Note to producers: the ideal movie length is under 2 hours – y-g.co/1Jveafw http://t.co/LKrAxEOVTr—
(@YouGov) September 26, 2015
Ideal movie length
30 Sep 2015 Leave a comment
in industrial organisation, movies Tags: Hollywood economics
Girls on Film
15 Sep 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, gender, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: gender gap, gender wage gap, Hollywood economics
https://twitter.com/paul1kirby/status/642813666249822208/photo/1
Hollywood movies write women out of the script & create a make-believe world where men do all jobs.Ace chart http://t.co/0eM17kRJKW—
paulkirby (@paul1kirby) September 10, 2015
What watch a movie 2-D when you can watch it in 3-D?
08 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: 10-90 lag, consumer sovereignty, creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, Hollywood economics, technology diffusion
We were watching some movie trailers last week-end. One of the 3-D movies also mentioned that it was available in 2-D.
I am surprised that there is still a market for movies in 2-D when people have the option for a tiny sum of money to watch it in 3-D. Of course, this market survives therefore it must be efficient and somebody must like watching 2-D movies over the 3-D movie option.
Is also the case that there is considerable difference in the quality of 3-D movies. There must be trade secrets. For example, Peter Jackson’s films in 3-D are excellent. Some 3-D movies sometimes look like they are in 2-D all to frequently. I saw one trailer for a 3-D movie that looked like it was just 2-D with beer goggles on.
There is rampant height discrimination in the movie business?
13 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, industrial organisation, labour economics, movies, survivor principle Tags: competition as a discovery procedure, height discrimination, Hollywood economics, market selection, statistical discrimination, The meaning of competition
Spare me the conspiracy theories. When an actor or actress walks into a scene, the first impression of the audience is not supposed to be about how tall they are or how they differ in height from those already on the stage or film set.
This casting decision can be deliberate or simply that actors who do not differ as much in height seem to work well together and have more successful careers because of better rapport.
I didn’t go to any of the 25 biggest box office flops – did you?
23 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, movies, survivor principle Tags: entrepreneurial alertness, Hollywood economics, profit and loss, The meaning of competition
John Carter recently beat Waterworld as the biggest loser in the domestic box office: randalolson.com/2014/12/29/the… #dataviz http://t.co/cYrW0fwzDH—
Randy Olson (@randal_olson) December 30, 2014
Biggest box office bonanzas by net profit
19 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of media and culture, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, movies, survivor principle Tags: entrepreneurial alertness, Hollywood economics
The biggest box office "boom" of the last 30 years was made 30 years ago nerdist.com/2015/01/the-bi… feat. @randal_olson http://t.co/KiBrxKcbjO—
Kyle Hill (@Sci_Phile) January 14, 2015
Chiselling on the Closer Economic Relations agreement between New Zealand and Australia
10 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, economics of regulation, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, rentseeking Tags: barriers to entry, closer economic relations, creative destruction, export pricing, free trade, Hollywood economics, price discrimination, protectionism, rent seeking
Back in the day, New Zealand television programming was sold cheaply into the Australian market. Many cultural and other products are exported into foreign markets and sold for whatever they can get above the price of shipping or digital transmission. What else explains all that rubbish on cable TV?
Under the Closer Economic Relations agreement that creates a single market between Australia and New Zealand, New Zealand made television programming content must be treated the same way as Australian content so it was included in their 50% local content rules for commercial television back from whenever I remember this story from. There was a Federal Court of Australia case that ruled that New Zealand television programming was Australian content programming for the purposes of the relevant media regulations because of Closer Economic Relations.
From the late 1990s, with revival of the New Zealand film and television industry, New Zealand content was starting to flood the Australian market, especially in the off-season in the summer when stations were looking for cheap content to fill a low ratings period.
Naturally, this Kiwi invasion did not please the rent seeking Australian television programme production industry and many a mendicant actor, writer and producer
Where there is a will, where there is a way: minimum quality standards are introduced into the Australian content rules defined by price – a price that happen to be above what the television stations used to pay for New Zealand made programming.
