some people want more action, while other people want more romance. There are shows right now struggling and failing to balance the disparate desires of their audience, and sometimes they'll miss the balance so badly that nobody's very happy. Allowing somebody to just click a "more pew pew now" button might actually benefit those shows. Possibly.
I think this better as a video game (like Heavy Rain or Sam and Max). Otherwise, the effort to make a 2 hour movie would probably make a 10 minute choose your own adventure movie.
> It can play with the structure to make the shows work better for its ad-free format
I think people underrate how big this is from a creator perspective. As viewers, we typically appreciate when work is uninterrupted by commercials (though some shows are more forgiving of them than others), but to my understanding, it's quite difficult as a creative to segment your work out into 12-14 minute segments, constantly building up enough momentum that people will be riveted through the commercial long enough to stick around, and then having to ensure enough recap is done after the break that it doesn't break the narrative flow.
This is one of the reasons I prefer Netflix-only shows, where the episodes aren't filled with contrived cliffhangers just for the sake of trying to hang on to viewers during ad breaks.
Instead episodes usually feel much more like short movies, with proper pacing and reveals.
Something I'm glad they've taken advantage of is having episodes in a series with totally different runtimes - e.g. Master of None, episode lengths range between 22 mins & 58 mins. It really frees up the writing & directing to have more room to breathe.
That's today's shows in general. Lots of build up to something the writers either haven't an idea how to resolve yet or just over hyped.
As photography and CGI improved, writing went down the toilet. Mainly because it's not necessary to make money. Most viewers are happy enough for bad plots, so-so acting, dubious congruency and limited dialogs as long as it's visually entertaining.
As usual, the wider your audience, the duller your product has to become to accommodate everyone.
The worst is definitely dubbing. In France you can clearly see that around 2000, producers gave up any effort on looking for decent translator and voice actors. The voices are always the same from one movie to another, the lips don't match, the jokes are lost.
When I watch the 5th element or the naked gun however, I'm amazed at the fantastic work they did to translate the spirit of the lines so beautifully.
Still, sometimes on netflix you got some very nice surprises, provided you watch it in orginal version only. "The good place" and "Dirk gently" really made my day.
I don't see why. Multiple takes are often done anyway. The setting is all there, the actors in place, the lighting - just do another take. It doesn't have to be done for all the scenes.
I also wonder why the original actors didn't do the dub voices.
Nope, I've never done any acting. But Director Clint Eastwood has a reputation for "one take" and seems to disagree with you:
"Everybody's heard those nightmare stories of somebody doing a take 20, 30, 40 times. Other than obvious errors like forgetting a line, often I can't see any difference between take one and take 20."
That’s great that Clint Eastwood personally prefers that style, but that doesn’t make it universally true nor does it mean that other directors would have the same results with one take. The negative effects of stifling a director by placing this artificial constraint would probably counteract any positives of having two versions.
Agreed. All the directors I have worked with have required multiple takes for certain scenes. The cost of an additional take is small and the reward of a better shot greatly outweighs that cost.
> the reward of a better shot greatly outweighs that cost
My point, too, the "better shot" being the improvement of the lips and voice matching the movement and action. Consider that the English language market is most of the world.
I get what you are saying but to retake a well shot scene in order to have a better dubbing experience doesn't make sense. I encourage you to make a film to test your idea, though :)
It's not just a matter of shooting it 2x. It's a matter of getting the scene right the second time. Each final shot that makes it in has many that don't. In contrast, dubbing is relatively cheap.
> I wonder why each scene is not just shot twice, once with the German dialog and once with English.
Because this would require an exclusively bilingual cast, dialog that works equally well in both languages, and would drastically increase the production cost.
Not really. First off, most Germans seem to know English passably well. Even if one doesn't know English well, one can still memorize/recite dialog. There isn't that much dialog in a show. And lastly, one can always dub the ones who can't do it, as a last resort.
> dialog that works equally well in both languages,
A requirement anyway if it is being dubbed.
> and would drastically increase the production cost
Increase it, sure, not so sure about drastically. Why spend a lot of money on the production (as is obvious in Babylon Berlin) only to make it sound crappy to the biggest market (English speaking)? An English soundtrack makes it accessible to most of the world.
The thing is it's kind of a false narrative. Because the shows aren't entirely ad free. They're mostly ad free, but Lost in Space for example featured an extremely jarring product placement for Oreos which came up repeatedly in an episode. It was just as jarring for me as ad placements, disrupting the narrative and throwing me out of the story. Especially since hte Oreo package was identical to the ones we have now even though the show is supposedly decades in the future.
This happens in most Netflix shows; jarring and obvious product placement that disrupts the flow of the story.
So it's not that they are ad free, they just featured reduced ads in most episodes.
I'm not talking about ads, I'm talking about interrupting the show.
I don't know if the Oreos thing was a product placement (though it seems likely), but if I'm writing a script or a screenplay, I probably have fewer mental gymnastics to hurdle through to inject Oreos into a script than I do to have to accommodate a show-break.
On the flip side, it's worth pointing out that it isn't either/or, as shows with commercial breaks may still include product placement, and not all of them are going to be as mightily integrated as Snyder's of Hanover was to Psych.
The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie has Krispy Kreme product placement to the point of absurdity, even having the main villain chowing down on one during the action.
Some product placement can be cheesy no matter what situation it's in but I'd take a few moments of cheesy product insertion over the typical pattern of a US serial: 2 seconds of blackness (or 3 minutes of commercials) every 12 minutes or so, 20 minutes of story time traded for adverts, and dialog you would never encounter in a more continuous story because it assumes the audience is intelligent enough to figure it out or start from the beginning. It's mind-numbing in the extreme.
Bringing up a pack of Oreos and waving it around the screen so everybody can really see it's a pack of Oreos is one thing, but the endless trudge of scenes like this is something else:
X: "So you got the brief from the NSA?"
Y: "The National Security Agency, they monitor all the communications in the US to prevent terrorism... yes I got the brief. You bring in Mr Snucklebum for questioning?"
X: "Snucklebum, the man under suspicion for trading classified secrets? Yeah he's in interrogation, right through here."
- alarm bells, ad break -
Y: "Snucklebum's escaped! Lockdown!"
X: "Snucklebum, the guy under suspicion for trading classified secrets to the NSA?"
I've always admired a show that can explain the plot and setting without characters having to say obvious, out of character, things to each other. Black Mirror is one such show.
Lazy exposition is a plague in the industry, and is pretty prevalent in basically every broadcast show. CW and Lifetime shows tend to be the most offensive here.
There are a ton of shows that let you discover the show along with the characters though; Breaking Bad, The Wire, Carnivale, etc. Those shows tend to be well regarded, and most people don't realize that it's just the lack of exposition making the people pay attention that they like.
The first season of Miami Vice used a fake Ferrari Daytona. Ferrari got miffed about that, and offered them a real Ferrari Testarossa if they got rid of the fake Daytona. Hence, the characters blew up the Daytona and moved to the Testarossa.
It was a good year for Ferrari sales, too :-) The Testarossa was one of the stars of the show, and nobody minded it. Probably the best product placement ever!
I had to stop watching The Walking Dead because of the endless commercial breaks. At least it reliably comes to Netflix. The spinoff, on the other hand, is missing the last season. I suspect it's because AMC is pushing their own streaming service with "watch the full current season now! Don't wait!"
Pretty sure almost everyone stopped watching The Walking Dead because of the continuous bad writing and lack of plot, boring interpersonal drama, constant death of interesting characters while the most boring characters get to linger like the stench of a mildew ridden towel.
It's like they're so impressed with their messages (interesting people stand out, take risks and responsibility, and die, scarcity and fear are the reasons we made governments, humans are the real zombies, life is hard) they forgot to make a good show.
In fact I actually think they can't. Anyone remember season 2 where they tried to develop characters and what-not? It was agonizing.
The characters never learned, either, which is why I quit watching. There was always "let's go to the village that we've never been to before, and split up so the zombies can take us out one by one!" among many idiotic tropes.
I think you overrate how big this is from a creator perspective. In large, because it is a return to previous standards, in many ways. Large chunks of content are not a new thing. If anything, the ads that we take for granted are somewhat the new flash in the pan. And like most flashes, pretty sure they flared out.
No, Netflix has managed to keep the requirement that a studio needs a ton of cash to produce something.
Youtube, on the other hand, probably has done a lot to change television. Shame it is changing back.
I think it is misleading to label Netflix as being an ad-free distributor. They in fact do generate revenue via advertising - it's just more modern and hidden: product placement.
"According to Isaacs, brands pay $50,000 to $500,000 per episode for getting into a Netflix or Amazon show. The price is calculated based on the popularity of the show and how long the product will be showed in the episode. There are two options for product placement in the shows: a logo in the background or a real plot point in the story." [0]
This, to me, seems just as disruptive to the creative freedom of a program's producers/writers/directors.
> This, to me, seems just as disruptive to the creative freedom of a program's producers/writers/directors.
only if there is a wide disparity in the price companies are willing to pay to have their product in the show.
say you have a show about a lawyer and they need a car to drive around in. my guess is bmw and mercedes offer similar amounts of money, so you just pick the one that the character would prefer.
on the other hand, you're probably not going to see anyone using a pixel 2 outside of mr robot.
I've been noticing product placement for a long time[1], but the most jarring/disruptive product placement I've seen, at least in recent memory, is that of the Windows Phone, especially when every character in the show uses one. The UI is so distinctive, and they made such a point of showing it off. This was in more than one show. I have yet to see one being used by a real consumer.
[1] Listening to directors' commentaries on <ahem> laserdiscs "ruined" this bit of moviemaking for me early on
It's true that the show's creators typically receive the cash for the product placement. (I also would guess that Netflix is getting a cut of some kind.)
Consider what it means that a service would optimize for this form of monetization. Brands that are placing products on Netflix shows are unencumbered by the brands/deals supported by other shows, since the product placement happens on the content level, instead of the distribution/broadcast level. Netflix can basically offer much more "robust" monetization options because its content choices don't narrow the scope and breadth of its list of supported brands.
One positive externality caused by the more limited advertising strategies employed by traditional broadcasters was that advertising was not a free-for-all. Ads were shown in predictable ways, on consistent (contractually-obligated) schedules. Now, Netflix can enable more and more next-generation advertising options within its content offerings, which is certain to lead to some disturbing changes. These changes would definitely catch its customers by surprise, if Netflix chose to roll out these strategies all at once. But they appear to be doing it slowly, so that most of their users will probably not notice it.
