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Are movies better than ever?
01/12/2005 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
Last month I was at the Toronto International Film Festival. A week or so before the festival we go through a process of choosing the films that we wanted to see. For years I had been picking films by whether the film sounded good or not. Some turned out to be good, and some were stinkers. Buy Toronto International Film Festival in the USA - or Buy Toronto International Film Festival in the UK  This year I had chose films in a sort of unorthodox manner. I was actually making the description of the film a low priority in my decision criteria. I had discovered in the past that they would choose some venues for the films they thought were worthy and I made the location much more important in by choosing algorithm. Choosing films by where they were playing I had dubbed "Feng Shui film selection." Evelyn and a friend who goes with us both tried to convince me that it was silly to choose this way. But I thought it was worth a try.
Evelyn would tell people about this choice technique if we talked to them waiting for films. Towards the middle of the festival I told her not to tell anyone else how we were picking films because we were very successful and it might kill the odds if too many people knew how to choose very good films. The simple fact was we were seeing one good film after another. Usually we were lucky if we got one or two good ones a day. This year we seemed to be getting a lot of good films. Usually you are lucky if you pick one film that impresses you. This year we were impressed by a lot. Rather than one film a day in my +2 range we would get maybe two or maybe three. Of 45 films, 22 where low +2 or better. That is a fairly good rating.
Eventually we realized that other people were telling us that they were also seeing more good films this year than in previous years. What I eventually decided is that our success may have had little to do with The Feng Shui of Film Choice. There really were better films coming out this year.
Eventually we realized that other people were telling us that they were also seeing more good films this year than in previous years. What I eventually decided is that our success may have had little to do with The Feng Shui of Film Choice. There really were better films coming out this year.
Then I started putting two and two together. This has been a very bad year for film ticket sales. For many years the film industry has realized that the engine that pulled the industry is the teenage audience, particularly the male teenage audience. This year that audience is not going to the movies as much.
The younger audience was not considered so important until that late 1970s. Blockbusters like JAWS and STAR WARS had really brought in a teenage audience in large numbers. These really are the people who spend a lot on entertainment. The industry chose to zero in on this audience. We got a lot of high action films. We got a lot of science fiction and horror films. We got films based on new media that spoke the language of teens: video games and comic books.
Serious films with intellectual content were not selling to the teen audience and generally retreated to be seen mostly in art houses. There was still an audience for better films and companies with names like Miramax, October, Focus, and Lion's Gate served that audience, but the major studios were not making that sort of film. As it happens to the film industry every few years, new technology comes along and shakes it up. First there was radio, then television, and then the video revolution. Now there are inexpensive DVDs that bring films to market not a long time after the films played in theatres. Speaking for myself, these days when a good film comes out that is getting good reviews I first put it on my Netflix queue, then I look to see if it is playing in theatres. I can always remove it from my queue later if I see it in a theatre. The studio makes a lot less profit on me renting a film from Netflix.
So more mature viewers are not as dependent on the theatres. Meanwhile the teen audience is getting their fun cell phoning to friends, instant messaging, surfing the Internet. They have something akin to movies on PlayStations and X-boxes, but there they get to participate in the explosions and chases and fights. The medium for them is going from being passive to interactive. The writing in the traditional sense is not very important to this audience. A teen on a PlayStation is not very concerned about the human condition.
Meanwhile, the theatres are becoming less inviting to mature viewers. The price of tickets has been going up each year. A generation brought up with less emphasis on manners has really hurt the theatre viewing experience badly. Then theatres are trying to keep profits up by showing more non-film ads. They increase the prices at the concession stands. Theatres have been saving money by hiring inexperienced people to run the theatres. Incompetence in running theatres is taking a toll in the viewing experience with obvious and irritating errors in projection. Theatres are not being very well cleaned.
Some of the theatres in my area are taking some modest counter- action. They are lowering the price of admission at some times when the young crowd cannot come. They are having ushers come in to patrol the theatres and look for offensive behaviour. They are trying to make the theatres friendlier to mature audiences. People over thirty may not be the target audience yet, but they are definitely more in the film industry's mind. With the teen dollar moving away from theatres there may be less money overall invested in films and a bigger proportion of what is there will be going after a more mature market.
One principle that the industry may be reminded of is that good writing may be a better investment than good special effects. Perhaps an investor knows he can put a lot of money into effects and it will get something nice put on a screen. But these days the visual effects alone will not guarantee success. Investing in writing and acting may prove to yield a better return. It may no longer be the greater gamble.
So as much as I would like to think that my wacko formulae was what got us better films to see at Toronto, it may well be that there are other reasons we had such a good year in Toronto. It may be that the film industry is trying to get its act together and make less flashy but better films. I hope so.
Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 2005 Mark R. Leeper
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