Guys, Jeff Bezos knows what it takes to make a great TV show and he's got the bullet points to prove it.
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Jeff Bezos, genius plotter of points
Guys, Jeff Bezos knows what it takes to make a great TV show and he's got the bullet points to prove it.
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Is there nothing this man can't do?
Achieve orbit
Treat his employees properly and cheat on his wife with a non-bogged monstrosity also grow hair and have two normal eyes.
The jokes in this timeline write themselves
Also, hey Jeff, please stop sucking your own dick on Cinemaphile, it's not a good look
How is he wrong, exactly?
You're a fricking moron
Cry more. You can't prove him wrong.
>You're a fricking moron
>Reduces the entirety of storytelling to a PowerPoint presentation
Yes, but how is he wrong?
He's totally missing the point like an autist. It's like saying all great paintings have 1) a canvas 2) brush strokes 3) color while not understanding what makes Picasso different from Shadman.
>like an autist
im pretty sure these mega billionaires are all autistic
I mean Elon Musk is literally with Asperger
>what makes Picasso different from Shadman.
I've never jerk offd to Picasso's art.
Picasso admitted in a letter that he was a talentless fraud painting the type of silly stuff rich gays liked.
>I've never jerk offd to Picasso's art.
Your loss
implying shadman isn't the picasso of drawn porn, go with someone who has zero talent not a hack
His shading/coloring sucks.
a lot of those things are subjective
>heroic protagonist
>compelling antagonist
>Moral choices
>humor
>etc etc
Sure you can put these things in, but if you write them in a hackneyed or cliched way it will be a shitty show
Hes's INTJ, so yeah. That's how he approaches everything.He doesn't care about making art. He cares about making money.
None of his suggestions are actionable. In fact, they're so abstract that they're effectively useless. He pretty much just restated "make a show that people like" as if that's a recipe. It's outsider-looking-in dunning-kruger management speak.
>It's easy to make a successful restaurant chain, just make food that people want to eat and sell it for a price that makes you a sizable profit. duh!
you're paving over the actual mechanics of how to achieve your goal by refusing to think about it beyond some fantasy land version.
>It's outsider-looking-in dunning-kruger management speak.
This is the basic issue. Jeff had one good idea—make an online bookstore—and survived the Dotcom crash because his company actually did something. Now twenty years later he thinks he's god because he's rich.
Capitalism was a mistake.
Literally this
Kings have some claim to legitimacy, lords have some claim to legitimacy, even union leaders and bureaucrats have a claim. Businessmen do not have a claim. There's a reason every traditional culture in the world has seen them as a lower caste of people, only strictly necessary.
>Kings have some claim to legitimacy
Bring back noblesse oblige.
Seriously, people think things have gotten better, but at least feudalism had noblesse oblige.
Art is dead. Great art requires time, commitment, investment, and purpose, which are all hallmarks of faith.
>Kings have some claim to legitimacy, lords have some claim to legitimacy, even union leaders and bureaucrats have a claim. Businessmen do not have a claim
Dumbest take I've had the displeasure of reading today. Anyone who creates something significant from nothing that contributes to society is worth appreciating at a minimum. morons who simply inherit their positions are nothing worth fawning over.
>muh job creation
Petit bourgoisie pls go forever
>Petit bourgoisie
Shut up nerd.
Kangz at least had to make nice things to keep the peasants impressed and the clergy loyal. Meanwhile 20th/21st century Western elites worship ugliness and filth. They Especially love hideous public works architecture. It's s how they express disdain for plebs like you and I.
>Neoclassical body that has been symbolically beheaded only to be replaced with a massive Black person head
They really have no sense of subtlety.
Americans really do worship blacks. Just look at that shit. LMAO
America was a mistake (also France, it's spiritual mother). The idea that all people are created equal should be enshrined nowhere.
I hate the bald guy but that's what C-level thinking should be. They should only concern themselves with the big picture. Good generals tell their officers to take that hill. The officers job is to figure out how to do it.
But that's not what Bezos is doing. Bezos is telling them how to do it, and saying it's easy.
Shit analogy. He didn't say "take that hill", he just said "take a hill", because he heard hills are better for defense or whatever, but he doesn't even know for sure where the battle is. And there's no big picture here, he just offers a list of disconnected bullet points, motifs with nothing to attach them to.
