The company’s now-famous little red envelopes first gained fame around the time the dot-com boom went bust in early 2000. Video rental behemoth Blockbuster, reeling from a catastrophic bleeding of market share to this wily challenger, entered the rent-by-mail fray in 2004, but it soon became apparent that they were going to get their hats handed to them. An even younger upstart, Redbox, began as a subsidiary of McDonald’s, and by 2007 its kiosks has spread across the fruited plains of America like wildfire, in the process putting the final nails in Blockbuster’s coffin.

My folks watch a lot of flicks, either at the theater or at home, so there’s always opportunities for improving the experience — the Great TiVo Immersion Program of 2005, masterminded and forced upon them by moi in the face of strenuous objections, turned out to be life changing. So after years of watching them drive out in the early evening to various video stores, I bought them a year-long Netflix subscription in Christmas 2009, and waited to see how it played out.

To my surprise, they hated it. For a year they bemoaned that Netflix never seemed to have the newest titles already available at the local rental shops. Even when using the service to queue older titles, they never got used to having to wait a day or two for DVDs that they could have in fifteen minutes by driving down the street. Eventually they settled in to using Netflix only for older or obscure films, things they otherwise wouldn’t have rented at all, and of course taking chances on such films was more of a hit-or-miss proposition than using Redbox to rent new movies they were jazzed to see. Meanwhile Netflix’s newest innovation, streaming to computers and TV, went entirely unused.

Now that their subscription is expired and they are once again happily back to using Redbox and video stores exclusively, I found myself wondering whether Redbox had some sort of edge over Netflix I hadn’t adequately factored in — some combination of convenience, selection, and the satisfaction that comes from immediate impulse renting that would soon allow them to supplant Netflix the way Netflix once supplanted Blockbuster.

It wasn’t long before I came to the conclusion that Redbox, for all of its merits, would ultimately flame out before it reached the pinnacle of the video renting mountain. Sure, their business model currently works well for those people who want a new movie and want it tonight. But what of the people whose pop culture horizons go back further than the week’s new releases? Redbox makes a token effort at sprinkling their kiosks with a smattering of older and classic selections, but they don’t even begin to compete with Netflix’s monster backlist.

Furthermore, what of the people who catch some long-running show on TV, and then want to plow through an archive of previous seasons? What of the many people who live in rural areas far from the nearest kiosk? Or the many people who are older and can’t leave the house, or don’t drive due to some disability, or can’t jump in the car and find a Redbox because they are too busy watching young kids? There are many situations where by-mail and streaming models are superior to the selection down the street.

Add to that the chilling precedent of the decline of music CDs — how quickly they went the way of vinyl records and 8-tracks. These days, everyone is increasingly dumping their bookshelves full of CDs in favor of carrying around a single iPod that connects to MP3-enabled speakers in the house, in cars, on the computer, and anywhere else there’s a USB plug. I think it’s beyond any doubt that physical DVDs are soon going to vanish in the exact same way. Even massive blu-rays are now effortlessly copied by pirates and shared over the Net, and legal video distributors like Netflix will all soon be streaming in 1080p resolution to living room TVs.

Netflix jumped onto the unlimited streaming bandwagon years before it became commercially viable, and that foresight will redound to its benefit for many years to come. Streaming is going to be huge, and Redbox, like Blockbuster before it, is being forced to try to compete in that arena. But by doing so they are competing on Netflix’s home turf, facing a company famed for its easy-to-use website, its fantastic movie-recommending algorithms, and its astounding selection of titles.

Once physical DVDs become a non-issue, studios will buckle one by one and offer their new releases to the major streaming companies, just as the record companies all eventually conceded to Apple’s 99 cents per individual song plan. The day new movies are able to be streamed directly to your TV via Netflix on the same day they are available at Redbox kiosks, that’s the end of that brick-and-mortar (metal-and-plastic?) business model.

So I think that when the dust clears, we’ll see Netflix standing tall as the preferred video rental company in the land, streaming its content long after Blockbuster, Redbox, and even many cable companies have declared bankruptcy. Not that they’ll have long to crow about it, given the looming Armageddon hanging over the industry as a whole.

What is that, you ask?

