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Post by dazz on Dec 11, 2019 22:29:09 GMT
Not really how it works, budgets get decided by how much they can make per episode and so can spend per episode, a shorter season does not impact episode budgets as they make the same money back regardless if it's 8, 12 or 20 episodes.
But this is an issue I have with how they treat the crossovers, they should NOT be part of the individual shows regular seasons, not in terms of budget and stuff, they should be considered as an annual mini series and given their own higher budgets due to these episodes tending to be among if not outright the biggest ratings the CW gets every year, also would prevent the cock up in the writing where in depending on whose show it is that episode features more of that shows cast, treat it separately and use the characters as needed in a manner which makes sense for the plot.
But I would also stop doing the crossover at the same fucking time every year, I don't care how many times I have said it before but Flashpoint should have been that years crossover and it should have kicked off the season, why the fuck does EVERY fucking crossover happen between thanksgiving and Christmas ffs? Then again why do new villains always pop up in October and major villains don't appear between May and October? so fucking stupid.
But back to the budget that's not the real issue, the real issue is the time frame, they tend to only have weeks 2 months at most to do the effects which is why it's always so off, they just don't have the time to properly render the details, this is why though the crossovers like this should be first on the docket for effects because it's the biggest audience you are going to get so give them the most time possible, hell film the crossovers first so you know ok this is how this story ends so you can know this is what we need to build into, instead of this bullshit we get where the lead up is fucking pointless because they make the shit up as they go.
Fair enough. How do you know all this? True, even the crossover threads are getting more hits than the standard episodes lol The budget stuff, common sense after listening to a fair amount of industry stuff over the years from people in or around the industry, I mean it makes sense, they only make money off of those specific episodes, so if they do 5 episodes and make $4m in ad revenue per episode to break even they cannot spend more than $4m an ep, and it's why a 10 episode series that cost $100m all together that earns $20m an episode isn't as profitable as a $50m series of 22 episodes that make $8m an episode.
Or if you mean the CGI stuff, just look at Justice League they spent millions to cover up the moustache and other shit but they changed so much so last minute and scrapped so much of what Snyder had done they just didn't have time to get the CGI right, where as look at Thanos and how real he looks, or even back in the day with T2 and how real the T-1000 looked, T2 had less than 5 minutes worth of CGI but had the equivalent of 20 years worth of combined man hours working on those 5 minutes which is why it looked so good.
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Post by stargazer1682 on Dec 12, 2019 1:29:52 GMT
Fair enough. How do you know all this? True, even the crossover threads are getting more hits than the standard episodes lol The budget stuff, common sense after listening to a fair amount of industry stuff over the years from people in or around the industry, I mean it makes sense, they only make money off of those specific episodes, so if they do 5 episodes and make $4m in ad revenue per episode to break even they cannot spend more than $4m an ep, and it's why a 10 episode series that cost $100m all together that earns $20m an episode isn't as profitable as a $50m series of 22 episodes that make $8m an episode.
Or if you mean the CGI stuff, just look at Justice League they spent millions to cover up the moustache and other shit but they changed so much so last minute and scrapped so much of what Snyder had done they just didn't have time to get the CGI right, where as look at Thanos and how real he looks, or even back in the day with T2 and how real the T-1000 looked, T2 had less than 5 minutes worth of CGI but had the equivalent of 20 years worth of combined man hours working on those 5 minutes which is why it looked so good.
I think a show will get an averaged per-episode budget to work with, but my impression is that it will sort of be this lump sum to spread over the entire season. So if one episode is under budget they can roll the difference over and put more into another episode. At least, that's how it worked on shows like Star Trek; because I've read a lot of background content about how certain episodes would be a "bottle show" not utilizing any new sets or guess stars or be light on special effects, saving them money, that they would then use for some of their bigger episodes. Or conversely, there'd be episodes towards the end of a season that would get re-written and plot elements or effects would be dialed back, because maybe some of the episodes earlier in the season went a little over budget and they simply couldn't afford as much later. But like you originally said, Dazz, with a 10 episode season order, they're not going to be given the same amount of money as they'd get to spend for 22 or 24 episode season; it's going to be proportional to the episode count. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I was reading recently how the final product CGI is actually not as good as it used to be or could be; and it has everything to do with everyone wanting it and relying on it. It's creating this paradoxical problem where, there are only so many CGI effects houses able to handle the kind of effects movies and TV wants. but such a high percentage of productions want some form of CGI, that in order to handle the volume it's becoming the norm for these effects studios to render less than their best work in order to get the finished product done in time for its release date; and then go back in and redo the CGI better for the home media release. But they don't always get paid much extra for the second round of work and they may not even get paid anything extra at all; I think may end up falling under whatever their original bid or budget was, even though it's extra work for the people creating the effects. And this is leading a lot of these CGI companies to actually lose money in a booming business, and even end bankrupt and out of business; which only feeds the problem, because then when one of those companies goes out of business, demand on the remaining companies only grows, creating extra burden, making it harder to deliver the quality effects on time.
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Post by dazz on Dec 12, 2019 2:56:53 GMT
The budget stuff, common sense after listening to a fair amount of industry stuff over the years from people in or around the industry, I mean it makes sense, they only make money off of those specific episodes, so if they do 5 episodes and make $4m in ad revenue per episode to break even they cannot spend more than $4m an ep, and it's why a 10 episode series that cost $100m all together that earns $20m an episode isn't as profitable as a $50m series of 22 episodes that make $8m an episode.