He's mostly right, but civilizational high stakes is wrong. Personal stakes are what drive engagement, nobody can really internalize the magnitude of difference between their entire community being destroyed and the world being destroyed, it hits the same on the instinctual level. Writers get caught up in the big stuff, forget that it's about what the characters will personally lose, and then you get a movie that surprises you in how dull it can be to stop the deaths of 7 billion people
he's right except high stakes isn't a must have.
holy fricking midwit
Stakes are always relative.
>urgency to watch next episode (cliffhangers)
Almost always comes off as tacky and moronic in practice, TV shows rarely ever get this right. It usually results in an extremely contrived escalation of stakes that has an obvious solution, and then those stakes are very predictably lowered instantly in the next episode because then the characters are allowed to use their brain.
>Civilizational high stakes
No, no and no. High stakes are moronic and this is the biggest filter ever. When the villain is trying to blow up the entire world you obviously know the story has to continue and it won't happen. But when the villain is trying to make a slight change to the world or kill a few people, you know it can absolutely happen since the setting can survive.
Think of The Dark Knight - regardless of how you rate it, you'll probably agree that the Joker's plan of blowing up two ferries or driving a lawyer insane with grief is a plan you can believe because within the setting it can happen. But if his plan was to blow up the solar system then consciously or not you would take it less seriously because you know the movie has to go on.
Small plot stakes but high character stakes is the right path. Imagine if someone told you your family member was going to die because the government wants to murder an entire city in broad daylight, you'd instantly discard it as bullshit. But if someone told you your family member was going to be one of three dead people in an entire city of people, that's much easie
>that's much easie
that's much easier to believe because society can go on undisturbed if it happens.
Wish fulfillment and magic powers is the other red flag, Mary sue chosen ones are a fricking terrible idea.
Yeah I didn't touch on that because I'm not sure how to verbalize. Magic chosen one tropes are nearly always ass. Even in shows with magic or superpowers, it's often the characters without magic or superpowers that end up being the most interesting. Probably because magic and power levels and cheap bombast often detract from interesting storytelling, and characters that have to rely on dialogue or effort are simply superior.
Depends on the execution obviously, but he's not wrong. Stories where the protagonist has a super special unique ability that sets them apart is a trope that audiences love - as long as it doesn't make them (too) overpowered.
Literally every anime does this and it's why they're so popular.
>Literally every anime does this
Every shonen anime maybe, and the reason for that is right in the target demographic - they're aimed at young boys.
>they're aimed at young boys
Anime is stupidly popular among Japanese adults and 20-30 year old neets in the west. Maybe it's a sign of a growing demographic of immature manchildren, but that doesn't change that it's profitable
> Maybe it's a sign of a growing demographic of immature manchildren
Its exactly that and pandering to them only makes shit worse.
>Depends on the execution obviously
That's the thing about the whole list: it depends on the execution. That means the list is meaningless.
You can say that all you want, but look at all the highest grossing movies from the last two decades or so. Iron Man is the smartest, coolest, richest person on the planet because he just is, okay.
Iron Man spends most of the first movie making shit from scratch while being kept in jail by a bunch of arab terrorist, that's part of the appeal of the movie. He overcomes and innovates, doesn't use magic.
Iron Man is wish fulfillment. Probably more potent wish fulfillment than the other marvel movies, if we're being honest.
He overcomes and innovates in making shit that's essentially magic by being the smartest, coolest man alive.
They usually are but it can work alright if it's done well like in A New Hope and The Matrix. The trick is to show the chosen one character get beaten down first before they eventually triumph. It doesn't work if the hero never experiences any real adversity.
>heroic
>superpowers
>magic
Literally none of the best television shows in history have these elements
Sopranos
???
Looks like someone got filtered.
Tony Soprano is rich, powerful, crushes women with his wiener and gets away with stuff you wish you could. He fulfills your wishes.
