Why Didn't TV and DVDs Kill Movies Before, But Now the Film Industry Has Suddenly Collapsed?

Author / Xue Shu

Many people have never worked on a film set, so they can't understand just how closed off this industry is.

You could say this industry is practically a medieval feudal system; wind (money) can enter, rain (power) can enter, but the king (outsiders) cannot.

Simply put, everyone working on a film or TV set is connected by blood or association. Every department and every position is somehow related to a high-ranking person in the crew, completely shutting out outsiders. This applies absolutely to everyone, from the director, producer, and actors at the top, down to the cinematography, lighting, sound, and costume and makeup departments at the bottom. No one enters the industry out of nowhere; either a relative is a producer, or an acquaintance is a department head. At the very least, it takes a "your department is short-staffed, the boss wants you to find someone to fill in" kind of situation. This is the culture everywhere, even in Hollywood. Do you think the Chinese "master-apprentice system" sounds bad? Well, swap it with Hollywood's "producer-centric system" or France's "academic faction," and it's exactly the same—they all just pull acquaintances into the crew before shooting begins.

How severe is this system? In our country, even graduates from film academies might not be able to get work on a crew. Unless they have a relative already working in the industry, the vast majority of film school grads end up either shooting commercials at media companies, becoming self-media creators, or changing careers entirely. If even they can't get in, what chance do others have?

So why was this setup so popular decades ago?

Decades ago, the resources of the film and TV industry were concentrated in various studios. Directors, cinematographers, and lighting technicians who came from these institutions received the best educational resources and the strongest artistic training. As top figures who benefited from this system, they naturally wanted to cultivate their own comfortable production teams. They would pull together professionals of similar skill levels for strong alliances, or simply train newcomers from scratch, sharing their knowledge with their favorites and guiding them project by project. As a result, this small group's knowledge and cultural literacy far exceeded that of the general audience at the time. This education was systematic, pooling knowledge from various fields, which widened the information gap and created a seemingly inexplicable and lofty "mystique." Ordinary people back then knew nothing about camera shots, framing, art, lighting, storytelling, let alone aesthetics. People struggling to make a living couldn't care less about these things; they might not even watch two movies a year. These gaps in aesthetics, information, and knowledge seemed incredibly shocking to ordinary viewers and easily moved them.

But decades later, the channels for acquiring information and knowledge have become democratized. People's aesthetic and appreciative levels are much stronger than they were decades ago. Among the audience, there are those who have read more books, experienced more of life's storms, and understand more knowledge than the directors. For any subject matter filmed, there are always viewers who have researched the relevant details: military buffs in war films, dynasty fans in historical films, everyday wage earners in modern dramas, and even connoisseurs in softcore films. Nowadays, throwing a random topless scene into a movie is no big deal; after all, we're all adults here. Once the information gap is erased and all the tropes and plot trajectories have been filmed before, the entire film and television industry can no longer fool the ordinary audience. Now everyone has access to the same knowledge channels; even a taxi driver can debate international politics with you for ages, and the armchair politicians on TikTok are no less articulate than Phoenix TV hosts. Where else are you going to create a cognitive gap?

This completely ruins things. The knowledge you learned from your master for so many years might seem impressive within the industry, but if it ultimately fails to please the audience and only pleases the "insiders" of the industry, what's the point of making the film? To flatter your peers? There have been far too many examples of this in recent years. Last year, films like *Emotional Value* and *Approaching the Finish Line* won a bunch of awards, making you think they were some peerless, epoch-making masterpieces. But upon watching, they're just self-indulgent works wildly hyped by industry insiders while the audience finds them incredibly boring, and even the actors' performances are subpar. It's funny to say, but movie actors actually having poor acting skills—what timeline have I stumbled into...

The overall cognitive framework of the world has improved countless times. We are all now operating within the same knowledge and information framework. Today's audience is the hardest to fool in history. They (or rather, we) have our own values and social views, and we hate being preached to. Meanwhile, filming techniques and tropes, screenwriting, and acting skills have stagnated or even regressed. So where are the so-called film masters going to come from?

There are still some film directors and practitioners today who believe that the plot of the script doesn't matter, and that camera techniques are the most important. They tout film as a showcase for "audio-visual technology," and it doesn't matter if the story itself is absolute shit. I've personally witnessed so-called big directors talking exactly like this to their cinematographers. Expecting them to lead the industry back to its peak... you'd be better off hoping for World War III to break out.

As a practitioner in this industry, I myself feel deeply despairing about it.

Many practitioners still cling to the old routines of decades ago, thinking that as long as they master a few filming techniques and concoct some passionately intense plotlines, they can move the audience. Who are you trying to move? Who are you trying to convince? You can't just do a Hitchcock zoom and think your level is so high and mighty, right? You can't just do a multi-thread narrative that eventually converges into the main plot and think your screenwriting skills are top-notch, right? These are cliché filming techniques that even promotional videos and cheap ads use.

The one who proposes it first is an innovator and a leader; those who come after are copiers and repeaters.

New blood can't get in, and old blood stubbornly monopolizes the most upstream resources. There is almost no renewal or iteration. The former dividend of the information gap has completely vanished, the audience's aesthetics and cognition have awakened, yet many practitioners are still walking the old path of acknowledging masters, begging for academic instruction, and relying on internal recommendations from acquaintances—no different from decades ago. Or perhaps it should be said that the essence of today's movies is no different from old movies decades ago. It's not progress just because you add some Steadicam or Ronin 2 shots, throw in a crane or car-mounted camera, or stuff the script with some details or hidden subplots. Aren't straw sandals from a thousand years ago and modern sneakers essentially still just freaking shoes?

Today's audience doesn't care if you're a master or not; they only care if your work is innovative, enjoyable to watch, sincere, and in tune with their aesthetic demands.

Not just repeating a trope three times, using the same tropes and plotlines over and over again, and then boasting that you're making a special effects blockbuster so the story doesn't matter. Just look at *Avatar*—see how the trilogy turned out.