311–320 of 697 posts
If you can get the artists on your side, you can kill hollywood.
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While I agree in part, the issue is that good art, really really good art, is a full-time job that can take years and years of practice. Much like writing good software. Saying art should be free is saying all software should be free - the same amount of work and risk goes into it. There is a balance to be had here and in many countries it is solved with artist grants, recognizing the value to be had from a rich cult…
Yes but invariably they were not rich. In fact too many died in poverty. The commercial, popular art era started when copies became available to the market, and it ends when copies become zero cost. Hollywood's obsession with mega-productions tends to be an attempt to force-feed mediocre movies rather than advancing the arts anymore BTW, Coppola suggests 3 rules 1) Write and direct original screenplays, 2) Make them…
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Pitches don't work like that. If you want other people's time or other people's money, you better throw some more skin into the game. The most simple thing to imagine is creating a small prototype. But there are other ways.
With this "RFS" who's pitching who? I'm working on the prototype to prove the concept. But there is no GUI, I am strictly a command-line user. What are the "other ways" you allude to?
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I believe the problem isn't the existence of Hollywood, but that too much power is centralized in the hands of too few. Competition within the city can be likened to a Duopoly; competition in name, but far from it in practice. I remember reading about how the RIAA companies engineer their licensing contracts in a way that forces maximum payoffs [1], and I wouldn't be surprised to find those problems in Hollywood as w…
Hollywood has guilds, unions, and politics (referring to the internal.) Fall out of favor or break the rules and your out. This environment is the antithesis of creativity. Consider an alternative market: books. Today anyone anywhere can write and sell a book to just about anyone thanks to the Kindle and other electronic book platforms. Borders went belly up and Barnes and Noble might follow. It suddenly appears that…
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What's really needed is the next level of authoring tools. Here's the startup I'd do: (1) buy up a near dead MMO, preferably one with impressively realistic character graphics. (2) retool it as a machima authoring tool (3) hook it into kinect for motion capture (4) leverage the userbase to crowdsource additions to the 3D library. With just this talented hobbyists and unfunded indy talents would begin to swamp Hollywo…
I like this idea. On the graphics end, it might be better to modify an FPS engine, like the DOOM3 engine. You will get better graphics, and if you are simply generating a TV show, you don't really need the scalability that an MMO provides. And the graphics for most failing MMOS are not that great. You could distribute the machima via a youtube like service that is specific for machima. You might even get a completely…
One of the characters in Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson mentions that accurate modelling of human facial expressions was a key component in the success of that world's VR environment.
Fictional anecdotes are even less like data than real-life anecdotes, but I think it says something that when humans try to annotate text with emotions, faces are the closest graphical analogue:
:) :( O_oSometime over the past year I went from thinking YouTube content was insignificant compared to Hollywood, to the point where I'd happily give up all broadcast/cable/DVD/Netflix content for YouTube type user generated content. I suspect this will be more widespread in a year or two more.
What's really needed is the next level of authoring tools. Here's the startup I'd do: (1) buy up a near dead MMO, preferably one with impressively realistic character graphics. (2) retool it as a machima authoring tool (3) hook it into kinect for motion capture (4) leverage the userbase to crowdsource additions to the 3D library. With just this talented hobbyists and unfunded indy talents would begin to swamp Hollywo…
There are a few reasons why I think this MMO would make an awesome engine for this startup.
1. The character customization system includes the ability to design clothing and tattoos for the character. If you don't like the wardrobe included in the game, you can design your own.
2. There is an equally extensive toolset to modify your character's physical appearance.
3. The customization was a main selling point for this game. People were supposed to be able to sell the clothing they designed in game and even exchange the virtual currency for more play time. This emphasis on user creativity means that the average APB player is probably more likely to begin playing with the intent to create their own content.
4. The studio that now owns the game didn't have to eat a $100 million loss, so they don't have to get a huge amount of money if they sell the game again. This combined with the fact that it failed once, and might again would ensure that there wouldn't be any competitors.
P.S. Another possible solution would be to just license the engine to create your own game. This is a common practice in the game industry and is usually far cheaper than trying to purchase a complete game.
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I love FFC. I'm a current UCLA film student - Coppola's alma mater. One thing to think about: UCLA has always been the "indy, intellectual" film school. It's our rep, internally and (to an extent) externally. When Coppola left UCLA to work in Hollywood, he was branded a sell-out by his fellow students. One thing to think about w/ this whole "crush Hollywood" thing is this: most of your favorite movies (assuming you'v…
I believe the problem isn't the existence of Hollywood, but that too much power is centralized in the hands of too few. Competition within the city can be likened to a Duopoly; competition in name, but far from it in practice. I remember reading about how the RIAA companies engineer their licensing contracts in a way that forces maximum payoffs [1], and I wouldn't be surprised to find those problems in Hollywood as w…
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Very interesting. A lot of people who suggest games as a replacement for video seem to be missing this point. Games require active interaction. Not everyone always wants to entertain themselves in a way that requires active interaction. Sometimes we just want to sit back, relax, and let the storyteller tell their story. Watching Bruce Willis blow shit up on a screen is a completely different kind of entertainment tha…
So, give me a way to have my cake and eat it too. Give me a medium that adjusts the interactivity demands of the entertainment according to the recline of my chair or the open width of my eyelids. Metaphorically speaking (or not).
Has anyone tried out Amazon Studios: http://studios.amazon.com/ ? That seems to be a big step in this direction. Amazon.com has already created a big threat in the publishing industry with e-books and self-publishing. I think hollywood is next with the democratization of content and technological tools. It used to be that to create "Hollywood grade" movies would require tons of expensive equipment and capital. I don'…
Many artists steer clean of Amazon because it is trying to democratize art through crowdsourced development. Can you imagine what would have happened to Blade Runner if Ridley Scott had even less control on the final cut?