(Why) Has streaming been able to avoid a negative connotation?
- Thread starter suarezguy
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Because streaming shows aren't cheap. The analogy here shouldn't be direct-to-video, but premium pay cable channels like HBO and Showtime. Since it's a subscriber-backed service, it's commercial-free (well, sometimes) and can do higher-budgeted programming, more adult programming, more specialized niche programming, etc.
It probably helped that when Netflix went into original streaming TV, it committed to doing high-budget, quality shows instead of going the cheap route. So that set a precedent for the other services.
True, but they're alongside higher-quality stuff which has had a bigger impact on the reputation of the medium.
Depends entirely on the content. Some of is good, but some of it is also quite bad. In particular, I've found myself disappointed countless times with Netflix Original movies (which are sometimes actually bought rather than Netflix produced). I've found that they spend a lot on star power, but not so much on scripting, often leaving the movies to abrupt endings, or unsatisfying ones.
Recent example of this would go to The Ice Road starring Liam Neeson. It's not a movie they produced, as they bought the streaming rights, but it's very much a direct-to-video movie, with plenty of production consistency mistakes that are easily visible to the viewer.
Recent example of this would go to The Ice Road starring Liam Neeson. It's not a movie they produced, as they bought the streaming rights, but it's very much a direct-to-video movie, with plenty of production consistency mistakes that are easily visible to the viewer.
I think you're talking about a paradigm that existed when the studio motion picture was widely accepted as the highest standard of quality. At first the made-for-TV movie was considered a lower form, and then with home video the straight-to-video release also had a negative connotation. The thinking was "If this movie's any good, why wasn't it released in theaters?" and it was assumed that the best and brightest in the industry were making big studio pictures, or were working their way to that ultimate goal.
So many things have changed since then: Availability, portability and technical quality of home video, independent film reaching a wider audience, the narrowing of the targeted mainstream cinema audience, the rise of more artistically ambitious and narratively complex programming on cable and later streaming. The result after 30 or so years: People no longer look to what's playing at the multiplex as any indication of quality and are perfectly used to getting the entertainment they prefer, of any level of quality, from a variety of sources.
Because everybody streams now, and there's a lot of money to be made from streaming services.
Direct-to-video, OTOH, was just cheap crap that the makers didn't think would make any money in the theaters.
Indeed. These days I expect theatrical movies to be more shallow and lowbrow on the whole than television. TV has the room to go deeper and develop its concepts and characters more fully. Plus writers have the power in TV while directors have the power in features, so a lot of movies are quite badly written even when they're well-made in other ways.
The only real advantage of feature films is budget, and even that difference is fading as we get TV series made with the same level of casting and production values as feature films. Plus it used to be that you had to go to movies for anything really adult while TV was subject to strict censorship, but these days it's the other way around -- most big movies are PG-13, while plenty of pay-cable and streaming stuff is graphically adult.
While that might be true for American productions, I don't think it's quite the same everywhere depending on country of origin. Canada for instance, doesn't really put out many domestic homegrown big budget productions, both in TV and in movies, and it only ever comes close via co-productions. But there's a reason why Canada's most popular exports are currently either a comedy (Letterkenny) or sitcoms (Kim's Convenience, Schitt's Creek), and that's because the budgets don't allow for anything too in-depth. What we do have a lot of are TV movies with a production level that hasn't really changed that much over decades.
That depends. Do you mean commercial TV or the prestige stuff on premium cable/streaming? It has always been the case that some TV productions are more sophisticated and high-quality than others. Just as it's always been the case that some movies are higher-quality than others -- "A" movies vs. "B" movies, either literally or figuratively.
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