It's probably unfair to refer to Netflix as ad-free, but (as I mention elsewhere), from a creator perspective, I'm referring more to the 'break-free' experience than 'ad-free'.
I do agree that impositions on the creative team to write in product placement are a hurdle, but I disagree on how difficult that hurdle is relative to literally stopping the show for a few minutes at a time, and from a consumer's perspective, product placement (when not overdone) is far less disruptive to the narrative than a commercial.
Of course, people discuss products in real life all the time, so it can be made to feel natural. Four Roses bourbon, TV shows like "Legion" and "Fargo", or Seagull Guitars could be product-placed into a TV show about my life and would look like just any other day in my life, for example.
One question though is what effect this has on shows with no plausible connection to contemporary life. Fantasy, historical, etc. Even in Legion a discussion involving brands would have to be pretty forced, though when they go out in public there's plenty of opportunity for logos (not sure if they used any placement or not, would be cool to see a database of this stuff).
Anyway it seems like there could be an increasing pressure against scripts that have no opportunities for brands.
People need to bear this in mind more often. I recall watching the second (I think?) episode of Lost in Space the other day that absolutely crowbared in a placement for Oreo cookies, how great they are and how much they reminded the character of home.
It took me completely out of the show. I would honestly have preferred an isolated 30 second ad to that. It does still affect the creative process, too - your show needs to be one an advertiser wants to be placed on, so there's every incentive to soften the show.
I agree with you in principle about product placement affecting the integrity of the work, but what's funny is I didn't even think twice about that one.
Were there other products in the show? I remember looking for logos on the rovers and seeing none.
How does one pay for a "plot point"? I can generally imagine how product placement works, but plot points seem a ever decreasing circle.
For starters the story needs to be set in modern day, and mostly modern western world. Cans of coke look out of place in Game of Thrones.
I can roughly imagine how you can get writers to create an embarrassing episode for Joey and Chandler over a Dunkin Donuts voucher, but the number of ways that can work well must be limited.
The product placement in Netflix shows can be so jarring; I don’t understand how it could possibly be worth such a small amount to permanently damage your creative works.
Overall, I think it's a positive change. But I think there are other effects too.
One is the trend toward longer, multi-season story arcs. This is also a trend in traditional television, but seems that the single episode story is dead on Netflix.
That's a shame, because it often is possible to succinctly express an idea in 30mins or 1hour. But it's in Netflix's best interests to keep you hooked on a show and "watching one more episode". That's particularly valuable for content that is released week-by-week. It also has other benefits, the more you watch, the more you're dependent on their service.
The one exception to this I've seen on Netflix is Black Mirror. But that was a show developed outside of the platform initially. I can't see something like Star trek the next generation, or another idea driven show which explores a single idea in a single episode being green lit on Netflix, and that's a shame.
For all the gloss of "prestige TV", a lot of the big story arc shows are basically just modern soap operas.
I think that'll slowly change though, because the current trend seems primarily motivated by culture rather than structure or economics. Like, procedural shows are still big, but they were everything for a few years after CSI. These things come and go.
Speak for yourself. In my opinion, this is a massive win for storytelling. And I'm saying this as a lifelong Star Trek fan who has watched every single series end-to-end except for TOS.
As much as I love it, Star Trek feels old. And this is the #1 reason why. With relatively small exceptions, every episode is complete disconnected from every other. The beginning of the episode sets up some sort of problem or danger. By the end of the episode, this danger is dealt with, gone. Character development is either non-existent, or happens at such a painfully slow pace that it's difficult to feel connected to what's going on. Instead what we see (if anything) are "snapshots" into the character's mental state. This is simply not how you tell a good story! So it's not surprising to me that Star Trek went fallow for a long time.
The point about character development applies to the universe too. People like to say that the Federation feels old. But what they really mean, in my opinion, is that the Federation should be viewed as a character. And if you think about it that way, it becomes obvious that as a character, the Federation is completely missing character development. So it's no wonder people get tired of it! Would you want to read a novel about a character who doesn't change at all during the course of the story? Would you come back for more after a half dozen of these?
The problem with saving the world perfectly every time is that over the long term, this means there is no change. Every individual episode might be a great story, but at the end of the day, did any of it matter? If there are no permanent consequences, it's hard to see how. This becomes especially obvious if you binge-watch the shows. Everything is always the same. Nothing changes.
What I want to see in a show (Star Trek or otherwise) is change. Permanent, irrevocable change. You dropped a glass, and it shattered, and no amount of wishing otherwise will put it back together again. That doesn't mean you can't do something about it! But certainly, you're not just going to put things back into exactly the same state they were before.
P.S.
You might be tempted to say, "oh, but what about DS9?" But even there, the format was largely unchanged. Go and count the episodes. The ones that actually dealt with any sort of ongoing story are a minority. Most of the shows follow the same framework as previous series. Except for one 10-episode sequence at the very end, you can basically forget that the war exists between the episodes that they mention it.
I'm not saying it's an either/or proposition. I think it's great to see characters develop over as they encounter different situations and the long term implications of their actions.
But I think it's also interesting to sometimes explore idea in a shorter period of time... I don't think there's much space for that anymore. And sometimes that can explore certain ideas more succinctly.