It’s all bullshit. He didn’t point out specific issues that inevitably ruin shows like
>too many blacks
>too many ugly/fat women and/or blacks
>not enough heroic white males
He's not. He's basically just reduced every "How to Write An Epic Story" book down to less than a page
he's not wrong but each of those points have to be skillfully implemented and balanced with everything else while avoiding tropes and contradictions and tackiness
if writing was that easy, tv shows today wouldn't be so badly written
he is right
He's not necessarily wrong about how to make a successful TV show. Indeed, many of the hit shows of the last couple of decades have followed a pulp fiction (the genre, not the movie) sort of "sex, violence, and antiheroes" formula. But much like that formula, his list is pretty mechanical and generic. For example, great fiction does not necessarily need an antagonist or civilizational high stakes. So while he does nail some of the typical ingredients of money-making shows, his list doesn't nail what makes a GREAT show.
However, even if we leave that aside and focus on making a successful show that makes tons of money, still the list is rather silly because basically the average 15 year old could write the same list. His list is stuff that pretty much everyone already knows. Like wow Jeff, thanks for informing us that people like heroic protagonists, compelling antagonists, humor, and violence. We never would have realized it otherwise!
If it's that simple, then why is the writing in the vast majority of modern TV and movies so bad?
Bezos is not talking about making high art. Instead, he is talking about the essential characteristics of a hit, people-pleaser tv show.
But everybody knows these things already. And knowing them doesn't help actually making a good show, otherwise there would only be good shows.
>But everybody knows these things already
and ignore them to push agenda
A lot of these bullet points are already commonly played out with tired tropes and in a vacuum would not result in a good show. It's not surprising that an enterprising businessman could easily identify all these key points as elements of successful shows, but it's exactly that analytical point of view that causes many corporate made shows to fail. Statistics and committee cannot reliably create cult classics or fan favorites because they neglect the most important aspects of success: the human element. Passionate writers, great casting, and a committed production staff will create a good show even if they include none of those bullet points.
Buzzwords and bulletpoints don't make a good story, good writing does. There's also plenty of good stories which lack several of the elements of his list.
Who the fricks would even name "emotions" as if this was not the most obvious thing in the world.
>Buzzwords and bulletpoints don't make a good story, good writing does
Thus
It's the same story all across humanity. Not everybody is good at everything. The stories NOT written by good story-tellers (like the sequel trilogy) suffer, where as stories written by good story-tellers stand the test of time.
I should read the Bhagavad Gita.
He's not, but that's like giving a pleb who never cooked before a list of ingredients as if this will result in a great meal. 95% of the time it won't because there's no talent honed through experience.
Great TV shows happen because of talented actors or talented directors or talented writers. You can't use bullet points to teach talent. Some people just inherently understand which techniques when juxtaposed against other techniques elicit the best emotional response, and a bullet point list will never teach you that.
It’s not that he’s wrong, it’s that all of what he said is basic, screenwriting 101 shit and his input is overvalued. You need a compelling villain? Holy shit someone give this man more money. The trick is in the craft. How you actually make something is harder than just saying “Moral choices” as if that’s not rudimentary story telling.
treating the symptoms
You should write for tv/videogames, you seem to understand writing about as well as they do.
None of those plot points relate to the structure and important components of writing itself.
He isn't but it's just super basic
It's all abstract bullshit. He's a sleazy salesman. For example, he put down two bullet points "positive emotions" and "negative emotions". So basically: emotions. He's saying a tv show should have emotions. Which is not wrong but come on. That's like saying a good tv show needs to be recorded, a good tv show needs to be written, or a good tv show needs actors.
High stakes are for consumer morons. Small and relatable conflict is vastly superior.
He's not "wrong" in the factors he identifies, but they're too grossly reductionistic to mean anything. The best novels and screenplays absolutely ignore or complicate those dot points far more than Bezos implies.
How to make a good movie
>make it GOOD!!!
I have solved the movie making problem forever!
He just posted the formula almost every fiction work has followed in the last two millennia.
Why there's outrage over this kek
He forgot a camera, you can't make a TV show without a camera.
Fricking idiot
he said ingredients, you can't make soup without a pot or similar receptacle, but it's not an ingredient.
One of the few sane men in this thread
But... make both endings exactly the same. Save production costs. It also means that watercooler talk won't be "that didn't happen" "well it did when I clicked option A". Everyone still feels like they watched the same show, because they did, only the moral choice scene was different but had the same result anyway.
