
Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood - invisiblefunnel
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/y-combinator-goes-on-the-offensive-against-hollywood/?src=twrhp
======
ajb
I think what we need to work on is improving the political clout of engineers,
not destroying hollywood. We've won this one (I hope) but it took rather
extreme measures. Blacking out wikipedia isn't something which can be done
every time congress threatens to do something stupid. It's a bit like going on
strike - a negative act which can turn people against us if overused. We need
mechanisms which can influence politics on a day-to-day level, so we don't
need to do these last-ditch operations.

Nevertheless, defeating SOPA is hugely significant, because it shows that we
CAN be politically effective. Politics can operate as a kind of nonviolent
intimidation: if our opponents have the reputation of being politically
effective, and our group has the reputation of being politically ineffective,
individuals think it's not worth their time trying to influence politics.

Take software patents. Whenever this comes up, there are always gloomy posts
saying that we will never defeat the patent lobby. This perception deters
everyone from trying to.

EFF does a good job. But I think more of us need to be active as individuals,
on a day to day basis rather than just when the trumpet sounds like this.
Suppose there was a website where you could sign a pledge which said: "I will
spend 1/2 hour a week working against internet censorship". and then provided
stack-overflow-like facilities whereby activists could suggest useful actions
and vote on which are the best; and collect data on which arguments seemed
most effective. Not only would this make us more effective, it would declare
that we were a force to be reckoned with.

Anyone up for making such a website?

~~~
sunchild
It's not about engineers vs. "Hollywood". I'm not even sure what either of
those categories are, and I doubt the people who fall into those categories
could agree who belongs in them and who doesn't. Also, the distinction is
completely meaningless when you consider that many of the labor interests
behind the "Hollywood" position are scientists and engineers who do the
logistical grunt work of the on-screen magic.

Lose that false dichotomy and the rest of your post stands on its own: we
won't win if we give up.

~~~
beatle
You need to convince millions of people not to watch Dark knight Rising,
Transformers, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Twilight, Mission Impossible, and
hundreds of other blockbusters and TV Shows, every year.

Then, the hardest part, you need to come up with something that is
Waaaaaaaaaayyyy waayyyyy better than all those movies and TV shows combined --
and do it every single day.

Then, you'll kill Hollywood.

------
jcampbell1
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 entertainment. Zynga's entertainment
value is less than worthless to me. I hope hollywood continues to be a
massively successful industry in the hope that the next David Simon is
created.

~~~
andrewcooke
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. you will like
even more whatever comes next - if you didn't, then it wouldn't be the next
big thing. the argument is self-fulfilling; yc simply wants to be the one that
makes money on it. don't be mislead by the macho "killing" rhetoric.

~~~
raganwald
> 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.

~~~
easp
It's worth keeping in mind that The Wire is a product of HBO, and cable TV.
They are now well established, but they were once upstarts in their own way.

HBO got its start showing rewarmed mainstream Hollywood movies, months or more
after their theatrical releasee. This though was enough to make them one of
the few bright spots on the vast wasteland of Gilligan's Island and Bewitched
reruns that was cable TV. For that, cable operators were able to extract a
premium. From there, they branched out into various bits of original
programming.

Then came original programming like Oz, Sopranos, the Wire. This was TV that
people regarded as art, and as art, superior to anything on network television
and hollywood movies.

Other examples to consider, early Miramax and Merchant/Ivory.

------
ajhit406
What hollywood has going for it, is a track-record of executing on the
operations behind producing movies that make money.

People who invest in movies invest for the same reasons all of us invest in
anything-- to make money.

Hollywood is a business, albeit one rooted in entertainment, but let's face
it-- many artists are also just in it for the money.

I don't think our world view of "entertainment" is going to shift the way that
YC suggested in it's call for action. I think most of us (unfortunately) are
still going to want to watch movies like Transformers 3 at a $200 million
budget than a $1million dollar indie flick.

So, once we've recognized that uprooting involves figuring out how to finance
movie production instead of shifting the realm of entertainment (at least, for
our generation, perhaps future generations will just want to watch WOW and
starcraft online), then we're getting somewhere.

Unfortunately, figuring out a way to finance a film that costs tens or
hundreds of millions to produce is a pretty tricky endeavor.

Still, it will be pretty awesome when Brad Pitt signs onto his first crowd-
sourced flick =)