I remember in 1996 buying a 4 gig hard drive and thinking it was the bee’s knees, a virtual Great Plains of unused digital space that would take years to fill. A scant fifteen years later, a single writable DVD in larger than that, and a flash drive is many times bigger while costing many times less. And this trend of exponentially increasing data storage, file compression, and internet bandwidth will eventually hit a seismic pivot point. For me personally, that point will be the day a single torrent appears from some movie-loving college kid called “All movies, 1888-Present,” an archive that has every single title available at Netflix, in a format that will sit comfortably on the latest hard drives or flash drives. Five minutes after clicking on that file, it will be sitting next to the “All music” and “All books” files on the user’s media drive, with the contents capable of being streamed to any number of devices in their electronic world.

That’s when all bets are off, and Netflix (and Hollywood itself) will be left to come up with a whole new business model.

All of Hollywood, in one file, copied down to your computer in five minutes. It will happen, and sooner than anyone thinks possible.

Here’s the tape:

What does she have against technology? Perhaps when she was young she was bullied by a blender.

No matter – here’s the lesson.

Naomi Campbell is what happens when a supermodel is no longer super. See, all your life, you were waited on hand and foot: you never had to think about paying bills, arranging travel, walking your tiny stupid dog, or wiping your mysteriously runny nose. You become, in the purest sense, a machine of entitlement. You live to receive, never to give.

Then suddenly it stops. You’ve grown old, and what you have people no longer want. And the entitlements drift away. And what happens? You lash out in frustration, anger, denial.

What I’m saying is Naomi Campbell is Greece.

Tonight we’ve got….

Steven Crowder!

Jesse Joyce!

Courtney Friel!

Father Jonathan Morris!

Andy Warhol also spoke that jewel of wisdom, presumably demonstrating a sense of humor in referring to his most famous quote.  Or was it, perhaps, prescient, albeit unintended foreknowledge?  Pity he’s not around to toy with Twitter.

Bridge as visual metaphor, Media as bridge, Pittsburgh.

Looking back at Part 1, we considered a couple of insights into Andy’s Pop Life with the aim of solving some problems surrounding Mr. Breitbart’s incisive assertion that conservatives must come to terms with popular culture, and more, use it to advantage, or fail catastrophically in countering the negative effects of said culture and restoring public confidence in fundamental ideals.  Narcissism, amorality, and an attitude of entitlement, as examples, speak poorly to the future of democracy, while the virtues of valuing others, the practice of ethical discernment and choice, and the elevating ideas of individual liberty and self-reliance are greatly to be desired in the body politic, and traditionally set America apart from typical “statist” governments around the world.  Evidence abounds of the former set of attitudes in common currency as reflected in pop culture; the latter set, highly prized by conservatives, goes sorely wanting for attention in movies, TV, music, etc.

The critical problem is that even people who are taught virtuous ideals and behaviors as kids get practically no reinforcement in the entertainment media for knowing, doing, and desiring what is generally called, in classical terms, The Good, which is determined in the greater part by the transmission of culture, conscience and common sense.  The rewards of such attitudes being as self-evident as the consequences for failure to acquire them, how may they be elevated in the popular culture?

As a visionary master of the Culture of Pop, Warhol’s work invites analysis, and previously the essentials of (1) commercial appeal for profitable outcomes and (2) elimination of distinctions between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” art were mentioned.  If it’s not hip and it does not sell, even to a niche market, it’s pointless and wasteful; since the rarefied sensibilities of cultural elites are of such little consequence outside their ivory towers and cocktail parties, crank up the heavy metal and unleash the moronic slapstick teen comedies, if that’s what it takes to deal with the issues and get the points across, specifically through thematic content.

In our next look at the Warhol canon, consider the obvious:

“It’s the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it. Everybody has their own America, and then they have the pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.”  —Andy Warhol

It takes actors and actresses, musicians and filmmakers, media mavens and individuals of charismatic character to thrust themselves and their ideas into the forefront of pop cultural awareness.  Jerks, nitwits, dirtbags and phonies do it every day, as Big Hollywood attests daily, because the template is cut for them and the infrastructure is in place to launch their downhill course.  Warhol, credited with coining the term “Superstar” which he applied—ironically, perhaps—to the loose troupe of lunatics, drag queens, and hangers-on who appeared in his films, parodied Hollywood culture with his Factory’s unstable stable of “sex symbols” and “celebrities,” growing all the while into a true media icon in his own right, ultimately hobnobbing with the genuine idols of stage and screen as a superstar himself.

