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

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

endcrawl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 92 posts

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

#41

Post by 67726e »

whack wrote: post #36
jasode wrote: post #9

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 no…

> Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists ... 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. This exact same argument can also be made wrt Musicians. Justin Bieber has no interest in managing a web server farm to distribute his music to fans. And yet, I'm able to go online and purchase specific Justin Bieber s…

> But the vast majority of new musicians do not self-finance their first few albums either. They sign up with a record label, and the record label finances the production/marketing/distribution costs.

Is that really the case? I'm heavily into the local music scene in my city, I'm friends with loads of musicians, go to shows almost nightly and talk to the bands, etc. Based on my experience most artists do pay for their first couple releases. With the exception of my friends who started their own "label" I only know one band who has any corporate involvement, and even in that case they're only paying to finish an album that was already being worked on.

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

#42

Post by Broken_Hippo »

euroclydon wrote: post #19
danso wrote: post #10

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 hundre…

> 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 For me, it's HD. Old movies look... old.

To me, it goes so much further than just something like the HD.

It looks old the same way an old photograph looks old. The colors are all off: The jokes aged. The sound seems weird. The special effects - even if they were amazing at the time - were off. The movies were obviously made for a different time.

Granted, there are exceptions - a few movies age well, but the vast majority do not.

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

#43

Post by TeMPOraL »

whack wrote: post #36
jasode wrote: post #9

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 no…

> Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists ... 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. This exact same argument can also be made wrt Musicians. Justin Bieber has no interest in managing a web server farm to distribute his music to fans. And yet, I'm able to go online and purchase specific Justin Bieber s…

> And yet, I'm able to go online and purchase specific Justin Bieber songs/albums that I'm interested in, without having to pay monthly fees to some Netflix-type aggregator.

I pay Spotify so I don't have to deal with a site per band. Going distributed has its costs; especially differences on the UI endpoint for the end-user is something bad, IMO.

Also, self-hosting MP3s is trivial (payment gateways, less so). At worst, you have to throw a couple bucks to a hosting company and hire a guy for couple hours a month to manage it. Hosting videos, however, is much bigger deal.

> Allowing consumers to pay only for the shows that they want to watch, instead of forcing them to pay for an entire monthly bundle, seems like it should be much more economically efficient.

It would be economically efficient, but honestly, I believe economic efficiency is the problem in arts, not the goal. That is, if users are paying for particular movies, then producers are incentivized to invest only in movies that are likely to be paid for. Which creates a feedback loop that promotes dumb, trivial content at expense of something that could be meaningful, but doesn't look sellable from the get-go.

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

#44

Post by whack »

jasode wrote: post #39
whack wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists ... 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. This exact same argument can also be made wrt Musicians. Justin Bieber has no interest in managing a web server farm to distribute his music to fans. And yet, I'm able to go online and purchase specific Justin Bieber s…

> songs/albums that I'm interested in, without having to pay monthly fees to some Netflix-type aggregator. Many music lovers subscribe to Spotify which has 30+ million tracks to choose from. However, it doesn't have the Taylor Swift albums because she pulled them. If those customers want to hear Taylor Swift, they have to buy them from Apple Itunes or Amazon Music. T Swift made a voluntary choice to net her the best…

> Many music lovers subscribe to Spotify which as 30+ million tracks to choose from

I'm not opposed to bundle-options being available, as long as I can choose to avoid them and pay ala carte. I don't even mind having to use 5 different sites in order to buy all my favorite content, as long as I'm only paying for the specific content I want on each of those sites.

That's my biggest complaint with television. For most popular TV shows, if I want to watch the latest episodes, I have to sign up and pay for an entire bundle that I'm not interested in. That strikes me as being both consumer-unfriendly, and economically-inefficient.

