movie distribution post copyright (Re: Artists)

[jamesd at echeque.com]

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Obviously, the end of copyright may well mean a substantial
reduction in the proceeds from big movies, but it will hardly mean
a total end to those proceeds (the powerpuff girl movie is one big
toy advertisment)

How big an effect will a reduction in money mean?

If you go back thirty years, you will notice that lots of movies
were produced on a budget vastly smaller than todays movies.  For
example I noticed a Hitchcock movie where a car and a car wreck
was central to the plot, and most of the story line took place
inside a wrecked car..  However, Hitchcock by use of cheesy camera
angles, avoided any need for the car to suffer any actual damage,
or even the need to go out and buy a wreck.

Go back even further, and people do not bother with production
values at all.   Thus Macbeth says "why upon this blasted heath
you stop our way with such prophetic greeting?", presumably
because Shakespeare was too cheap to have a backdrop painted
depicting a blasted heath.

So the end of copyright will not mean the end of movies, but
merely cheaper effects, and since computers are making effects
cheaper daily, with imaginary landscapes made inside a computer,
and real landscapes massively altered, we probably will not notice
any effect at all.   The landscapes of Lord of the Rings, though
based on real landscapes, were modified beyond recognition in the
computer.

 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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