Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood • Hacker News Board

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#61

Post by jiggy2011 » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 1:24 PM UTC

inkaudio wrote: post #21

eck wrote: post #11

I am sort of surprised that pg chose movies rather than music. Movies are hard . You need a lot of things to make a movie. I liked Avatar. You can't do that kind of thing on the cheap. Actors, sites, makeup, lighting, special effects, etc. For music, you need the band, which are essentially founders from an equity standpoint, and own their own instruments already since they know how to play them. You need like $1000…

A $1000 recording won't give you great sound quality, not 24/96 K. It easy to marginalize a recording engineer until you try to record an album yourself. To get the the sound you want there are number of things you want to get right, the right equipment, the right space, mic placement, recording levels. Still not as expensive or hard as making movie, but not so easy either.

This is true, I know some indie musicians and they usually own a minimum of $10,000 worth of equipment themselves and on top of that hire other stuff when they record or play live.

A lot of things that people think are "done in someone's garage" are either done by someone with very rich parents or produced by a relatively well funded company.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#62

Post by Retric » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 1:56 PM UTC

jcampbell1 wrote: post #31

In the risk of being down voted to hell, this whole thing seems completely misguided to me. I love the product that hollywood produces. I love great movies and great TV. I frankly think "The Wire" is the best example of story telling I know of. I can think of nothing that silicon valley has produced that even comes close. If Zynga disappeared tomorrow, I could care less, and Hollywood and Zynga are both selling enter…

Farm ville is silicon valley's equivalent to Survivor, massive popular appeal zero actual substance. If you want to compare art, I don't remember the last time I enjoyed a movie as much as Portal the video game. And unlike Hollywood it's squeal was bettor than the original.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#63

Post by phzbOx » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:18 PM UTC

Woa, that went huge fast. I mean, every startups is an offensive against something already existing, no? Yes, you can have an original idea but more often than not, it's based on something existing and enhancing it in some ways.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#64

Post by powertower » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 2:44 PM UTC

If you want to get rid of Hollywood, there is only one way to do it...

Start funding shows, movies, and productions.

Or figure out how to get 100MM people (or more) subscribed at $10/month (or more) to check-mark which shows and movies they want created. Then use the revenue from that to make the production.

Maybe even make the process completely democratic, where actors (known, and unknown) can send in their auditions and you get to vote on it. Then use YouTube or NetFlix for distribution, and provide downloads.

There is more to it than the above, but that pretty much cuts the studios off, and Hollywood in general, at the knees, and gives control to the consumers.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#65

Post by maigret » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 3:04 PM UTC

powertower wrote: post #64

If you want to get rid of Hollywood, there is only one way to do it... Start funding shows, movies, and productions. Or figure out how to get 100MM people (or more) subscribed at $10/month (or more) to check-mark which shows and movies they want created. Then use the revenue from that to make the production. Maybe even make the process completely democratic, where actors (known, and unknown) can send in their auditio…

So back to the beginning of the loop... One has to pay for content.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#66

Post by powertower » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 3:28 PM UTC

maigret wrote: post #65

powertower wrote: post #64

If you want to get rid of Hollywood, there is only one way to do it... Start funding shows, movies, and productions. Or figure out how to get 100MM people (or more) subscribed at $10/month (or more) to check-mark which shows and movies they want created. Then use the revenue from that to make the production. Maybe even make the process completely democratic, where actors (known, and unknown) can send in their auditio…

So back to the beginning of the loop... One has to pay for content.

How's that a problem?

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#67

Post by pilgrim689 » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 4:08 PM UTC

jcampbell1 wrote: post #31

In the risk of being down voted to hell, this whole thing seems completely misguided to me. I love the product that hollywood produces. I love great movies and great TV. I frankly think "The Wire" is the best example of story telling I know of. I can think of nothing that silicon valley has produced that even comes close. If Zynga disappeared tomorrow, I could care less, and Hollywood and Zynga are both selling enter…

What's to stop the Hollywood competitor from producing shows like "The Wire"? No one said Zynga would be the Hollywood killer. In fact, the "Hollywood killer" might not even exist yet... so how can you know it won't do for you what Hollywood already does before it even exists??

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#68

Post by raganwald » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 4:16 PM UTC

andrewcooke wrote: post #50

jcampbell1 wrote: post #31

In the risk of being down voted to hell, this whole thing seems completely misguided to me. I love the product that hollywood produces. I love great movies and great TV. I frankly think "The Wire" is the best example of story telling I know of. I can think of nothing that silicon valley has produced that even comes close. If Zynga disappeared tomorrow, I could care less, and Hollywood and Zynga are both selling enter…

you're missing the point completely. any replacement has to succeed because it's better than hollywood. something even more awesome will come along and replace it. the argument is not "lets all share files until they go bankrupt"; it's "there is change afoot; whoever can make the awesomest, most loved art / entertainment of the next wave will win big". you're not a special flower. the stuff you like is mass market. y…

> any replacement has to succeed because it's better than hollywood. something even more awesome will come along and replace it

Don’t forget, when it comes along, it will probably appear to be worse than hollywood, just as text messaging is worse than email and email is worse than an express envelope.

That’s the nature of a disruption. It’s obviously worse. Until, after the fact, everyone suddenly claims it’s so much better.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#69

Post by learc83 » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 4:48 PM UTC

mooki wrote: post #53

learc83 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avatar and Tangled were both pioneers of new technology of course they were expensive, but there are amateur fan effects better than those from multi-million dollar movies and TV shows 15-20 years ago. And the games of 10-15 years ago can be made a couple of people on a shoestring budget. I expect that trend to continue. >Makeup isn't going to be much cheaper just because you do it in Maya. They won't use Maya. Techn…

But to take that photo you still need to find the perfect tree or building, then drag some cameras out and take pictures of it. Then once it's uploaded, set up light and do some manual adjusting because that branch is just a few degrees off. And that's just one tree or building, you need thousands for a movie. Indie movies will upload their back yard or buy stock trees, and it will show. That's what separates big bud…

>Computers doesn't understand beauty or emotion, so you need fine grained human control every step of the way.

That's were your wrong. Computers don't understand beauty, but given enough processing power, and sample data they can recreate it.

There's already a program that can listen to Beethoven and reproduce something that even experts can't tell he didn't write.

A movie example: In your movie creator you set up a scene with 2 people talking in a room. The computer has been trained with thousands of such scenes, so it automatically selects the best camera angles and allows the operator some manual control. That will happen at some point.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#70

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 5:04 PM UTC

powertower wrote: post #64

If you want to get rid of Hollywood, there is only one way to do it... Start funding shows, movies, and productions. Or figure out how to get 100MM people (or more) subscribed at $10/month (or more) to check-mark which shows and movies they want created. Then use the revenue from that to make the production. Maybe even make the process completely democratic, where actors (known, and unknown) can send in their auditio…

[deleted]