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movie dearth of quality: "straight to video" syndrome?

posted 3 years ago by 123Guy (7842)
3 replies | jump to latest

in the 1980s, when VHS really shined, bigger and smaller studios jumped at the chance of making quick profits, bypassing the Movie To Theater chain and expense, and started making small, very crappy, "Fast food" movies to release STRAIGHT TO VIDEO, to VHS to sell in stores and rent at BLOCKBUSTER Video rental places.

There were TONS of no name films, with no name actors, and no good scripts you would find on shelves next to the big, famous, known movies. Maybe the covers were pretty enough, or the cost was much less and people rented or bought them. Quantity and profits over entertainment quality.
As video rentals slowly died off, I feel the number of Strait To Video garbage films reduced vastly. (Not looking at you, ASYLUM, since that is just normal day for ya)

It was a mess.

Are we back to that again?

With STRAIGHT TO STREAMING, big studios, small studios, heck, a guy with a cell phone and an idea makes films, finds "distribution", and now there is a thousand streamers, making 1/4 penny proftis off millions of garbage movies. Amazon has space. Hosting your shitty film costs almost nothing, and a couple renters (mom, brother and cast) pays for that, they make a profit and you feel special being listed on amazon, while pocketing $.75 against your $5000 spent making it.

Quality is in the toilet.... lighting, sets, acting is RARELY good, worst part is the story: 10 minute plots are being stretched 1.5 or 2 full hours when they deserve 30 minutes at best...

Will this ever get back to normal?
Is there a solid way to sort out a quality story over a low budget cash grab that sounds like a great film?

[–] FredBurroughs (22313) 3 years ago

This is a flawed premise.

Every generation has an equal proportion of mediocre or forgettable fare. This is not a new trend. Look at a typical newspaper clipping from the 1940s and you'll see more than a dozen movie titles that are so long forgotten they might not even exist in any present day media formats.

Convenience of distribution and the demand for content causes the perception of this phenomenon, but it is nothing notably new.

[–] 123Guy (7842) 3 years ago

there is always bad films out there, yes.

you don't think business ramps up the amount of production when a new open platform surfaces? like VHS or streaming?

I remember seeing new/random/bad movie population growing when video rental stores started opening.
streaming was slow on the uptake, but once it went mainstream, I witnessed tons more movies cropping up. Some streamers have nothing but crap on them, never a well known movie to even be found.
Roku also has tons of garbage channels.
Entertainment is subjective, but surely, there is a way to sort quality verses quantity.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

every era had crappy movies.