~~~
nextparadigms
Think in a disruptive way. Actors don't have to be paid $10 million. Special
effects don't have to cost tens of millions. Equipment doesn't have to cost
millions either.

Make the movies the way you would build a lean start-up. And bank on
innovation in the movies and scripts, rather than recycling popular content
and make it very flashy.

But as I mentioned in another comment, I think to kill Hollywood you need
incubators like YCombinator to seed the initial team and script, and attract
young talent, and then help them find investors who would put a few millions
into the movie, and also build a platform for distribution, like a Youtube for
these movies, and a good business model to monetize them.

Some kind of news/community sites would help too, not only to share
information about the projects, but also get feedback and build a group of
"early adopters" who will evangelize your movie later.

~~~
MrScruff
Honestly, what do you think YCombinator can bring to the table that isn't
already there? How exactly do you propose to disrupt something you know
nothing about? It's the equivalent of the head of the MPAA saying 'Fuck it,
we'll build our own search engine'. I know the tech scene is full of very
smart people, but guess what - the film industry is full of very smart people
too!

The thing you have to understand is that smart, talented people are making
films _right now_ with innovative scripts and low budgets. And most of them
will lose money, because nobody wants to see them. People genuinely prefer
watching 'flashy' films with lots of VFX and actors who they've heard of.

Just because you want it to work differently doesn't mean it will.

~~~
burgerbrain
_"Honestly, what do you think YCombinator can bring to the table that isn't
already there?"_

The attitude that things are wrong with the industry, and it can/should be
done better.

~~~
_delirium
That's already there in droves: that's basically the mantra of every indie
film director, iFilm, most film schools, alternative distributors and
theaters, and just about everyone else connected to movies who isn't the big
studios. They even have substantial seed funding for that kind of thing (much
larger than YCombinator's typical seed funding) through a large number of
directors, actors, grant agencies, universities, and rich film fans who
regularly fund "not Hollywood" experimentation (sort of that industry's
version of angel investors and incubators).

------
mekoka
The project has an objective _find an alternative to Hollywood_. But like
everything else, baby steps are in order. I don't know why it is assumed that
a beta solution should ship with the ability to produce "Avatar" caliber
productions.

When it comes to technology, I'm optimistic that it has almost limitless
potential to revolutionize. My instinct tells me though that a startup aimed
at competing against Hollywood doesn't have to be about inventing alternate
forms of entertainment, but rather to work at optimizing on alternate means of
production and distribution of the already successful form of entertainment.
Recent efforts with other media have shown that most optimizations are about
cutting out as much unnecessary intermediary layers as possible.

I'm convinced that a number of people currently working within the
Hollywoodian system are unhappy with the present arrangements and I would not
be surprised if a few were to come out the woodwork because of this YC
invitation. Their expertise will be essential, because if my guess is correct,
I think that a large majority of people on HN are complete ignorami when it
comes to making a movie or a tv show. We're more consumers and critics than we
are creators or producers of such material.

Another thing would be to look at what currently exist that tries to spearhead
such alternate efforts. Is it successful? What are the problems? What has been
tried? Where's the data?

First, let's ask the people who currently work on the fringe of Hollywood how
they're doing it.

~~~
MrScruff
Do you know what's involved in making high end mass-market entertainment as
produced by Hollywood or the games industry? A massive amount of work by large
groups of very talented, highly qualified, incredibly hard working people. You
see, unlike most tech startups, making movies is a really big collaborative
endeavour. As an example, let's consider post production/VFX.

