SPEAKING SHOWCASE

FILMS & TV

We know that movies, series and TV itself

play an important role in our routines and
during this crazy period that we are living
as a society we were able to realize this
more and more.
To talk about the future and present of
cinema we should introduce the origin and
development of the cinema as we
understand it today, which is associated
with the invention of the cinematograph,
in the 19th century, a device capable of
capturing “motion images”, created by
William Dickson, assistant to the American
scientist and inventor Thomas Edison.
In its first versions, the spectator of the
kinetoscope had to observe the images
inside a darkroom through a hole in which
he placed one eye. In the year 1892, the
Frenchman Léon Bouly managed, from the
kinetoscope, to develop the
cinematograph, a model that was able to
record and project the light of the
movement images on screen, in frames per
second. The cinematograph ended up
being patented by the Lumière brothers,
who started, from 1895, to make several
small capacity cinematographic
productions and to exhibit them in special
sessions for that. The first film screening
made by Auguste and Louis Lumière took
place on March 22, 1895. The film was
entitled “La Sortie de L'usine Lumière à
Lyon” (The departure of the Lumière
Factory in Lyon) and recorded the
departure of the employees of the interior
of the company Lumière, in France.
It was also with the Lumière brothers that
the first “scenic directions” for cinema
began and the first kinetoscope films
already featured boxing matches, music
hall attractions and short scenes. The
'scenic spectacularity' appears like that at
the same time as the cinematographer.
One of the main names in the illusionism of
cinema was Georges Meliès, who directed
“Le voyage dans la Lune” in 1902, achieving
with this film truly impressive visual effects
for the time.
After the films by Meliès, there were the
productions of D. W. Griffith, in the United
States, those of expressionism and the
“Camera Movement”, in Germany, of
surrealism, in Spain, and Soviet cinema,
especially with names like Vertov and
Eisenstein.
The ease provided by on-demand video
services is so great that we even forget
that this technology is relatively recent.
Television has been gaining a prominent
place in homes since the 1960s. Despite
that, until about 10 years ago, access to
films and series outside of television
programming was only possible thanks to
the rental companies. It is precisely from
an evolution of the rental model that the
first streaming platforms emerge,
rethinking the public's relationship with
entertainment. Today, it is almost
impossible to imagine life without them or
remember a remote time when we
depended only on recommendations from
friends to discover new films or directors
that we liked. The algorithm is able to
understand our tastes like nobody else and
seems to always suggest the exact content
we were looking for. Artificial intelligence
scans the selection of films and
understands which works promise to
please each type of viewer and you can't
deny that these recommendations are one
of the best things between technology and
entertainment.
With the pandemic thousands of people
lost their jobs and many sectors were
affected, in the film industry it´s no
different. Unlike the commerce that was
able to try an outlet through e-commerce
or beauty centers that sold vouchers for
future purchases, the exhibitors had to
watch this without being able to react,
while the costs of employees and structure
continue to arrive every month. It also
looks like retailers will recover faster, once
the isolation measures are relaxed, but
who will be willing to enter a closed room
in the dark with 200 more people for two
hours? With the security measures to be
taken, in the best of cases the rooms will
be able to hold 40% of their capacity, that
is, a potential reduction of 60% in the box
office revenue and, consequently, in the
bomboniere.

With that, small exhibitors suffer a lot, as

they will hardly be able to renegotiate their
rents, and many will have to close their
doors. To further complicate matters, the
largest cinema chain in the world AMC
Theaters, is going through serious financial
difficulties, with a high level of
indebtedness and a drop of more than 90%
in its share price in the last 2 years. Fewer
theaters to show means less box office and
less revenue for studios, who even before
the pandemic spent a lot of money to
release a film and kept only 50% of the box
office revenue.
A film like Malévola2 that cost US $
200MM for the studio and had a sale of
tickets of US $ 500MM actually practically
tied its costs, and later it would be
profitable over the years in streaming, on-
demand rent and on sale to TVs. With this
uncertainty of how the cinemas will return,
which studio will risk launching a film that
costs US $ 200MM with the possibility of
reducing its box office revenues by 60%?
Not for nothing, films like Wonder Woman
1984, Black Widow and the new 007 had
their premieres postponed.
The studios have always complained about
having to fulfill the 75-day “window” after
the premiere of films in the cinema to
make the film available for sale on
demand. They would like to take
advantage of the “buzz” upon the premiere
of the film to make it available quickly to
that viewer who does not go to the
cinemas.
To try to reduce the damage, and enjoying
the children at home, Universal launched
the movie Trolls 2 in the USA directly on
video on demand, without going through
the movie theaters. This model, in which
the studio usually gets 80% of the
turnover, worked for the studio, but was
severely criticized by the exhibitors, who
already threaten to boycott Universal's
new films.Disney was not far behind and its
new CEO, Bob Chapek, has already
admitted that the company will rethink its
launch strategy and may put some films
directly on its Disney + service, as it will
with Artemis Fowl.