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New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

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Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#101

Post by nemothekid »

rwhitman wrote: post #87

Hollywood is an industry that should be very vulnerable to disruption. Even if we ignore the whole digital distribution aspect, there's so much bloat in the overhead cost of producing a film. Everything about the industry is based around croneyism, various inside deals made between established independent contractors on short term contracts with all sorts of padding. Plus overhead for safety & insurance, lots of manu…

I've thought about this a lot - I work in mediatech and have also thought about PG's RFS when it was posted some years ago.

Ultimately, I've come to the conclusion that thinking about Hollywood as "production & distribution" is naive - if that were really the case YouTube and Netflix would have long replaced Hollywood by now. And I don't think "CGI" realism will disrupt them either.

What Hollywood has, to an overwhelming degree, and which is really hard to "automate" is talent. From writers, singers and to actors and directors, Hollywood is really effective at finding and growing talent and the rest of the world hasn't really figured out how to write great content other than "throw millions of dollars at it" (like Netflix with House of Cards).

Simply put, you can have the best distribution channels or the cheapest platform but the top tier talent is expensive - but also has the best returns. And couple that with the fact that media production is very hit or miss (you can spend 150MM on a movie and have no one watch it, or make 1B), you are faced with something you can seemingly only "disrupt" by spending as much as everyone else.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#102

Post by WorldWideWayne »

tosseraccount wrote: post #79

Maybe Google should do product placement in movies like Apple does: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-product-placements-in-t... * Apple's marketing chief, Phil Schiller, said that "One of Apple's employees works closely with Hollywood on so-called product placement so its gadgets are used in movies and television shows.

They've done product placement and they've also done something that Apple never has - they got an entire movie about just their company. It's called The Internship.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#103

Post by shkkmo »

rwhitman wrote: post #87

Hollywood is an industry that should be very vulnerable to disruption. Even if we ignore the whole digital distribution aspect, there's so much bloat in the overhead cost of producing a film. Everything about the industry is based around croneyism, various inside deals made between established independent contractors on short term contracts with all sorts of padding. Plus overhead for safety & insurance, lots of manu…

I learned recently that one the big reasons why Hollywood because synonymous with movies (besides the weather) was movie studios moving west to avoid Thomas Edison's ability to enforce his patents on the east coast.

I thought that was poetically ironic.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#104

Post by pyre »

gcb0 wrote: post #41
pyre wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MPAA/RIAA are not "The Movie Stars" they are "The Movie Studios." It's not even that. The MPAA is an industry lobbying group that the studios are members of. There is no big name movie star that is the "face" of the MPAA.

lobbying group that can order new presidential mandates and for Angelina Jolie to adopt a dozen new kids. you have no idea how PR works...

I do know how PR works. I also know that the MPAA's sister organization's fight against music piracy had some big name stars from their industry side with them (e.g. Lars Ulrich), but at the same time many big name artists (Trent Reznor, Radiohead, etc) did not side with them.

If the MPAA tries to put a "face" on this by pulling in celebrities, that could equally backfire if other celebrities come out against it.

> for Angelina Jolie to adopt a dozen new kids

So the MPAA tells Angelina Jolie how many kids to adopt now? Did the order come directly from the Illuminati or The Bilderberg Group?

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#105

Post by thenomad »

rwhitman wrote: post #87

Hollywood is an industry that should be very vulnerable to disruption. Even if we ignore the whole digital distribution aspect, there's so much bloat in the overhead cost of producing a film. Everything about the industry is based around croneyism, various inside deals made between established independent contractors on short term contracts with all sorts of padding. Plus overhead for safety & insurance, lots of manu…

Having made films for quite some time, aiming to outdo Hollywood rather than work within it - there's a lot less bloat than it may initially appear, and they're better at this stuff than they look from the outside.

Films are hugely labour-intensive, particularly to produce to the standards that the public demand. There are a variety of interesting avenues to pursue if you are interested in disrupting Hollywood - I blog about many of them when I'm not actively pursuing them - but none of them are trivial.

