You have to beat the man to be the man • Hacker News Board

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#21

Post by lisper » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 5:48 PM UTC

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #18

lisper wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but Silicon Valley's mistake (not necessarily PG's mistake) is thinking that what will kill Hollywood is technology. It isn't. What will kill Hollywood is the marriage of technology and the new content creation and distribution models that the technology enables. Curran's point is just that cute cat videos will only get you so far. It's what comes after that that no one seems to have figured out yet. The current…

> cute cat videos will only get you so far. Aren't we already spending more time watching videos on YouTube / CollegeHumor and funny pics on Reddit than we do watching films? One might think that we have solved the content / attention problem. What remains to be solved is monetization.

Yes, just that one little detail to work out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#22

Post by tlb » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

gergles wrote: post #15

The real reason a VC company isn't going to kill hollywood is because there's not enough money in it. The author throws around $65 billion industry as if that's some sort of impressive number. FB alone is worth $100B. We could liquidate FB and buy the entire industry and shut it down if we really wanted to. Compare that to LNKD, EBAY, GOOG, hell even CRM. We have hit after hit after hit that are worth more than the e…

$65B is Hollywood's annual revenue. $100B is Facebook's market cap -- its revenue is $5B (2012). Hollywood's revenue is a plenty big enough prize to chase.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#23

Post by Spearchucker » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 5:53 PM UTC

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #17

KaiserPro wrote: post #10

There are several reasons why Y combinator is unlikely to kill hollywood. The Author touches on part of the problem. To make a good movie you need: 1) an excellent script (if it reads like shit, its going to look worse, if the pitch is "its like X but...." its a fail) 2) a significant amount of captial ($1million) 3) quality actors 4) ridiculously good organisation skills (you'll be organising 40+ people hundreds and…

You're assuming that the content has to have the same format as movies. Short videos (like the ones produced by CollegeHumor) can have a good script and quality visuals without involving a big budget. The market isn't "films". It is "entertainment".

I like feature-length movies. Short films are a way to fill an idle minute, but otherwise bore me. No one I know spends 2 hours straight just watching short clips or movies on YouTube.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#24

Post by walshemj » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 5:54 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #10

There are several reasons why Y combinator is unlikely to kill hollywood. The Author touches on part of the problem. To make a good movie you need: 1) an excellent script (if it reads like shit, its going to look worse, if the pitch is "its like X but...." its a fail) 2) a significant amount of captial ($1million) 3) quality actors 4) ridiculously good organisation skills (you'll be organising 40+ people hundreds and…

$1million is a low/mid budget TV series I think Amanda Tapping's Sanctuary show had that sort of budget and they had tax breaks on top of that

Mad men is several million per episode. A cheapish movie is 30-40 Million.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#25

Post by drblast » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 5:58 PM UTC

Spearchucker wrote: post #23

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that the content has to have the same format as movies. Short videos (like the ones produced by CollegeHumor) can have a good script and quality visuals without involving a big budget. The market isn't "films". It is "entertainment".

I like feature-length movies. Short films are a way to fill an idle minute, but otherwise bore me. No one I know spends 2 hours straight just watching short clips or movies on YouTube.

My wife and I spend quite a bit of time watching 22 or 50 minute TV shows in succession on Netflix.

I think that format is in many ways more interesting, as you can develop a story in much more depth than you could with a 2 hour movie.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#26

Post by robin2 » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

gergles wrote: post #15

The real reason a VC company isn't going to kill hollywood is because there's not enough money in it. The author throws around $65 billion industry as if that's some sort of impressive number. FB alone is worth $100B. We could liquidate FB and buy the entire industry and shut it down if we really wanted to. Compare that to LNKD, EBAY, GOOG, hell even CRM. We have hit after hit after hit that are worth more than the e…

It rather depends what you count as "killing Hollywood".

Back in the late 90s, I used to get rather perplexed by the way geeks railed against DVD zoning, DMCA, etc. Yes, the entertainment industry was acting in fairly nasty ways to defend itself, but then drug dealers can be unpleasant too. My view was the debates around DRM circumvention didn't even touch on the root cause of the entertainment industry's power.

Michael Ventura once summarized the meaning of entertainment: "You go from a job you don't like to watching a screen on which others live more intensely than you." On that view of things, something like meetup.com is more of a threat to Hollywood than youtube could ever be.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#27

Post by ericHosick » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 6:01 PM UTC

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #17

KaiserPro wrote: post #10

There are several reasons why Y combinator is unlikely to kill hollywood. The Author touches on part of the problem. To make a good movie you need: 1) an excellent script (if it reads like shit, its going to look worse, if the pitch is "its like X but...." its a fail) 2) a significant amount of captial ($1million) 3) quality actors 4) ridiculously good organisation skills (you'll be organising 40+ people hundreds and…

You're assuming that the content has to have the same format as movies. Short videos (like the ones produced by CollegeHumor) can have a good script and quality visuals without involving a big budget. The market isn't "films". It is "entertainment".

> The market isn't "films". It is "entertainment".

Kevin Spacey on this subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ukYf_xvgc.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#28

Post by djloche » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 6:19 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #24

KaiserPro wrote: post #10

There are several reasons why Y combinator is unlikely to kill hollywood. The Author touches on part of the problem. To make a good movie you need: 1) an excellent script (if it reads like shit, its going to look worse, if the pitch is "its like X but...." its a fail) 2) a significant amount of captial ($1million) 3) quality actors 4) ridiculously good organisation skills (you'll be organising 40+ people hundreds and…

$1million is a low/mid budget TV series I think Amanda Tapping's Sanctuary show had that sort of budget and they had tax breaks on top of that Mad men is several million per episode. A cheapish movie is 30-40 Million.

For reference here are the production budgets for Rian Johnson's films:

Brick: $500,000

The Brother's Bloom: $20,000,000

Looper: $60,000,000

The obvious thing that is seen here is that Special Effects and High Profile Actors significantly increase the cost of films. If you had little to no CG (like Brick), you might be able to pull off a ~1M film with new-er talent (like JGL was at the time).

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#29

Post by rdxm » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 6:20 PM UTC

i like this post/article/statement. it reminds me that as technologists we tend to want to reduce things to algorithms.

that just doesn't work when you get to aesthetics and the human side of the equation.

Re: You have to beat the man to be the man

#30

Post by KaiserPro » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 6:24 PM UTC

drblast wrote: post #25

Spearchucker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like feature-length movies. Short films are a way to fill an idle minute, but otherwise bore me. No one I know spends 2 hours straight just watching short clips or movies on YouTube.

My wife and I spend quite a bit of time watching 22 or 50 minute TV shows in succession on Netflix. I think that format is in many ways more interesting, as you can develop a story in much more depth than you could with a 2 hour movie.

Thats longform/episodic, which is not the same as feature length hollywood.

However you are correct that 8x25 or 6x60 allows for far richer narrative. (The BBC's sherlock is a brilliant example of this 3x90 minutes of tastily thick narrative)