The Bechdel Test: whether women are in a movie as fully human characters, or as plot devices for the male characters
27 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of media and culture, gender, industrial organisation, movies, occupational choice, survivor principle Tags: co-worker discrimination, consumer sovereignty, customer discrimination, employer discrimination, Hollywood economics, sex discrimination, The meaning of competition
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3332436/hickey-bechdel-11.0.png)
Hollywood is a slave to the box office on the most cutthroat industry there is. Film producers and screenwriters will portray men and women in whatever roles and whatever extent sells tickets.
How women are represented in the movies is determined solely by the preferences of the audiences willing to buy tickets. It’s a buyers market out there. Film producers would do whatever it takes to finance films that sell tickets, as even Five Thirty-Eight realised:
“Movies that are female-driven do not travel,” said Krista Smith, West Coast editor of Vanity Fair, describing the broader sentiment in Hollywood. There are almost no women who have sales value in multiple international territories, maybe with the exception of Sandra Bullock, she said.
Times change, and film producers change with the times. Consumers are both sovereign and change their minds, and in the case of movie audiences, constantly demand novelty and surprises, as even Five Thirty-Eight picked up on:
Hollywood is the business of making money. Since our data demonstrates that films containing meaningful interactions between women do better at the box office than movies that don’t, it may be only a matter of time before the data of dollars and cents overcomes the rumours and prejudices defining the budgeting process of films for, by and about women.
This moral panic over gender wage gaps between millionaire actresses and actresses dare not say that for want of offending the audience that is actually the main driver of any gender gap in movies.
Hollywood activists complaining about the gender wage are to business minded to dare insult the audiences that pay their wages.
Hollywood economics
04 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: global subsidy markets, Hollywood economics
Peter Jackson and the rest of the New Zealand film industry recently received a large increase in tax breaks and subsidies to stay competitive in the global subsidy market that is film production. But for the increased subsidy, the New Zealand film industry would have suffered from runaway productions. Whether that race to the bottom is a game worth playing is for another time.
The Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild of America define runaway productions as motion picture productions or television shows that are
intended for initial release/exhibition or television broadcast in the US, but are actually filmed in another country.
One foreign shore for these runaway productions is New Zealand. New Zealand is a major beneficiary from the growth in internationally mobile cultural productions.
Runaways can be creative runaways because of script requirements or settings that cannot be duplicated or because the preferences of the actors or director.
An economic runaway goes abroad to reduce costs. The concerns of the Screen Actors Guild about runaway productions date back to the 1950s.
Consumer demand is an important driver of the globalisation of film production both in terms of expected quality of productions and a willingness to patronise individual films and television shows.
Film and television is part of a much larger, highly competitive and price-sensitive leisure and entertainment market.
Film producers learnt right from the start that audiences demanded novelty and innovation – they wanted to be surprised again and again. Short films evolved into full-length feature films with complex narratives. Sound, colour, spectacle, and endless special effects and increasingly sophisticated distribution and exhibition networks were required to stay ahead.
Film-going choices are driven to a high degree by a demand for novelty and a taste for uncertainty. Audiences take a chance on a film they may not know much about, which is a large part of the experience sought.
The first law of Hollywood economics is ‘nobody knows anything’. Extreme uncertainty is pervasive in film and television show production.
Every film and show is a unique product. In the film industry, the uniqueness of each film means product innovation is both rapid and thoroughly unpredictable.
Many famous films and shows succeeded because the producers made something that audiences did not know they wanted to see.
Their success surprised everyone, including the producers. Star Wars, Rocky, National Lampoon’s Animal House, The Blair Witch Project, The Gods Must Be Crazy, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Godfather, Fawlty Towers and Seinfeld are all examples.
Big budgets do not guarantee a profit; star power and large marketing budgets do not reduce ‘the terror of the box office’ and the films involving stars often run over budget.
There is no typical movie – industry profits depend disproportionately on rare blockbusters, and there are many dogs – 78 per cent of films are unprofitable. Steven Bonars explains it well:
In 2000 the average top 1% film earned 100 times as much and the average top 10% film earned 50 times as much as the median film.
Today these box office ratios are about 1400:1 and 550:1 for movies in the top 1% and 10% respectively.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments