Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

If I don't like a part of your movie, I can fork it and make it better. People collaborate, and the system tracks their share in the project, and when the movie makes it to the cinema, TV, Netflix, etc., they are remunerated accordingly.

Initially, a resistance is to be expected in the established distribution channels, therefore a new distribution channel is to be built. Perhaps a P2P on pay-if-you-like basis. Do you like your new Firefly series? Do you want it to continue, to thrive? Then contribute as much as you see fit. Contribute financially. Or submit screenplay ideas to the project. Make the 3D CGI scenes better, add more details, make animations more fluid. Offer acting - maybe you will be selected by the audience in a democratic process.

This must be funded, filming equipment and studio time is expensive, rendering time in the cloud is also not entirely free. But once the equipment is purchased and studios built or contracted, the projects can share them.

Go get 'em.

It used to be that to create "Hollywood grade" movies would require tons of expensive equipment and capital. I don't see that to be the case anymore. There is powerful software (some even free, e.g., Blender) and hardware (http://www.red.com/) to create high-quality productions at a fraction of the budget.

Having worked at a film studio for a few years, I can say that they are definitely struggling to compete. Mostly because they are slow to adapt to the changing landscape. Slow because they either don't want to change or are too arrogant and feel they don't need to make an effort to change.

What about micro-payments? Can we make small payments easy and efficient enough to work? Is flattr scaling well?

This sounds like the first hurdle.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I don't agree that they're not about movies. They are about movies and TV-shows. If if were not of the existence of those, then there would be no need, in their eyes, for distribution control. What would they be controlling, an idea factory?

If they were only channel and no content, they'd have nothing of value to safeguard. Their reason to exist would cease to be.

If Hollywood were _only_ distribution channel, they would have long been disrupted and rendered irrelevant. Their distribution _is_ actively being disrupted by the likes of Apple, Amazon and Netflix --but not the product, so much. They are slowly accepting that they have to acknowledge this new distribution type. On the other hand, Netflix is beginning to create original content --that's not going through the old Hollywood channels, so that's a start to the content production disruption. We'll have to see how that unfurls.

In addition, I don't agree with the "mass-produced" qualifier. Each production is not mass produced or stamped out. Each movie (of which there may be ~500/year, and TV episode are unique productions. The qualifier mass-produced brings me visions of millions of identical, easily reproduced productions -I think the attrition rate of new shows and movie flops attest to the difficulty in producing viable content. If you meant they were destined for mass-consumption, then yes. But that's altogether different.

In the meantime, I would like to see startups that manage to keep an eye on congress while making money. I don't know how, but here are a couple of loose thoughts.

- A service that helps people determine who to vote for and who to avoid voting for.

- Something that keeps track of representatives based on current issues and where they stand.

- An easy way to visualize where backing for new legislation comes from.

I'm sure stuff like this already exist, but I suspect it's not easy enough for most people to bother using. It should be dead simple and connect with ordinary stuff people follow in the news.