Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 697 posts

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#301

Post by ijk »

eru wrote: post #169
jamesgatz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love FFC. I'm a current UCLA film student - Coppola's alma mater. One thing to think about: UCLA has always been the "indy, intellectual" film school. It's our rep, internally and (to an extent) externally. When Coppola left UCLA to work in Hollywood, he was branded a sell-out by his fellow students. One thing to think about w/ this whole "crush Hollywood" thing is this: most of your favorite movies (assuming you'v…

> There would be no Godfather without Hollywood. No Apocalypse Now. (also no Taxi Driver, no Star Wars, no Indiana Jones, no MASH or Nashville) In the absence of Hollywood, you get movies like Youth Without Youth and Tetro - two wonderful oddities, but you'd be hard pressed to make the case for them against Coppola's early masterpieces. Those movies you mentioned were a result of being within/outside Hollywood, not a…

In a sense, Hollywood has died once before: the studio system used to be the only way of doing business in the movies. The breakup of the union between distribution and production lead to the current system of direct investment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_system

Films have been made with other forms of investment, production, and distribution. While films like The Godfather came out of the present model, there's nothing that indicates to me that the present model is the only one that works. And, indeed, the production The Godfather in particular is one of the early successes of that model, and after 40 years its not surprising if the cracks are starting to show.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#302

Post by MrScruff »

Disclaimer: I work in film.

This discussion is very strange. Hollywood films are extremely expensive and difficult to make, do you think the studios would spend all that money and effort if they could get the same return of investment knocking out budget films shot in someone's living room with a DSLR? I'm quite sure film won't remain at the top of tree for mass market entertainment forever, but it's going to be replaced by ever more immersive games, not tech startups. And those are pretty expensive to make as well.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#303

Post by SudarshanP »

Drbble wrote: post #231
reinhardt wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this opinion more honest and convincing than the "it's not stealing if you both get to keep a copy" argument. The latter fails to account for the time, money, effort, inspiration, talent required to create the original work that is subsequently copied millions of times. When the issue of how are artists supposed to make a living in an copyright-less, free-filesharing world is brought up, proponents come up wit…

It would look like free software looks as compared to Microsoft: edgy, unpolished, more engaging with the audience as a collaborator and not just an consumer, in more niches, non-monolithic, with a more visible connection to the author's humanity. :help uganda :wq

Free Software is not Just Vi or Emacs. It evolves into Android, Firefox, Chrome, Eclipse, jQuery, etc. You may get to see work before it is fully ready... But finished products in Free software can also be user friendly and mainstream. And for niches it serves, Free software does a far better job than than the Lowest common denominator that suits the masses.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#304

Post by lukeschlather »

marquis wrote: post #251
lukeschlather wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine what the complete works of Shakespeare would look like if he were responsible for releasing any of the folios we use today? The whole idea of being absolutely loyal to the artist's intent is a cultural idea that has come in and out of vogue, but is largely an artifact of 20th century America. Really, art has always been crowdsourced in some sense or another, and any work of art is in some sense an ama…

Sure, crowdsourced over time (the bible..). But what is wrong with wanting to understand the author's original intent? There is plenty of time over the next hundreds of years for the work to be re-interpreted. Didn't some of our greatest open-source tools start from a single source before being disseminated among us to evolve?

There's nothing wrong with trying to understand the author's original intent. But the author's intent isn't necessarily more important than the reader's interpretation (and trying to separate the two can miss the point of art.)

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#305

Post by marshray »

AznHisoka wrote: post #43

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.

We were younger back then too. Now put that in a bottle and you could replace more than Hollywood!

What I miss from that time was the ability to sit around with friends and argue about simple issues of fact. E.g. "who was the actor in that old movie blah.." "no it wasn't, it was ..."

Smart phones + IMDB & Wikipedia killed that. How could one bring that back?

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#306

Post by kruhft »

reinhardt wrote: post #115
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…

I find this opinion more honest and convincing than the "it's not stealing if you both get to keep a copy" argument. The latter fails to account for the time, money, effort, inspiration, talent required to create the original work that is subsequently copied millions of times. When the issue of how are artists supposed to make a living in an copyright-less, free-filesharing world is brought up, proponents come up wit…

> Interesting thought experiment: how would the world look like if all art was created by hobbyists? (honest question)

Linux.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#308

Post by lukeholder »

Here is MY idea.

Anyone can post a movie to the web service (website access/roku access). Hollywood, or freelancer gets to publish on the platform free.

Anyone can stream a movie completely free, but every 10-15 minutes the price to see the last 10 minutes of the movie cost 1 dollar more. (ratio variable)

You can pay a dollar after the first 10 minutes and watch the whole movie for just a dollar, or you watch all of the movie free but dont see the last 15 minutes ending.

/end crazy idea.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#309

Post by MrScruff »

Steko wrote: post #267
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.

What's really needed is the next level of authoring tools. Here's the startup I'd do: (1) buy up a near dead MMO, preferably one with impressively realistic character graphics. (2) retool it as a machima authoring tool (3) hook it into kinect for motion capture (4) leverage the userbase to crowdsource additions to the 3D library. With just this talented hobbyists and unfunded indy talents would begin to swamp Hollywo…

Great idea, I can't see anyone paying to watch Avatar 2 when they can see someone overdubbing their Skyrim avatar with Battlestar Galactica fanfic.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#310

Post by dmragone »

jfoster wrote: post #283

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 produ…

I am still digesting all the comments, but think I agree.

Storytelling has existed as a form of entertainment for quite some time. The primary change has been the delivery mechanism, which provided for alternative ways to consume the content, altered how it was made (think putting on a play vs making a film), and also shifted the power structure. Seven years ago it cost over $60 million to make a Hollywood blockbuster, and nearly another $40 million was spent on marketing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3564377.stm). Getting that kind of reach requires deep pockets, hence few large players.

I may be thinking small here, but I think any significant changes to this power structure in the near-term will have to start with new delivery systems. At least in terms of consuming video content in the home, I imagine most of it occurs in front of the tv. I know there are various ways to watch movies, shows, and sometimes even sports without needing a cable or satellite subscription, but the options are still limited and way too spread out. The content that I want isn't available where I want it to be, when I want it to be, in a manner easily usable by most people.

I'm sure this is only one piece of the puzzle. I imagine if more content was more readily available, that would change things as well. Ultimately I think people are willing to pay for content they enjoy, but the current availability and especially packaging are outdated.

Post reply on HN