551–560 of 697 posts
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.
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.
It sounds like you're pushing for for the webseries model. There's some great work going on there - the big difficulty isn't the producing or financing, though. I'm part of the Seattle webseries community, and the big difficulty I keep seeing is - how do you get your series in front of people? So in a sense - I think marketing is the killer if you're going to compete head-to-head with Hollywood.
A simple answer would be 'social proof'. Mashable provides a TopTen list of the most watched shows. That's a good start but the site is too distracting for Average Joe, in my opinion.
Also, web series are too short for true passive entertainment. I guess what your communities would need is a sort of Google Adsense, so you could plug-in advertising to be able to produce longer streams.
That would at least provide you with some money. When one show hits it big, that'll make news, and more people would start looking for shows like that. More eyeballs, more advertising, better chances of another hit, more news, and there you go.
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…
You can bet that really stupid decisions are made here, because they can't save money without losing a revenue stream, or pissing off theatres.
And Box Office sales are really important, because they are the first figure to be released. If 10 million people watch the movie, it's a good movie, so the DVD shops it (doing free advertising for you), and the TV Channels will pay more (even if everyone thought it was awful). They want to "anchor" the movie as being a money maker, by maximizing Box Office sales.
If you shoot a brilliant movie, like The Shawshank Redemption and nobody goes to see it, then the DVD shops won't push it. This means you'll only sell copies by word of mouth, by which stage the price has gone down.
"I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia. That's the biggest problem for children in this industry. ... It's the big secret," Feldman said.
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/corey-feldman-pedophilia...
In 1920 a sane person, when asked to speculate on the future of entertainment, would have had a pretty easy time of it: "The radio forms the backbone of social discourse. Around this hallowed box, millions of families converge nightly to get their daily dose of news and entertainment. Millions of people are employed by the radio industry, and millions more depend upon it. Whatever changes the winds of time may blow o…
Radio is a communications technology. Hollywood is a consortium of large, rich entertainment companies which are capable of adopting and adapting to new communications technologies, usually reluctantly, but eventually successfully. They will not be replaced easily.
Here in Vancouver, on the AM radio station CKNW, there's a show called Dan Russell's Sport Talk that succeeds each Canucks game. I used to listen to this show back in the day, parking my car at the beach and smoking a joint as I heard talk of trade rumours and coaching strategies. For reasons previously alluded to, I would occasionally find myself sitting in my car listening to AM radio at 1:00 in the morning. If you live in Vancouver I highly recommend you do this at least once, for you'll encounter an interesting anachronism: the Radio Drama.
Late at night, CKNW plays dramas from the Golden Age of Radio. There were murder mysteries and detective stories and comedies, tales of adventure and romance. There were radio stars, known for their rich voices. There were famed writers and common tropes, much as you find in Hollywood today. In short, there was an industry that many today would recognize, now long dead and forgotten.
This industry was, at one time, the pillar of entertainment and news. Before the silver screen it was the radio that conveyed fact and fiction, that drew families together in the evening. This industry would have seemed just as indomitable as Hollywood does now. Indeed, many of the great radio broadcasters persist today in television, having made the necessary technological leap.
Hollywood shows no signs of being capable of such a leap. Granted, the music industry until recently showed no such signs either. It may be that Hollywood will, as market forces dictate, slowly gravitate to a streaming and on-demand model, but we've seen no signs of it. Their active hostility towards Netflix, combined with their lack of interest in offering an appealing alternative, suggests that they simply lack the industrial agility to adapt. If Hollywood could have continued to produce the content they do on Netflix dollars, they would have. They can't, and so they either must adapt their production to much different revenue streams, or die. Either way, streaming and downloadable video is here to stay. It may well be, as pg hopes, that a new form of entertainment rises up. We shall see. What is undeniable is that the old distribution mechanisms are dead and gone.
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 repl…
You balk at DSLRs but (whilst not the go-to option) they are increasingly being used by the industry. This[1] is an article just about the use of cannon's 5d mkII. You can add Slumdog Millionaire and 127 hours to this list. If it's good enough for an oscar winner? 1. http://canon5d.wonderhowto.com/blog/canons-5d-mark-ii-invade...
That said, digital is certainly here to stay and the cost of professional equipment continues to drop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 abo…
This seems to base the idea of profitability on US box office alone, which makes it more or less meaningless. The bigger the budget, the more likely there are strong revenue streams from other sources. For example, for large tentpole pictures domestic box office is often only 1/3 of the total global box office. This study appears to be rather shallow.
A website where you create an account, are able to transfer money into it, and are able to search for a film or episode of a TV series (for a list which we have licensed somehow). When you find the film you want to watch you are given the option to buy it using your credit, if you have bought it there will be download links available: direct/HTTP download as well as something more robust (able to stop and restart half way through with ease). What you get to download is simply a video file (mp4, mkv, something like that) of the episode itself: No adverts stuck onto it, no digital hand cuffs, no hidden water marks than identify you personally: Just the video you want to watch. You can then watch it on your computer as many times as you want but you are not allowed to upload it to the internet or broadcast it publicly etc.
I think this is a good idea because it gives people freedom from DRM and harassment and similar such things (many people that currently use torrents do so because they do not like these anti-freedom technological devices). I do not know whether or not any publishers would actually sell licenses for a site like this to use though, I imagine they will argue that as soon as one person downloads it then you can't stop them uploading it and giving it to everyone so they'll get no sales.. in fact this is not a good argument because all this stuff is already available on torrent and file sharing sites.
I hope I explained this clearly and suitable for this site. Have been thinking about ways to end DRM (something I am terrified of strangling us even more painfully in the longer term future than hollywood could ever do) for many years but I am not going to make my own startup so I hope someone might find some insight in my idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re an ass. Pardon the bluntness of that statement but I’m home right now because this pissed me off so much. So my tone is less measured. Have you even contemplated all the things the industry you’re trying to “kill” does? Make note of something: Hollywood is one of the most unionized workforces in the United States. This isn’t a story of rich studio heads taking advantage of people. Actors, Writers, Stage Hands,…
One could have made the same argument against someone who wanted to abolish serfdom.
I know you'll be able to get this account killed in moments. It just continues to astound that your hypocrisy has not mediated against the insane hero worship you enjoy.
This comes across as very reactionary and frankly silly. YCombinator believes we should actively work toward making narrative video obsolete? It isn't itself inherently a faulty product or art-form. Do you really believe film's potential to produce creative and commercial success is over, or even implicates being so in the foreseeable future?