531–540 of 697 posts
I would love to see a technology wave wash over Hollywood the likes of which we saw with the introduction of Desktop Publishing on the print market 25 or so years ago. Very little comes out of Hollywood these days with any creativity, originality or soul. If there was ever a market ripe for the picking, that's it.
It's an interesting proposition to kill Hollywood, but I don't exactly think it's going to be killed so easily, or that it's anywhere remotely resembling close to being "dead". Just examining the profit margins from this year alone paints a picture of a vibrant and healthy industry and overall employment in the industry is actually doing quite well considering the state of the economy. Although, full disclosure, I do…
To create a film/television show you are generally going to need these things:
Script
Time
Reliably Available Crew
No matter what you do, you will always need money to accommodate these three needs to produce a project in any kind of time frame that could allow such productions to ever turn a profit and allow you to keep making films. Even if everything is going to be CG and you don't need a locked location, crew doesn't need to be driven, and no one is Union, people still have needs that can't always be interrupted. Usually, that is the need to eat and drink to perform their tasks reasonably (and filmmaking can be some fucking grueling, albeit fun, work.) The rest of the time, it's making a living. Money allows you the freedom of time. If you're making a low-budget feature, that's generally going to take between 15-30 days of principal photography alone. Trying to schedule that kind of a production around your actor's shift at the Quik-Stop is a fucking nightmare.
So finding a way to finance these smaller productions gives the cast and crew the freedom they need both financially and chronologically.
It seems the best way to do that would be some form of microfinancing infrastructure similar to Kickstarter. There's been some marginal success on Kickstarter itself for film production, but I'm not aware of anything that's actually managed to gain traction. So a service that was actually completely specific to film projects that could match scripts, with time/location and reliably available crew (pre, principal and post) would be a wildly powerful tool for filmmakers (that could potentially eliminate the need for a centralized physical location like "Hollywood" as the technology has pretty successfully caught up).
Okay, the next big problem is going to be equipment rentals. They're expensive, it sucks, but it's a reality of production. An equipment rental service that caters specifically to low-budget next-generation film production that ships all over North America from multiple warehouses with helpful and reliable customer service is necessary to decentralize production.
Focusing a little more narrowly on what YComb readers could help with, scheduling and budgeting. Collaborative scheduling and budgeting tools are extremely expensive, particularly services that exist in the Cloud. Drafting a set of scheduling/budgeting tools that can be collaborated with online without the crazy charges other companies have would be a game changer. I think the only kind of open source project attacking this problem is CeltX and they don't have a budgeting component. If anyone is interested, the industry standard tools for this have generally been EP (Entertainment Partners) Budgeting and Scheduling, with cloud-based services gaining popularity over the last two years or so.
Each of these three ideas could be expanded upon radically, so I would love to have some discussion on them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are three stages in production of movies and tv shows, roughly they are: Preproduction: - where screenplay is written or adapted, cost is usually low unless rights are to be managed for original content you're adapting from. - Production schedule and directors shooting script is done, sometimes a storyboard too (skilled storyboard artists COULD be somewhat replaced by software and there are attempts) - Sound de…
According to the analysis [1] from the Institute for International Film Financing [2], movies with budgets higher than 10 Mil. have a worse ratio of breaking-even: roughly 6 of 10 loose money based on box office alone vs. only 4 of 10 fail in the less than 10 Mil. category. I agree that making movies is expensive, but we shouldn't fall prey to the availability heuristic. To circumvent this, it might help to think abo…
As for TV costs, I was involved in a Big Brother show as a director for example - reality shows are among the cheapest content you can produce (hence why there are so many of them)... 3 months of that show production was I believe in 3-5 million euros range. And that was the cheapest content you can produce, with producers that watched every penny spent with relatively cheap workforce.
It's an interesting proposition to kill Hollywood, but I don't exactly think it's going to be killed so easily, or that it's anywhere remotely resembling close to being "dead". Just examining the profit margins from this year alone paints a picture of a vibrant and healthy industry and overall employment in the industry is actually doing quite well considering the state of the economy. Although, full disclosure, I do…
You're attempting to derail the conversation by making the tech/start up/hacker scene sound like they are being immature and not listening. Tech and the internet have been in mainstream conscienceness for 15 years. They have had time to learn. They have already fired the first and second shot with numerous laws like SOPA, the DMCA and others. Rather than them being too busy, I believe they are too greedy. I owe them…
As someone stuck in the middle (a hacker working in the film industry) the whole exercise is rather depressing, and not because I think pg's startups are going to disrupt my source of income.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the media industry can help to create stupid laws. I don’t deny that. But it isn’t because they’re evil or mean. For the most part it’s because these companies are run by 60 year old men who don’t understand the nuances of technology. But their intentions are good. Oh, okay. Well, as long as their intentions are good, then it's fiiiine that they keep trying to ram bills through Congress that would destroy jobs i…
The point is people who have good intentions can be reasoned with. The Cold War didn't end with bombs it ended with talk. Because the intentions were good on both sides. Someone like pg could just as easily go to media companies and say "what you're doing here is stupid. Allow our startups access to your catalog for a reasonable price and let us try to create startups that will give people what they want and still en…
It ended with the economic decline and political collapse of the Soviet Union.
