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Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

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Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#151

Post by sambeau »

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…

Here's Mick Jagger saying basically the same thing last July:

"Before recorded music, incomes depended largely on the whim of patrons - meaning even Mozart and Schubert died destitute."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10581280

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#153

Post by tkl »

awt wrote: post #113
gfodor wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who said anything about Freud? In any case, you need to ask yourself why it feels good to make an imprint on another human being's mind and soul. There is a reason. It's not random or unexplainable.

This brings up an interesting topic: can a rational person do anything that's not for the purposes of ego, or to be more polemic, sex? Hypothetically, if one were to be completely ego-free and also rational, they would have to reconcile that their work and their productions here on earth, are infinitesimal and perhaps negligible on the scale of galaxies. Surely, all human motivations break down at that level, and for a person to continue to be productive, they must admit to the level of "i'll produce something here on earth, that will a.) give me attention (and hence a chance at a more lovely significant other), b.) money (so that I may live comfortably and have a better chance in the future to achieve 'a'." To even claim altruism is to use the adjective to positively light one's ego, no? True altruism would have to function under "rather than doing nothing, i shall do something good, but 'I' do not exist", and under the course of 80 years, any person would succumb to a more aesthetically pleasurable life.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#154

Post by jerf »

I think this is the sort of thing that history will record as the true result of SOPA. Not the mobilization of the public, which despite how thrilling it may feel even today is still something that will not be easily replicated, but the fact that significant chunks of the Internet industry now realize they are in unavoidable, open warfare with the content industry. The Internet industry can no longer pretend to itself that it is neutral, or that the content industry is.

There's been a lot of concern expressed about the fact that the RIAA and MPAA will try again, and we can't count on public mobilization to save us. But I don't think that's the true backstop. The true backstop is that the Internet industry will hopefully become more engaged, and it will hopefully shortly become much less easy for this dying industry to push a bill through Congress.

At least for now, consumers will win. We should keep our eyes peeled for when that changes, because it is only a matter of time, but this should buy us some years.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#155

Post by eternalban »

gfodor wrote: post #107
awt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Creativity is about pleasure.

Of course, for some that reduces to the motives the parent comment is highlighting. For others, it is self gratification. And yet for others, it is to touch the divine.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#156

Post by ender7 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #94
cstross wrote: post #7

Hollywood and the MPAA isn't about making movies. Rather, it's about maintaining a distribution chokehold on mass produced popular entertainment. This in turn means controlling what goes into the pipeline, and how the output from the pipeline is delivered to the consumers, and how the MPPE is marketed -- for example, the whole star system, Oscars night hype, and so on. What is needed is a better distribution channel,…

Distribution is a solved problem. It's open. Even theatrical is more open than it was 5 years ago. NATO wants competitors to Hollywood. In fact, NATO members are beginning to openly compete with Hollywood (see Open Road Films, a joint venture between AMC and Regal). Production is a solved problem. The tools have been democratized. Even financing is open these days. There's a huge range of film financing sources, and…

This is true, but you have to understand that there is a phenomenal amount of talent locked up in Hollywood. I'm not necessarily talking about directors or actors, but camera men, DPs, best boys, set dressers...the list goes on and on. These people have skills that require many, many years of on-site training.

(Don't forget about producers, line producers, production managers, site scouts, and all of the logistics people who find a way to make a huge movie happen)

Making a small, Blair Witch Project/Little Miss Sunshine/indie whatever doesn't require an army of people with these skills. You can get away with some rough edges and end up looking good.

But making the next Avatar? That's not a problem that will be solved solely with technology. You have to find some way to extract these guys from an industry that already pays them pretty well.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#157

Post by DocSavage »

"Some of the best ideas may initially look like they're serving the movie and TV industries."

Somehow, I think it'll be difficult for your startups to partner with or serve movie and TV industries if they've been funded under a "Kill Hollywood" RFS :-)

Although leadership in Hollywood may be cruel and tech-stupid from our standpoint, they have a tremendous amount of talent at their disposal. Seems like a production system for what comes out of Amazon Studios could threaten their system if it was stocked with Hollywood-level talent -- actors, editors, cinematographers, etc -- and coupled with a smarter distribution system.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#158

Post by bandushrew »

haberman wrote: post #138

> SOPA brought it to our attention that Hollywood is dying. They must be dying if they're resorting to such tactics. If movies and TV were growing rapidly, that growth would take up all their attention. I'm not sure this follows. I'm guessing that Hollywood sees piracy and filesharing as vast amounts of unrealized profit for the work they're already doing -- "free money" essentially. I think it's personal too; look h…

"I'm guessing that Hollywood sees piracy and filesharing as vast amounts of unrealized profit for the work they're already doing"

right, but the fact that they are chasing it implies very clearly that they believe there is more money in chasing free cash for work they have already done, than there is in creating new work.

That is the sure sign of an industry (or business) that has stopped growing.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#159

Post by marquis »

aethr wrote: post #130
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…

Passionate artists will still pursue art for the joy of creating and sharing their art with others. This is how it has always been. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the popular artists from the last 20 years began their entertainment careers to get "rich and famous". These people didn't do it for the love of the art, and looking at the decline in quality of the music industry since the 70s I think we can all see…

I don't necessarily equate many of the rockstars we know of today as artists, more as 'produced'. For every well-known artist out there who is making mega-money there is a cohort of producers, marketers, colluders. Even the Venice Biennale is full of these mega-artists who make huge money because the plastic arts industry survives on the transfer of sums of money.

I think of the artists I genuinely appreciate: independent filmmakers, poets, writers, musicians: without time to pause and focus on their work for weeks at a time we would have little of this. Even a well-recorded indie band needs to raise money for a good production. While we may wish to think so, you just cannot record in your garage without thousands of dollars of tools from microphones, mixers, plugins, then marketing and seed-funding for tours. So yes, these people are doing it for the love it and would like nothing more than to see the mega-industry fail: it leaves more money for them and less glitz in the eye to blind us from accessing their work.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#160

Post by melling »

Actually, what should be done is make it easier for small groups of people to make movies. There's always going to be a need for what Hollywood produces. However, for example, if we could start by making Pixar type movies then distribute them somehow for a small fee then lots of independent movie studios would appear. At some point in the next decade or so, we'll be able to create "real people" that replace Hollywood stars.
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