You mention DS9, I think a few characters developed in quite interesting ways over the course of the series actually Dukat and Kai Winn for example.
Binge-built tv shows are definitely great for storytelling, over the last 15 years or so I've found feature length films to be severely lacking in depth compared to the development that can happen over untold hours of serialized tv. There is something to be said for the isolated narrative format, though. I appreciate that I can watch any random Star Trek without refreshing my understanding of the plot or getting sucked into the next episode. I wonder if this format would be used in more Netflix shows if Netflix had a random button.
The quality of TV writing has definitely improved in recent years. But we a have a new problem now. The producers still want the shows to run forever. Instead of telling discrete stories and wrapping them up in a season or two they try to keep stringing the audience along. The characters end up repeating the same situations.
Rather then one series that runs for 5 to 10 years I’d prefer 2 or 3 different series telling different stories about the same characters. A few crime series have been dealing with one case person. I’d like to see more things like that.
There are some stories on Netflix that are single season, or single show. I just watched Anon, it was fine as a single show. A single season show like "The End of the F*ing World" is perfect, and true to its source material.
> But it's in Netflix's best interests to keep you hooked on a show
Is it? For Netflix the more the watch, the more it costs them. The only thing they want is to keep you subscribed and that's an entirely different sort of motivation.
Traditional TV is focused on selling eye-balls to advertisers; keep you hooked on a show is necessary. For Netflix, they just have to ensure the entire service provides enough value that you'll continue to pay monthly for it.
We know Netflix doesn’t believe that measurement is good for their company because they spend as much as possible on content and give creators more control than traditional publishers to make the content better.
They also talk about their competition being sleep, games, YouTube, etc.
These aren’t the actions of a company that wants to give users “just enough.”
I think the only time they’d apply this idea (the only place it’s appropriate, IMO) is when reaching the limits of their budget and prioritizing one market over another. In that case it would make sense to avoid dropping below a threshold of attention. However, as in the article, they do what they can to make content watchable in all markets at once so they don’t have to take that risk.
I would be surprised if this wasn't an internal metric that the optimize for. I'd be surprised if a drop in viewing time didn't strongly correlate with cancelled subscriptions (which they use as motivation).
When a film ends, they always seem to play a trailer for something else (even if you've seen that trailer 10s of times already). They seem to want to push content at you.
As noted elsewhere in the thread, they seem to see their competition not just as traditional TV, but as other ways of spending time.
Netflix is helping produce a bunch of anime recently, and from that point of view it doesn’t seem to have a single focus on genre or format.
It looks more like a “we’ll pay you to make stuff people want to watch” approach, with no specific request on “high brow” or “low brow” or overall length.
In a way I think they don’t care if a creator or studio makes 4 different series where 2 are big hits and 2 with a meh reception, or one big 4 season series where viewers drop out a random places.
As long as viewers come back to Netflix to look for more stuff it should be fine for them.
They were divisions in the structure, but that's about the only similitude. Acts are an artistic choice, not an imposed constraint with defined timings and mandatory recaps.
It's also just so much wasted time. Once I started watching old Mythbusters episodes on youtube I realized that about a third of it is just drumming up suspense before a commercial break, or recapping after a break. That's time that could be filled with actually interesting content.
Fans have edited every mythbuster episode into “streamline” edits that get rid of all the recapping and precapping. They tend to be about 30-35 minutes long.
The segmenting backfires hilariously between countries.
I've often seen shows go "It was Mr. X all along!", everyone looked at the person who said that in shock and awe and realization, there was a sound cue, screen faded to black and then the show continued with them going to kick Mr. X's teeth in, but already in a much less dramatic tone.
And then the actual break happens in another spot, where it's much less appropriate and breaks the flow completely instead of making me eagerly await the end of the break to see Mr. X get his teeth kicked in.
Problem is, this spam the market approach yields a lot of crap content.
I realize this is anecdotal (feel free to ignore), but most times I open Netflix and go through almost everything they feature on the home screen...before turning it off because there isn’t anything that looks good.
So, you look at a bunch of book covers you don't like and call it "crap content".
I can't even count the number of Netflix shows/movies that the description didn't look all that appealing and the show absolutely was wonderful. Chef's Table was probably the biggest example. It looks like a cooking show. In reality is a beautiful documentary series about how world-renown chef's made their way.
Black Mirror has gone downhill in an effort to create a mass audience. (Mostly the fourth season) What they do is create "hit" content that is very consumable not necessarily great or timeless.
"We need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art" ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
That said, their documentary productions are way better than the crap Discovery, History Chanel, et al. have been producing this past decades or so.
Exactly. My guess is that's why they passed on The Expanse - it's a great story that is absolutely impossible for the majority to watch because it actually requires you to look up from your phone and pay attention. That's also why sense8 got the axe.
Sense8 got axed because it was a $1 million niche show. The same reason they passed on The Expanse. at $700k an episode. They are both wonderful television, but the masses want Survival so that's the garbage we get. At least Netflix and HBO still show actual TV.
> Black Mirror has gone downhill in an effort to create a mass audience. (Mostly the fourth season)
I just wanted to say that I strongly disagree. "USS Callister" and "Hang the DJ" in particular were great episodes in my opinion and very well received overall. "Black Museum" was also quite good. And "Metalhead", together with the black and white versions of Fury Road and Logan, presented a very interesting view of a mostly hopeless future.