Filmmaker John Waters followed much the same path, unfazed, as was Warhol, by the lack of blockbuster budgets, and has written and directed numerous crossover and mainstream movies in addition to his early, “underground” flicks.  For underground, read unsavory, demented, filthy, what you will, (and particularly offensive to conservative sensibilities) in both Waters’ and Warhol’s oeuvres.  The point, however, is about realized potential, not content, and about the degree to which anybody can do it.

Content which reflects The Good is the desired outcome in delivering a product for widespread Pop consumption; in its creation, contemporary technology goes a long way to minimize budget obstacles which would have been insurmountable in even the recent past.  “The Blair Witch Project” was made a decade ago for about thirty-five grand.  “Fireproof” was made for around a half-million.  Somewhere between those two budgets there is enough money, in the right hands, to build the beginnings of an alternate Pop universe, as Warhol did in a wide range of media.  Conservative hands, libertarian and independent hands, any like-minded people who want to get together—and get a grip—can, and should, give it a shot.  (Perhaps needless to say, in promotion and manipulation of image, such works should never be promoted as “conservative,” etc., any more than the others are promoted as “progressive.”  Let the critics and the Democratic Media Complex complain about that.)

The more such alternate worlds, the better, because audiences embrace the pleasures of participating, however briefly, in fully realized, well-defined imaginative realities, such as the “Star Wars” films, the “Mad Max” and “Lord of the Rings” trilogies, the “Seinfeld” and “X-Files” TV productions, and, for that matter, the entirety of the imaginary ”country” American society and landscape created by country music artists.  Rock and pop music create similar imaginary worlds, though the music industry as a whole continues in decline.

For a time it was said, “The Rolling Stones are not a band.  They are a way of life.”  That way of life is a continuum in the world of rock and roll, which is blasted all night followed by partying every day, to paraphrase KISS.  For party, read “indulge.”  Anyone can play.  Especially with karaoke or the Guitar Hero game, which provides just the imaginary setting for your rock and roll fantasy.

The degree to which anyone can do it: low-budget media-generated alternate universe by your correspondent. In Warhol's day, such an image would have involved considerable time, expertise and expense. Note subtle product placement of the famous Marshall Amplifier.

Video games—which currently surpass the movie industry in sales—put the players in such worlds, contending with or even surpassing the experiences of “real life” activities.  Individuals create such worlds with shameless self-promoting personal websites, Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites.  You can take high school kids on a field trip to Mount Rushmore or Auschwitz, but if you don’t keep them away from their phones or iPods, they might miss the whole thing.  That is the power of immersive digital media, which now means everyone can play.

Erstwhile film student Jim Morrison may have had no idea of what was coming when he expanded on Marshall McLuhan’s statement:  “Everyone should say, the media is the message, and the message is me,” but that is what is possible now, and that’s the message, in every form imaginable.  Camera held at arm’s length, snapping self.

The fifteen minutes Warhol mentioned have elapsed—everyone is famous.

Now what?  Pop culture demands glamour.  But it needs The Good.  It needs character, courage, and vision.

Tomorrow: Do The Warhol— Part 3 of 4: The Velvet (Underground) Revolution ]]> http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sgraves/2009/07/24/do-the-warhol%e2%80%94-part-2-the-culture-of-personality/feed/ 23 http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/proff/2009/03/20/your-best-form-of-entertainment-technology/ http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/proff/2009/03/20/your-best-form-of-entertainment-technology/#comments Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:22:22 +0000 Peter Roff http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/?p=85610 Hollywood used to proclaim that “Movies are still your best form of entertainment.” 

That it felt it necessary to do so was in reaction to its declining share of the entertainment market against the little box, television, where you could see things for free and in the comfort of one’s own home. 

Hollywood assumed an adversarial stance against television right from the beginning, doing everything from encouraging stars under its control to stay off TV to changing the aspect ratio of movies so that they no longer matched the dimensions of the television screens.  Yet think of how different things might have been, for television and for the Hollywood studio system, had the moguls of the 1950s decided that television represented not a threat, but a new outlet, a new source of profits in which everyone would have a chance to wet their beaks. 

But they didn’t.  They put more value on the short-term loss than on the potential for long term gain – and an already teetering studio system crumbled.  And, after the ground finally stopped shaking and thanks to folks like MCA’s Lew Wasserman - the studios found themselves in the television business anyway.  But they had to learn the lesson the hard way. 

