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Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

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Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#521

Post by rmc »

sanjiallblue wrote: post #516

It's an interesting proposition to kill Hollywood, but I don't exactly think it's going to be killed so easily, or that it's anywhere remotely resembling close to being "dead". Just examining the profit margins from this year alone paints a picture of a vibrant and healthy industry and overall employment in the industry is actually doing quite well considering the state of the economy. Although, full disclosure, I do…

You're attempting to derail the conversation by making the tech/start up/hacker scene sound like they are being immature and not listening. Tech and the internet have been in mainstream conscienceness for 15 years. They have had time to learn. They have already fired the first and second shot with numerous laws like SOPA, the DMCA and others.

Rather than them being too busy, I believe they are too greedy. I owe them nothing.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#522

Post by cschwarm »

Keyframe wrote: post #498
ramanujan wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do expand on these reasons. What costs a lot for fundamental reasons? And what can be attacked with software?

There are three stages in production of movies and tv shows, roughly they are: Preproduction: - where screenplay is written or adapted, cost is usually low unless rights are to be managed for original content you're adapting from. - Production schedule and directors shooting script is done, sometimes a storyboard too (skilled storyboard artists COULD be somewhat replaced by software and there are attempts) - Sound de…

According to the analysis [1] from the Institute for International Film Financing [2], movies with budgets higher than 10 Mil. have a worse ratio of breaking-even: roughly 6 of 10 loose money based on box office alone vs. only 4 of 10 fail in the less than 10 Mil. category.

I agree that making movies is expensive, but we shouldn't fall prey to the availability heuristic.

To circumvent this, it might help to think about TV: What would it cost to produce original content for a 24/7 stream?

[1] http://abovethelineproducer.blogspot.com/2011/12/hollywood-p... [2] http://filmfinancing.org/

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#523

Post by colomon »

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…

In the world of traditional music, it's already the case that many of the best musicians earn their living doing something else.

Jerry Holland (RIP) was a world-class Cape Breton style fiddler, I'd guess almost everyone involved in "Celtic" fiddle knows at least one of his compositions. It took me finding three bios of him before I found one that even mentioned what I remembered from meeting him ten years ago: he made his living as a carpenter. Nine months a year he did that (with occasional gigs), and then come summer he'd go out on the festival circuit playing fiddle. http://www.cranfordpub.com/articles/holland_%20interview.htm

Brian Conway is another example. He's probably the best New York / Sligo style fiddler alive, but his day job is as a lawyer in a district attorney's office. http://www.brianconway.com/music.html

In both cases the standard of musicianship is impeccably high. You'd never guess from their playing or recordings that it wasn't a full-time job for them.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#524

Post by mtts »

teyc wrote: post #161
sambeau wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I thought Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave in accordance with the tradition of the day.

Correct. He was not destitute at all, just not fabulously wealthy enough to get a personal grave.

Schubert was destitute but then Schubert basically sat in his room all day writing music. That does not earn you money now and it didn't earn you money back then either.

Schubert is also one of the first examples of the starving artist. Before him, artists did not starve, they did their job and made money at it. It was only around 1800 or so that romantics came up with the notion that artists were singular geniuses who had to sacrifice everything else for their art.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#525

Post by vidarh »

Irfaan wrote: post #500
vidarh wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't played it, you should take a look at King of Chicago by Cinemaware for the Amiga, which was pretty much the first game to let the gamer be arbitrarily passive (playing pretty much like a movie if you didn't do anything, but allowing you to decide every action if you wanted).

I'm unfamiliar with "King of Chicago". But now that you've pointed it out, I'm going to try and correct that. Thanks, vidrh!

Cinemaware in general produced awesome games, and some of the real classic in terms of bridging the gap between movies and games.

It's worth loading up an Amiga emulator (WinUAE or E-UAE) and getting hold of them - getting legal copies would be tricky, but copies abound...

I mentioned King of Chicago in particular because it was the most movie-like of the games - as I mentioned, if you just start it, it will run like a movie, complete with rolling movie like credits, but their other games have much of the same feel to them though you had to drive most of them forward by taking actions. E.g. Rocket Ranger, Defender of the Crown, It Came from the Desert, Wings are some of their best known titles, all heavy on narration and heavily inspired by movies.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#526

Post by gbog »

Keyframe wrote: post #498
ramanujan wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do expand on these reasons. What costs a lot for fundamental reasons? And what can be attacked with software?

