#AskSwell • "Made for TV" vs "made for streaming" movies.
It's funny, I remember someone telling me once that in certain circles, if you're an author, it's not a matter of whether someone reads your book or not. That's not the important part, it's whether they buy your book. It might sit on their shelf and never be read, or it might be read years from now, but the goal is to have it bought
And I hate to say that in the midst of the strike that's happening right now, but poorly written films, poorly devised films, but films with insane budgets. And I would be curious to know actually how much of that budget goes towards advertising and how much of it is actually going to the filmmaking process. Now, I also think it's interesting because one of my favorite movies of all time, the Irishman Martin Scorsese film, was put out by Netflix and had a whopping budget
Jordan Tepper
@JordanTepper · 4:01
It. I think that the made for TV movie is dead. There's no more made for TV movies because nobody watches TV anymore. It's all streaming. And I mean even I, I use Apple TV so I'm technically streaming TV. And I don't even think that there is movies really movies anymore because movies after a month or so are already on a streaming service
There was like these interpersonal interactions with aliens, or at least people from other places, right? And then maybe there's some sort of an overarching message. So there's interesting things going on, as opposed to there are other shows that I've watched, and you can tell the same writers on this one as compared to another show. Not this one, as an SG One, but whatever show I happen to be watching, you can see similar plotlines
Because they're not TV shows, they're, they're streaming. But maybe it's one of those things like hang up on the phone, it will not die out. Because it's funny when it comes to movies. And I'm thinking I have to sit down and stay with this for 2 hours. And yet, like you said, I'll turn around and I'll binge a few episodes of whatever a show, right? So it's like what's the difference?
Jordan Tepper
@JordanTepper · 2:19
But also, look at where things are coming from. Look at on TikTok. There's the Wednesday dance, right? That's not even the dance that was actually on the show Wednesday. But people are dancing to it, but they're curious to know what it is. So they put them on
Now you've got me wondering if creation is being done largely through the analytics and what the algorithms are saying, and it's not really about quality anymore, then how do we, as the consumers reeducate either, I guess, the people who are doing the creating, but then you have to somehow devalue the analytics. And I don't know that you can do that, especially in a society that focuses on the bottom line, on profit
Jordan Tepper
@JordanTepper · 1:06
There's no there's nothing to it to understand. Trying to teach them what is quality. They don't care. Just, wow, now it's time to find what your quality is, what quality is for. You stick to that. Because whatever everybody else is saying is probably going to be not good. It's
In this particular case, I'm going to have to agree to disagree. This is the way my brain operates. I enjoy analyzing systems, deconstructing them, attempting to reimagine and build new ones. And in order to do these things, then I have to understand. And my process of learning is by zooming in, zooming out, deconstructing, teasing apart, putting it back together again, and so on. And so this, this is how I understand the world
Jordan Tepper
@JordanTepper · 0:20
No, I mean, that's me joking around. I have a really dry sense of humor, so please don't think anything of it. And I'm glad that you're trying to figure out and asking questions. And we can talk more about it, too
It's all good. I figured in part it was in joking, and in part there was probably some seriousness there as well. No, it's all good. I don't know that I have any question at the moment. I'm just pondering some of the things that you've both brought up and then some of the questions that have come out of that
I'm really particular about what I watch. So I like Bill Maher politically. But I found that between Made for TV and Netflix series, I lean more Netflix series because the more episodes allow you to gain more complexity in the depth of the character. If I'm making the right discrepancy here, the Made for TV would be shorter. It's not a series, but with Netflix, it's like with White Lotus
And I guess it's partly because it had to be condensed. The same token though, there's things like the recent Star Trek series don't fill maybe it's the same thing. They don't fill the 24 episodes, whatever, of a season and they make it much shorter. But they also then create almost moviesque, excitement and richness into multiple episodes. So oh, there we go. Sorry, cat got stuck
The greater means of influencing the quality of a film or the response to a film, whether that be good or bad, I would honestly say belongs to streaming because television was one of those things where it was built off the lead in. Like a lot of times it was a made for TV movie. I can remember from my childhood here in Chicago that NBC would usually have a lead in from, let's say a block of television sitcoms like Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Blossom were back to back
And streaming is just one of these things where we kind of partake in it, especially since it's at home and we can pause it, revisit it, come back to it, put it out of mind, text during it, talk during it. It's fascinating to see how we're consuming these forms of art. And in hindsight, we look back and say television may have been cheaper and it may have been more limited because of censorship and budgets
And when I went to go looking to find a different TV show to watch, I like when they have many, many seasons and because then I can grow attached to the patterns of the writing and storylines as well as the characters, they sort of become pseudo friends
It's like a very odd ideology. I know a lot of people wouldn't agree with it because they'll say, if there's no pop culture, then why are we referencing things again? I say I believe it's the idea of the viral trend culture. We don't read anymore like we used to. There are no covers to magazines that are consumed the way they used to be. It's just the idea that we can regurgitate over and over again
My brain works in visuals and so I've got this short term sort of as sparks. You see a spark, it's there, it's gone, right? And we sort of bob along in a body of those sparks. But pop culture, if I use that word to describe whatever it is that's being observed, is more like marinating. We soak it up and without the delay, without the time, we can't do that
It's not meant to flourish us. It's not meant to expose us to better qualities. It's just meant to really put us in a position to where we become, for the lack of a better term, paypigs. And I think that's why I said pop culture ceased to exist, because we're not necessarily taking in the work that we see. When I look at RoboCop, I saw RoboCop way too young. I saw it with my mom, and they didn't traumatize me anything
Sort of the the people who did the social dilemma on Netflix did the AI dilemma a couple of months ago. And seeing how large language models that are from AI and how that's going to affect every facet further than I even realized. Just thinking about all of these interwoven systems and how they're affected and the lack of timing, marinating, the creating for the bottom line or the numbers is what a detriment we're doing to ourselves
And like you say, we're not given the time to let this marinate and let it develop into a source of understanding anymore because we're being fed something else immediately. I think American culture is a bit damaged, and it's damaged in a different way than we've ever seen. The way I see it, especially when you look at it through the lens of TV versus streaming
And if we don't constrain things and there's too much data flowing, there's too much influence, and in this case, whether we're talking socials or streaming, et cetera, then there are no constraints, there's no, quote unquote meaning. There's no anchors to hold ourselves individually and as society right, of what means something or what should mean something or what do we want to mean something? Yeah. Wow. It makes that phrase less is more really profound, dare I say
Tanya Coles
@MsColes77 · 3:04
Well, with made for streaming movies, you can watch the entire sitting at once if it's a movie. So I think those things kind of give made for streaming movies a little bit of leverage over the traditional made for TV movies. Also, made for streaming movies aren't subject to the same guidelines and restrictions that TV movies are subject to. Like I said, with streaming movies, they can explore many different storylines and they can go in a lot of different directions