Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: Interessante articolo di John Boorman

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/o,12084,1035758,00.html
Descrive, ovviamente da competente, come si lavora ad Hollywood oggi e di
come l'enfasi sui blockbuster, i cui costi sono ormai fuori controllo,
finirą per provocare una crisi finanziaria catastrofica.
Moritz Benedikt
'Life is not short enough'


Scusa non si riesce a trovare il link, non potresti
sopia-incollarlo?
Gracias
Luke

 ha scritto nel messaggio
news:sIk6b.85480$sj6.1...@tornado.fastwebnet.it...

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084.1035758,00.html
Questo dovrebbe essere corretto.


 finirą per provocare una crisi finanziaria catastrofica.
Magnifico, ci sono andato e non si legge niente.
MA POSTARE IL TESTO, INVECE DEI LINK, PROPRIO NO?
-- 
http://www.albertofarina.tk

 ha scritto nel messaggio
news:XWk6b.296740$lK4.9...@twister1.libero.it...
Eddai copia l'articolo !!!
Luke

Eddai copia l'articolo !!!
Davero! Porcoddue!
L'ho trovato:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1035758,00.html
---That's all, folks---
Big movies now cost $100m and that figure is going up. How can the
studios afford it? They can't. Film-maker John Boorman on an industry
facing meltdown 
Saturday September 6, 2003
The Guardian 
When I was a child in the London blitz, a blockbuster was a massive
bomb that could knock out a neighbourhood. The blockbuster movie, now
utterly dominant and crushing better films, is set to destroy the
Hollywood studios; the monster is turning on its makers. The
blockbuster now costs so much to make and market that no one can
afford them any more.
The American military, able to crush every opponent, is in danger of
bankrupting the US. Is there an inherent flaw in a system whereby
everything gets bigger and bigger until it collapses under its own
weight?
Until the 1980s, movies opened in a handful of cinemas, one in each
major city. There they would sit for a few weeks then roll out
gradually as word of mouth created demand. Then they started
advertising on national TV. It was so expensive that to make it
worthwhile the movie had to be available at "a theatre near everyone".
Radically, they opened with 1,000 prints, then 2,000, 3,000 and
eventually 4,000. Five million dollars for prints alone. Costs
escalate each year. Marketing a picture can run to $30-40m, as they
swamp the multiplexes in attempts to squeeze out the opposition.
Between 25% and 30% of a blockbuster's box office will be taken in the
first weekend.
Certain basic elements are required to manufacture one of these: an
A-list star ($20m) who will lend the picture instant recognition;
spectacle and action, but no real violence or sexuality since the film
has to achieve a PG rating (an R rating cuts the take by 30%); digital
effects where the bar is raised with every picture. Industrial Light
and Magic needed $40m to make the creature in Hulk.
Dolby stereo and huge amplification in the cinemas give audiences an
experience comparable to a rock concert. Typically the music will be
almost incessant and costs several million dollars. A hundred million
dollars is now the norm for a blockbuster and going up every year.
The studios can no longer afford them but must go on making them. More
and more they swallow their pride and split costs with a rival studio.
Massive German tax shelter money has kept them afloat for the last
several years, but is running out. With stakes this high, they try to
buy guarantees: subject matter that the audience can instantly relate
to, sequels, films based on TV series that the audience watched as
kids, or stars in a storyline that copies last year's big hit.
In my memoir, Adventures of a Suburban Boy, I describe how Deliverance
was made. Warners hired me to write a script. I submitted it. They
said, OK, if you can cast it and make it for a price, go ahead. How
naive that sounds by today's standards.
Today, I would have received pages of detailed notes from a number of
studio executives. I would have been obliged to hone the script down
to a simple direct storyline that is clear and undemanding, and
eradicate any eccentricity or quirkiness.
When the script satisfied their requirements, the studio would send it
out to a star. If the star passed, the studio's response would be to
hire a new writer. Further rejections by two or three stars and the
project would be dropped.
If they found a star who was interested, the title, cast and storyline
would then be test-marketed, asking people in the street if they would
go to see such a film - four men canoeing a river and one gets
buggered. Only with positive results would the studio go forward.
Clearly, there is no place for originality in this method. In fact
originality is anathema. How can you ask people if they want to see a
film that they cannot relate to another film?
To this end, script gurus like Robert McKee have brainwashed a
generation of screenwriters into constructing scenarios along rigid
lines: introduction of characters, statement of conflict, development
of narrative, division into three acts, carefully placed climaxes,
conclusion. This contributes to the sameness of movies, and feeds into
audience expectations of comfortable patterns and makes them uneasy if
