Why the Film Industry Hasn't Been Disrupted Yet, Part 5

It seems more that the film industry has been disrupted, it's just that small studios have been hurt and large conglomerates were the ones to seize power. Technology changed the economics of the film industry in a disruptive way, and "disruption" shouldn't be a term reserved for small startups taking advantage of those shifts as opposed to large companies.

Re: Why the Film Industry Hasn't Been Disrupted Yet, Part 5

#7

Post by btown » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 5:45 PM UTC

It's worth reading the entire series, beginning with http://endcrawl.com/blog/film-not-disrupted-yet-part-1/ .

While large tech companies are great at attracting talent, that doesn't create a dearth of talent going into smaller startups. The driver here is Part 1: the capital requirements for any high-quality project are huge and up-front. And as entertainment is getting increasingly saturated, there's no real way for a "unicorn" franchise to be born out of an indie flick. No upstart VC will take a bet on you making the next Star Wars, even if you're already an industry insider... and in that case, per the OP, it's much more reliable for you to work within the current system. And on top of that, industry fundamentals don't look good: from one of the links in Part 4, https://redef.com/original/the-future-of-film-part-i-us-film... .

Perhaps film is truly an industry in decline, and the disruption is already happening - not from Netflix and other content producers, but in the form of interactivity and mainstream gaming. Perhaps the monetization model there is simply better. Time will tell.

Re: Why the Film Industry Hasn't Been Disrupted Yet, Part 5

#8

Post by anotherarray » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

What about bootstrapped, self-funded, youtube channels that became huge?

Re: Why the Film Industry Hasn't Been Disrupted Yet, Part 5

#9

Post by jasode » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 5:48 PM UTC

The article's Part 1 refers to an old HN thread and buried in there is a good comment from anactofgod about "disrupting Hollywood": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491584

His analysis has similar to themes to the misunderstanding of "gatekeepers" like Netflix / Amazon Video / HBO and why they exist.

Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists not having money to self-finance their projects -- and -- also not wanting to mess around with tasks that are unrelated to creativity such as managing a web server farm to distribute their videos to their fans.

There was a recent HN thread where people were frustrated that they had to pay for multiple streaming services (Netflix/Hulu/Amazon) to get all the shows they wanted. Several suggested that we need to move towards a decentralized P2P distribution platform. Unfortunately, as techies and programmers, we don't consider the underlying economic forces that created the centralized gatekeepers in the first place. For example... if director/producer David Fincher wants the highest payment for his project, he can go to Netflix execs and convince them give him $100 million[1]. How would he get that kind of payday from decentralized systems such as IPFS / Sandstorm / DECENT[2]?

[1]http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-outbids-hbo-da...

[2]https://decent.ch/

Re: Why the Film Industry Hasn't Been Disrupted Yet, Part 5

#10

Post by danso » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

One factor that I didn't see mentioned in this post or the author's previous post is the strength and influence of the union. I lived with an actress who had moderate enough success to do acting full time, have an agent, and be in the Screen Actors Guild. I was amazed at how much money she could pull in for just having a split-second role in a nationally broadcast ad, when it seems likely a company could finds hundreds of attractive, willing people to show up in an ad for a few hundred bucks. My impression from her was that doing non-union work as SAG member could easily kill your career, considering how most studios do not work with non union folks, as SAG would push back hard on them.

That said, the film industry is very much built on sentiment and brand. I'm a fan of movies from all eras, so I don't understand why people are so thrilled to pay money to see a new movie when there are so many great movies in the past few decades, nevermind the past year. But people today really want to see Jennifer Lawrence's new work, no matter how many other equally great actresses have had great roles in years past.

Same deal with franchises, in movies and in games. A fan-remake could remove Nintendo characters and assets and still have the exact same game mechanics and quality, but very few people would give a shit. We want to see the characters and worlds we grew up with and loved, regardless of whether the actual vehicle (movie, game, etc) isn't particularly noteworthy.

Edit: Contrast film with other industries that have been disrupted. I like Seymour Hersh, but I don't care if a great investigative reporting scoop comes from him or from a blogger, I just care about its veracity and impact. Same with software; John Resig seems like a great human being but that's not the main reason for jquery's dominance. Meanwhile, if Star Wars Force Awakens refused Harrison Ford's demands and put someone else in as Han Solo, people would not be so accepting.

Note: I'm not saying the union is bad. It's probably more useful to see the strength of the union as a reflection of the inherent strength and value that actors wield in moviemaking.