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

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

#91
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looked up "Hollywood accounting". Basically an accounting trick to screw people out of their cut of movie profits. Also familiar with DRM. Still have GP's original question. What is disrupting hollywood mean?

Who do you think is responsible for these?

Does disrupting Hollywood mean that Steven Spielberg gets his fair share of the profits?

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

#92

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 n…

Hi, I'm the guy who wrote this article. Good comments. Some thoughts:

* It takes a lot of people to write software, too. Those SoMoLo SaaS world-changers don't design and code themselves.

* But, the tech industry has found ways to bootstrap ideas that do not involve eight- or nine-figure up-front bets. The only difference between "high end" movies and "indie film" is that indies merely require six- or seven-figure up-front bets.

* Every industry that is disrupted goes through two revolutions: (1) it is digitized, i.e. it joins the "World Of Bits" (VGR) or the "IT Era" (Stratechery's phrasing); and (2) it is networked, i.e. the Internet enables new business models and production modes.

* That first revolution usually benefits incumbents. It lets them do the same exact things, more efficiently.

* Further, that first revolution is commonly confused with "disruption". But if it's not unseating incumbents -- it ain't.

* Filmed entertainment is still at the tail end of this first revolution. (I had the first two RED cameras, so I've had a front row seat to this.) But many pieces of the supply chain are still mired in Paper Belt mentality.

I mainly wrote this to stimulate discussion and thought among my film industry peers. Ironically, there's been far more engagement from y'all hackers instead. Probably because hackers, like rappers, tend to think of themselves as entrepreneurs by default. Filmmakers: you need to catch up.

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