a film diverges from that formula. Little by little movies become more
and more similar to each other, with marginal variations. One can
imagine them evolving like No theatre into a form where only an
audience inured to them can discern any differences. "Those Rocky
movies," someone asked, "how do you tell them apart?" "It's easy,"
said his companion "they're numbered."
Ang Lee said of his experience of making Hulk that the blockbuster
requires not talent but endurance. The nervous studio executives exert
relentless daily pressure over every aspect of their investment. The
other day a studio fired the cameraman on a big picture. The director
was not consulted.
The studio will insist that every scene is shot in such a way that it
can be malleable to editing, because when the picture is put together
it will be test-marketed. Audiences will tell the makers what bits
they don't like. These will be recut or cut out or reshot. The
audience is asked to rate the movie as excellent, very good, good,
fair, poor. To be successful, a film must achieve over 80% in the top
two categories. If it falls short, recutting and reshooting will
continue until it does. During this process, any remaining fragments
of originality that have slipped through the net will be ruthlessly
expunged.
Putting all their money into blockbusters, the major studios are
making fewer films, down from 20-24 to 10-12 per year. Whereas films
are traditionally developed by directors who work with writers and
designers to shape a project to the point where it can be shot, the
blockbuster is built by the studio.
They manufacture the script, decide on cast and budget. Only then will
the studio audition directors. With fewer films being made, the
competition is intense. More and more, directors will arrive with a
visual presentation, often quite elaborate, with scenes from other
movies or animated storyboards. With many directors vying for the
first Harry Potter movie, Warners elected to assign it to the
applicant who had made the most movies that had grossed over $100m.
The winner was Chris Columbus, famous for Home Alone.
Those of us excluded from this elite, or lacking the stomach for
film-making of this order, are increasingly relegated to the mean
streets of the independent film, the arthouse ghetto of low budgets
and deferred fees.
The independent film has to squeeze into margins and corners not
occupied by the bullying blockbusters. The finance is cobbled together
from co-productions, tax shelters, territorial pre-sales and, if you
are lucky, as I was with my film Truth, money from the Film Council (I
won £2m on the lottery without buying a ticket).
It took 18 lawyers to reconcile the contracts of all the participants.
During those long weeks as I waited in South Africa with my cast and
crew, the picture teetered on the verge of collapse. A feature of
independent films is that most of them fall apart, often days before
they are due to start shooting, and, even sadder, sometimes a week or
two after they have begun.
Legal fees were one of the biggest items in my budget. Everyone who
puts in a bit of money, or introduces you to an investor, demands to
be an executive producer. I ended up with 6 producers and 5 executive
producers and 2 associate producers. Billy Wilder was once asked:
"What is an associate producer?" "Anybody," he replied, "who's
prepared to associate with a producer." When it comes to showing the
picture to them, their lawyers, accountants and assistants, is there a
screening room big enough?
But once the tortuous process of patching the picture together is
accomplished, you make the movie without the advice and intercession
of studio executives. Here originality is not penalised, an individual
vision is allowed, ideas are tolerated, and the final vindication
comes at the Academy awards, which have increasingly become an
independent film festival. Somehow we stay alive, we limp along as we
wait for the blockbuster to reach critical mass and implode. In the
rubble and ruins of Hollywood, we will emerge to baffle and bemuse
that pre-programmed audience.
adamski
-- 
"Tits are great!"
(Bob Crane)
www.actuals.supereva.it

Sono molto impressionato.
Ero un po' incazzato con lui per la trasposizione del Sarto di Panama,
che a mio avviso non rende merito alla *geniale* invenzione del libro,
ma questo articolo, oltre che scoprire molti perché del cinema
contemporaneo, dimostra chiaramente che il nonnetto è nient'affatto
rincoglionito.
Onore al merito.
Prosit!
M®

 L'ho trovato:
Effettivamente molto interessante. L'unico elemento che Boorman non
tocca e' lo stretto legame fra i blockbuster e le azioni della societa'.
Mi spiegavano che la necessita' di fare roba grossa non dipende soltanto
dai motivi che elenca Boorman ma anche da cio' che l'annuncio di un
kolossal e l'uscita strombazzatissima di esso comporta sulle azioni
della societa' che lo produce.
I dettagli non me li ricordo, ma credo che c'entri il fatto che la
pubblicita' di un grosso blockbuster spinge in alto le azioni di chi lo
produce/distribuisce anche *prima* che il film esca, consentendo delle
buone speculazioni azionarie.
-- 
http://www.albertofarina.tk
UFV:Cabin Fever/Bend it Like Beckham(DVD)

 until it collapses under its own weight?
La sindrome della sequoia.