Practice Question: Internet Piracy

To what extent does internet piracy pose a threat to the film industry?

Internet piracy seems to have had an impact on the film industry in terms of a decrease of profit in the film's being created, especially in Hollywood films. Independent films do not seem as affected by piracy because they are low budget films anyway and if they do not make all of their money back it will not affect independent film makers as much because their budget is not as big. A lot of independent film makers release their films straight to DVD at the same time of their film being released in cinema's to give film goers a choice in how they would like to watch this film to try and make more of their money back. Mainstream film makers seem to have taken a different approach to independent film makers as they have responded to internet piracy with the resurgence of 3D, giving audiences an illusion of a new experience and do not even think about taking risks with films anymore because otherwise they will not make more money than their original production budget. However because of mainstream films continuously producing 3D blockbusters this may well encourage people to pirate or go out and watch other kinds of films like independent and foreign films which offer an intellectual storyline and not more sequels of Transformers and find more diversity in films.

The internet allowed pirated films to become easily accessible to the public through file sharing services such as services which has now been closed down by the FBI which may have been a way of the film industry making a statement that internet piracy is affecting the film industry and that they now cannot show a more diverse film range in cinemas because of the public essentially stealing money from them which they could have used to take more risks in film making. This caused the resurgence of 3D which made the digital distribution of newer films more difficult to be pirated since you cannot pirate a 3D film. This gave audiences the illusion of a new experience as an attempt to raise cinema attendance since ticket sales have began to drop since 2010. This has impacted the film industry in terms of exhibition since their is a 30% colour loss in 3D films, actually decreasing colour quality in films. Action and Horror genres also now dominate 3D since  they work best with 3D e.g. Avatar.

Socially, pirating films became fashionable to stay indoors and watch a pirated film on TV or on a laptop than go out and pay to watch a film. Cinema attendance decreased from this and as a response films that had pre existing audiences were rereleased in 3D such as Titanic which was directed by James Cameron who is a supporter of 3D and created Avatar. This caused more films to be influenced by 3D to try and give audiences an illusion of a new experienced. Directors such as Guilermo Del Toro  have been forced in to changing their films in to implementing 3D features, Pacific Rim was forced in to 3D and Guilermo Del Toro lost partial control over the directing of his film because he did not want it to be a 3D and his superiors decided otherwise. This suggests that internet piracy has posed a threat top the film industry because the industry is so scared of losing money that they are taking control away from certain directors who don't support the use of 3D.

It is free to pirate films and audiences would probably much rather watch a film for free than go and watch it in the cinema if the choice is available. The film industry has been losing money because of this and presented new 'experiences' when going to see a film such as IMAX cinemas which give audiences a bigger screen and sound quality and 3D films. The introduction of subscription based services such as Hulu, Netflix has helped make the film industry gain some of their revenue back. Youtube has been used to help advertise a different assortment of films both independent and mainstream allowing more independent film makers to get more attention for their films and possibly to attract investors, an example of this is Gravity.

In conclusion, internet piracy has seemed to have become a threat to the film industry, causing them to not be able to take risks in film making, only releasing films in 3D to reduce the risk of piracy and releasing blockbusters which have a high chance of making a high profit. They also cannot release independent and foreign films in mainstream cinemas because of this risk of not making enough money back. Causing their to be a lack of a well developed plot line in films in blockbusters even though it has been done in films such a Inception and Gravity. This is similar to the 1960s when the recession damaged the film industry causing them to only produce films with a low risk that would make back their production budget.