Netflix Wants Plots Explained Multiple Times Because Viewers Are on Their Phones, Matt Damon Says (nme.com)
- Reference: 0180615290
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/01/19/178222/netflix-wants-plots-explained-multiple-times-because-viewers-are-on-their-phones-matt-damon-says
- Source link: https://www.nme.com/news/film/netflix-tells-directors-to-repeat-plot-for-people-using-phones-while-watching-says-matt-damon-3924120
The streamer has also suggested that filmmakers reiterate plot points " [1]three or four times in the dialogue " to accommodate distracted audiences, he said. "It's going to really start to infringe on how we're telling these stories," Damon said.
[1] https://www.nme.com/news/film/netflix-tells-directors-to-repeat-plot-for-people-using-phones-while-watching-says-matt-damon-3924120
Umm, how about nooo? (Score:2)
Just film select and actually interesting stories, not every bs every screen writer comes up with
Re: (Score:2)
Particularly when the screen writers are Gemini, ChatGPT and their friends.
This will encourage more scrolling (Score:5, Insightful)
If you add more redundancy to movies people will scroll more. This is like the geniuses in California that extended red lights because people were running yellow lights. Now lots of people run lights after they have turned red.
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Probably increases revenue, though... Lots easier to write and uphold tickets for running a red than quibble about whether the driver had already entered or cleared the intersection when it changed from yellow to red.
As for the Netflix thing: Yeah, this is stupid and feeds into the general inability of anyone to pay attention to anything anymore. Further enshittification of the world to accommodate the lowest common denominator. If they feel the need to do this sort of bullshit, they ought to do it by add
Reminds me of the Teletubbies (Score:2)
Apparently the average adult is now on the attention level of a toddler ...
What is this about ? (Score:5, Funny)
I only made it halfway through the headline.
Dumb. (Score:3)
Okay, not only insofar as it is the intentional dumbing-down of their content, it's also a dumb idea in other ways. For one, why bother caring? If people are basically watching Netflix as background noise, let them. What, you want to make sure they know what's going on when they show you they don't care? Why? They're paying their bill, that's all you need to worry about. Worried they'll realize they're wasting money and cancel? Well, stop. They've already demonstrated they're too lazy to bother.
Don't change how you do things for the people who care in order to do something you hope will make the people who don't care happier. That's a losing proposition.
There is this button that lets you rewind (Score:1)
There are these buttons that let you rewind and fast forward.
Why not let people use the rewind button to catch up on something they missed instead of making the rest of us skip forward to get past the repetition?
Cancel is the cancer of video streaming (Score:2)
As if what they're doing wasn't enough to keep people away...
Let's see:
- Insufferable push at originals which are mostly Netflix throwing money at random scripts, hoping that something would stick. Very little does.
- Related to the point above, quatity over quality. It's a spray-and-pray, throw-enough-money-at-it-and-something-may-be-good approach.
- Constant price increases to fund their spending spree on crap.
- Interface changes over the years - even more visibility to originals.
- Big problems withs access
Re: (Score:2)
you make good points but what is this:
I cancelled Netflix the moment The Big Bang Theory appeared on Disney+.
Why do you even care to coment on big bang theory, or Disney ? fuck em. let them do what ever they want? Why let it influence you
Re: Cancel is the cancer of video streaming (Score:2)
Because I like TBBT and didn't want to oose access to it but there was literally nothing else on Netflix holding me there?
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I'm sorry for you. It's hard to see the way out when you are inside, but hopefully, one day all will be good Peace.
Re:Cancel is the cancer of video streaming (Score:5, Interesting)
Netflix is too "woke" [sic], so you switched to Disney+?
Re: Cancel is the cancer of video streaming (Score:4, Interesting)
"Good stuff drowns in a river of shit" - Netflix in one sentence.
That'll work (Score:2)
> Netflix Wants Plots Explained Multiple Times Because Viewers Are on Their Phones, Matt Damon Says
Sorry, I was reading this while scrolling, all I got was "Want multiple viewers on their phones, Matt Damon says."
