I’ve never heard someone say they wanted to listen to pop or stadium country music because it’s innovative. In fact, a hasty and anecdotal surveying of friends and neighbors says that they listen to the music because it’s easy to listen to (ie unchallenging).
Yeah they want a familiar sound they are accustomed to. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Sometimes I’ll go to a fast food chain because I know exactly what to expect and I don’t have to think about it too much.
I was thinking the other day about how “pop” is an artifact of market economics and has nothing to do with art. Pop music for example is simply an attempt at maximizing ROI by appealing to the greatest common factor. I suppose this is obvious, I’m going to stop talking now.
Ive got hundreds of these damn movies on my Plex server specifically because my wife LOVES this crap.
I’m convinced we have a Family-Guy-Manatee-Ball-Pit situation going on here. There’s less balls to choose from, but damn if I haven’t seen “save family business with a last minute impromptu charity event spurred on by the handsome dude from her past who posseses some talent” 100 fucking times.
They aren’t usually direct plot copies, they just have identical pieces that get moved around so they can factory farm these bitches out.
He also forgot the silly, but loveable sidekick best friend of the romantic interest who is irrelevant for the whole movie, but helps to save the day in the end (and sometimes gets it on with the very serious sidekick best friend of the main character).
Fun game: see how much of the set is used in other movies. Most of the Hallmark movies are made on the same set in Atlanta so some will share little things like the same staircase or same exterior of a house. Hallmark reuses more than just the plots!
There’s an episode of South Park where they go to the writing offices of Family Guy for whatever reason, and instead of actual writers, they have an aquarium tank full of manatees and plastic balls with words on them.
The manatees would bring the balls to the top of the tank, few at a time, and the staff would use the words on the balls as prompts for their new jokes/episodes.
I assume this was the same for the Harlequin Romance Novels too? I knew a few women over the years that had a bunch of these books. They seemed to digest them like monthly magazines.
In some ways it’s sort of a business dream to be able to keep repacking the same nuts and bolts to make something slightly different for consumers who will keep paying. It’s pretty efficient.
Still I’ve not read a Harlequin Romance nor have I seen a Hallmark movie. This doesn’t mean I’ve not seen all of the Star Wars movies or a good majority of the Marvel ones.
“In some ways it’s sort of a business dream to be able to keep repacking the same nuts and bolts to make something slightly different for consumers who will keep paying. It’s pretty efficient.”
Friend of mine’s dad used to write some Mills and Boon ones, which is the UK equivalent I suppose. We all found it hilarious. Had to sign up for one the ‘8 pre-approved plots’ in advance, and then got paid about a penny a word. You need to be properly cranking out text to even reach minimum wage - it would be easier to work stocking the shelves at a supermarket, quite frankly. But yeah, not an environment that fosters innovation.
I met the author… a guy who wrote the script for one of the pictured movies. He was doing stand-up comedy on a cruise ship. He said yes, they are all terrible, but there’s a certain audience for them and they’re quite profitable.
He said I want you to think of me when you’re forced to watch one of these. I want you to know who is responsible, and that I’m very sorry.
None of them are interesting in practice, but the idea of two versions of a movie being filmed at once sounds like it could be cool. And if successful, would be almost twice as profitable as one.
They are definitely lower budget than ‘normal’ movies. But even as a low budget it still requires all the same production staff, camera, sound, editor, crew park staff, food services, wranglers, casting etc. The cheap part is unknown actors and not a lot of travel. Source: my wife has done background work on many movies and TV shows. As background they get paid to sit until call time. so scene maybe half hour, but all the background people waiting get a full hourly pay and all the food you want while waiting. You will notice on hallmark they zoom in tight so background is barely visible, this helps not having a large set of background people. in one movie at the mall they had my wife shopping and walking back and forth. it works for the scene but if you watched it closely you would notice the same lady in every scene carrying different boxes or bags.
It is kinda weird they haven’t made the Teletubbies decision to stop making new episodes once they have enough to loop. Once they have, what, three hundred? Then they can fill twelve hours per day from Halloween until Christmas. Shift those by a few movies every year and people will catch a whole different set based on when they watch TV.
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