Is it true that you have to make these types of movies to be successful likely? (filmed, scenes)

[ironpony]

I'm in film school right now, wanting to get into different aspects of filmmaking and one thing that the teacher keeps telling the class, is that if you want to sell yourself on microbudget movies, the kinds of stories that people want to see for that budget, are monster movies with sex and nudity.

But do you think that that's true, to the point where it has a huge fan base for microbudget? I was on a set helping shooting someone else's movie, and he also filmed a whole evenings of time worth of sex and nudity for his, and I asked one of the actors who I have worked with before (who was also a producer on it), out of curiosity, if the story needs this much sex and nudity that they are filming. He said that they can show things that mainstream entertainment can't, and that's the 'beauty of it', as he put it.

But is that really true though nowadays? Cause you see a lot on Netflix, and HBO, sex and nudity wise, and it seems to me, that for most people's, it's been there seen that. Unless I am being naive, and that is what people really want to see as oppose to a story, that would have no reason to have sex and monsters in?

[FluidFreedom]

I find that most of the sex and nudity that is in most tv or movies is so uneccessary. It isn't there to move the story along. It's strictly there for titilation. It doesn't bother me, but if a movie has so much of that and I feel like it is distracting from the story, I will turn it off.

I remember reading an interview with an actress and she said that she refuses to do nude scenes because 9 out of 10 times it does nothing for the movie. She said that sex scenes are awkward and uncomfortable.


This also got me thinking about 80's horror movies (which I love) and how Carpenter said that while people were trying to ban his movies for showing so much sex and violence, his movies were suppose to teach kids/young adults about the dangers of sex and drugs. Some 80's movies are so over the top with the nudity and sometimes border campy when it comes to the sex scenes. Those make me just laugh.

[Cida]

I wish I knew if you were asking an idle question, or were seriously trying to plan your career.

[bobisinthehouse]

You don't need sex and nudity in every movie. The one thing people want to see is movies with morals and strong beliefs about what's right and wrong.

[katygirl68]

I'm no prude and don't mind sex and nudity in movies if it's necessary to the plot. But if it's just gratuitous or soft porn, then it actually might turn people away from it. I especially think shows on Starz and HBO tend to be on the gratuitous side. There is one show I really wanted to watch on Starz called The White Queen, but nearly the first scene was a five minute love scene that made me almost embarrassed to watch. That show seems to be marketed to women, and many like a little sex scenes, but not when it goes on forever and in every other scene.

I feel like Game of Thrones puts a lot of gratuitous sex scenes in there, but they normally don't go on forever and they are mostly part of the plot. Rome had a lot of sex scenes that definitely advanced the plot because it fit so well with the history. And again, they didn't go on forever.

I'd say know your audience. If it's a horror flick, maybe a scene or two of nudity may be okay, though there are plenty of good horror movies (oxymoron?) that don't have any nudity at all. It isn't necessary.

My question is why must a micro budget film be a horror movie? Couldn't it be cheap by just having a few people in it and one set? As long as the story is good, it doesn't need sex or monsters.