We have a running comparison of "LA people coming to the Bay Area to do tech because 'How hard can it be?'" and the reverse being true as well, "Bay Area people going to LA to produce television/movies because 'How hard can it be?'"
Reality is complicated, and smart people so often seem to miss that.
> Hollywood's really different than Silicon Valley. And neither understands the other at all. People up here think being creative is some guys in their late 20s and early 30s sitting around old couches drinking beer thinking up jokes. It couldn't be further from the truth. The creative process is just as disciplined as the technical process; it requires just as much talent. And yet people in Hollywood think technology is only as deep as something you buy. There's no technical culture in Hollywood, they couldn't attract and retain good engineers to save their life, because they're second class citizens down there. Just like creative people are second class citizens in Silicon Valley.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,32207-6...
My experience as a geek, on shores very far from Silicon Valley, is that engineers are second-class citizens almost everywhere, but particularly where "creatives" are on top.
Look at any high paying industry/job, apart from FAANG tech or doctors - it's either marketing or sales at the end of the day. I'll go so far as to say that even most doctors in the US are in the sales business.
There are places where engineers' and creatives' opinions are valued and taken into account when making decisions, for instance certain quant funds or Hollywood studios. If you want to not be considered a second-class citizen, so to speak, work in a place where ideally your job isn't just coding or building content, but also convincing others of your own ideas (sales) and building consensus within the organization to back them (marketing).
I do grant writing for nonprofits, public agencies, and some research-based businesses, and we get a fair number of calls from smart people who started with the best of intentions and then after a number of hours of struggle decided to seek aid.
I had two roommates try to make a structurally stable stool / box out of lumber. 3 hours later I returned to find both of them pissed off & a "box" without a square corner in sight.
Days later, I offered in a conversation with them how odd it is that dimensional lumber doesn't measure the named dimensions.
They looked at me in shock and said "Maybe that's why nothing was lining up."
That's "X does Y, because how hard can it be?" in a nutshell. But the broader takeaway is to test & validate your own assumptions -- they had a measuring tape the entire time.
My foreign friends all pointed at the screen and shouted! Anyone know what that means? Searching for yes no doesn't turn up appropriate results.
What, no love for Ted Lasso? (I love that show, but I'm tired of grim gloomy edgy death-philic television. It's a nice change without being Hallmark.)
Later the same plane takes off from Tehran and there is a Southwest airlines jet in the background, like its supposed to be Tehran, not Phoenix. One hardly needs to be an aviation expert to notice these things. How could a well funded production miss two thing in the first episode of a show?
However, in Servant, there's a continuity error where an Audi is shown without the emblem in one scene and then with it in another scene. This is especially surprising because Servant probably has the best Apple TV+ cinematography.
You must not have seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF5v0Y1uM7g
None of these were started because Apple thinks they could do better and contribute something, a word Steve Jobs likes to use. They are doing it simply because they needed those Services Revenue. Something to dilute down their near 100% App Store Margin and Google Search Placement.
Apple Music was something they wanted to save iTunes / Music as a Business. And they bought in Jimmy Iovine for that god damn "Next Song" idea.
Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade were part of the grand plan for Apple One. Unlike iCloud, Apple Music and Apple News+, Apple TV and Arcade does not have any per unit cost. iCloud are cost / GB, Music are cost per song played, and News are cost per article read. TV shows and Arcade Games are paid as a whole at a fixed cost regardless of users. This give opportunity for Apple to bundle them at a discount.
One could argue Apple Fitness+ is more like iTunes where it is used to sell more Apple Watch / iPod. And it isn't out yet so I am giving it some benefits of doubt.
For Apple Fitness+, it might sell more watches, but the reason it requires a watch is because the product includes sensors that read useful data during the fitness experience that other devices simply don't have.
Given Tim Cook has stated publicly that what Apple wants to be most known for when looking back on the company is improvements to people's health, I don't think Fitness+ was spun up to sell watches. It was created out of a genuine priority for the company to have a certain impact on the world.
I also don't believe the purpose of Apple TV+ and Arcade was to create Apple One. It seems like they genuinely are trying to come up with a unique service for these two areas. Apple One is just a bundling. They are also responses to growing problems. Apple Arcade is an answer to the growing problem of in app purchases and advertising. They want to create a pure, fun gaming experience that you can put in front of your kids and not worry about it. I think Apple TV+ is more about business deals required to build the Apple TV app itself. You aren't going to have a seat at the table if you aren't serious about buying and delivering content.
So basically, The Boys where Vought=Amazon & superheros=Amazon divisions.
Those are more indie titles, they are rather original and different from AAA titles and don't have the refinement of AAA titles when it comes to graphics et al. But they are absolutely not paint-by-numbers
Non-tech, typical parents will stick with their vertical rather than be nickeled and dimed by Netflix, and Amazon, and CBS, and...
I’m pretty sure how the 20th Century thought about this stuff is on the way out.
My kids have no clue what any the names on those icons mean. They watch random stuff and don’t cling given the diversity.
I am teaching my kids to make content with modern tools. ML will no doubt take over.
Consider how much textual content we have given the internet. ML will be able to generate video and audio and where we need new ideas, help humans iterate much faster.
The emotional value of any given property will nose dive as it happens. Mario and Solid Snake will be lost to time. Really though, unlike Aristotle, or Galileo, will humanity have lost anything near the overall value?
Pop culture isn’t forever.
I don't understand this - these are Apple people themselves? I was always under the impression that external production companies were making these TV shows and Apple was just buying the rights. They might (or might not, if you ask Apple) make editorial decisions, but I never expected Apple to have technical talent and input for set design, etc/
The Executive Producers are like the Board. The show runner, director and sometimes certain talent are like the C-Suite or SVPs. These set the vision, pace, hiring, management, budgeting etc... like in a normal business.
There are then the middle level directors (casting, lighting, sound) editors and line producers who do the lions share of the work and are supposed to interpret the intents of the director and show runners - basically handle all the details and make sure things run smoothly.
Finally the supporting cast, craft services etc...are basically told what to do, how to do it and when.
They have good line producers and of course great technical talent for set design, editing, production - but the left hand of marketing doesn't talk with the right hand and you get a lot of disjointed efforts.
If you look at Netflix, for all their downsides, they go big and hard, buy working shows based on data and don't shy away from controversy. They also have way better middle talent which I think makes the difference.