VFX companies are external contractors to the studios and compete to bid on
upcoming projects. Competition is tough and the studios are more than willing
to go wherever they can to achieve the best price/quality ratio. Yet still VFX
can amount to a significant fraction of the production budget for a modern
blockbuster. The studios are happy to pay for this though since they know that
VFX driven films generally do better than the alternative.

<http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/>

So if the VFX companies aren't making massive profits, what are their costs?
The costs are employing hundreds of artists and developers to create content.
And content is what people are ultimately paying money to see. It's exactly
the same in the games industry.

So to create an alternative to Hollywood, you'd need to generate content
that's as good as Hollywood. And you're not going to do that without lots of
highly paid content creators. Doesn't seem like particularly low hanging fruit
to me.

------
eck
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 of recording gear and some dude to
hit the "record" button.

Eventually movies will be democratized, but killing the RIAA/iTunes cabal
seems like the obvious first step.

~~~
edge17
games used to cost a lot of money and used to be hard. now they cost nothing
to make except your time, and you can do it in your garage.

let people have the opportunity to access the distribution channel, and they
will figure the other problems out.

people in this community seem to think that they're the ones that are going to
solve all the problems in an industry to move it forward.

colleges have access to expensive equipment - if students have access to
quality distribution channels, they'll take time to produce high quality
content.

my first company made software and hardware; we started in my dorm, used
electronic equipment (scopes and power supplies and stuff), and build a
product and company that made money. if I can do it with technology, someone
else can do it with cameras, recording equipment.

music has itunes, software has app stores, artists/painters have the web,
online retail has warehouses without floorspace (and in some cases, not even
warehouses). there is absolutely no reason movies don't fit into the equation.

~~~
kooshball
> games used to cost a lot of money and used to be hard. now they cost nothing
> to make except your time, and you can do it in your garage.

Let's not go overboard here. Just because there is a growing market for indie
games like Minecraft does not mean big budget productions like CoD, WoW or
Skyrim is at all feasible for a single person to design, code, test, and
support from a garage.

Good games are still very hard to make. They dont have to cost a lot of money
but if you want to make the next WoW, you better have a big budget.

~~~
edge17
you missed the point. the point is that the distribution model has changed and
parties interested in participating has increased. this doesn't mean that the
larger parties with deep pockets no longer participate. but if you are
implying that competition has not increased and won't increase because making
games, good or bad, costs less then you would be wrong.

the average game does cost less to make, because there are a lot more low-
budget games out there.

the game changes when the distribution model changes.

------
jezclaremurugan
Or how about a way to fix the congress and the election process? A startup to
provide information on the promises kept/broken, campaign financing, how much
someone is influenced by lobbyists etc, so that only people who can be trusted
get to vote on these issues. I think having politicians who can be trusted,
who are informed, is more important. The recent blackouts swayed so many of
them, but we can't do this every time. Some dashboard kind of thing, to let
them know what their constituents want would be very useful for them, since
I'm afraid they dont read opinion polls...

------
frankydp
It is so very true that financing is the real issue here.
<http://rootstrikers.org/>

~~~
Aloisius
Definitely. Either fix financing or join in. The reason why Hollywood is so
powerful is because they actually donate to campaigns and have lobbyists.

