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Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

ycombinator.com

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Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#321

Post by sek »

When we are serious about disrupting the industry we need insiders, the whole Hollywood network is very powerful.

They have a very weird scheme, with production companies who always make a loss and agencies who make enormous amount of money with the whole star system. It's very complex, but totally artificial. Look at South Korea, they made a star system out of computer games.

This scheme works only in combination with media, what gives them the ability to make marketing and stars at the same time. The big cycle is:

Make a movie -> your newspapers write about the movie or the actors -> people watch the movie, actors become stars -> make money with print

This is the whole reason these conglomerates exist, there are not many synergy effects in print. It would be totally decentralized/commoditized, but when you sell your PR as content.... big profits.

These big schemes have always have flaws, but we need insiders who know where to find them. I am interested in this topic, but all i know are from very few sources. Most of them books, or public funded contend. When i think about it right now, it's totally obvious.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#322

Post by jonah »

I have two friends doing content in new ways:

* The New Kind - CG Television show, created by a global group of artists with the development posted to Facebook day-by-day: https://www.facebook.com/pages/THE-NEW-KIND-series/246243672... https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=127971893907947

* "'One Day On Earth' is the documentary new media project about the amazing diversity, conflict, tragedy, and triumph that occurs in one 24-hour period on this planet. More than a film, 'One Day on Earth' is a multi-platform participatory media project. The flagship of this project is a documentary to be released theatrically. Through a creative commons we will establish a community that not only watches but participates.' https://www.facebook.com/onedayonearth http://www.onedayonearth.org

Both community created on a global scale, they could only exist in the internet age.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#323

Post by phaus »

ohyes wrote: post #280
Steko wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I like this idea. On the graphics end, it might be better to modify an FPS engine, like the DOOM3 engine. You will get better graphics, and if you are simply generating a TV show, you don't really need the scalability that an MMO provides. And the graphics for most failing MMOS are not that great. You could distribute the machima via a youtube like service that is specific for machima. You might even get a completely…

This is a great idea too. I replied above but I had forgotten that Id software open sourced the Doom 3 engine.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#324

Post by icebraining »

kijin wrote: post #145
sriramk wrote: post #95

Movies aren't the latest evolution in entertainment, they're the latest evolution in storytelling , something which is as old as humanity itself. Hollwyood is the descendant of ancient man telling stories of adventure around a fire at night. So the more accurate question - what is a better way to tell stories?

Very interesting. A lot of people who suggest games as a replacement for video seem to be missing this point. Games require active interaction. Not everyone always wants to entertain themselves in a way that requires active interaction. Sometimes we just want to sit back, relax, and let the storyteller tell their story. Watching Bruce Willis blow shit up on a screen is a completely different kind of entertainment tha…

I find that oversimplified. Personally, I game to relax and I watch movies to be mentally (and emotionally) challenged.

The problem with games is that they, by their very nature, have problems for the storyteller:

First, they take away his control from (at least) one of the characters, since it has to be given to the player. This means that either certain stories can't be told as they should, since you can't force the player to have the same motivations as the character, especially if they're supposed to be revealed only later.

Second, plenty of great movies would make shitty games. Dialog driven movies (12 Angry Men), for example. You'd need to put the player on rails and limit his movements to a minimum - and to do that, why make a game at all?

Third, game play can distract from the story. There's a reason why people tend to make more mistakes when they're recalling a situation where they were participants instead of passive viewers.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#325

Post by jim-greer »

potatolicious wrote: post #266
jim-greer wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really not optimistic on getting people to stop watching TV or movies. Maybe there's some way of producing and financing them that's smarter but I wouldn't bet on changing behavior that drastically. People have been consuming stories about other people forever, and they're going to keep doing that.

> "I'm really not optimistic on getting people to stop watching TV or movies." Why do we need to? I hear this sentiment from gamers sometimes, where passive (story told to you) entertainment is almost used in a derogatory way, as if the fact that the audience is not actively participating makes it worse . It seems to me a kneejerk reaction to years of everyone treating gaming as an illegitimate artform. Why do we nee…

I didn't say we needed to. I like TV and movies. I just don't like Hollywood's political agenda.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#326

Post by icebraining »

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.

Ad sponsors from the third world countries themselves have no problem paying for advertising in their own countries.

Here in Portugal (not third world, I know) I get plenty of AdWords from national companies, much more than from international ones.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#327

Post by jeffool »

If you see a film that no one else has seen, you'll spend all your time telling others about it, and to go see it. Despite film viewing being a largely solitary experience, even when holding a girlfriend's hand watching a movie... It's still important in a communal aspect. Just like great songs; they always make us think about other people or our interactions with them.

That's why games will eat film's lunch. One day, they'll master that.

If I had a startup capital? I'd focus an mmo-like server based game on small communities. Maybe base them around a few hundred players, so you KNOW the people you game with. And your actions have consequences to people you know. The fun of Skyrim, the familiar face of FarmVille, without the crass exploitation of metrics like Zynga, with the heart of Team Ico.

Hey, a guy can dream.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#328

Post by wj »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #281
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.…

Francis Ford Coppola has a site that is a "virtual studio" called Zoetrope (http://www.zoetrope.com/). I haven't visited in a few years but it was a lot of aspiring screenwriters at the time.

I'm currently working on a collaboration tool for filmmakers and am hoping to launch it in a month or two.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#330

Post by omarchowdhury »

ig1 wrote: post #129

It interesting to see how narrow the responses are here, what may be the standard entertainment in 20 years time might be something that unlike anything mainstream today. It could be something completely new or something that's incredibly niche right now (for example machines which induce lucid dreaming - what happens when they become reliable and cheap?).

Which machines do you know that induce lucid dreams?
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