Hollywood Reporter on "the Next Curry Barker" raises some concerns for me about the direction the industry is headed -- curious what you all think.
TLDR: I fear that the effort to turn more influencers and YouTubers into filmmakers will make Hollywood only more risk-averse, and favor those with a big following over people with a track record of making great films.
This is a bit of a Change My View post -- I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, as having my mind changed would probably make me feel a bit better about the direction the industry is headed in.
Okay. For the record, I think that Curry Barker and Kane Parsons are both excellent young filmmakers, and seeing them given such great opportunities does fill me with hope.
But I'm seeing a trend here that worries me: there are a few people in this article who are not filmmakers -- one has a podcast where they interview filmmakers, and another posts reaction videos to existing horror films. We have already seen examples (in acting especially) of talented, capable actors being turned down roles due to a lack of an audience, and an increasing amount of people being given roles due to having a large following -- many of whom are not actors. This reeks of the same practices, just focused on who's behind the camera instead of who's in front of it.
This is not a new phenomenon, but I feel like we are only headed deeper into a machine that benefits those who are better at marketing, audience-building, and short form content than filmmaking -- and one that prioritizes turning filmmakers into branded, highly publicized icons instead of taking risks on films by filmmakers who have the skills but not the charisma, publicity skills/resources, or online presence.
I could see the argument that this is better than the system that preceded this -- the system that prioritized those with connections they've had since birth, or lucked into it -- but I think that will just simply continue in addition to this new influencer-based hiring practice.
I don't want to be too cynical here -- but there's something that bums me out about Hollywood essentially taking the lesson that Backrooms and Obsession worked simply because those filmmakers were already popular online -- and not because they are talented filmmakers with unique voices and dedicated to the craft.
So where do we go from here? Is the best bet for up and coming filmmakers to dedicate their time and resources to building an audience and hopefully stand out among a flooded ecosystem of people trying to do the same; or to just create quality films, try to go the festival circuit, maybe put them online, but not worry too much about becoming some online celebrity?