Yeah, I feel the opposite.. I go to the home screen and see so many things I want to watch but don’t have time for... I only have a few hours a week to watch tv shows, and there are so many ones that look good on Netflix. I don’t think I will ever get through the shows I want to watch, even if they never added anything more.
This is one area I think Netflix format puts them at a disadvantage. At any one time how many shows does HBO have running the one person likes? A couple? But HBO stretches thoes shows out over 3 or 4 months. By the time those couple things you like end, something else is on.
On Netflix some people go through a season of a show in a day or 2. Then they complain there is nothing on for a couple months until they spend a weekend watching something.
Netflix is an amazing testament to the fact that copyright does promote the creative arts. It started out as a mere middle man service trying to make a cut in the transaction between content creator and content consumer. But show and movie providers realized the true value of what they were licensing to Netflix, forcing Netflix to create its own, new content. The result is the best, most competitive market in television shows in American history.
Netflix never would’ve done all this if (a) they could easily just stream other peoples’ content, and (b) other people could easily stream their content. Instead, the logical business play would’ve been trying to leverage network effects and lock in to keep consumer eyeballs on their service instead of a competing service.
I think copyright has largely always been considered a good thing. The reason it's talked about derisively is that it's basically become infinite thanks to the likes of Disney. It was never intended to live that long.
I'm not sure that's Netflix's doing, though. I remember reading a few years back that the market was trending towards TV shows. Apparently years ago, being in a TV show was seen as relatively low pay/low class, and at some point that switched. I do think Netflix helps competition, but I honestly don't know anyone whose favorite TV show is a Netflix original. I'd describe their content as good overall, but not on the level of AMC/FX/HBO just yet.
> but I honestly don't know anyone whose favorite TV show is a Netflix original.
I remember a year or two ago Stranger Things was a massive super hit. I mean that's all reddit could talk about that year - it overshadowed almost every other show at the time.
I didn't like the ASOUE books, but I watched the first episode of the show because my wife loved them. The series is much better than the books, at least partly because the casting is spot-on. In particular, Patrick Warburton as Lemony was an inspired choice.
Are any of those your favorite show? House of Cards was entertaining, but I don't know anyone who had it as a favorite or even liked it by the end. If you compare those to shows like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, not even a blip. I did say generally good, but let's be honest, Netflix has a ton of junk content, with a few that aren't terrible, such as those you mentioned.
Season 1 of Daredevil was probably my favorite show in recent memory (followed by West World). I don’t like political dramas, but House of Cards got huge critical acclaim. Definitely mentioned in the same circles as say Mad Men.
Personally, I’d rather watch Netflix’s catalog over AMC’s or HBO’s.
They create content to increase the value of their platform. That is unrelated to copyright, except that copyright lets them compel other platforms to not show their content.
We don't have any legal platform without DRM or copyright to compare against. We also can't, because copyright is a monopoly.
Copyright and the first-sale-doctrine also takes us into weird places like streaming someone a movie is somehow different from buying a DVD and renting it to them. Which is the whole reason Netflix began producing their own content.
Not actually all that happy about this. They were striving for quality at first but now it's given way to quantity. I think the turning point for me is when they canceled Marco Polo. I no longer could count of Netflix to be better than the other guys, by allowing a show to come to a natural enjoyable conclusion. There is nothing worse than a show that ends mid-story. I simply don't bother to get involved in any show anymore unless I know it has had its due run.
There was a lot of narrative at first around data-driven decisions etc. As far as I can tell Netflix and Amazon have realized it’s mostly a game of darts, data it not. They don’t have to cater to mainstream tastes as much as the networks. But picking hit shows still seems like a crapshoot.
I can't help but wonder how long it'll be before there are ads, the price goes up a lot or it gets split up into 'channels' where you'd have to pay separately for separate set of content.
Another thing I think that's coming, is Netflix adding daily shows like the Jimmy Fallon show or Ellen. It seems like a no brainer - they're trying it out with David Letterman monthly series, and it's doing very well as far as I can tell.
Here's how I see it: Netflix and other streaming services are recreating all of cable now. It's not a good thing, just wait. Networks moved to the current cable model because its the most profitable. Netflix disrupted that in the same way Uber disrupted Taxis, now they're both becoming what they sought to change.
I don't get the appeal of streaming and find Netflix shows mediocre at best. It could very well be just my personal preference but I find HBO shows much better.
HBO also does streaming, so I don't get your point. If it's just 'most stuff on Netflix is cheaply made crap', that's a fact the article more or less states in it's body. That said, the expensive things are quite good, if rare.
I prefer cable and don't bother with streaming, period (I'm not even sure their streaming services are available here to their full extent, mind), thus Netflix as a service is completely irrelevant to people like me.
Second, the description fits my experiences with Netflix quality quite well, so I don't really care about them as a producer either, regardless of the platform.
Seems like this might be a good time to mention that we're hiring! My team works on availability and latency optimization through global demand distribution and ensuring sufficient scaling.. If you are a Sr SWE or SRE, ping me! Lots of other jobs open, too: jobs.netflix.com. /shameless plug
Well, they're certainly not doing anything differently than traditional producers when it comes to taking the axe to shows after just 1 or 2 seasons. Whenever I see a new Netflix show released, which seems to be just about every week now, the first thing that comes to mind is "even if I like this, will there actually be a second season?". This degrades the time investment of immersing yourself in a show's characters and storytelling.
Netflix shows also don't force their producers to make 18+ episodes a season that draw out plots. There are lot of serialized TV shows that would be better with shorter seasons.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 91.6 ms ] threadYou get 30+ hours of ad-free gameplay (that's > 60 half-hour TV shows), PLUS the chance to replay and experience a new story. (Good) RPGs are the best bang for your buck entertainment-wise.
It's hard enough writing a single good plot, let alone multiple plots that have to branch from each other. Plus it's much more expensive (many more scenes filmed per show), and it kills the shared experience between viewers.
I like the idea, but I'm not sure people are able to tell in advance what will bring them the most entertainment.
Maybe it could work for something with a small cast and with only studio locations, but even then it's a big risk.
Past that, since democratizing the plot would almost certainly yield a regression to the lowest common denominator, it seems like a really fun way to ruin quality television.
I think people underrate how big this is from a creator perspective. As viewers, we typically appreciate when work is uninterrupted by commercials (though some shows are more forgiving of them than others), but to my understanding, it's quite difficult as a creative to segment your work out into 12-14 minute segments, constantly building up enough momentum that people will be riveted through the commercial long enough to stick around, and then having to ensure enough recap is done after the break that it doesn't break the narrative flow.
Instead episodes usually feel much more like short movies, with proper pacing and reveals.
As photography and CGI improved, writing went down the toilet. Mainly because it's not necessary to make money. Most viewers are happy enough for bad plots, so-so acting, dubious congruency and limited dialogs as long as it's visually entertaining.
As usual, the wider your audience, the duller your product has to become to accommodate everyone.
The worst is definitely dubbing. In France you can clearly see that around 2000, producers gave up any effort on looking for decent translator and voice actors. The voices are always the same from one movie to another, the lips don't match, the jokes are lost.
When I watch the 5th element or the naked gun however, I'm amazed at the fantastic work they did to translate the spirit of the lines so beautifully.
Still, sometimes on netflix you got some very nice surprises, provided you watch it in orginal version only. "The good place" and "Dirk gently" really made my day.
I finally found a switch to switch to the German soundtrack with English subtitles. I'm much happier with that.
I wonder why each scene is not just shot twice, once with the German dialog and once with English. It would work much better than dubbing.
I also wonder why the original actors didn't do the dub voices.
"Everybody's heard those nightmare stories of somebody doing a take 20, 30, 40 times. Other than obvious errors like forgetting a line, often I can't see any difference between take one and take 20."
https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/0309-Sept-2003/C...
Exactly my point!
> the reward of a better shot greatly outweighs that cost
My point, too, the "better shot" being the improvement of the lips and voice matching the movement and action. Consider that the English language market is most of the world.
I've seen it done, don't recall which movie it was.
> make a film
I'd love to do that. Wanna finance me?
Because this would require an exclusively bilingual cast, dialog that works equally well in both languages, and would drastically increase the production cost.
Not really. First off, most Germans seem to know English passably well. Even if one doesn't know English well, one can still memorize/recite dialog. There isn't that much dialog in a show. And lastly, one can always dub the ones who can't do it, as a last resort.
> dialog that works equally well in both languages,
A requirement anyway if it is being dubbed.
> and would drastically increase the production cost
Increase it, sure, not so sure about drastically. Why spend a lot of money on the production (as is obvious in Babylon Berlin) only to make it sound crappy to the biggest market (English speaking)? An English soundtrack makes it accessible to most of the world.
This happens in most Netflix shows; jarring and obvious product placement that disrupts the flow of the story.
So it's not that they are ad free, they just featured reduced ads in most episodes.
I don't know if the Oreos thing was a product placement (though it seems likely), but if I'm writing a script or a screenplay, I probably have fewer mental gymnastics to hurdle through to inject Oreos into a script than I do to have to accommodate a show-break.
On the flip side, it's worth pointing out that it isn't either/or, as shows with commercial breaks may still include product placement, and not all of them are going to be as mightily integrated as Snyder's of Hanover was to Psych.
Bringing up a pack of Oreos and waving it around the screen so everybody can really see it's a pack of Oreos is one thing, but the endless trudge of scenes like this is something else:
X: "So you got the brief from the NSA?"
Y: "The National Security Agency, they monitor all the communications in the US to prevent terrorism... yes I got the brief. You bring in Mr Snucklebum for questioning?"
X: "Snucklebum, the man under suspicion for trading classified secrets? Yeah he's in interrogation, right through here."
- alarm bells, ad break -
Y: "Snucklebum's escaped! Lockdown!"
X: "Snucklebum, the guy under suspicion for trading classified secrets to the NSA?"
Y: "The national security agency. Yeah"
There are a ton of shows that let you discover the show along with the characters though; Breaking Bad, The Wire, Carnivale, etc. Those shows tend to be well regarded, and most people don't realize that it's just the lack of exposition making the people pay attention that they like.
It was a good year for Ferrari sales, too :-) The Testarossa was one of the stars of the show, and nobody minded it. Probably the best product placement ever!
In fact I actually think they can't. Anyone remember season 2 where they tried to develop characters and what-not? It was agonizing.
It had such a wonderful start...
No, Netflix has managed to keep the requirement that a studio needs a ton of cash to produce something.
Youtube, on the other hand, probably has done a lot to change television. Shame it is changing back.
No ads? Don't have to cater to advertisers, don't need to have advertiser friendly content.
No ad breaks? Don't need to create cliffhangers on a defined schedule. Can preserve flow.
On demand? Don't have to worry about people missing episodes.
No syndication? Don't have to worry about episodes being watched out of order. Now the world and characters can change in meaningful ways.
"According to Isaacs, brands pay $50,000 to $500,000 per episode for getting into a Netflix or Amazon show. The price is calculated based on the popularity of the show and how long the product will be showed in the episode. There are two options for product placement in the shows: a logo in the background or a real plot point in the story." [0]
This, to me, seems just as disruptive to the creative freedom of a program's producers/writers/directors.
[0] https://learnbonds.com/134772/netflix-killing-secret-ads-sho...
This is probably the end-game of Adblocking unfortunately. A lot more product placement that is obviously harder to filter.
only if there is a wide disparity in the price companies are willing to pay to have their product in the show.
say you have a show about a lawyer and they need a car to drive around in. my guess is bmw and mercedes offer similar amounts of money, so you just pick the one that the character would prefer.
on the other hand, you're probably not going to see anyone using a pixel 2 outside of mr robot.
[1] Listening to directors' commentaries on <ahem> laserdiscs "ruined" this bit of moviemaking for me early on
Consider what it means that a service would optimize for this form of monetization. Brands that are placing products on Netflix shows are unencumbered by the brands/deals supported by other shows, since the product placement happens on the content level, instead of the distribution/broadcast level. Netflix can basically offer much more "robust" monetization options because its content choices don't narrow the scope and breadth of its list of supported brands.
One positive externality caused by the more limited advertising strategies employed by traditional broadcasters was that advertising was not a free-for-all. Ads were shown in predictable ways, on consistent (contractually-obligated) schedules. Now, Netflix can enable more and more next-generation advertising options within its content offerings, which is certain to lead to some disturbing changes. These changes would definitely catch its customers by surprise, if Netflix chose to roll out these strategies all at once. But they appear to be doing it slowly, so that most of their users will probably not notice it.
I do agree that impositions on the creative team to write in product placement are a hurdle, but I disagree on how difficult that hurdle is relative to literally stopping the show for a few minutes at a time, and from a consumer's perspective, product placement (when not overdone) is far less disruptive to the narrative than a commercial.
Of course, people discuss products in real life all the time, so it can be made to feel natural. Four Roses bourbon, TV shows like "Legion" and "Fargo", or Seagull Guitars could be product-placed into a TV show about my life and would look like just any other day in my life, for example.
Anyway it seems like there could be an increasing pressure against scripts that have no opportunities for brands.
It took me completely out of the show. I would honestly have preferred an isolated 30 second ad to that. It does still affect the creative process, too - your show needs to be one an advertiser wants to be placed on, so there's every incentive to soften the show.
Were there other products in the show? I remember looking for logos on the rovers and seeing none.
For starters the story needs to be set in modern day, and mostly modern western world. Cans of coke look out of place in Game of Thrones.
I can roughly imagine how you can get writers to create an embarrassing episode for Joey and Chandler over a Dunkin Donuts voucher, but the number of ways that can work well must be limited.
One is the trend toward longer, multi-season story arcs. This is also a trend in traditional television, but seems that the single episode story is dead on Netflix.
That's a shame, because it often is possible to succinctly express an idea in 30mins or 1hour. But it's in Netflix's best interests to keep you hooked on a show and "watching one more episode". That's particularly valuable for content that is released week-by-week. It also has other benefits, the more you watch, the more you're dependent on their service.
The one exception to this I've seen on Netflix is Black Mirror. But that was a show developed outside of the platform initially. I can't see something like Star trek the next generation, or another idea driven show which explores a single idea in a single episode being green lit on Netflix, and that's a shame.
I think that'll slowly change though, because the current trend seems primarily motivated by culture rather than structure or economics. Like, procedural shows are still big, but they were everything for a few years after CSI. These things come and go.
As much as I love it, Star Trek feels old. And this is the #1 reason why. With relatively small exceptions, every episode is complete disconnected from every other. The beginning of the episode sets up some sort of problem or danger. By the end of the episode, this danger is dealt with, gone. Character development is either non-existent, or happens at such a painfully slow pace that it's difficult to feel connected to what's going on. Instead what we see (if anything) are "snapshots" into the character's mental state. This is simply not how you tell a good story! So it's not surprising to me that Star Trek went fallow for a long time.
The point about character development applies to the universe too. People like to say that the Federation feels old. But what they really mean, in my opinion, is that the Federation should be viewed as a character. And if you think about it that way, it becomes obvious that as a character, the Federation is completely missing character development. So it's no wonder people get tired of it! Would you want to read a novel about a character who doesn't change at all during the course of the story? Would you come back for more after a half dozen of these?
The problem with saving the world perfectly every time is that over the long term, this means there is no change. Every individual episode might be a great story, but at the end of the day, did any of it matter? If there are no permanent consequences, it's hard to see how. This becomes especially obvious if you binge-watch the shows. Everything is always the same. Nothing changes.
