Welcome to the weekend! Progress in the word mines is going very well. First draft is finished and I'm now halfway through the first edit. The end is in sight! So today I would instead like to talk about something else.
I'm sure you've heard a lot about the recent kerfuffle going on in Hollywood involving the writers and studios. The actual nitty gritty details have been bandied about on social media endlessly, usually in one dimensional rhetoric, but there is one thing about it not being discussed at all. That would be exactly the problems that led to the entire situation in the first place. Check out the video above for a more detailed explanation on how complicated it actually is.
As it turns out a lot of the reason residuals in this current climate are next to impossible to be meted out comes from the fact that streaming as a medium makes it that way. There is essentially no way to pay anyone properly or negotiate because there is no way to track proper streaming numbers in a way that could be understandable to anyone involved. And what might be revealed would at best be vague estimates, and would not be all too impressive--and would also unveil the emperor has been naked the whole time. You would most likely learn what everyone has been saying for ages: streaming is not viable long term.
It also feeds into the current AI argument in how modern writers have been deliberately writing "down" and following a formula Hollywood has wanted them to do in order to make their product more streamlined and easily accessible. In other words, they have been fashioning writers to write automated product and trying to get the audiences used to it. They've been setting up the AI climate for a long time.
The issue is that there might not be any audience here in the first place. Hollywood is relying on perception that is entirely artificial, and the writer's strike might be forced to reveal those cards definitely to the whole world.
Despite all of that, it is clear what Hollywood wants, and it is not creativity. They have been training their dwindling audience to want endless an product beltline divorced from quality. Streaming is the best way to keep this going, whether it is actually successful or not.
What this means is that technology has surpassed the need for creativity or even quality and there is not only no incentive to improve, but no way to grow. Hollywood and the streaming model are fundamentally incompatible and the recent squabbles are showing you why that is. There is actually no way for them to come to an agreement because of how the entire system works and was constructed. To rephrase it: this current situation is an albatross around their neck they made themselves. And with their abandonment of physical media or outside monitoring of their success and failures, there is no way track anything internally. You are just supposed to Listen and Believe whatever they tell you. It's all a big hot mess without any option to clean it up.
And that's how they wanted it to be. They just didn't expect the current situation to arise and put them into a deadlock. There is no winning scenario for them here.
If you were wondering why this whole event hasn't been solved yet, when it is apparently so easy to fix, well now you know. It can't be actually solved so easily, despite what you are being told by every other pundit on social media. This crazy situation can't be resolved without throwing everything else around the industry into chaos.
In conclusion, Hollywood is in a serious pickle right now. They have no straightforward path out of this and the house of cards they've constructed around themselves is about to crumble. The next few months are going to be interesting.
As an aside, here is the earlier video referenced in the one above about AI. It's also quite an interesting watch.
This is why I've said that the independent spaces are the only serious option going forward. The old industries are rusting out and dying and there is only one place you can go to get pure art and entertainment free of the corporate coffin entombing the industry. The old era is over, and it's time for the new one.
This is all the proof you need that things are shifting, and in a decade you will see a much different climate for art and entertainment than the one we have now. That future will not lie in the above mess made by these people who hate you.
Times are changing. Better get ready! It's about to get real interesting . . .
Superpowers, magic, and psycho gang members swarm a small town and only Matthew and Jason can stop them!
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