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

#46

Post by TeMPOraL »

whack wrote: post #44
jasode wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> songs/albums that I'm interested in, without having to pay monthly fees to some Netflix-type aggregator. Many music lovers subscribe to Spotify which has 30+ million tracks to choose from. However, it doesn't have the Taylor Swift albums because she pulled them. If those customers want to hear Taylor Swift, they have to buy them from Apple Itunes or Amazon Music. T Swift made a voluntary choice to net her the best…

> Many music lovers subscribe to Spotify which as 30+ million tracks to choose from I'm not opposed to bundle-options being available, as long as I can choose to avoid them and pay ala carte. I don't even mind having to use 5 different sites in order to buy all my favorite content, as long as I'm only paying for the specific content I want on each of those sites. That's my biggest complaint with television. For most…

You paying for the entire bundle is what makes me, a person who likes less-than-most-popular TV shows, to be able to watch those shows - they probably would never exist without that economic inefficiency in the first place! So that's why I'm probably biased, but I do believe economic efficiency leads to lowest-common-denominator products, which I find to be a bad thing in arts.

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

#47

Post by apalmer »

Joeboy wrote: post #27

Megan Ellison's had a pretty good stab at breaking into film financing. I don't think it's impossible as long as you have, say, a hundred million dollars at your disposal. If you don't, that's basically game over as that's what you need to finance a handful of decent indie films.

your point is valid... however i think its going to get into the same feedback loop as regular movie studios. fundamentally even if you have 100 million to make 5 films, you really cant afford a 20 million dollar flop. As long as your a rational actor your going to start chasing hits and trying to minimize flops by 'standardizing' your films.

The fundamental problem is in my opinion we want folks with millions on the line to not act like rational actors but instead do it 'for the art'... this will happen from time to time but will not really be the norm i think.

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

#48

Post by TeMPOraL »

devonkim wrote: post #23
euroclydon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 For me, it's HD. Old movies look... old.

It's not aesthetics for me as much as sufficiently older movies are a lot closer to stage plays in how they're filmed and storyboarded, and I generally dislike plays and musicals whatever the content is (case in point: I don't have any interest in Hamilton nor Disney movies). Then comes a lot of older movies having pacing that doesn't fit the time and mental energy commitment I am capable of making. I can appreciate…

It's probably different to different people, but I'm having trouble with old movies for a similar reason - they feel too slow to me. The plot doesn't develop fast enough; sometimes I actually can't make heads or tails of it, because some events are spaced out in a way that breaks the casual relationship in my mind.

The what it differs from what you described is that I don't mind active, decision-rich entertainment. I love video games. I just have too short of an attention span to really enjoy old, slow-paced movies :/.

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

#49

Post by klodolph »

whack wrote: post #36
jasode wrote: post #9

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 no…

> Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists ... 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. This exact same argument can also be made wrt Musicians. Justin Bieber has no interest in managing a web server farm to distribute his music to fans. And yet, I'm able to go online and purchase specific Justin Bieber s…

Even if an artist doesn't finance production, you can still show up at the record company with a demo tape and a fan following. There is also a long history of artists starting their own studios and record labels.

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

#50

Post by Keyframe »

It's a multi-tiered problem with each one with its own complexities. I don't want to write a long story now, but I want to emphasise one and one thing only.

If you want to disrupt film and/or tv industry then you have to disrupt people, not technology (by much). It's a people problem.

It takes a lot of people in a collaborative manner to work on a product like that, with each person being skilled and expensive. You need a lot of people like that for a long time. You also need wood, nails, paint, cars, space, energy... lots of those in order to build sets. And someone to imagine them and someone to design them.

Having a fancy camera, grip, lenses is a tiny tiny proportion of any reasonable-sized budget. Most of the money goes to people and towards materials, rentals and space for sets.

It's a lot of money too, if you want to make something reasonable. Not everything can be made on a small budget with innovative story. Some products can, but not majority.

What it means is that you need a lot of cash, and for that you need investors (or deep pockets and then you don't care, maybe). With investors there are expectations of return on investment. And with that you're in the realm of distribution.. and then real complexities come forward.

You can't expect to raise anything moderate in crowd-funding for these types of products. It's too much for the level where that is now.

Note: I work in this industry. I have or have access to free state-of-the-art cameras, grip, lenses, even studio facilities and more, yet I can't make a movie just like that. I still need to pay lots of people to do their job and pay the materials for (at least some) sets or set dressing.

It's a people problem. They need to eat and pay bills and they don't care (much) about your grand vision if you're not paying.

Post reply on HN