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Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

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Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#441

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Point count is the equivalent of contribution. It means you perhaps said something that opened someone else's eyes or led the conversation in a positive direction. Guidelines are to prevent people who don't contribute valuable ideas (e.g. trolls) from bringing the conversation down. So, if someone has proven them self not to be a troll, I think they're entitled to lose their temper every once in a while provided they…

Sorry to burst your bubble but no. Karma gives you no entitlement to ad hominem attacks and means absolutely nothing. It's quite pathetic you looked up that guy's karma and used it as an argument. Stick to arguing the points made on the original post, please.

For God's sakes if you're going to use a phrase at least know what it means. Ad Hominem means "an argument appealing to emotion" or "attacking an opponents motives rather than the content of their points". I did neither of those things.

Ironically you did both of those things in this comment.

But for the record I did not, in any way, mean to suggest that natep was lesser in any way. But I do think there's an arrogance to him schooling me on how things work on HN given our relative positions.

My karma rating means I've been around. I've read A LOT of comment threads and I've seen how names that are familiar to me react to things. So I have some idea of the norm and what is and is not acceptable (though in fairness I was so pissed when I made the original post that I didn't really care and I'll admit to that)

In that experience I've seen many people who have been around longer than I have lose their tempers and violate the guidelines in the occasional, rare post. My behavior was in line with that.

(That isn't to say I'm proud of said behavior just for the record)

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#442
post #418

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Maybe there needs to be something like YCombinator for making movies, instead of start-ups. Seed the scripts and the initial team, and then get other investors to invest a few hundred thousand or a few millions in the movie. Also think about how to best distribute those movies - maybe a special site that shows all these movies, or a partnership with ThePirateBay to promote the movies. A news/information site about th…

There are. Small production companies. Hundreds of them. But when it comes to marketing and distibuting what you've made, you really need a major studio's support.

Does it necessarily have to be this way? The internet has provided a way of sharing and proliferating and distributing content. As long as a content is quality enough, people will tend to share the content and as more people distribute and share the content, you have a relatively inexpensive way to market and distribute the content. Now all this needs is a startup cracks a way for artist and content creators to monetize this way of distribution and marketing method online. I have posted my idea somewhere on this page. Care to discuss what you think? It would be great if small production companies can allow me to test my hypothesis =)

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#443
Here's my proposal: "Vertical Facebooks", social networks for certain industries, are a big opportunity. Hollywood is the biggest and best opportunity for this. If Ben Stiller needs to pitch his new project to, say, Mila Kunis, it's pretty inefficient. If a screenwriter has finished a script and wants to tell people about it, same thing. IMDB is already used by studios to vet people -- this is broken and could be made much better.

Once you've built and instituted such a Hollywood Facebook (where privacy is everything and joining requires clearing some big barriers), if they try something like SOPA again, you can just go dark. They would be helpless and quickly back down. Don't kill the horse -- just give it a harness.

My email is in my profile if you like this.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#444
post #156

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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 pe…

None of these people are locked into anything. They're all essentially freelance workers, moving from one startup to the next. Each project is its own world, and doesn't lock anyone into anything. Well, with the exception of franchises locking in some actors. I've known both above the line and below the line people to move from the biggest blockbusters to projects with a very-low-five-figure budget and back again. Th…

You don't even need to play by union rules. The unions are broken in Vancouver, Toronto, the Czech Republic and other non-Hollywood film centers. You get the exact same people showing up to work on the latest TCF or GEP productions as you do the non-union indies in these places. The same is possibly true of Hollywood and New York, but it's been years since I've worked in either of those places.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#445

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First Mr. 278 Karma I think my 7000+ karma has earned me the right to call pg an ass when he's making an ass out of himself guidelines be damned. Second, plenty of people are wrong every day. That doesn't mean they and their industry deserve to be destroyed. it means you TALK TO THEM. Try to convince them of the error or their ways. That's why Steve Jobs formed a friendship with Rupert Murdoch. Not because they're su…

The idea that your Karma count means you're better than anyone else here is laughable. Ideas should stand on their own merit and karma, money, or any other arbitrary metric doesn't give you the right to devolve into name-calling when you disagree with someone (but I only have 580+ Karma, so what do I know?).

Who said I was better? That said the idea that everyone is equal regardless of their contribution is laughable. That's not to say people who have contributed more are "better" but it is to say they've proven themselves to some extent.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karma is a (imperfect) measure of contribution. Time is just time. As far as Hollywood killing themselves that's not what he was doing. I quote from his post... "The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down" That's calling them names and assigning motive. Not observing their behavior and pointing out what the…

I can't really empathize with your argument because I have no respect for today's Hollywood but I agree that the article took an active, even aggressive stance. You have to understand though that while you may know movie and music executives personally and you don't think they're bad guys (I read your previous comments) Paul is just as high up in this industry as they are in theirs, and they almost just fucked this i…

I understand your point but for the record he was attacking my friends and everyone else. He specifically advocated tearing down the entire industry. That means everyone.

As for the downvote I have to say when you go into a topic like this where you know most people are going to be against you the downvotes become a point of pride. Whether people want to admit it here or not Karma is of some value (otherwise why would it be there). Being willing to lose something of value to stand up for what you feel is right actually feels kind of good.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a clarion call to kill an industry, it's a clarion call to accelerate creative destruction on an industry. All that does is puts the bad entities out of business and creates new entities. Sure, there will be some labor displacement, but that's the nature of capitalism. The fact of the matter is that it is inevitable. You can't stop it. The fact that hollywood feels that they have to sue and legislate to prot…

I get pissed because of the rhetoric. Not just from this side. I have many friends in the entertainment industry and from there it's all about "thieves". So you have "hate" and "kill" on this side and "theft" and "arrest" on that side and I'm sick of all of it. The most effective solution to problems with the media industry has always been the same: Collaboration. Look at allthestepisodes.com. This is a site that all…

They're working to kill Netflix, though.

First by restricting just how early it could get videos, then by making them pay for streaming on every user, not just those who stream. I understood that to be the whole point of the ill-fated attempt at splitting the company, in fact.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point count is the equivalent of contribution. It means you perhaps said something that opened someone else's eyes or led the conversation in a positive direction. Guidelines are to prevent people who don't contribute valuable ideas (e.g. trolls) from bringing the conversation down. So, if someone has proven them self not to be a troll, I think they're entitled to lose their temper every once in a while provided they…

You can lose your temper as much as you want (nothing wrong with being angry). Being disrespectful to others and making personal attacks on the other hand, is well...just disrespectful.

Two wrongs don't make a right but for the record pg started it. If you call the people in Hollywood mean and advocate taking their livelihood away and I have friends in Hollywood that means you're disrespecting them.

Second I don't think calling someone out is disrespecting them. Disrespecting them is letting them be an ass and not saying anything. Because calling them out means you care enough about them as a person to care about their behavior and try to get them to correct it

(though for the record I do wish I'd said "you're being an ass" rather than "you're an ass" since he's not an ass in everything)

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