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Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

ycombinator.com

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Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#101

Post by bengl3rt »

What I wonder is, what role does talent play in this transition? I am a hacker by trade but am always thinking about how to "break in" as an actor and be in movies and on television. A myriad of other challenges (including finding the time to compete with a large talent pool) aside, one thing that I realize again and again is that participating in traditional media means supporting and receiving a paycheck from precisely the companies that fund bills like SOPA and think of their customers as "eyeballs with wallets".

With the costs of production and distribution ever falling, more and more content is being created outside the traditional media ecosystem. How would I position myself (as an actor or set designer, or sound mixer or etc) to take advantage of the coming transition?

Live theater comes to mind as something that might be inline with PG's last paragraph, which suggests more recreational time be spent not looking at screens but engaging with other people.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#102

Post by radagaisus »

>> There will be several answers, [...], through new media (e.g. games) that look a lot like shows but are more interactive

Some genres will not be replaced soon by games. The archtypes of How I Met your Mother are the same as in Friends, and they serve to appease our loneliness and self worth. The 'entertainment' TV Shows and Movies are our fantasies coming real in front of our eyes. While action movies are clearly replaced, fantasies on the Social level are a tougher problem we are a long way from solving.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#103

Post by marquis »

zerostar07 wrote: post #99
marquis wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree in part, the issue is that good art, really really good art, is a full-time job that can take years and years of practice. Much like writing good software. Saying art should be free is saying all software should be free - the same amount of work and risk goes into it. There is a balance to be had here and in many countries it is solved with artist grants, recognizing the value to be had from a rich cult…

Yes but invariably they were not rich. In fact too many died in poverty. The commercial, popular art era started when copies became available to the market, and it ends when copies become zero cost. Hollywood's obsession with mega-productions tends to be an attempt to force-feed mediocre movies rather than advancing the arts anymore BTW, Coppola suggests 3 rules 1) Write and direct original screenplays, 2) Make them…

Yes, I agree. I was just commenting on there being other ways for artists to make a living, much like Coppola does not rely on his film income.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#104

Post by pearle »

natesm wrote: post #89
pearle wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point but, multi-player aside, how many $60 games (that's the standard pricing these days for AAA titles) provide 100+ hours? They are very rare. Skyrim is the only recent qualifying game that jumps to mind.

Why put aside multiplayer? I think I've paid $0.50/hour for my copy of Battlefield 3.

I do not argue against the fact that multiplayer games have a longer potential playtime, however not all games have multiplayer so you just can't say that a $50 or $60 game will definitely have 100+ hours of entertainment value.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#105

Post by methodin »

Also consider the thing that got movies into the forefront in the first place was excellent use of the medium. The movies of old, due to lack of technological advancements (or even in some cases due to them) were masterfully crafted in the context of the medium. There have been relatively few movies since that era that have utilized dialog so intimately and intelligently as those that were made in the era where all you really had were cameras and audio. I would tend to think that this would translate into where we are currently. The next initiative that can masterfully take advantage of the obvious things at their disposal and package them up into a tight, sound package will be the ones that excel at the craft - and the ones that can get steer us into a new entertainment era.

That being said the only thing I can really think that is equivalent to the old era of movies is mobile or streaming. Both of these have potential to disrupt, but both are trying to force old idioms into new technologies. Youtube at least is trying some new things, regardless of how well that works out.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#106

Post by dspeyer »

dexen wrote: post #36
armandososa wrote: post #5

I hope whatever kills hollywood also kills distribution by regions. In the third world we are people too.

Don't hold your breath just yet. If the new thing gets funded chiefly by ad revenue -- and that's the popular way of funding freemium now -- it will remain regionalized. Ad sponsors prefer certain demographics and third world countries aren't high on their lists.

If it's funded by ad revenue, there will be no reason to deny the third world.

In a sale model, dropping third world prices to locally affordable carries a risk of those copies being brought to the first world and resold. Viewers would buy the imports because they were cheaper.

In an ad model, the viewers don't pay. Instead watching an import would mean watching ads which were placed more cheaply, but are probably also less artistic and less targeted. No real incentive.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#107

Post by gfodor »

awt wrote: post #68
malkia wrote: post #35

Here is what Francis Ford Coppola has to say on the matter: http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-O... "We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or…

This is insightful. Along the line of discussing what art is really about (not money), I would say that it is about sex. Art will not go away if it's no longer possible to become a millionaire doing it. Some evolutionary psychologists propose that art is a never ending game of creative one-upmanship. Women find creative men sexy, men find creative women sexy (the reasons for this are complex and have to do with the m…

I don't think it's about sex, the answer is a lot less Freudian and a lot more obvious: it's about the joy of being able to make an imprint on another human being's mind & soul. It's as old as humanity itself is.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#108

Post by ThomPete »

marquis wrote: post #90
malkia wrote: post #35

Here is what Francis Ford Coppola has to say on the matter: http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-O... "We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or…

While I agree in part, the issue is that good art, really really good art, is a full-time job that can take years and years of practice. Much like writing good software. Saying art should be free is saying all software should be free - the same amount of work and risk goes into it. There is a balance to be had here and in many countries it is solved with artist grants, recognizing the value to be had from a rich cult…

I think you are confusing craftmanship with art here.

It's the craftmanship that takes years.

Art can take anything from 10 seconds to 10 years.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#109

Post by marquis »

ryanjmo wrote: post #62

Ha, the timing of this is pretty funny. I have had a start-up in LA for the last year, in the entertainment industry. I spend time in the professional YouTube community (like freddiew, annoyingorange) and spend a lot of my free time meeting people and learning about Hollywood. I especially find the people who are in both industries really interesting. It is very interesting for me, because there are few programmers i…

>a project like this is much more of a lifestyle business than a venture business

If you can gain enough market share there is plenty of money to be made in advertising and affiliation, also consider if you had a successful platform you could offer space for independent film. I am reminded of AtomFilms from a few years ago (I think it has since degraded in quality). I spent many an hour watching independent shorts and animation that couldn't be found elsewhere. There is now mubi.com which seems to do well, I pay for content there, but for sure - there is space for a main-stream non-hollywood media delivery network.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#110

Post by spodek »

malkia wrote: post #35

Here is what Francis Ford Coppola has to say on the matter: http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-O... "We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or…

HN is techy and entrepreneurial so most of the ideas presented so far suggest new technologies and business models.

Does this community know of the French New Wave -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_new_wave?

It influenced Hollywood as much as any new technology and business model since WWII. IT created a new ways of looking at movies, created the role of director as author, decreased studios' power, and put creation in the hands of new people. Its influence continues today, though the studios regained their power after a generation. The movement was influenced by new technologies, so I don't mean to imply they are independent.

I hope people think about other ways of thinking about change than just technology and business plans.

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