Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You have to beat the man to be the man

charliecurran.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 89 posts

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

#31

Post by KaiserPro »

ericHosick wrote: post #27
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".

> The market isn't "films". It is "entertainment". Kevin Spacey on this subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ukYf_xvgc .

yup, but we are talking about "killing hollywood" which is films.

Longform is largely separate. People rarely gather for a single 20 minute episode of something, they do gather for an 90 minute film.

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

#32

Post by betterunix »

"At the very heart of the film industry’s longevity is the art of narrative storytelling which has been refined continuously"

The overwhelming majority of Hollywood movies are terrible, shallow stories with formulaic development that are designed to grab money from specific demographics. There is hardly anything artistic left.

It may be what people want, but let's not pretend that great works of art are what keep Hollywood profitable.

"you have to remember this is a sixty-five billion dollar a year industry that has survived multiple world wars and the great depression"

The typewriter industry also survived those wars and the great depression, and where is it now? Times change, and businesses that adapt poorly to a changing market will be replaced.

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

#33

Post by betterunix »

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…

"Once you've spent three years of your life doing that, you then need to get your movie seen. That means persuading people who think you are worse than dogshit to watch a movie that they really couldn't care about, much less actually pay you for."

Which is exactly why Hollywood is due for replacement. When you can't say, "People want to see this movie because it is a good movie," or, "People want to see this movie because it is worth the price of a ticket to see," you should not be in the movie-making business. If nobody can make a movie that stands on its own merits, then the movie-making business is past its prime.

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

#34

Post by KaiserPro »

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.

At what time of day?

The main problem that people fail to grasp is that nobody really cares about the technology, unless it gets in the way.

People only care about content, look at the signal to noise ratio on youtube, it's astronomically high. American TV has a lower s/n ratio, but not much lower. (I'm british so fortunately we have a stream of relatively HQ TV without the shitty twitter gimmicks that plague things like discovery.)

In short, there is no problem with monitization really, netflix has it nailed.

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

#35

Post by greenyoda »

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".

Exactly. Killing Hollywood doesn't necessarily mean beating them at their own game. Killing Hollywood means that some competitor (or perhaps several competitors) will take away enough share of the entertainment market to make Hollywood's business collapse. For example, TV shows have taken a large chunk of business away from the motion picture industry since TV was invented, but they're not feature films. A similar example might be tablets killing the PC industry: tablets are not PCs, but they've taken a large chunk of business away from the PC market.

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

#36

Post by diminish »

betterunix wrote: post #32

"At the very heart of the film industry’s longevity is the art of narrative storytelling which has been refined continuously" The overwhelming majority of Hollywood movies are terrible, shallow stories with formulaic development that are designed to grab money from specific demographics. There is hardly anything artistic left. It may be what people want, but let's not pretend that great works of art are what keep Hol…

Here comes the formulaic HN movie, two hackers decide to kill movie industry.....

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

#37

Post by KaiserPro »

betterunix wrote: post #33
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…

"Once you've spent three years of your life doing that, you then need to get your movie seen. That means persuading people who think you are worse than dogshit to watch a movie that they really couldn't care about, much less actually pay you for." Which is exactly why Hollywood is due for replacement. When you can't say, "People want to see this movie because it is a good movie ," or, "People want to see this movie b…

Ahh, but therein lies the rub. The movie-making business is fine, its the disties that are the problem.

The problem is this, a good movie is subjective. Go to your local movie festival, 90% of the entries will be clichéd lumbering trite. 7% will be good by comparison, but you wouldn't recommend them to your friends, much less bet money on them. This leaves 3% that are quality. Of that 3% 20% might be profitable.

People go to cinemas to see movies that interest them. If they go to a cinema, they understand that the content is hand picked and is going to be high quality. This is how HBO works. They select scripts/concepts that they think are good. They are overwhelmed by wannabe directors who are frankly rubbish. In the same way the a good VC is overwhelmed by instagram clones.

There is a need for a gate keeper, to maintain quality. arguably these gate keepers are more likley to be TV execs (HBO bankrolled the new Liberace movie) or people like netflicks

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

#38

Post by KaiserPro »

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'm assuming there is a market for 90 minute narratives.

CollegeHumour is only really competition for things like Archer, Family Guy and the like. So really only a competition for TV.

There is still a market for Movies, and its a large and thriving market (in the UK movie going is at an all time high.)

You're not going to kill hollywood by stringing together a few gags into a 90minute combo. movie42 is a good example of that.

People want content, and until you can provide content that is on a par, or better than movies, you are pissing in the wind

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

#39

Post by KaiserPro »

greenyoda wrote: post #35
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".

Exactly. Killing Hollywood doesn't necessarily mean beating them at their own game. Killing Hollywood means that some competitor (or perhaps several competitors) will take away enough share of the entertainment market to make Hollywood's business collapse. For example, TV shows have taken a large chunk of business away from the motion picture industry since TV was invented, but they're not feature films. A similar ex…

http://screenville.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/attendance-history...

cinema attendance has been growing for a while.

Not even netflix is killing hollywood at the moment.

Post reply on HN