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Why does Netflix want Matt Damon on his phone when he's supposed to be making a movie??
That is the next big thing! (Score:2)
I home Netflix doesn't read your comment!
Why bother with the movie when Matt Damon can be group chatting with the audience instead? The "movie" is a set of fictional characters chatting with you interacting with their drama! Perfect for AI to simulate the characters to scale up and all they need is to digitize some famous people to draw them in and market it. (Like a cartoon blows $$$ on famous voices they do not need and probably not as good as a voice actor; it's solely for marketing.)
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BTW, my 93 escort wagon rusted out in 2000 but managed a while longer with some crazy welded scrap metal repairs...(like holding the back wheel on, my feet from going into the pavement, and some other bad stuff.) Some sucker bought it in 2005 and managed to blow up the engine within a year so he didn't have to suffer all the other issues waiting to happen. It was a nice little death trap that I could squeak out 50mpg on occasion.
Went to a volvo afterwards with a crappy 20mpg but it was a tank that ran 20
Meta-accommodation (Score:5, Insightful)
Our customers are distracting themselves from the distractions they are buying from us.
Idiocracy was prophecy, not fiction.
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I bet if you block phones, they'd enjoy the movie more or realize it's shit and not... but more likely they've never get to that point because they'd walk out like a chain smoker needs "a break" and also not allow themselves to be put a situation where they are separated from their digital appendage.
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Could you repeat that? I was in another tab watching a cat video.
Explains a lot (Score:2)
I always feel completely underwhelmed by Netflix's content lately. This may very well be a big contributing factor.
Maybe they should leave the story telling to story tellers.
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I don't know what ST:Discovery you watched, because I found it pretty awful.
Next: Vertical Videos (Score:2)
Netflix videos should be optimized for vertical devices.
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You're holding it the wrong way
We have entered the brain dead movie viewer age. (Score:2)
The time when movies actually told a story are gone. Yes it has always been about 'more booms' in lieu of plot, but now instead of just repeating the plot during the entire movie, they will need to blow the same things up several times because the first time you were too busy driving the car.
This is great! (Score:2)
Can't count how many times, a key plot point has come up and it is just a single sentence or less; I'm listening intensely and then the key line gets whispered, or mumbled or background music drowns it out and 'damn, missed it'
Unengaging plot (Score:2)
I'm on my phone because the plot is unengaging. It's usually a bunch of random events and/or "everybody is an idiot" that drive the plot - there is no story line.
Repeating that multiple times doesn't fix it. Most content has turned to background noise for my living room.
Being on my phone is not the cause, it's the effect of unengaging story lines.
My own experience,,. (Score:2)
is that I don't watch anything produced by Netflix much anymore, and very little on Netflix at all. My subscription is pretty much running on inertia at this point. Even things that I expect to enjoy, or that I was looking forward to, I typically don't finish. When I want background tv, I put on one of 20th Century series I liked, purchased on DVD and ripped to my media server. This has been a gradual change over the last year or two, but the thread topic brought it to mind.
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> is that I don't watch anything produced by Netflix much anymore, and very little on Netflix at all. My subscription is pretty much running on inertia at this point. Even things that I expect to enjoy, or that I was looking forward to, I typically don't finish. When I want background tv, I put on one of 20th Century series I liked, purchased on DVD and ripped to my media server. This has been a gradual change over the last year or two, but the thread topic brought it to mind.
Sounds like you are their dream customer. They don't have to produce any content or pay for bandwidth to serve it to you, but you are still giving them money.
How about no! (Score:2)
If people are more interested in their DAMN phone than the show they are "watching" on Netflix - screw 'em. Let them just re-watch it and maybe the next time they will actually WATCH the damn show. Producers/Directors should tell Netflix to F! off.
Self fulfilling prophecy (Score:2)
This is just shitty writing. The final season of Stranger Things did this and it made me pick up my phone out of boredom.
Why bother? (Score:2)
Anyone who's "watching" a show on a tiny screen and scrolling around on their phone couldn't care less about the plot anyhow.
Streaming Netflux Pablum (Score:2)
for the masses.
