“Pleasure yourself everyday to stay creative” Lou Reed. (28.10.13)
With an abundance of content available, on multiple screens, it’s becoming harder and harder to entice and keep an audience engaged. So it's not surprising that TV has had to really step up its game and do what cinema has been doing since its inception.
But it’s really worked, with great stories and character development replete across our screens with the likes of Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad to name a few. Arguably, no other other time in TV history has seen such a concentration of great shows on offer.
It would make any TV enthusiast start shaking with withdrawal symptoms just to think that one day, inevitably, their favourite show will come to an end. Just like Sex and The City (tear) and The Sopranos did.
Just as the rise of the series is evident on television so is the rise of the sequel on the big screen. So far this year, there have been fifteen instalments of sequels/trilogies/additions to a franchise in cinema with another six to be released before the end of 2013.
Global box office reached a record $34.7 billion in 2012, up 6% over 2011’s total. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (Iron Man, Thor, Avengers etc) has had phenomenal growth, especially in the last two years. It is the highest-grossing movie franchise of all time, with total takings of over $5 billion.
The Walking Dead series broke its own rating records in the US when its fourth season recently aired. The series premiere was up five million viewers from the previous season, with its live+three ratings at almost 20 million, out-rating “Sunday Night Football” for that week, which is almost sacrilege for Americans.
The season finale of Breaking Bad also smashed their previous series records by jumping to 10.3 million viewers compared to the 1.9 million the fourth season finale delivered.
While this may seem almost contradictory to our so-called low attention spans, but does suggest that it’s the quality of content that is key to cut through the clutter and determine where people decide to rest their eyeballs.
People will watch great content, discuss it and look forward to it. It seems that good content have a cult following with fans united in their obsessions and emotional connection to particular shows, movies and characters.
Speaking of characters, there's been a crossover of talent between the TV and film realms. Actors better known for their silver screen pursuits are coming across to the small screen rather than TV actors using their TV career as a finishing school before getting their big movie break. This indicates content not only drives the viewer but also the actor. Kevin Spacey touched on this in his keynote speech at The James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture during the Edinburgh International Television Festival. In his introduction he said the below, which set the mood for the forty-minute speech.
“If the MacTaggart were a political office that you actually had to run for, then the banner hanging over this lectern would be my campaign slogan and theme for today and it would read …”It’s the creatives, stupid.”
I hope now you get why I started with my first quote, other than using it as a cheap ploy to get your attention. It’s all about the creative. The quality of the content rules what and where we decide to watch it. In the end it will be the creative that you will be discussing at the water cooler during the week.
I’m an 80s baby. I love TV, however the comfort of my bed has been winning lately with an array of shows that I’ve consumed in the last year saved on my MacBook Pro. I still have the last season of Breaking Bad (yes I still haven’t watched it) patiently waiting for me on my desktop and the new season of Game of Thrones is still to come. For the time being, I’ll probably go see a few movies with my friends. Or it might even be Superwog on my phone that will get all my attention. As I mentioned earlier, it all comes back to the content and that’s what’s going to dictate what and where I’ll watch it.
Natasha Doudkevitch
Sales coordinator
Val Morgan Cinema Network