If Hollywood wants to talk during its economic decline, have at it. I don't think anybody was actually suggesting killing it off by bombing it, but rather through economic and market pressure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are three stages in production of movies and tv shows, roughly they are: Preproduction: - where screenplay is written or adapted, cost is usually low unless rights are to be managed for original content you're adapting from. - Production schedule and directors shooting script is done, sometimes a storyboard too (skilled storyboard artists COULD be somewhat replaced by software and there are attempts) - Sound de…
What about indi movies with non-pro actors, hand held cameras, no fx, no costumes, etc? If a lonely guy can entertain for hours with a book he wrote alone, may be a bunch of skilled guys can, or did already make a nice movie for much less. Think minecraft.
But, you make an interesting point. Ultra low budget movies, character or story driven ideas could get funded and developed via kickstarter, but you still have most of productions which aren't suitable for low budgets no matter what.
It's an interesting proposition to kill Hollywood, but I don't exactly think it's going to be killed so easily, or that it's anywhere remotely resembling close to being "dead". Just examining the profit margins from this year alone paints a picture of a vibrant and healthy industry and overall employment in the industry is actually doing quite well considering the state of the economy. Although, full disclosure, I do…
You're attempting to derail the conversation by making the tech/start up/hacker scene sound like they are being immature and not listening. Tech and the internet have been in mainstream conscienceness for 15 years. They have had time to learn. They have already fired the first and second shot with numerous laws like SOPA, the DMCA and others. Rather than them being too busy, I believe they are too greedy. I owe them…
I also fail to see how the mere existence of the tech industry somehow should mandate that studio executives understand how IT architecture works. In fact, I find that downright baffling how you could believe such a thing.
Your assertion that "they fired the first shot" is really the kind of rhetoric I was condemning as this isn't some kind of malicious attack born from intelligent observations of reality. Instead, it is misinformation born from overzealous and irresponsible legal analysis, a point which I detailed in my post and you aren't exactly addressing.
The final line is emotional and irrational and doesn't deserve a response.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are three stages in production of movies and tv shows, roughly they are: Preproduction: - where screenplay is written or adapted, cost is usually low unless rights are to be managed for original content you're adapting from. - Production schedule and directors shooting script is done, sometimes a storyboard too (skilled storyboard artists COULD be somewhat replaced by software and there are attempts) - Sound de…
According to the analysis [1] from the Institute for International Film Financing [2], movies with budgets higher than 10 Mil. have a worse ratio of breaking-even: roughly 6 of 10 loose money based on box office alone vs. only 4 of 10 fail in the less than 10 Mil. category. I agree that making movies is expensive, but we shouldn't fall prey to the availability heuristic. To circumvent this, it might help to think abo…
The bigger the budget, the more likely there are strong revenue streams from other sources. For example, for large tentpole pictures domestic box office is often only 1/3 of the total global box office.
This study appears to be rather shallow.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need filming equipment, a good script, stage infrastructure, well-performing or/and good-looking actors, repetition until they get it right, sound-tracks (with composers, interpreters, instruments & instrument people), editing, post-processing and maybe animation/special effects. And it's an industry where profits are made at the high end of the market (you'd rather pay Tom Cruise $100 millions for the statistica…
Yes, but that's attacking the problem in the traditional sense. We need to disrupt Hollywood, not take them head-on. A better model would be to try a lot of movies made by young actors, and just let the best of the best come on top, in an evolutionary manner. This is the web. It doesn't have to be constrained by artificial scarcity and heavy filtering. I'm sure there are a lot of young actors who are dying to get a j…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about a way of opening up financing to the public? Ideas get pitched, and the public can invest - kickstarter for movies? We've had fan-fiction, this would fan-financing.
Yes, it can work. In most cases it works like this - you produce a trailer out of your own pocket and pitch the idea to investors and studios (or studios finance trailer and pitch to investors)... so you'd replace investors here with crowd. Studios bring security to investors because they have measurable projections of what would work what wouldn't and secure channels of distributions. But, tell me how could a kickst…
Incidentally Francis Ford Coppola's comments quoted below are quite telling. If we are viewing movies as an art form then the cost (and revenue) generated should be a lot lower. If it is viewed as entertainment then it will be run as a business; making money will trump creativity and artistry every time.