Means they don't need to script and shoot 50% of the film differently and incur the costs.
>Why there's outrage over this kek
because they have to get one over on a billionaire who doesn't think about them at all
>"All these iconic shows have basic things in common"
I never watched the dragons show, but is he referring specifically to that one? I can't think of a single tv show that has those things.
This is why scripts are so bad now. The writers essentially have to go through a checklist of market research approved points and then fill in the gaps. There is no room for organic writing.
"You need to shoehorn in a strong female character, goy".
And while they're doing it, producers are meddling on the script and the scenes. When it's done, after everything is finished, comes the focus group.
No surprise everything is so shit now.
And even with all of the market research and attention to focus groups that was orchestrated in the first place in order to make shows/movies appeal to the widest possible audience they come out bad and everyone hates them. See: Picard.
Same with the new Thor movie.
Actually somewhat based in a weird way
>be a billionaire
>can't even afford a pair of jeans that don't have holes in them
Bezos is notorious for being stingy as frick, he drives some 90s shitbox of a car too.
It's almost like all businesspeople are narcissists that presume they have total mastery of all subjects. In a sane world, they'd be kept in cages.
No need to keep them in cages. Just audit their businesses and hold them financially accountable. Won't happen in our world yet but in a sane world...
hes right tho
He forgot breasts
All great movies have
1) quips
2) strong female characters that emasculate the male characters
3) lots of soulless action sequences
4) more money spent on cgi and marketing than everything else combined
5) black people in pre-modern Europe
yeah, Bezos is a chud for having forgotten those.
And this is why you should never believe what sycophants tell you. They're as bad as haters when it comes to listening to for accurate self perception. Only you can't tell them that easily to go to fricking hell.
Didn’t Amazon also mandate that all of their shows need to have 50% women and minorities at the very least? Why wasn’t that included in his bullet points?
who wrote this? sounds like some Amazon exec whose tongue was far up Bezos' butthole
Are Black folk on the second page?
>civilizational high stakes
Yup, he's a moron. All that does is make your movie corny as frick, completely dumb or a combination of the two.
Is he wrong, though?
How was your mother wrong when she became Cinemaphile's fricktoy?
I'm sure that sounded like a good comeback in your head, Ranjeet.
I can hear your tears from here
Tech bro homosexuals are the worst.
> civilizational high stakes
Bezos must watch nothing but dumb alien invasion movies and capeshit.
i made a post here and it disappeared completely after submission what the frick
they're on to you. burn all your things and get out of your house now
Why didn’t he mention a diverse cast?
That's a given in any business. There used to be a saying "no one got fired for buying IBM", now it's the same with minorities and woke stuff. You won't get into trouble for going along but if you don't and mess up you will be personally held accountable.
I swear to God code monkeys are degenerates fricking hate them so much
>violence
>proceeds to reeeee against the 2nd amendment.
why are progressives such hypocrites?
At least he didn't say "diverse actors" which doesn't explain why the frick Ring of Power is so woke? Was he asleep when they did the casting?
It sounds like he's describing LoTR, but that wasn't a tv show.
>diversity and strong female characters not on list
Hmm
There's wish fulfillment. Legolas is pure power fantasy.
Less so in the first movie, and it's the best one.
Aragorn is the power fantasy in that one. That one also contains the wizard fight, the badass elf womyn scene, and some scenes of Bilbo playing with the invisibility ring to name a few.
>goyslop instructions
None of this explains buying the rights to continue The Expanse and turning it into the 'Naomi Nagata cries and screams' show.
bad tv shows according to bezos:
literally every good tv show ever made
>Master Storyteller, Jeff Bezos
ahahhaa
>character growth
stupid meme from critics. People hate change, they want to see the same thing over and over.
>compelling antagonist
a one dimensional antagonist is better, doesn't need further characterization or story arcs that justify his intents, and firmly puts the audience's sympathies in the hero
>wish fullfillment
every fricking media is based on wish fullfillment and power fantasies, he's kicking an open door
>moral choices
completely unnecessary and will need proper pacing, dialogue and subplot to boot, none of which your average writer can provide. Better stick to something simple, people don't want their morals tested, they want entertainment
>diverse worldbuilding
some of the greatest shows were shot in a three room indoor set.