As for CGI realism: ish. I actually moved away from CGI to live-action quite recently, after nearly 20 years of making low-budget animated movies, because IMO live-action is actually far more promising right now. CGI is extremely useful as a backup and emabler in conjunction with live-action, but not so much on its own. I wrote more about that here - http://www.strangecompany.org/why-the-guy-who-coined-machini... .

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#106

Post by thenomad »

olavk wrote: post #91
rwhitman wrote: post #87

Hollywood is an industry that should be very vulnerable to disruption. Even if we ignore the whole digital distribution aspect, there's so much bloat in the overhead cost of producing a film. Everything about the industry is based around croneyism, various inside deals made between established independent contractors on short term contracts with all sorts of padding. Plus overhead for safety & insurance, lots of manu…

Your point about "shooting on location" versus CGI seem absurd to me. A Hollywood production is so much more that just the logistics to shoot on location. It is actors, directors, casting, production design, production management, music, manuscripts, editing etc. All of these things requires a specialized skillset. None of these can be replaces with a server rack. Animation is somewhat different production-wise, but…

"Many movies are made outside of Hollywood (so-called independent movies) with cheaper talent (sometimes working for free), but only rarely are they as financially successful as Hollywood movies."

There are one or two individual producers who crack the code to making movies that are financially successful AND outside the Hollywood model, but they're rare.

Right now, Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Insidious) and Mark Duplass (The Puffy Chair, Safety Not Guaranteed, Creep) are the two names to watch in the indie-but-also-profitable space.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#107

Post by itsuart »

venomsnake wrote: post #11

If I were google I would choose a big upcoming multi billion Hollywood film. And just return empty pages while the marketing campaign is roaring. For the star/cast/everything. I would call it piracy prevention program - that way no one will be able to find piracy content trough google.

Is TV no longer a dominant channel for big budget film marketing?

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#108

Post by ohitsdom »

bkmartin wrote: post #73
NicoJuicy wrote: post #46

I'm actually wondering how illegal this is? This is trying to influence the stock market and attacking 1 company without "legal" jurification. They are trying to hurt Google's through stock, this IS actually the same as stealing/taking away a billion $ (stockvalue) ... (that should be illegal, isn't it?) They obviously failed before execution, but that shouldn't matter... Does anyone know if Google can use this infor…

Why isn't the AG being indicted by the DOJ for this garbage? That is what I want to know. This is the kind of thing that should put someone behind bars and end a political career. Hood has obviously let his power go to his head. The MPAA is a well documented piece of garbage, but the Hood revelation is really where things get scary.

How does he justify being the MPAA's attack dog? Is there a significant movie industry in Mississippi that I am unaware of? If I lived in MS, I'd be pissed and demand answers from this guy. Using tax payer money with no benefit to his state.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#109

Post by cbr »

vonklaus wrote: post #96
venomsnake wrote: post #11

If I were google I would choose a big upcoming multi billion Hollywood film. And just return empty pages while the marketing campaign is roaring. For the star/cast/everything. I would call it piracy prevention program - that way no one will be able to find piracy content trough google.

I assume this is a joke. This would be terrifying. The MPAA are trying to stop google from fairly distributing pages they disagree with. Google is net neutrality and should act as a dumb pipe utility in the sense that it returns the most relevant info based on your search. If google returned empty pages for something it didn't agree with, the implications would be appalling. Google should do during the spectrum wars…

I agree Google should return the best response to your search and not cut things out for bargaining points, but "dumb pipe utility" is incredibly off.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#110

Post by bediger4000 »

timjahn wrote: post #90
rwhitman wrote: post #87

Hollywood is an industry that should be very vulnerable to disruption. Even if we ignore the whole digital distribution aspect, there's so much bloat in the overhead cost of producing a film. Everything about the industry is based around croneyism, various inside deals made between established independent contractors on short term contracts with all sorts of padding. Plus overhead for safety & insurance, lots of manu…

You could say the same about television. I don't buy it. I don't see us all watching cartoons only in the future.

Whadda ya mean "in the future"?

After documentaries on Netflix and Hulu, cartoons are already all that I watch, except maybe local news.

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