The Evolution of Storytelling: From Network Pitches to Streaming Platforms (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Any of you guys working on network pitches? I'm working on all forms, yeah. I mean, I think that as with the evolution right now of storytelling, I think you're going to see network doing more things like Netflix, where you have serialized storytelling. And so I don't, you know, the big thing is swearing and, you know, those types of things. And so that may be where, you know, the lines, you know, get drawn in terms of, you know, is this a network show or not?

Speaker 2: I think also just because I came from the independent film world and, you know, there used to be a platform for independent voices via limited release. Now limited release is used by all the people that broke in the 90s. So like, you know, a voice like myself or a female filmmaker of color or a gay filmmaker or any of these kind of more marginalized voices like can't do a limited release because Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky, and P.T. Anderson all get that platform. And so when you look at something like streaming, you actually are getting those voices that maybe can't, don't have that same access like out there in front of the world. Like when I was working on Russian Doll, I really believed in the storyline and really loved it. But I had learned from my experience making both my movies that as a female filmmaker who focused on female protagonists that usually were assholes, that most of the critics really started out in that first paragraph going, I don't think this is a worthy story, basically. I don't think that this subject matter is something I'm interested in, and now we're going to talk about the movie. Whereas when Russian Doll came out, I was shocked by how many people loved it. And I just assumed Russian Doll would get the same response. And as I was reading through the reviews, I realized most of these critics are women and most of these critics not only review streaming content, but review video games. So they also understood a lot of the references that we were making. And so you have this platform that is very competitive and very crowded, but you're also reaching kind of a different audience. And I think that you get to tell different stories. I just watched Ava DuVernay's- When They See Us. I mean, holy God, I just don't think you could do that anywhere except Netflix, because she would have gotten all kinds of notes about where's the white savior, where's the person that makes this okay? Can't you make up somebody to save that? Can't we green book this situation? Isn't there a way we can do this? And for her to be able to tell that story in such a brutal and perfect way, I just don't know if there's a limited release platform. I don't know if there's a major studio. I don't know if there are people that would really support her voice in that story that way.