What I want to see in a show (Star Trek or otherwise) is change. Permanent, irrevocable change. You dropped a glass, and it shattered, and no amount of wishing otherwise will put it back together again. That doesn't mean you can't do something about it! But certainly, you're not just going to put things back into exactly the same state they were before.
P.S.
You might be tempted to say, "oh, but what about DS9?" But even there, the format was largely unchanged. Go and count the episodes. The ones that actually dealt with any sort of ongoing story are a minority. Most of the shows follow the same framework as previous series. Except for one 10-episode sequence at the very end, you can basically forget that the war exists between the episodes that they mention it.
But I think it's also interesting to sometimes explore idea in a shorter period of time... I don't think there's much space for that anymore. And sometimes that can explore certain ideas more succinctly.
You mention DS9, I think a few characters developed in quite interesting ways over the course of the series actually Dukat and Kai Winn for example.
Rather then one series that runs for 5 to 10 years I’d prefer 2 or 3 different series telling different stories about the same characters. A few crime series have been dealing with one case person. I’d like to see more things like that.
Is it? For Netflix the more the watch, the more it costs them. The only thing they want is to keep you subscribed and that's an entirely different sort of motivation.
Traditional TV is focused on selling eye-balls to advertisers; keep you hooked on a show is necessary. For Netflix, they just have to ensure the entire service provides enough value that you'll continue to pay monthly for it.
They also talk about their competition being sleep, games, YouTube, etc.
These aren’t the actions of a company that wants to give users “just enough.”
I think the only time they’d apply this idea (the only place it’s appropriate, IMO) is when reaching the limits of their budget and prioritizing one market over another. In that case it would make sense to avoid dropping below a threshold of attention. However, as in the article, they do what they can to make content watchable in all markets at once so they don’t have to take that risk.
When a film ends, they always seem to play a trailer for something else (even if you've seen that trailer 10s of times already). They seem to want to push content at you.
As noted elsewhere in the thread, they seem to see their competition not just as traditional TV, but as other ways of spending time.
It looks more like a “we’ll pay you to make stuff people want to watch” approach, with no specific request on “high brow” or “low brow” or overall length.
In a way I think they don’t care if a creator or studio makes 4 different series where 2 are big hits and 2 with a meh reception, or one big 4 season series where viewers drop out a random places.
As long as viewers come back to Netflix to look for more stuff it should be fine for them.
I've often seen shows go "It was Mr. X all along!", everyone looked at the person who said that in shock and awe and realization, there was a sound cue, screen faded to black and then the show continued with them going to kick Mr. X's teeth in, but already in a much less dramatic tone.
And then the actual break happens in another spot, where it's much less appropriate and breaks the flow completely instead of making me eagerly await the end of the break to see Mr. X get his teeth kicked in.
This is actually a trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CommercialBreakCl...
I realize this is anecdotal (feel free to ignore), but most times I open Netflix and go through almost everything they feature on the home screen...before turning it off because there isn’t anything that looks good.
I can't even count the number of Netflix shows/movies that the description didn't look all that appealing and the show absolutely was wonderful. Chef's Table was probably the biggest example. It looks like a cooking show. In reality is a beautiful documentary series about how world-renown chef's made their way.
Don't judge a book by its cover.
"We need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art" ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
That said, their documentary productions are way better than the crap Discovery, History Chanel, et al. have been producing this past decades or so.
I just wanted to say that I strongly disagree. "USS Callister" and "Hang the DJ" in particular were great episodes in my opinion and very well received overall. "Black Museum" was also quite good. And "Metalhead", together with the black and white versions of Fury Road and Logan, presented a very interesting view of a mostly hopeless future.
I was actually hoping for a cooking show :-) I stopped watching after a couple of episodes.
Though I think it's more like when people say "ugh, nothing to do!" after checking Facebook and Reddit.
On Netflix some people go through a season of a show in a day or 2. Then they complain there is nothing on for a couple months until they spend a weekend watching something.
Netflix never would’ve done all this if (a) they could easily just stream other peoples’ content, and (b) other people could easily stream their content. Instead, the logical business play would’ve been trying to leverage network effects and lock in to keep consumer eyeballs on their service instead of a competing service.
I've never heard the argument that copyright promotes progress by making works inaccessible, thereby forcing new creations.
I remember a year or two ago Stranger Things was a massive super hit. I mean that's all reddit could talk about that year - it overshadowed almost every other show at the time.
See comparison to Game of Thrones or TWD: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
Personally, I’d rather watch Netflix’s catalog over AMC’s or HBO’s.
I don't know about that, 90% of netflix's content is pretty bad IMO.
I sincerely doubt that.
They create content to increase the value of their platform. That is unrelated to copyright, except that copyright lets them compel other platforms to not show their content.
We don't have any legal platform without DRM or copyright to compare against. We also can't, because copyright is a monopoly.
I can't help but wonder how long it'll be before there are ads, the price goes up a lot or it gets split up into 'channels' where you'd have to pay separately for separate set of content.
Another thing I think that's coming, is Netflix adding daily shows like the Jimmy Fallon show or Ellen. It seems like a no brainer - they're trying it out with David Letterman monthly series, and it's doing very well as far as I can tell.
Second, the description fits my experiences with Netflix quality quite well, so I don't really care about them as a producer either, regardless of the platform.