Basically Dick & Jane film styles.
*sigh*
Pablum is a processed cereal for infants originally marketed and co-created by the Mead Johnson & Company in 1931.
A "company" cannot WANT something (Score:3)
But an executive or board member at Netflix wants to dumb down content. Get the name or names and put a face on this. Try to talk to some of the people who are around these decisions. I mean, try to get in touch with that desktop support guy who's always around the sociopaths. Get the REAL news, and spread that NAME or NAMES with the story. Let's see the squirm. Again, as much as the Supreme Court wants you believe, a company is not an individual , and has no first amendment rights.
The plot?!??!? (Score:1)
TFS seems to be suggesting that the plot of an action movie actually matters.
Actually, go ahead and explain the plot multiple times. It's an action film; I'm probably not even going to see it anyway, but if I do, I won't be watching it for the logical and intellectual stimulation of a carefully constructed plot, so I won't really be focusing too much on the intricacies of the dialogue.
Or, hear me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
...people can learn to put their damn phones down for a while. Understand that it's not good to constantly be attached to devices consuming metric tons of short form, stop chasing the constant dopa hit. If you're going to watch a movie or something, then actually watch it.
Re: Or, hear me out... (Score:2, Insightful)
However, IMO movie-makers should shorten their damn films and cut out so much fluff. I maintain that if you can't tell your story in 100-110 minutes, you don't know how to tell a story.
Re: Or, hear me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
> "However, IMO movie-makers should shorten their damn films and cut out so much fluff. I maintain that if you can't tell your story in 100-110 minutes, you don't know how to tell a story."
That depends. Not all GOOD stories can be told in that short of a time. I would rather have it longer than split into a SECOND PART movie that is released a year or something later. Even worse when they fill it with fluff AND split it up into multiple movies. Ug.
In any case, no way should movies be altered to deal with idiots who can't bother to watch what they are watching.
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no way should movies be altered to deal with idiots who can't bother to watch what they are watching.
Making movies that people don't watch might initially appear stupid, but the more discerning of us realize that if the viewers can't be bothered to watch, then the movie is probably repetative garbage already, and making it more repetative is probably not going to help.
Some movies should never be released. Probably quite a lot of them.
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> "Imagine you're Netflix, and a paying customer says "I am paying you to show me this stuff I'm not watching, and I am becoming somewhat disappointed. What are you going to do about this?What would you say to this paying customer, who is representative of millions of paying customers?"
I don't know. I guess make an alternate version available for them? Or add some plot summary available on hotkeys or menus in the app?
What would I say to the even more millions of customers asking why the movies have beco
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> Or add some plot summary available on hotkeys or menus in the app?
Or ask out loud your TV to give you a recap, and it does so, bringing up the relevant scenes.
Or your TV will watch you and what you do on your smartphone, determine which important scenes you didn't watch, and repeat them for you. So you don't miss a thing. Maybe bring up a pop up window on your smartphone when the villain goes for the kill.
Or you can enable the "distracted viewing" setting on your remote, so the TV will extend the movie accordingly.
In any case, they shouldn't make the movies differently.
Re: Or, hear me out... (Score:5, Funny)
> if you can't tell your story in 100-110 minutes, you don't know how to tell a story.
No wonder The Lord of the Rings was such a critical and financial failure! /s
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I suffered through having to read LoTR in Grade 12 English. Of course any movie based on that would have to be interminably long.
Tolkien is one of those authors that you either love or you hate, and enough people love his work to make the movies a success.
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> if you can't tell your story in 100-110 minutes, you don't know how to tell a story.
Schindler's List
Titanic
Ben-Hur
Spartacus
Gone with the Wind
The Matrix
The Sound of Music
Oppenheimer
Dances with Wolves
JFK
All these movies are over 100 minutes long and all of them tell a pretty good story.
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Titanic? Really? I had more empathy for the guy whose car they defiled than either character. Hundreds of actual real people died on that ship so we could have a back drop to a trite and unbelievably sappy romance about fictional characters? The ending was beyond annoying too with the whole throwing a unique priceless heirloom into the ocean, you know to "let go" of Jack. you know -- that boy she knew for almost 4 whole days.
