Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood. • Hacker News Board

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#281

Post by Samuel_Michon » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:48 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #168

Is there a social network / kickstarter like site for making movies. A LinkedIn for Actors, Writers, Directors and everybody else you need to make film and television. I'd be interested in building a site that helps people find each other, review projects and scrape together whatever funding they need to make indie films happen. There have got to be hundreds of people floating around Hollywood trying to get into the…

Most good blogs and communities are more specialized than that. Aspiring screenwriters go to John August's blog [1], documentary filmmakers go to The D-Word [2], cinematographers go to forums like DVXUser [3] and RED User [4], sound folks go somewhere else, etc.

Your idea sounds swell, though. I think a lot of people would be interested in a such a site, if done well.

[1] http://johnaugust.com/

[2] http://www.d-word.com/

[3] http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/

[4] http://www.reduser.net/

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#282

Post by Typhon » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:48 AM UTC

fl3tch wrote: post #146

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.

GeoIP data is 99% accurate at the country level, so it's trivially easy to enforce regional restrictions on the internet, and some web sites have been doing it for a while. Sure, there are ways around that too, but most people are not technically inclined enough to figure them out. As one article recently posted on HN said (can't find it right now), we need to stop thinking only about technical solutions, and start a…

In the context of a replacement for Hollywood by something new, most likely something new on the internet, why would anyone bother to restrict the market to a specific region ?

My comment wasn't about technical feasibility, it was more about the fact that, by default, the web is a planetary medium, therefore, any new entertainment made on it is available without regional restriction unless the authors take steps to create such restrictions.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#283

Post by jfoster » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:51 AM UTC

I'm not sure the suggested approach is right. Trying to replace the medium is overkill, because it's actually just the companies that need to be removed.

The companies are able to exist because the $-to-quality ratio is currently very high. It has always been decreasing, but the way to kill the companies quickly is to lower all of the barriers to entry toward $0 sooner.

I think it's easier for startups to lower production costs than it is to replace mediums. Shouldn't take too long, either.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#284

Post by Samuel_Michon » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:51 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #277

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So what have they done lately?" Not even counting foreign films, here are some darn good productions from the past five years: Midnight in Paris, Hugo, Drive, Warrior, Black Swan, Inception, Inglourious Basterds, Up, Whatever Works, The Limits of Control, The Dark Knight, WALL-E, Gran Torino, The Wrestler, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, Ratatouille, The Departed, and The Prestige.

The Prestige and The Departed are from 2006 and I would say 1/2 of what's left sucked. Still, listing a few movies that don't suck is hardly a ringing endorsement. Pixar demonstrates that it's possible to make 10 movies without 5 of them being terrible. If the rest of Hollywood knew what it was doing you would expect the same quality from Sony pictures etc.

Do you really think there was a time in which every new movie was a masterpiece? I seriously doubt it, and I don't think movies are worse now than they were 10 or 20 years a go.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#285

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:52 AM UTC

caublestone wrote: post #217

InclinedPlane wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Population and demographics have changed as well of course. What does it matter? We're not comparing movies based on which had the biggest impact on the people of their time, we're talking about business. Of course competition in the landscape of entertainment is going to affect that, that's the whole point.

What about if the price of apples went up you could still be making the same amount of money as when they were cheaper...and you need less people to buy your apples. I can almost guarantee that a smaller number of people saw Avatar in theaters than Gone with the Wind. A movie ticket, on average, cost $.23 in 1939. Adjusting for inflation, thats $3.72 today. I think I paid $15 for Avatar 3D. http://boxofficemojo.com/a…

[deleted]

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#286

Post by marshray » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:55 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #244

marshray wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in a sense you've identified the issue too. For every dedicated player who will pay $60 and be disappointed when he beats the game in 50 hours, there are 99 or 999 who want a game that they don't have to invest as much in. Players like me want to play on our own terms and come and go as they please. I used to play a lot of WoW but shutting down all my VMs and rebooting out of Linux to do so is now a big disin…

I guess Nintendo serves these demographics pretty well. (Not that there's no space for a competitor.)

Yes, more than once the kids and I have flipped over to the Wii to play while waiting for stuff to load on the PS3. Sometimes we don't bother to flip back.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#287

Post by os2 » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:55 AM UTC

What need to be done, is to move games into real poligon games, where people come comein pay the same amout as for movie tickets, but wear all virtual reality gadgets ( helmets, gloves, maybe full suite) and play the games in virtual reality. Imagine poligon for Quake arena, where several team can fight, or Fallout, etc. Its sound expencive to create now, but once it running, it will be much better than go to movie. Gaming industry will like it and will start develop for it.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#288

Post by skb_ » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:57 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #128

skb_ wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you guys consider video games? I think that's already a viable alternative form of entertainment. I would argue video games already killed Hollywood, they just never pulled the sword out. $50 for 100+ hours of content vs $10 for roughly 2 hours? No contest.

I don't think video games are a full substitute for TV or movies. They are completely different experiences - one is purely passive, and the other is active and participatory. There are lots of game fans that would claim that this distinction is what makes games superior , but for a lot of people I think that's what turns them off . The passivity is a virtue in many places.

Well nothing is a full substitute for TV/movies, just like nothing is a substitute for novels. But the question is, is it an overall stronger form of entertainment? I'd say that video games definitely have the potential to be, the industry itself is already bigger than Hollywood and rapidly approaching the book industry [1]. And the market for games just keeps getting bigger that there is no point in trying to dissect why games are not a fit for certain people. It's still unexplored space as Minecraft, GTA, WoW, farmville and the Wii have shown. Make the right game and you can potentially gain a new audience.

And I'm not dodging your assertion either, because games can also be passive. I've spent god knows how many hours watching Starcraft II games - well more than I'd like to admit. That's a game that was built with spectators in mind. I probably enjoy watching the game more than playing it, as wonderful as it is. Apparently so do other people, TwitchTV is evidence enough.

1 - http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_industry

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#289

Post by jamesgatz » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:58 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #207

Sometime over the past year I went from thinking YouTube content was insignificant compared to Hollywood, to the point where I'd happily give up all broadcast/cable/DVD/Netflix content for YouTube type user generated content. I suspect this will be more widespread in a year or two more.

I like youtube quite a bit, but if someone told me I could either: a) have unlimited youtube forever or b) re-experience my first viewing of a favorite film (say, No Country for Old Men), I would always choose b.

This is likely my own personal bias, but great youtube is great entertainment. Great cinema is magic.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#290

Post by dmoney » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 3:00 AM UTC

Three things that would help to kill Hollywood:

1. Make it less expensive to create entertainment.

2. Raise the quality level of what amatuers can create.

3. Turn people who would ordinarily be consumers into creators.