DID THE SERIES KILL THE FILMS?

$ 100 million . This is the total budget allocated by the HBO giant for the production of Game of Thrones' season 6. By way of comparison, we are talking about a little more than the production costs of the Fellowship of the Ring , the first installment of the Lord of the Rings saga. It seems very far from the era of sitcoms with limited means, the budgets of the major series are now more like the GDP of some underdeveloped countries. Yet if the case of Game of Thrones is an exception as its profitability in terms of audience and derivatives allows it incredible budget follies, it allows to expose a new trend of audiovisual consumption. Welcome to the era of the series.

Fratricidal War

In the large family of audiovisual content, the film represents the elder brother , the one who leaves the grandes écoles and has enriched himself with his travels in France, Italy and the United States. He frequents the high social spheres, lodge perched on the hills of the prestigious Hollywood and exhibits every year his success in the eyes of the world during excessive ceremonies and, it must be said, slightly snobbish. By the side, the younger brother that incarnates the series has long struggled to exist. It has been many years of entertaining the housewife and science fiction students riveted in front of their television set. Its development took place in the crushing shadow of the big brother.When the cadet began to amuse the gallery with MASH, the elder lay The Godfather, a potential intergenerational classic. And even though the series decided to attack the sphere of worship with Friends, the film returned instantly by marking its domination through revolutions like Jurassic Park or Matrix. As if the cadet was condemned to always have a delay of both the amateurs of the 7th art and the popular culture.

The audiovisual revolution

Only the wheel always turns. A new millennium involves new practices. Since the early 2000s, the viewer wants to take control of his audiovisual consumption. We are witnessing the development of VOD and replay, proof of a new refusal of the imposed standards. Then becomes the attraction of audiovisual fragmentation. The viewer wants to be able to view content whenever he wants, where he wants, at his own pace. It is a whole new look focused on the audiovisual that appears, and that greatly benefits the series. After having gnawed his brake and contented himself with the crumbs left by the films, a glorious period now opens to the younger. Quickly, the series became fashionable.More budget-oriented series, and the more complex scriptwriting structure are emerging, such as The Sopranos or Prison Break. Their format corresponds perfectly to the new will for fragmentation, and allows, more naturally than films, to develop a narrative frame calibrated in time. Collaborators of the elder brother no longer hesitate to turn to the younger brother to surf this wave. From Kevin Spacey and David Fincher with House of Cards to Matthew McConaughey in True Detective, and Martin Scorsese to the Vinyl series controllers, many traditional actors of the world of cinema try with varying degrees of success on the series.

Netflix is ​​the new cinema

Naturally, the repercussions of the series increase exponentially. New television channels, like HBO, see the popular appeal for the series as a tremendous opportunity. By producing original series to which it allocates insane budgets, the American television channel becomes a basis for broadcasting content that can compete with the traditional cinema. The sofa is substituted for the red seats, and the big screen shrinks. Even the name of the channel - Home Box Office - betrays this new trend. Obviously, another actor illustrates this reign of the series. Its name is on the lips of any series, any binge watcher worthy of this title.This is of course the Netflix video-on-demand platform. Since its creation in 1997, the American giant of the VOD has not ceased to grow to impose itself today like a major actor of the serial universe. So much so that Netflix is ​​now at the forefront of some of the most popular series of recent years, such as House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, or more recently 13 Reasons Why. This competition is exacerbated, the cinemas suffer undoubtedly. For the price of access to a movie on a big screen, Netflix subscribers now access a diversified and complete catalog of series (and movies, for the more adventurous) directly in the comfort of their sofa or bed. And that makes a difference.

Several moviegoers of our entourage recently told us to have greatly reduced their movements to the cinema in favor of the series. How to blame them, as there is today for all tastes and in a more accessible way. What testifies to the new dimension taken by the series is also the enthusiasm they provoke. Discussions are now focused more on the Cliffhanger of the last Game of Thrones than on Christopher Nolan's latest film. Conviviality is a real asset in the round of the series. It is important for recreation to be a popular topic of conversation, and the suspense created by the serial format allows us to awaken our imagination and keep our interest alive.Better yet, the series arouse all sorts of popular theories, and this is what makes them live after the episodes spread, especially on social networks. Movies are in the background, which is a real novelty

A 7th art stainless

So, are we really witnessing the death of the film? Not so fast. Several elements make it possible to affirm that the elder brother still holds on his paws and is not ready to disappear. First, the series do not (yet?) Have a cognitive and symbolic scope sufficient to make us forget the more than one hundred years of antiquity that the films carry. From the cinema of the Lumière brothers to the talking cinema, from Chaplin's work to that of Hitchcock, and still today, the film carries the heritage of the evolutions of our society. This indelible mark gives it credibility in the eyes of the world that the series can not erase.The elder has been able to modernize, adapt to technological and sociocultural developments for more than a century. Our age is no exception. Faced with the desire for more fragmented formats, the cinema responds with the development of franchises - type Fast and Furious, X-Men or Harry Potter - which allow the narration of a longer and more worked story, in the manner of the series.And even if the appeal of the series attracts more and more actors and directors of the 7th art, they often end up returning to their first love. Take the example of the music series The Get Down. Beyond the stated will to offer more popular series from Netflix, its cancellation is also explained by the desire of its director, Baz Luhrmann, to return to the films and devote themselves fully to it. As if the series was only an interlude of his career in the 7th art.

Divide and rule ?

So the series are booming. Despite this, the cinemas are not empty when comparing the figures for the last three decades. The overall consumption of audiovisual works exploded. Rather than opposing these two brothers, they must be considered as two complementary means of artistic expression. Each has its own qualities, and the consumption of one or the other is not necessarily exclusive.One can like to watch an episode of a series at dinner time and then chain by a good movie after eating. Having two complementary formats is even a guarantee of quality. The cinematographic adaptation of literary works, for example, has often been criticized for not sufficiently developing the script and taking some scriptural shortcuts. Harry Potter and Da Vinci Code fans will probably recognize each other. With a series, this is no longer a problem. It is easier to develop the psychology of characters, the identification with the latter, and more generally the script's subtlety of the novel.The result is neither more nor less than series like Game of Thrones or The Man in The High Castle, which are widely unanimous. The two brothers, formerly rivals, thus knew how to set aside their differences to offer their respective qualities to the service of the family business. To the greatest happiness of us seriesphiles and cinephiles.

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