On the Business of Bullshit,

On the Business of Bullshit,

For more information, visit: Inside the Asylum, One of the Most Successful Low-Budget Studios

Holy shit, great read! Often I wonder what the hell supports the junkpile in Netflix's library. It's the same way I wonder what supports the endless assortment of garbage Facebook games, or unnecessary classes at school. For an Americanmindset often miscalculating the value of the "freedom" label, or the better branded "individuality" tag, choices translates in a perception of power in my presumed ability to distinguish myself from others based on the assortment of options within my grasp.

A quote:
"And in the endlessly filterable world of Netflix, where your preferences are sorted into hyper-specific genres, a full page of results for horror films with nightmare-vacation plotlines makes you feel like Netflix is tailoring its product just for you. “The bottom line is that it’s there, and you saw it,” Davis says—even if you didn’t actually watch it."

I find the article below really fascinating. It's more interesting then the rest of what I'm writing here. So read it NOW! It reveals a disguised set of conditions responsible for flooding the shelves with content I would never have considered producible. Moreso it puts the audience's fallibility in an interesting light. Some people are directly matched for low-intelligence films. Some people find value in the opportunity for harsh criticism. In either case a crap movie is vindicated. Common sense right? - but a hypothetical consideration until you begin realizing checks are being written and people are surviving off of this nonsense and it's all due to the evolution of digital streaming. This makes me wonder if it's really possible for an intelligent filmmaker to fail.

For example: If I have the right perspective matching my talent to the right scope of the market and the correct audience, and if I can keep to my budget and meet deadlines, and I know the basics well enough to get to a fine cut without anyone dying on set while maintaining enough continuity to be able to argue that what's been cut is actually a movie, well then chances are I will have a career.

And if all the suck is just a place holder until more producers, directors and writers enter the scene and secure funding so that existing libraries can grow bigger, it's good to know the demand exists on the viewer side and that they really deserve a better kind of movie. I won't knock what Asylum is doing though. Val Lewton originated terror films in much the same environment back in the 1930s and these films often went up against Univeral's monster show. If the worst that can happen to a dedicated filmmaker is that he or she becomes a carnie, a business models exists that can keep him or her in the mix until inspiration elevates him and his product back into mainstream appeal. It's OK to suck, apparently the world doesn't really mind and quite often audiences appreciate it in their own way. If you were worried about ultimate failure, don't.

Let's get what we came for,
C.M. Sanchez III