The New Stuff......................

[Scott]

This topic has been loosely talked about before. What at first seems like a lack of creativity in Film and Music may simply be they have run out of original names, titles, sounds, and ideas.

1.) All the good movie titles seem to have been used up.
2.) All the good music types have been created already.
3.) All the good screen ideas have been done already.
4.) The names of music groups have run out. The new names are unappealing.

Are we at the end of creative art forms and names? Have all the classics styles and types already been made? Well, I doubt it, but it is certainly harder to create original stuff. It's not impossible of course.

[ulthar]

I think it goes spurts.  Any creative 'industry' will have a stand-out, really innovative idea that sets things on fire, then a period of stagnation while it is being copied to death.  TV is certainly like that, and so is music.

I think there are far fewer truly creative people making movies/music/whatever than there are in the industry period.  Most are probably just hacks trying to cash-in on what are historically profitably businesses.  Like anything else, you have about 90% of the "good" work done by 10% of the people.

One reason why I really like alternative rock music is the way folks try to blend various sounds - like fusion on steroids sometimes.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.  It's very experimental and that makes it exciting.  (Admittedly, you do have your share of copy cats in this genre like any other).

I don't think we are at the end of creativity.  Perhaps we are in a slump, though.

[Scott]

The key today (and perhaps always) seems to be in new combinations of the old.

[Mr_Vindictive]

I hate to be like Plan9superfan, and respond with a non-response...but:

In 1899, then Patent Commissioner, Charles H. Duell reportedly announced that "everything that can be invented has been invented."

[Scott]

Plato said it best by saying that we don't create anything, we only uncover what aready exist.

[Scott]

In the sense that it already exist as a "potential" in idea form.

Or as Anselm woud say something to the effect that God exist because we can image God existing. These are not exact quotes from Anselm and Plato, but you get the idea.

Supposedly the "experts" have determined Anselm's theory wrong.

[AndyC]

It seems like we've come through several decades of artistic revolution. The rise of movies, television, rock and roll, modern art, science fiction - the list goes on. The 60s and 70s, when the artists gained more control than ever before, and the 80s, when new technologies opened things up to those who knew how to exploit them.

Today, we're not only winding down from a period of unprecedented creativity, but enough growth in the entertainment industry (and corporations in general) that big business has once again got an iron grip on things. It's all about minimizing risk and maximizing profit. It's all about blockbusters and superstars. There's no room for a nice little movie that does moderately well. And nobody is interested in looking for the next big thing as long as they can repackage the same old crap. It's not just movies.

The sad thing is that the industry people are right. Most people will happily take an excess of whatever they're told to want. Whether it be movies, TV or music, nothing's going to change until the average audience member starts to give a damn.

[raj]

Re:
"#4.) The names of music groups have run out. The new names are unappealing. "
Rock bands need to read Dave Barry.  He's got some good band names in his column.  He'll even point them out.

[LH-C]

Personally, I think that there is new and interesting stuff being made and released all the time. The problem is is that it's not being made by the big studios or by anyone that can convince a studio to distribute their little movie (other than putting it out on DVD).

[ulthar]

That's true of music, too, I think.  Man, some of the best music you hear is small timers playing their local bars.

[Ash]

I had wanted to go to Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival on April 29th but couldn't find anyone that could get time off from work to go.

I hear that one of the films they're showing is Ripley's Game and John Malcovich will be there to discuss it.

[LilCerberus]

"When you hit about thirty-five or forty, you notice something terrible happens to music." - Paul Harvey

[AndyC]

I saw something terrible happening to the music when I was just out of my teens. Thought things might be getting better in the late 90s, but they didn't.

The funny thing is that I'm aware there is a lot of good independent music out there. There is just a part of me that misses the days when you could turn on the radio and hear good music. When you could talk about your favourite music, and other people would be familiar with it.

I actually got into a flaming email debate with the program director of my favourite radio station a couple of years ago, because I could see that with all of their polls and demographics, the music was going down the toilet. The guy was very dismissive, and assumed I just missed the classic rock format they used to have. In fact, I missed the later mixed format where they managed to have good classic rock and interesting new stuff -- and a good deal of success, reaching number one in the market with adults under 50. I couldn't seem to explain to this guy that, in fact, I wanted new music. The problem was that they had, through listener polls, fine tuned their format to the point where they had few classics and little that was new. It was mostly songs that were at least months old, overplayed from the start, and due for a rest.

This idiot praised the new polling system for allowing him to know exactly what people wanted from week to week. Knowing something about polls, I tried to explain some of the flaws to him. For one thing, it only polled listeners on the current song lineup, not anything new. You might think that an internet poll would be a safe way to run new ideas up the flagpole, but not this guy. As the poll was, the best it could tell them is when people finally got sick of a song. Their means of deciding what new songs to play was even less scientific. This all showed in their song lineup.

This guy (patronizing as all hell, by the way) explained to me how bad it was in the old days, when they had to wait for the ratings, scratch their heads and figure out what to do. Wow, they actually had to think! They had to try things! How awful! I mean, that could lead to a great discovery, and who wants that?

I tried to be constructive and polite and reasonable, but the guy was clearly under the impression that I was just some unreasonable listener who thought they should play nothing but what I liked. The funny thing was that I did not initiate this. I only responded to the poll every week, answering the questions they asked. He was the one who emailed me, to tell me that my opinion was not the majority one, and maybe I should go away. Nice way to run a poll.

I finally switched to another station (which I hated to do, because I liked the morning people, contests, local news, etc. at this station), but I was glad I did. The new station not only had better music and more variety, they tended to have more respect for music.

Well, I don't have that many radio choices where I am now, so I mostly listen to CDs in the car. I can only assume the music on this station is still stagnating -- neither new and exciting nor tried and true. Kind of a statement on the whole music industry.

[dean]

I'm more of the opinion that there's not enough people experimenting with their chosen mediums.  From my music tastes to the films I enjoy, most of the top films I've enjoyed of the last few years, have been films which aren't afraid to do things differently, such as Sin City's digital black and white style, or Life Aquatic's wit and pacing [which although seems to be more in vogue at the moment, but it's still a much different movie in style compared to other 'comedies' at this time.]

I also read an interesting article the other day, talking about Consultants and Presidency Campaigns, in which someone had the opinion that Kerry and Gore lost their elections due to them listening to the consultants too much.  They made the point that when you ask people what they want to talk about in politics, most will say education or health care etc, but what they want the President to be interested in is National Security [It was something like that] and therefore the consultants were being relied on too much, much like advertising and 'viewer habits' dictate alot of what gets approved to be made, rather than what is actually good programming.

Constant experimentation is the key to a more creative set of media!

[AndyC]

Exactly, and the trend these days is to use polls and focus groups to stay as close as possible to the safe middle ground. If you use evolution as an analogy, you can't have progress without mutations. Every once in a while, one of them proves hugely successful.