Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Matthew Sidney Long brings up an interesting point with a challange:

Please name me a band over the past 10 years who has come close to Nirvana in sheer impact and talent since Kurt put shotgun to mouth above garage in 1994? (and, I’m not talking about some indie band that hardly anyone listens to or some ring-tone fueled, Top-40 creation who no one will remember in 6 months. I’m talking IMPACT here, people. Combining art AND commerce. Both big AND authentic. Dig?).

My pick would be Rammstein, of course.  That’s the band that made an impact.  I don’t know if it was as strong as Nirvana’s or not, but I think it was pretty close.  As always, I very biased and subjective.

While I was trying to come up with the band, I had a thought about the strength of an impact.  And, as much as I love Nirvana, I have to admit that it was nowhere near the scale of Elvis and Beatles.  There were a few others in between that were larger than Nirvana too.

If Rammstein isn’t as big of an impact as Nirvana, maybe it has to something to do with my theory of sources.  Back in the days of Elvis and Beatles, there were much less sourcse of music available to an average listener, than it was in the days of Nirvana.  Think number of albums, songs, bands, radio stations, television, top-X lists and hit parades, music awards, DJs, Internet, peer-to-peer, mp3s, music shops, etc.  So, each band had a chance of producing a bigger impact back then.  In the last 14 years, since Nirvana, the number of sources only grew.  So, each band these days has even less of a chance to impact the world.

Either that, or the music industry is broken.  Or both.

Terry Heaton posted an insightful article on 2008 predictions for media companies and Web developments.  Here is a quote to get you started:

Consequently, we have traditional media who have played with the Web instead of embracing it, and a change in this kind of thinking will dominate new developments for local media companies in 2008. We have no choice. 2009, with a new President, no election or Olympics, economic uncertainty, and digital television on top of already decreasing revenues, looms like a tidal wave just a few miles off shore. As AR&D president and CEO Jerry Gumbert puts it, “2008 will be all about getting ready for 2009.”

While reading this post at Techdirt about a starting decline in DVD sales, I was thinking about quality and quantity…

We get more and more music and movies released these days than ever.  But most of them suck.  Most of them suck so badly, that nobody cares about them.  If I’m bored and I have plenty of time on my hands, I’ll watch a movie.  It’ll help me kill a couple of hours.  If that movie sucked or if it didn’t left anything for me to reflect on, I’ll grab the next film from the top of the pile and I’ll watch it.  And then the next.  And then the next.  A couple of years ago I had a period of time when I was watching 4-5 movies a day.  (I had a lot of time on my hands, and I had a friendly DVD rental right next to my apartment).

If in my crusade to burn free time I stumbled upon a good movie, my behavior changed totally.  After watching a good movie, I’d need some time alone to “sink” it into my brain.  To think about it.  Then, I’d go on the web to read more about the movie and people involved.  That can range anywhere from actors biographies and filmographies (most IMDB pages) to movie mitakes and trivia. I’d often feel the need to discuss the movie with other people, read other people’s reviews, blog about it, and, eventually watch the same movie a few more times.  I’d have no problem buying a DVD (bonus materials anyone?).  I’d be more inclined towards investigating and watching films with the same actors, of the same director, producer, screenwriter, etc.  I’ll even go to the movies.

Something similar happens with music.  I’d get an mp3 from the web.  If I didn’t like it particularly, I’d get another one.  If I liked it though, I’d get an album. If the album was any good, I’ll get the discography.  I’ll try to get my hands on live performances.  Videos are very welcome too.  And posters.  And interviews.  And I’ll listen to the music several more times.  Then I’ll learn the lyrics.  Then I’ll listen some more.  If I get a chance to go to the concert, I won’t miss the opportunity.  I’ll blog about it.  I’ll talk about it with people I know…

Now, back to the quantity vs. quality.  Producing a good piece of entertainment, be that music, movie, or anything else, is hard.  Everybody knows that, and I’m not an exception.  It takes time, money, dedication, and talent.  Mass producing crap seems simpler.  However, when applied over huge numbers (think globalization), is it still so?  Is it really easier to keep up with the demand for entertainment by  producing, distributing, and advertising crap?  I don’t know for sure, but I have my doubts.  Why?

