Death of mid-budget films

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

How the Death of Mid-Budget Cinema Left a Generation of Iconic Filmmakers MIA Flavorwire

It's three pages, from two years ago but still relevant. A lot like how people complain about the death of mid-list books.

[Ibrahim]

Just the middle class disappearing on all levels. & sometimes i don't understand the complaints, at all. Waters can't make a low-budget film because he has four assistants to pay? That's not a luxury position, somehow?

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Been thinking about this more and I think I have noticed over the past 5 years, films by veteran directors looking cheaper than they previously did. Gregg Araki springs to mind.

I think it is being proved that sometimes no matter how creative you are, sometimes a lower budget is going to show painfully.

[Zaharoff]

I view countless films and scribble reviews constantly.
There are plenty of mid tier movies made.
Foreign films, arthouse, indie, you name it.
Nevertheless, you must wean yourself from Hollywood product.
Much of that can be soul destroying, hackneyed, cliched, Christ almighty.
Blockbusters - superheroes - try to avoid.

[Revenant]

I guess I got lucky. Weaning myself off of Hollywood pictures has been really easy. But then again I am getting older and popcorn flicks aren't meant for me anymore.

[paeng]

There is another argument about the matter that states that because of big budget movies the industry may at some point implode:

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas predict film industry 'implosion' | Film | The Guardian

[Zaharoff]

I was rereading an old article by Midnight Eye, explaining why they were calling it a day.

Excerpt:

... Much has changed on the Japanese film scene during those years as well. The dawn of the new millennium was a really exciting time for Japanese cinema, with people like Takashi Miike coming up, J-horror breaking through internationally, directors like Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Shinji Aoyama, Hirokazu Koreeda and Naomi Kawase establishing themselves as new auteurs on the festival scene. Thanks to a decade of feverish filmmaking activity for the video market, the medium budget range (roughly US$ 400,000 – 1 million per film) was alive and well, with both genre films and arthouse indies (the line between the two was blurry to begin with) making their money on the mini-theater circuit and on video. It was a very diverse and vibrant scene, and our excitement for it led to the decision to create Midnight Eye ...

Midnight Eye feature: Reflections in a Midnight Eye

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I remember reading that a while after it was published. Thankfully South Korea seems to be still making the kind of things that it did in the 90s.

A lot of stuff is going to Netflix now and while that is not the worst outcome, the cheaper look is still noticeable.

[Zaharoff]

Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour

... South Korea seems to be still making the kind of things that it did in the 90s. A lot of stuff is going to Netflix now and while that is not the worst outcome, the cheaper look is still noticeable.

I watch a fair amount of K-dramas and J-doramas, so I knew where you are coming from.
Korean series (and I am more fussy about TV shows than I am about films) are generally professional looking with strong cinematography. Acting, directing, and scripts is where I hope for the best.
Japanese series are more hit n miss. So many simply look cheap, like they were filmed on a twenty year old camcorder.
Even in a single episode, one scene will be fabulous, the next flat and washed out.
Then again, S Korea seems to keep the global audience in mind, whereas Japan seems more insular.
Overall, I prefer the "japaneseness" of the doramas from Japan.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Have you heard about this Chinese series The Untamed? Fantasy writer Vanessa Fogg writes about it at the bottom of this post
Short fiction recs! (and more) December 2019-January 2020

I was kind of amazed how good some of the Chinese shows looked (somehow better than a lot of the movies, maybe because they tend to focus on things they can achieve without cgi?) but I've never taken the plunge yet because I generally avoid tv series now.