Box Office in a Box

WHEN WAS the last time you watched a movie in the cinema or theater? Next question, when was the last time you watched a movie on say, Netflix, or maybe DisneyPlus? Although similar, the words cinema, theater, and movie, hold clear distinctions from one another. A movie, put into technical and specific terms, is a motion picture. Simply put, pictures put into motion. Movies are the enjoyed products themselves of cinema, which, meanwhile, cinema refers to the state of movies being practiced as an art. 

Anyone can watch movies, but not everyone really experiences cinema. Cinema at its truest, meant to be enjoyed, meant to be an experience for its viewers, and not merely watched. The presence of streaming services are very much felt, and they are shifting the artistic landscape of cinema. 

Netflix stands as the world’s largest online streaming media provider for movies and television shows. As of 2022, Netflix has a total subscriber count of 230.75 million. This overpassed Disney, which was once the top streaming media provider for North America, which, nonetheless, is just as large of a subscriber base. Comparing the valuation of Netflix’s stock price towards the end of 2007 to the valuation in recent years, the rise of the price saw an exponential increase of 200 times. Although this example of immense success only speaks for the case of Netflix, such an increase of stock value in an easily volatile, ever-changing digital media landscape says a lot more – about the shift of the entertainment, art, and media landscape. With the meteoric rise of Netflix as a call to competition, streaming giants such as Disney, HBO, Sony, and Universal Pictures rode with the tide and launched respective streaming platforms. 

In a 21st century world where much of otherwise physical experiences of entertainment and art are being reoriented to a digital setting, viewing practices and content are being replaced. Technological advancement is reorienting social interest from where it used to be. Such technological advancement is making way for intense competition in the streaming media industry, never seen before in any other industry. As such, streaming companies are ceaselessly trying to find new ways to enhance user experience. For example, making easily accessible the newest, as in, newborn movies or shows, as early as possible, constantly expanding the content library of the particular streaming platform, or developing some cool feature that leaves users with no other choice, but one: to keep consuming. There continues to be such a prevalence of streaming services because those who render these services deliberately make it so that users are virtually addicted – hooked, even, to the platform. 

Aside from a watered down viewer experience, this shift in media streaming services alters movie-watchers’ viewership. “Cinema is an art form that brings you the unexpected,” Martin Scorsese, a renowned filmmaker in the New Hollywood era, says. An aspect essential to cinema as an art is the vision of an artist unifying it, which, as any other art form is, poses an element of risk and uncertainty presenting itself as a way to experience cinema as an art. Conversely, the analytics that streaming services employ absolves that very aspect of art in cinema. Cinematographer Jake Ures explains in his magazine: “Films and television will lose their originality and staying power as streaming platforms tailor-make what they assume viewers want rather than showing them something they wouldn’t expect.” Alongside ceaseless technological operations in an attempt to compensate for the cinematic experience, streaming platforms Netflix collect data on its users’ preferences and habits, feeding them content to consume on a silver platter. These analytics then create hyper-specific sets of content for equally as niche of a demographic of people, limiting the viewership of these users outside of the so-called perfectly curated array of movies immediately consumable anytime, that Netflix or HBO suggests they watch next, instead of the experience of looking through a movie catalog at your nearest cinema. 

On the other hand, the age of streaming has considerably made way for an era of dynamic innovation, centering its work around the viewer. For instance, streaming companies have creatively tinkered around with ways to adjust their content distribution: streaming platforms such as iQiyi, Youku, and Sohu, have created a six-minute preview feature for non-subscribing users. From which, network films, emerging as a subgenre as the field of cinema falls in the hands of technology, puts forth pivotal scenes at this segment to captivate users. “In terms of visual presentation, network films, taking into account varying screen sizes and display standards, tend to employ more close-ups or medium shots while minimizing the use of wide-angle shots. Concerning color composition, they strive to utilize visually impactful color combinations imbued with tension, discarding superfluous secondary details to maximize the manifestation of pure aesthetics (Shen, Y. Z., 2006)”.  

An additional supportive perspective on the rise of streaming platforms offered by Laura Mulvey, film theorist, argues that  streaming media “allows films to be slowed down or paused, creating a new mode of viewing that prompts contemplation of new meanings within the imagery itself (2018)”. Despite its limitations and disregard for the authentic sense of viewership as the practice of cinema as an art, streaming media and network films constructively attempt to tackle common apprehensions from those who swear by conventional cinema. Streaming platforms utilize the communicative nature of an online setup to adapt to the changing sphere of the movie industry. 

Nonetheless, such innovation has its downsides. Ceaseless efforts to sell and keep viewers engaged in streaming media turns movies into mere content; which is to say, movies are likened to mere products to consume. Though streaming platforms bring forth a great pool of possibilities for viewers, in terms of enhancing user experience, expanding content libraries, and more, the very mechanisms that help streaming platforms create these services pose harm. As there is an algorithm hyper-tailored to each viewer, with every movie or television episode readily available at the tip of one's finger, streaming media becomes highly addictive and enticing. Viewers are starting to become more self-fulfilling, and may be unlikely to expand their experience of cinema, confining themselves within a technologically prepared array of media to consume. Regardless of the attempt to bring color into digital mediums, streaming platforms are unable to consider the problem of a declining sense of viewership amongst movie watchers. 

Audiovisual entertainment being gentrified by streaming services slowly leads to its separation from cinema, from which movies originate to begin with. In the age of streaming, the artistic industry of cinema is polarized with the audiovisual entertainment industry, and streaming services proliferate as part of a financial prospect. As media evolves in the age of streaming, the beauty of the cinematic experience faces social, economic, and financial threats. We may be witnessing the regrettable loss of an artistic experience within cinema.