Because of two points:

1. Anybody can produce crap.  Seriously, how hard can that be?  Even I can do it.  I know, because I did. (and still do sometimes)
2. The lower goes the quality, the harder it is to see the difference.  How much one crappy movie was worser than another crappy movie?  Nobody cares?  Both of them weren’t worth the time and money the spectator spent on them.  That’s as bad as it can go.

Content is getting easier and cheaper to produce.  Mobile phones had built-in photo cameras for years.  Most of them can record video now too.   And sound.  Semi-professional equipment is getting cheaper too (think camcorders, DSLRs, etc).  Software and hardware is getting more and more powerful, closing up the gap between a personal computer and a rendering cluster.  More and more people are getting connected to the Web.  More and more content sharing web sites are coming up (YouTube, Google Video, Flickr, PBase, etc).

I think the competition in crap producing is getting tougher and tougher because everyone and their brother can do it now.  The quality stuff, on the other hand, is something completely different…

While reading dooce’s reasons for why she stopped reading music reviews, I had a thought along the same lines, but for the movies.

A music reviewer runs into a problem that plagues most writers: coming up with new ways to say the same thing.

Why is that most of my movie review reading consists of checking the first half of the IMDB page for the movie?  (The part with title, genre, user rating, producer, and top of the cast).  Well, because that’s all I need to know about most of the movies that I get a chance to see (TV, rentals, and cinema).

Yes, most of these movies are either total crap or half crap.  They don’t amaze. They don’t make me think.  They don’t bring back the memories, and neither do they stimulate my imagination.  Most of these movies have a pretty straightforward story, shallow characters with long time coined phrases. You know the ones I’m talking about.

It’s a tough job being a critique for such movies.  You’ll indeed run out of words to describe them, and that will happen pretty fast.  I know, because I tried a movie blog ones.  It’s dead for a long time now, and I don’t have much will to revive it.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time now.  One thing that scares me a little bit is this move towards shorter time frames.  I’m guilty in participating, of course, but that makes it even scarier.

What I am talking about is this general move towards smaller pieces of information and entertainment.  We used to have printed books.  Those took a few days to read each.  Gradually, the majority of the population moved from books to movies.  Movies are much easier to consume, and then only take a couple of hours.  With the raise of the Web, the time frames got even shorter.  YouTube is one of the most popular entertainment resources on the Web, and it has a limitation of a 10 minute clip.  You just can’t upload anything which is significantly bigger than that (give or take a few seconds).   Now with mobile devices coming up strong, and popularity of short message services, such as Twitter and Jaiku, something tells me that we’ll go much under those 10 minutes of YouTube.  Of course it won’t happen in a day or two - I’m talking a general trend here.

Now imagine the reviewers going in step with the progress.  Writing a book review was simpler ( I guess).  Movies got tougher, because there are so many of them and because they are so much alike.  YouTube clip reviews turned into tiny user comments and star ratings.  You just can’t talk about a few minutes of video for hours I guess (again).  What will happen with a reviews of Twitter messages and tiny mobile video clips?  They’ll disappear.  It’ll be easier and faster to watch the original rather than spend time on the review.

Of course, it won’t all turn out that bad.  It’s just I’m having one of those pessimistic days…

It’s been a slow news day, so here is something to make you smile on this Sunday afternoon - martial arts video clips from one Indian movie - Hebetudinous:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snJYagxgx5U
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNxBdG4TZT8
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_7208QRX6Q
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-InxPME85eM
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zngt8OdXWSo

Intense, beautifully choreographed, bloody as hell, and, above all, hilarious…

Via exler.