So you might think the next time the opportunity arose to tap into an emerging market that had the potential for big revenues, the studios would be the first ones in line.  Guess again.  As we all know from the famous “Betamax” case, the folks who produced movies and television entertainment were so concerned about the potential for abuse that they tried, essentially, to put a stop to home video recorders while overlooking the enormous profits to be made in movie rentals. 

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  But fool me a third time?  The studios still seem to think that new technology, rather than being a source for additional profits, remains the enemy.  Case in point: RealDVD, a product from Real Networks, the same folks who gave us Real Player and other interesting media applications for our computers. 

As the company puts it, RealDVD is “a cool new product that lets you save your DVDs to your PC or laptop,” a way to get additional value from the DVDs you have already purchased.  RealDVD is, in essence, a convenience in much the same way cassette tapes (remember them?) were a way to listen to the music contained on the LPs (remember them?) you had purchased while driving in your car. 

RealDVD is not, at least according to RealNetworks, a tool for pirating media.  The company says it has stringent protections embedded in its software to prevent piracy and illegal copying.  And, truth be told, anyone interested in breaking through the piracy protections encoded into today’s DVDs so they can rip free bootlegs has more than enough shareware to choose from already that they don’t need a program developed by a for-profit company to make things easier for consumers. 

But, just like they did with television and with home video recorder, the big studios have reacted with horror to the idea that something that might make it easier for consumer to get more life out of products, in this case DVDs, which consumer have already purchased, that they brought suit against RealNetworks to shut things down. 

There are certainly real issues involved here.  The protection of intellectual property is a very real concern, for producers and consumers alike.  As is the matter of the assignment of rights for duplication, the definitions of personal use and the distribution of revenues that might be generated from what one can assume would be the increased sale of DVDs. 

But the fact remains that the technology companies, RealNetworks among them, are looking to the future while the studios remain grounded in the present or, even worse, the past.  DVDs will eventually go the way of the LP, becoming an anachronistic storage device of interest only to serious collectors.  The Internet, and downloads, is where the future lies.  Programs like RealDVD are part of the transition and it makes little sense to trying and keep it shut down.  The smart move, from a business perspective as well as a technological one, is to follow where it leads.

If you think things are scary now, imagine how people felt when World War I or World War II started. Both of those wars led to massive alterations in the world as we knew it up till then. WWI ended the age of the aristocracy. Dukes, earls, czars, even kings fell by the wayside and their fortunes and lives were ruined. WWII shifted world power structures, ending the European dominance over the developing world. Colonies were abandoned and left to find their independence. The US became a superpower after living in the shadow of Europe for so long.

But this site isn’t dedicated to geopolitics. It’s dedicated to the Big H. And that’s the subject of today’s discussion. The end of Hollywood as we know it. It’s already begun.

Entertainment is about to undergo a radical shift from old media to new media. And the rules of the game will be changed forever.

In the early days of Hollywood they had the studio system. If you worked there, you were beholden to whoever held your contract. They’d give you work, but you had to do what they said. They would hand you a project and you were forced to do it. Or you might lose your deal and you’d be lucky if anyone would hire you. The creative person in the old system may have worked more, but they had less freedom. Working for the old system was kind of like being a citizen of a Communist dictatorship. The studios controlled the press and the behavior of their stars as much as they could. They had a tight control over everything.

But that system couldn’t last. The costs of running a studio like a company town were too exorbitant. The public was also getting tired of the artifice of back lots and stages. They wanted more realism. So, with the price of land being so high, the studios sold off a lot of their lot space and compressed their operations. Actors and writers were let go of their contracts and were free to work wherever they could find it. That’s the system we have now. But even though artists are more free, there is still the game to be contended with. There is still a kind of invisible hand over it all that sometimes feels like Big Brother is watching. You dare not offend the powers that be.

In my last piece I talked about how diversification of TV content has led to a zillion channels. But the business model of advertising paying for shows is hitting some roadblocks. That’s affecting the bottom line. TV viewership, especially on the networks, is down. It’s caused a tightening of belts everywhere.

Internet usage is way up. More kids are going online than watching TV. You can download entertainment online. If you missed a show, it’s probably on the Net. Download it and watch it at your leisure for free. Movies are being pirated before they’re released in the theaters. The studios are fighting the pirates, just as the music companies fought the file sharers. But file sharing has only increased. Like Prohibition, laws banning things do not stop people from wanting them. Where there’s a demand, there’s a provider.

