by Doctor Science
In the Star Wars thread, Ugh commented:
Overall, I thought the movie would have been better with an additional 5-10 minutes of emotion/reactions/character development.
cleek replied:
i think so, too. but it was already over two hours. and i assume they probably cut out a lot of non-explodey stuff in order to squeeze in more explodey stuff.
I don't think this trend is mostly an artistic or marketing choice, even though that's what people in Hollywood usually say. I think "more explodey" is driven by the need to justify budgets, and by the individual interests of the people who have to do it.
I formed my theory during the years I was fannishly focused on Stargate Atlantis, then in production. Each episode was reviewed, analyzed, and deconstructed by fans (especially on Livejournal); many of them were also commented on by executive producer Joseph Mallozzi on his blog.
When asked to explain certain plot or characterization developments, Mallozzi would often say, "there was a nice scene between these characters, but we had to cut it for time." I noticed, after a while, that he *never* said "there was a nice fight sequence, but we had to cut it for time." Here's the theory I came up with:
Absolutely *nothing* is worse for a TV broadcast than dead air. The standard US "hour-long" TV drama needs to be exactly 43 minutes in length, so showrunners aim to have 44-48 minutes of episode-worthy footage, which can then be trimmed precisely to fit.
Artistically, the decision about what to edit out would be based on things like what scenes are necessary for story flow, for characterization, for making sure the plot hangs together. In reality, I believe the process is heavily influenced by how expensive different minutes of footage are to produce.
FX ("effects" of all sorts, including stunts, CGI, explosions, fight and chase scenes, etc.) are *extremely* expensive compared to scenes with only actors. This is especially true for TV shows, where a scene between salaried actors on an established set can be done almost "for free", but I expect it's true for movies, too, just scaled up. Either way, I guess a minute of FX on screen costs at least 20-50 times as much as a human-only minute, and may well be 100x as expensive, or more. And that means that the budget for the 43-minute episode as will be dominated by the cost of 2, 5, or 10 minutes of FX.
So, if you're a showrunner or editor who has to cut 47 minutes of footage down to 43, which 4 minutes are going to go? If you have to cut an entire scene, there's no way it will be one with a lot of FX, because then the people who control your purse strings will wonder where the money went and think maybe you don't need as big a budget after all. And since money is power, this would clearly be a catastrophe for you, personally.
Obviously the time constraints on movies aren't nearly as tight, but AFAICT the budget pressures are just as bad. Consider, for example, Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Among the scenes cut for theatrical release were ones explaining about Thror (Thorin's grandfather), his Dwarf-Ring, and his fate. This is actually a major driving force behind the plot of The Hobbit, and a connection between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
What was left in? An orc-chase scene outside of Rivendell that just goes on and on. It barely advances the plot, but it must have cost a lot to film, so it stayed.
Even if your intention as a director or showrunner is to "just tell a story", the fact that you can't edit out a FX scene once you've filmed it, unlike character-focused scenes, means that the FX ends up being the defining ingredient and other stuff gets rearranged to fit around it. This is not, in fact, how you tell a good story -- but it can be how you have a lucrative career.
Hmmm. I think I'm going to look at the Michael Bay data again. I wonder what the graph of return-on-investment against explosions would be for his movies. Anyone who feels like counting explosions in "Pain and Gain" and "Transformers: Age of Extinction", let me know.


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