Or if you mean the CGI stuff, just look at Justice League they spent millions to cover up the moustache and other shit but they changed so much so last minute and scrapped so much of what Snyder had done they just didn't have time to get the CGI right, where as look at Thanos and how real he looks, or even back in the day with T2 and how real the T-1000 looked, T2 had less than 5 minutes worth of CGI but had the equivalent of 20 years worth of combined man hours working on those 5 minutes which is why it looked so good.
I think a show will get an averaged per-episode budget to work with, but my impression is that it will sort of be this lump sum to spread over the entire season. So if one episode is under budget they can roll the difference over and put more into another episode. At least, that's how it worked on shows like Star Trek; because I've read a lot of background content about how certain episodes would be a "bottle show" not utilizing any new sets or guess stars or be light on special effects, saving them money, that they would then use for some of their bigger episodes. Or conversely, there'd be episodes towards the end of a season that would get re-written and plot elements or effects would be dialed back, because maybe some of the episodes earlier in the season went a little over budget and they simply couldn't afford as much later. But like you originally said, Dazz, with a 10 episode season order, they're not going to be given the same amount of money as they'd get to spend for 22 or 24 episode season; it's going to be proportional to the episode count. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I was reading recently how the final product CGI is actually not as good as it used to be or could be; and it has everything to do with everyone wanting it and relying on it. It's creating this paradoxical problem where, there are only so many CGI effects houses able to handle the kind of effects movies and TV wants. but such a high percentage of productions want some form of CGI, that in order to handle the volume it's becoming the norm for these effects studios to render less than their best work in order to get the finished product done in time for its release date; and then go back in and redo the CGI better for the home media release. But they don't always get paid much extra for the second round of work and they may not even get paid anything extra at all; I think may end up falling under whatever their original bid or budget was, even though it's extra work for the people creating the effects. And this is leading a lot of these CGI companies to actually lose money in a booming business, and even end bankrupt and out of business; which only feeds the problem, because then when one of those companies goes out of business, demand on the remaining companies only grows, creating extra burden, making it harder to deliver the quality effects on time. Yeah a show will be given a season budget and then from that the average episode budget will be devised, if they over spend they will need to cut back in later episodes, if they come in under budget they can just roll that over into other episodes, the bottle episodes as you said are great for this, and sometimes are planned specifically if a show has big spectacle lined up, I think when they first did King Shark Flash did this, they saved a little money in the earlier episodes and spent it on King Shark effects or something.
The CGI houses thing I have heard also, and it is god awful some of the things I have heard from people, a lot of guys end up working near non-stop to the point they sleep at the office when their projects get close to the deadline because if they don't finish in time the company and they get penalised for it, this is why so many of these big films like Endgame have umpteen effects houses in the credits because no one place can do all the work, also explains how the same movie can have great effects for one thing and terrible effects for others, different houses get given different things so results may vary.
Another issue really is also studios setting release dates years before a film even has a script or director, so by the time the film is done filming instead of 18 months to do the effects and stuff they have 8 months, which is why they should have more practical effects and less full green screen movies, it's too much needless work, why not have the same amount of CGI houses working on half as much effects and then hire a practical effects team to do that stuff, split the workload more, also give the actors something to act against, I don't care how good the CGI looks on camera theres something palpable about the practical raptor effects in the Jurassic Park films that the CGI ones in the Jurassic World movies lack.
CGI is great it allows so much more than what could be done with just practical effects, but your spot on it's become a self creating issue, too much is being relied upon and sometimes needlessly, I have brought this up before but the Thing prequel was done with all practical effects at first, then some exec came in and pissed and moaned because in this scene
When the Thing attacks the practical effects they created could not be shot from a side angle because it exposed the props mechanics and stuff, but they accounted for this and were never going to shoot it from a side perspective so it didn't matter, I think it may have also only been on on side also so they could shoot it from the other side, but the exec was like oh it limits the scene or some shit and made them do it with CGI and it looks like shit, that happened with I think pretty much every practical monster effect in the movie, and one of the biggest issues with the movie people had was how the effects looked like shit, and this happens with a lot of stuff where it's like oh CGI gives us such freedom, which is good when it is needed, when it's Arnie ripping off the skin covering of a Terminator arm fuck that let it be practical, who cares if you can see if you look properly Arnie had a wire and power pack under his shirt, no one is looking at that until atleast the 10th viewing, I never noticed it until someone else told me about it, but I would rather have the practical effect than the CGI version because that would look no where near as good.
Ian Malcom said it best all those years ago and I may be paraphrasing a little but now people are so consumed with whether they could they don't stop to think about if they should with the CGI bullshit.
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Post by stargazer1682 on Dec 12, 2019 3:41:35 GMT
it's like oh CGI gives us such freedom, which is good when it is needed, when it's Arnie ripping off the skin covering of a Terminator arm fuck that let it be practical, who cares if you can see if you look properly Arnie had a wire and power pack under his shirt, no one is looking at that until atleast the 10th viewing, I never noticed it until someone else told me about it, but I would rather have the practical effect than the CGI version because that would look no where near as good. And I fee like some of that CGI just doesn't blend into the real world as seamlessly as it should; not necessarily in an obviously fake or cheap way, but I guess maybe in an "uncanny valley" sort of way, where there's just something something dissonant. It looks real, but simultaneously doesn't look real. Like, everyone raves about Thanos, and I haven't actually gotten around to watching Infinity War or Endgame, but all the clips and reviews I've seen... I don't know why, but I'm not impressed. Same with Hulk to some degree, more so maybe what I've seen of Professor Hulk in End Game. I don't know that they could have made him look "better" with prosthetics, but I certainly have wondered what Thanos might have looked like done using prosthetics.
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