There are three stages in production of movies and tv shows, roughly they are: Preproduction: - where screenplay is written or adapted, cost is usually low unless rights are to be managed for original content you're adapting from. - Production schedule and directors shooting script is done, sometimes a storyboard too (skilled storyboard artists COULD be somewhat replaced by software and there are attempts) - Sound de…

What about indi movies with non-pro actors, hand held cameras, no fx, no costumes, etc? If a lonely guy can entertain for hours with a book he wrote alone, may be a bunch of skilled guys can, or did already make a nice movie for much less. Think minecraft.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#527

Post by Retric »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #284
Retric wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

50% of a studio's output not being terrible is hardly the same thing as expecting every new movie to be a masterpiece. With studio's spending 100 million on a 'low' budget film you would expect they could spend 1 million to mock up 10 different films and pick the top 10% of scripts and fund them. Instead they use independent funding for most films which gives them far less choice.

PS: Pixar is hardly the first company to fund things internally raise the bar. You can find other studio's that used that model and produced a lot of decent films one after another. It's just that after a while the people running things don't really have a taste for talent and they can't handle the risks.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#528

Post by mtts »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #22

I find it utterly fascinating how under the radar a lot of the new media has been. Only recently have some people begun to appreciate that Netflix has as many subscribers as many large cable companies, though I think it's still flirting with the popular consciousness so far. Meanwhile, there are many people making their living off of original content posted to youtube or elsewhere, and in some cases they are making 6…

It's under the radar because its appeal is very, very limited. My mom will read Asterix, but Penny Arcade is completely uninteresting to her.

We're living in somewhat of a hacker bubble where what happens on Youtube or Boing Boing is significant. The rest of the world, however, does not care. The rest of the world likes Hollywood.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#529

Post by nextparadigms »

vladd wrote: post #496
ramanujan wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do expand on these reasons. What costs a lot for fundamental reasons? And what can be attacked with software?

You need filming equipment, a good script, stage infrastructure, well-performing or/and good-looking actors, repetition until they get it right, sound-tracks (with composers, interpreters, instruments & instrument people), editing, post-processing and maybe animation/special effects. And it's an industry where profits are made at the high end of the market (you'd rather pay Tom Cruise $100 millions for the statistica…

Yes, but that's attacking the problem in the traditional sense. We need to disrupt Hollywood, not take them head-on. A better model would be to try a lot of movies made by young actors, and just let the best of the best come on top, in an evolutionary manner. This is the web. It doesn't have to be constrained by artificial scarcity and heavy filtering. I'm sure there are a lot of young actors who are dying to get a job in Hollywood. These new businesses should target them.

Only a bottom-up, decentralized approach can win against Hollywood.

Re: Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

#530

Post by Keyframe »

pdelgallego wrote: post #520
Keyframe wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three stages in production of movies and tv shows, roughly they are: Preproduction: - where screenplay is written or adapted, cost is usually low unless rights are to be managed for original content you're adapting from. - Production schedule and directors shooting script is done, sometimes a storyboard too (skilled storyboard artists COULD be somewhat replaced by software and there are attempts) - Sound de…

>> Marketing and distribution is a sizeable chunk of money in a project too How is a movie marketed and distributed in the film industry? >> - Camera and grip departement can get huge... I've done only a moderate size productions and my camera and grip dept. was 20-30 people (skilled labour that costs money) Could the team size be reduced by more/better technology? >> Sound designers start their work (sound design is…

How is a movie marketed and distributed in the film industry?

It's not my expertise so I can't dwell into detail, but you can see it for yourself too - mostly via traditional channels, print and billboards, tv and radio trailers, online campaigns.

Could the team size be reduced by more/better technology?

Yes, but not by much! For example 35mm film is now more or less obsolete - average movie is shot on 20:1 ratio (for 90 minutes of running time, 1800 minutes is shot), that shaved off about $100,000 in negatives alone (around $5000 per hour of negative - costs of processing and making copies with film is additional cost). Film equipment can get cheaper. Dollies (like panther) cost around $60,000+ for example, good optics is 250,000 euros etc... Film lights are expensive too, but you need grip crew to operate them. I see opportunity in reducing costs of film equipment, but not so much in crew size.

How much of this work can be outsource to other countries?

It can and is, but as productions shifted from California to other countries those same countries started raising prices over time - so it's not so much as a cost reduction anymore... other countries now compete more on tax incentives than lower salaries (cost of equipment is more or less the same everywhere).

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