>cliffhanger
The cheapest, lamest, most irritating way to beg for attention.
>global threat
midwit take
>humor
Not if you want to make action/drama. Jokes are anticlimactic
>Betrayal
Lame shortcut to develop a proper lore. Greatly cheapens the product
>Positive/negative emotions
Lmao is this guy a robot or something?
>Violence
Absolute pleb filter
Becoming a billionaire is simple you just have to sell things.
Wow he wrote the recipe for all the boring samey tripe that is now the only thing most studios put out because the money is in the hands of people who are only ever going to base their decision making on the safest bet.
He forgot sex appeal. What a fool.
Just because you have all the ingredients doesn't mean you have the the skill and knowhow to make a bomb from household items that could atomize a nursery.
post the other part
>50% non-white by 2024
When are white normies going to wake up.
Never.
as long as their goyslop full of corn syrup keeps coming they'll keep denying it
only at the end when they're about to die and have nothing left to lose do they allow the realization surface
>productions as a whole (not just casting) should be 30% female 30% shitskin
>that last restriction about suppliers
So that's why everything sucks, they're not just giving women and Black folk screen time they're fricking their entire business along with it
>casting actors whose identity aligns with the character
So why did they refuse to follow Jeff's advice here?
>aspirational goal is 50% women, 50% minorities
Doesn't that mean that there can't be a single white male in the whole production?
yes but they can't say that outright...yet.
hence the word salads
It means you can have a cast of 50% black women and 50% white men, and you're good.
It's this kind of thinking that leads to amazon products being cheap disposable junk that breaks within the first couple signs of heavy usage.
People used to have care for the craft of things, now it's reduced to shitty draft points.
Jeff, heres a tip!
make a movie but in the middle of the plot allow the audience to click "A" or "B" and let the movie go towards whatever plot the viewer wants.
It could be a moral choice, something critical to the plot, changing the story entirely, or just adds another quip.
This way users can really feel a part of the film and say "I did that!" and call it Amazon Choices+ Series.
>everyone realizes that we're basically just living in an even worse Weimar Republic
Can't wait for super Hitler 2.0 to rise up finally slay the israelites.
>essential essence
>positive emotions
>negative emotions
What the frick did he mean by this? Why not just say emotions?
He just described the MCU
>A heroic protagonist who experiences growth and change
S11 E23&24 Goodnight Seattle
>A compelling antagonist
S9 E12&13 Mother Load
>Wish fulfillment (e.g., the protagonist has hidden abilities, such as superpowers or magic)
S6 E19 IQ
>Moral choices
S4 E22 Ask Me No Questions
>Diverse worldbuilding (different geographic landscapes)
S1 E21 Travels with Martin
>Urgency to watch next episode (Cliffhangers)
S7 E23&24 Something Borrowed, Someone Blue
>Civilizational high stakes (a global threat to humanity like an alien invasion-or a devastating pandemic)
S2 E7 The Candidate
>Humor
S4 E18 Ham Radio
>Betrayal
S8 E7 The New Friend
>Positive emotion (love, joy, hope)
S1 E24 My Coffee with Niles
>Negative emotions (loss, sorrow)
S6 E1 Good Grief
>Violence
S3 E17 High Crane Drifter
Does Frasier follow the Hero's Journey?
this is genius. it's literally the plot of every great anime ever produced
>violence
Then the story you're building for yourselves will truly be epic.
I hate cliffhangers. When I start seeing a show employing this it just tends to annoy me and I stop after it becomes routine.
Also, wish fulfillment is for homosexuals.
Sexy naked women is a missing bullet point
Weird how leftism dovetails nicely with corporatism.
Twin Peaks, Breaking Bad, The Wire, and The Sopranos are missing almost all of these. Sorry Bezons you lose again.
What's his favorite anime?
thank you for telling me that shows should have positive and negative emotions, third richest man in the world
>negative emotions
see a white man on screen
>positive emotions
white man is put in his place by woman of color
it's that easy
>White man alone on screen
Negative emotion
>White man getting his pelvis crushed by a woman of color
Positive emotion
He might be a bigger robo autist than Zucc.