fallsauce

Sucky title aside, the question still stands. How come good TV movies (I just watched Horatio Hornblower: The Duel - Brilliant!) don't get released in cinemas? They'd make a lot more money, surely. And since they've filmed it, and it stands alone, why bother with television? (BTW, I have no idea how they're making money except maybe ads and selling it to different stations/countries.)

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Kadath

Well, a few things come to mind. First, production values on a TV movie are generally much, MUCH lower than a film made for theater release, so what would be considered good for a TV movie (think about your lowered expectation with that phrase) would not be impressive if you had to shell out 9-10 bucks just to see it. Also, and I'm speaking directly from my ass here, but you know how movies from the theater are formatted to fit your TV screen? TV movies might be filmed in standard tv format, not 16:9 aspect ratio or whatever. But I'm sure someone more knowledgeable* than I could correct me on that.

*worst word to spell ever.

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Kostya

Well, Hornblower rocks the Kasbah. Character and plot go a long way in this man's opinion.

Charlatan

There could be any number of reasons why a film goes directly to TV.

The number one reason is that it was financed by a broadcaster. I don't know the history of Horatio Hornblower but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that both ITV and A&E put money into the series of films. They probably also pre-sold it to a number of International Broadcasters to assist in the financing of the films. They don't want it to go to Cinemas because they can market it exclusively to their channel... This means higher ad dollars.

There are instances of films that were made of UK television that then were released theatrically in the US or Internationally. Increasingly, however, most films made for TV, while shot on film are posted online (i.e. digital editing like AVID, etc.) and output onto Digital Betacam (industry standard). They never edit the negative. The cost of making the transfer is realtively prohibitive.

The other thing that can happen is, that while the film looks good, the producers or distributors may not feel it has a broad enough audience to warrant the wide release and the P&A (prints and advertsing) budget that a theatrical release would require. In other words, they would make a reasonable amount of money but not enough to cover what it would cost to actually promote and release it.

The opposite is also true. I know of many UK and Canadian films that were released theatrically in their respective countries but ended up going straight to television (not even video) in the US or other countries.

Finally, they also make quite a bit of money in the video/DVD and ancillary rights (i.e. airline, hotel, ships, libraries, public performance, etc.).

(I do this for a living... does it show? )

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fallsauce

Looking at all the films that are released in cinemas, I'd say my expectations aren't all that high.

And the low production cost was what got me thinking, if they're making it for much cheaper than normal movies, and let's say it turned out great, wouldn't it be a great idea to show it in theaters first? (Will they be at a disadvantage for doing this?) Imagine the profits.

Don't know about the ratios, but loads of TV stuff are in 16x9 now, look at the Battlestar Galactica miniseries.

Edit: Nevermind this post then, looks like Charlatan beat me in answering my questions.

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warrrreagl

Charlatan has the same answers I've heard before, too.

In addition, those old Columbo shows from the 70's were 2-hour episodes. They basically filmed a movie every time they went to the set. Amazing.

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Charlatan

Yes, but would you pay to go and see a Columbo movie in a theatre? The filming techniques for TV Movies is markedly different from a theatrical film... most notedly in the budget. The average low budget cinema film is 5 to 10 million. The average TV Movie is somewhere in the 2 to 4 million range (clearly Hornblower is a above average in cost but it is event TV).

This budget difference is noticable when you place these films side by side.

The other big difference between a made for TV Movie and a Theatrical Film is the story structure. TV movies are typically a 5 act structure. They are constructed around commercials. Cinematic films generally follow a three act structure. As a result the rhythm of the plot and story structure feel different.

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Gilda

Most theatrical movies and made for tv movies are filmed on the same film stock, which is 4:3 or 1.33:1. With a tv movie, they typically use the whole frame. When filming for theatrical release, they can do one of two things. First, they can frame the shot so that there's irrelevant information at the top and bottom of the frame that's not intended to be seen by the audience. The director has a special guide he looks through to see what will and won't be seen by an audience in the theater, and put the important stuff into the safe area. A metal screen is then used in the camera to block out the top and bottom portions of the picture to create the correct 1.85:1 (for mos US pictures) or 1.66:1 (for most European pictures).

Have you ever been in a movie theater and seen boom mikes at the top of the frame, and wondered how the movie got to the theater that way without it being noticed? It's not the fault of the filmmakers; the projectionist has framed the picture wrong, and that part of the screen isn't supposed to be visible.

Movies filmed this way have to be reformatted in pan n scan for tv, with the edges of the safe area chopped off and the picture panning back and forth to follow the action.

The second method is to frame the shot so that the whole frame, top to bottom, is used, but the most important info is in the middle portion. In theaters, the top and bottom portions are still screened out, but because this information isn't important, nothing is lost. For tv, the top and bottom screens are removed, and the whole frame is shown--this is called open matte. Stanley Kubrick did many of his movies this way so that they wouldn't be butchered by pan n scan the way 2001 was.

If you see something broadcast in HD, it's a different story. Those are recorded using a special high definition digital camera, so there's no film source to be manipulated in the first place. Star Wars episodes 2 and 3, and several current tv shows are filmed this way.

One further reason why tv movies aren't broadcast is the cost of advertising. A big portion of the cost of theatrical moviemaking is advertising, which can be in the tens of millions of dollars, more than A & E has to spend.

fallsauce

I've seen these cameras on behind-the-scenes type docu before, but why don't the filmmakers just use all of the frame?

I know lots of people are saying how 4:3 cuts out heaps of important stuff, but if the director just used the whole frame to begin with, wouldn't it make the whole screen ratio issue irrelevant?

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Gilda

Some directors do, Stanley Kubrick for example in my previous post, and Richard Donner did the same thing with the Back to the Future movies.

Most of Disney's movies in the late 70's, when the Woderful World of Disney was big on tv, were filmed this way. They were filmed full frame, released theatrically masked down to 1.66:1 (Disney prefers this ratio to the standard American 1.85:1) then shown full frame on the Disney tv show withing a few months. These were essentially made for tv movies that got a brief theatrical release. Most of them were cheaply made comedies starring Kurt Russel, Ken Berry, and Sandy Duncan.

However, you have to keep in mind that theatrical movies are created primarily for the theater, and the screen in a movie theater is much wider than that of a typical tv. When filming a movie, the primary focus has to be on how it will look on that wider movie screen; how it will look on a tv screen is of much lesser importance. Many directors simply don't care about what it will look like in 4:3, and consider the alterations necessary for tv broadcast (time, commercials, language, sex, and violence editing) to be such major changes that they refuse to accommodate any of them in any way that will compromise their artistic vision, and I completely agree with them. Many will actively campaign to prevent their careful compositions from being released in pan n scan. Steven Spielberg hates pan n scan and won't allow his movies to be altered from their OAR for video release.

In addition there is another format, anamorphic, which uses a special lens to squeeze a much wider feild of vision onto the standard film frame. A matching lens is used in projecting to spread the picture back out. This is usually at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio and in these films, there is no extra information at the top and bottom to be used.

djflish

If you are talking about the British Hornblower with Ioan Gruffudd, it's because its not a movie. It was a mini-series that had about 6 or 7 episodes.
There are a lot of shows on TV over here where each episode is 2 hours long, but I don't think you get many shows with times like that in the states, so I can see why they would be thought of a movies...

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fallsauce

And the fact that, technically, I knew it was a miniseries, but really, because they're so stand-alonable, (I've only watched 1,3, 5) It's hard to think of them that way.

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