Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood. • Hacker News Board

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#41

Post by bsenftner » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:15 PM UTC

If course, this RFS appears on a day when I have my working demonstration site down, (because I'm laying in new optimizations). I have been working to seriously disrupt "Hollywood" and the media advertising industry for several years now. There are a few places where interested parties can see brief descriptions, I'll list them in a bit. What I'm building is globally patented by me as well. I've developed an automated visual effects pipeline and globally scalable distribution infrastructure for automated actor and object replacement in filmed media - creating a new Personalized Advertising platform where anybody can appear in prepared media with anybody else doing anything. This is photo realistic visual effects, of the same caliber as ILM enhanced feature films - that's the world I come from (Rhythm & Hues Studios, actually.) Interested parties can read bits at these locations:

www.about.me/Blakes www.BlakeSenftner.com

www.Flixor.com This is offline at the moment, but as soon as this is ready I plan a HN announcement:

www.cg-general-store.com

I'm bootstrapping this, after spinning my wheels courting VC investors for too long. Interested parties that want to collaborate can contact me. This is real.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#42

Post by harold » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:15 PM UTC

I would love to see a technology wave wash over Hollywood the likes of which we saw with the introduction of Desktop Publishing on the print market 25 or so years ago.

Very little comes out of Hollywood these days with any creativity, originality or soul. If there was ever a market ripe for the picking, that's it.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#43

Post by AznHisoka » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:15 PM UTC

Anyone else remember the days before the internet/smartphone? I distinctly remember spending the majority of my time hanging out with friends, playing in the park, etc. I can't recall the last time I even went to a park anymore... Maybe we need to do more of that.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#44

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:16 PM UTC

emmett wrote: post #15

oldstrangers wrote: post #6

"The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise." This seems hypocritical considering YC's funding of companies like Cloudant that go on to work with companies (Monsanto) actively engaged in the worst kind of subversive geopolitical work.…

1) Please don't preface your comment with a statement about people downmoding you. All that does is make me think, "well, the following opinion will probably be poorly thought out flamebait". It's also against the site guidelines. 2) There's a large gap between funding a company which sells something to a company which has a political point of view you disagree with, and actively sponsoring bad legislation. In fact,…

[deleted]

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#45

Post by SlipperySlope » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:16 PM UTC

mattmiller wrote: post #32

SlipperySlope wrote: post #16

Here is an idea for the taking: bypass big-studio production, theaters, cable & physical media sales/rental, and go direct to streaming video rentals, e.g. to Amazon or Netflix, or set up your own streaming infrastructure. This business model is disruptive by capping allowed production budgets and greatly reducing distribution expenses. Produce content digitally. Have subscribers pay a recurring fee to genre-oriented…

There are not enough players in the streaming industry to negotiate. If you lose one you will not be able to make enough money from the other 2. They know this and will be able to low ball you. They also pay a flat fee up front based on how much demand you can prove for your product. Small studios cannot prove demand very well. You would be better off going straight to the physical distributors like RedBox and sellin…

Agreed.

Your last point is what I had in mind. The startup sets up its own non-Hollywood streaming video infrastructure, reusing existing services in its software stack when reasonably priced - or for scale. It creates its own customer service back end, and uses HTML 5 for content delivery.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#46

Post by corin_ » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:16 PM UTC

ig1 wrote: post #31

corin_ wrote: post #14

I know this is completely off-topic, but pg: reading that football analogy from an American makes me love you. On topic, is there not space for (if there was enough funding put into it) a new studio, one that understands the internet and modern culture? I'm not sure it's the content that's wrong, it's the business models around it.

You realize pg was born in England to welsh parents right (although he grew up in the US) ?

I had absolutely no idea, that explains it!

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#47

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:17 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#48

Post by oldstrangers » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:17 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #18

oldstrangers wrote: post #6

"The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise." This seems hypocritical considering YC's funding of companies like Cloudant that go on to work with companies (Monsanto) actively engaged in the worst kind of subversive geopolitical work.…

That's the sort of disingenuous remark a politician would make. It's hypocritical of us to want to fund companies doing good things because one of the 383 companies we've funded has one customer you don't like? We don't have any control over who companies we fund do business with.

Why don't you issue a call for people to bring down Monsanto then? You can't feign do-gooder interest just because there's a financial interest. I guess my issue is with consistency. Reading this call to arms just sounds hypocritical. I believe you even called me dumb for voicing my displeasure in the original Cloudant thread.

Nothing disingenuous about that.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#49

Post by Xylakant » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:19 PM UTC

olex wrote: post #34

Typhon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious that many new forms of entertainment will use the web as a medium which, barring dictatorships, is worldwide, so you don't have to worry about it, insofar as you have enough bandwidth.

Many new-ish forms of entertainment already use the web as a medium, but that has not helped the region problem much. Hulu, Netflix, Turntable.fm and many many other services are US-only.

Incidentially I wouldn't call Hulu, Netflix and the likes "new-ish forms of entertainment", they're basically just new distribution channels for the old form and thus dependent on the content creators. And it's the content creators that impose the regional limits. I'd assume given the choice Hulu and Netflix would open up their offers to anyone with bandwidth to spare.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#50

Post by diego » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:19 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #18

oldstrangers wrote: post #6

"The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise." This seems hypocritical considering YC's funding of companies like Cloudant that go on to work with companies (Monsanto) actively engaged in the worst kind of subversive geopolitical work.…

That's the sort of disingenuous remark a politician would make. It's hypocritical of us to want to fund companies doing good things because one of the 383 companies we've funded has one customer you don't like? We don't have any control over who companies we fund do business with.

I take issue with the name-calling: "the people who run it are so mean..." You could say the system is corrupt, broken, blinded by self-interest, etc.

There are probably all kinds of people running Hollywood, like in any other industry. There must be some execs with sociopathic tendencies, others who simply go with momentum or believe they are doing what's best for their shareholders, etc. In my opinion, stating that people who run the industry are "mean" is inappropriate for an investment fund.