That seems far more productive than trying to destroy an industry because
you're tired of their political power.

~~~
gfodor
It's important to remember you can do both at the same time. Work hard towards
financial reform, but in the mean time flex your financial muscles to get
there otherwise you will be defenseless and the reform you seek will never
happen.

------
pentae
Am I the only one who believes that this notion of 'piracy stealing jobs' is
simply a catalyst for Rupert Murdoch and his billionaire friends who
collectively own this industry to personally control the Internet? This is
absolutely a power struggle. They want to control our information, like they
always have--look at Fox news.

As more and more people switch to online sources of entertainment, their
industry is simply being diluted by Youtube's, Hulu's, Reddit, HackerNews and
the Apple App Store.

So in their dying breaths, they are spending $100 million a year trying to
take control of the very industry that is diluting their power over our
information and their control of our minds. It sounds very George Orwellian,
but I mean really.. have you seen Fox news? It's a parody of itself.

Rupert Murdoch tried his best to have a go at the online industry with Myspace
and we all know how well that turned out for him, so I guess the self-
professed billionaire tyrant figures if he can't beat them, why not just try
and own them?

------
ck2
It's ironic Hollywood itself WAS a group of rogue startups, just over 100
years ago.

But here's the thing - you can probably make a dent but "killing it" ?

Wouldn't that be like making professional sports obsolete?

There is just too much money and organization and you are never going to get
all the fans to try something else instead and stay with it.

------
waterlesscloud
Relevant- Hollywood tries new online network for connecting established
filmmakers with investors.

[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/risky-
business/sundance-201...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/risky-
business/sundance-2012-slated-online-hub-283760)

------
powertower
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.

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

~~~
powertower
How's that a problem?

~~~
maigret
I don't think it is. I guess the problem that should be tackled is not how the
movies & music are actually done, but rather the way they are sold. The
problem in my view - without pointing at anyone - is that not enough people
are willing to pay for the products.

------
vellum
Does getting rid of our Old Entertainment Overlords really matter, if our New
Entertainment Overlords are going to be doing the same thing? As long as one
group of people is getting rich in an industry, the temptation is always there
to start rigging the rules in your favor by working the refs. Look at the
current mess we have with patents. Disrupting Hollywood is great, but we
should also innovate by coming up with new ways to discourage and punish
companies from attempting things like SOPA.

~~~
oflannabhra
Yes, it does matter, because whatever replaces Hollywood will 1) let me
consume better entertainment products in ways I prefer, and 2) not require
legislation to remain viable. I have no problem with whatever and whomever
eventually disrupts Hollywood getting rich off me buying their stuff.

I agree that lobbying power for industries like Hollywood is a problem that
needs to be fixed, but that is a much larger context than entertainment. We
can both replace Hollywood with a more consumer oriented industry and reform
lobbying, but they are two separate goals.

------
thret
“Such ridiculous, destructive bills should never even pass committee review,”
Mr. Arment wrote. The real problem, he added, is “the MPAA’s buying power in
Congress,”

The real problem is that money has buying power in Congress. Money shouldn't
buy votes. I don't know what the solution is but I'm fairly sure that's the
problem.

------
phzbOx
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.

------
jasonabelli
I don't believe we can blame the politicians for campaign finance corruption.
It is our own complacency that has allowed this system to take a firm root in
our government. How can you blame or get mad at one of our representatives for
playing the game we make/allow them to play. I guess what I am saying is if
you can't get elected unless you use the corrupt campaign financing system
that we allow to be in place how can we be upset when our elected officials
are a pawn to the system?

~~~
stfu
Same here. Campaign finance reform is a great idea but is not going to happen
overnight. As long as it is not abolished the existing system has to be used
to one's advantage. And as long Hollywood lobbyists outnumber Tech lobbyists
it is going to be an uphill battle. I hope this recent conflict motivated big
tech companies to increase their involvement in the policy process.

------
chaostheory
How much money do indy film makers need for a minimum viable product? How can
we help them bring it to an audience and make money?

~~~
justincormack
There is already lots of Indy product. Distribution and audience seem to be
the hard bits. If you can make money, the product will come, people want to
make this stuff...

------
signalsignal
Bookmark this article and remember this date, as YCombinator has altered its
focus and embarked on this political venture. Once it had worked hard to stay
clear of political entanglements, now it dives wholeheartedly into the grift
of politics. No one play politics and plays clean, not even angel investors.

------
omarchowdhury
When all is said and done, more is said than done.

------
bane
Engineers love to solve problems. Hollywood has become a problem.