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Titanic received Academy Awards for: Best Picture, Best Director, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume, Visual Effects, Sound, Sound Effects Editing, Film Editing, Original Dramatic Score, and Original Song.
Tied with Ben-Hur and Return of the King for the most awards given to a single movie... It is also the [1]3rd highest grossing movie of all-time adjusted for inflation [imdb.com]
Universally approved by critics, the media and viewers as a great movie.... but you don't like the love story, so it must be a horrible fi
[1] https://www.imdb.com/list/ls026442468/
Re: (Score:2)
You left these out:
Birth of a Nation
The Longest Day
Around the World in 80 Days
The Ten Commandments
The last being 220 minutes, not counting the overture, intermission and exit music. Yes, it really has a built-in intermission.
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> However, IMO movie-makers should shorten their damn films and cut out so much fluff. I maintain that if you can't tell your story in 100-110 minutes, you don't know how to tell a story.
Not all movies are simple shoot-em-up or drive-and-crash-fast-cars fare that requires little-to-no character or story buildup.
It's hard to see how Lawrence of Arabia could've been the film it is if the studio had dictated to David Lean "You need to cut at least 100 minutes from this film before we'll release it".
And it would be a poorer world if Kurosawa had been told "Sorry, Akira, but there's no way anybody's gonna sit through 3.5 hours for this Seven Samurai slog of yours".
And boy, the theaters were sure
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> However, IMO movie-makers should shorten their damn films and cut out so much fluff. I maintain that if you can't tell your story in 100-110 minutes, you don't know how to tell a story.
90+ is a normal runtime for films, with some today running that long. Blade Runner, Lion King, Godfather Part II, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, High Noon, Paths of Glory. Years ago they even had an intermission.
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Not only that... a lot of the younger crowd consumes Netflix with subtitles to read, because they are not listening to the words just paying attention to visuals with their phones or on other mediums.
Re: Or, hear me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the subtitles trend is more because the sound is recorded at 7.1 channels with the dialog coming from a specific location and too much other noise everywhere else.
If you are watching on a screen with one or two speakers all that noise is indistinguishable
Re: Or, hear me out... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry but actors do mumble today. Listen to any classically trained actor like Christopher Lee, Alan Rickman, Patrick Stewart, Vincent Price, or hell even William Shatner. Every word spoken audibly and distinctly.
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Indeed. There are actors I cannot stand because I cannot understand a single word. Not so much in US movies, but in other languages, absolutely yes (I'm multilingual).
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> or hell even William Shatner. Every word spoken audibly and distinctly.
But - that trend - can - change. We're - human beings - with wills. Not - some - damned machines!
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William Shatner is a classically trained Shakespearean actor who appeared in festivals and on Broadway prior to switching from stage to television. His TOS enunciation and emphasis is due mostly to his experience with radio performances (which were over the top verbally) combined with directors on TOS constantly telling him to increase the astonishment. And in reality, wasn't anywhere near as pervasive or dramatic as the pop culture version that pokes fun at Kirk.
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No mod points today but your answer is absolutely correct: we have to have the subtitles on even for English-language stuff since otherwise we just get a wall of background+music+speech+effects merged into two low-quality speakers.
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That's part of the problem, but not the whole problem. Even *with* a properly configured and tuned surround-sound system there are an infuriating number of movies and TV shows that sometimes present nearly inaudible dialog for various reasons: actors "whispering" and mumbling is one very real issue, though that *could* be at least mostly corrected by the sound engineer responsible for the final audio mix-down. I think there are directors that are literally doing this on purpose to "enhance realism" or som
Re: (Score:2)
If the movie is going to explain the plot for the third time with even more boring exposition, I'm going to be reaching for my phone. I can probably just skip the movie entirely as someone will clip the five minute scene that made it worth watching anyways.
I'm personally okay with a movie ending without understanding everything. Some films intentionally don't explain themselves. Maybe the point was for me to think about it a bit or to be left with a sense of mystery. As long as I don't feel like the movi