The studios fought the VCR in the early 80s. When VCRs first came out, you couldn’t buy a movie. You could only rent them. And they sued people for taping shows off the air. Look how well that worked out.

The studios eventually got smart and decided to go with the flow. And they made untold billions in revenue from the home video market.

Eventually they’ll figure out how to co-opt file sharing and downloads. They’re already trying different business models. When they’ve solved the puzzle of how to make money off it, they will reap more billions.

The DVD will go the way of the tape as everyone stores their films digitally as a file. The cost of storage is getting absurdly cheap and the devices themselves are getting more powerful all the time. You can buy a terabyte drive at some places for $100. And the hard drive is also becoming obsolete as we shift to “solid state” memory cards. Memory chips that can store vast amounts of information on things like the memory sticks you may use with your computer. These are approaching the terabyte range. And they’re extremely cheap. In no time we’ll be dealing with picobyte storage, which is a thousand terabytes. A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes. You get the picture. It’s plenty.

You can now load shows, movies, and large amounts of music on iPods. In fact, many cellphones can do that now. But it gets better.

The technologies coming out in the very near future will merge your computer, cell phone, and television all into a tiny device no bigger than a pen. They already have prototypes of this technology in labs. And don’t worry about the size of the video screen. They’ll have tiny projectors that can do HD quality on any blank surface. Your computer of the future may resemble this prototype: a projected laser keyboard (already on sale) with a projected “screen” on which you can watch movies, shows or play games.

You’ve already seen commercials for the iPhone or those BlackBerries with similar features. They are just the beginning of a trend.

They now have “e-paper” which is paper thin monitors that can be rolled up. E-paper is cheap to manufacture and will replace signs, billboards, newspapers and most other printed matter. You can read a book, a comic, or a newspaper, and change the page or even enlarge the view. Sony already has flexible, paper-thin color monitors. Supermarket price signs will be animated e-paper. Their message will be updated from the central office. Signs at bus stops or in stores will react to you as you pass them by, flashing ads tailored to your buying habits.

The cost of printing has held a lot of authors back from self-publishing. But it will cost you nothing to be published in the future. Just as it costs nothing to publish your work online now. A comics creator can get their books out on downloadable e-comics and charge whatever they want for them. A book author will no longer have to go through publishing houses to get distribution. New markets will be created online to allow people to get their work out. It’s already happening.

As for Hollywood, their lock on distribution is being eroded by the Internet. Right now they’re still an exclusive club, so they can afford to be snobs. If they don’t want to let you in for some reason, they can keep you on the other side of the red velvet rope. But those days are coming to an end, because competition is coming from foreign markets and soon from other markets in the U.S.

New markets mean new attitudes. The culture in L.A. and N.Y is not the culture of the South or the heartland. And you’ll see entertainment coming from there, too.

The state of California is no longer a good place to do business. The politicians have made such a mess of things: the taxes, labor laws, cost of living have driven many to flee the state. The expense of shooting in California has also gotten out of hand. Productions are running away to other locales. New studios are being built in other states willing to offer better tax breaks. The monopoly that Hollywood once had on entertainment in the US is fading fast. It will accelerate as new companies will find ways into these emerging digital markets.

You see, you don’t need a studio to make movies anymore. Video cameras are getting cheaper and higher resolution all the time. Home studio editing software, as well as special effects software can turn any competent geek into a film whiz.

Right now, fans are making nicely produced episodes of their favorite TV shows for an online viewership. The production quality is about as good as a professional studio would make, even if the acting or writing often falls short. A good example is the excellent ‘Star Trek: Phase II’ series which often has original cast members acting in episodes (and original show writers doing the scripts). There are many movies like this being made on the Internet from filmmakers all over the world. It’s only a matter of time before some of these efforts become big money makers. And then you’ll see even further erosion of Hollywood’s power.

The unions, the agencies, the studios themselves, will probably be around for many years. Some will find a way to capitalize on new markets and thrive. But the power structure of the past will not survive the way it has. And that means more opportunities for people with a competitive vision.

For one thing, the way money flows from the consumer is going to change. Advertising will still be a revenue generator. And they probably still charge money to see a movie or listen to a song. But more and more we’re beginning to see the “open source” approach where products are disseminated for free and people are encouraged to pay what they want. In several recent cases, like the release of Radiohead’s In Rainbows album, it earned the band many millions of dollars by making their music available for “free” online.