
Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood. - dzlobin
http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html
======
malkia
Here is what Francis Ford Coppola has to say on the matter:

[http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-
Coppola-O...](http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-On-
Risk-Money-Craft-Collaboration)

"We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s
only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money.
Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state
or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had
another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But
I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five
in the morning and write your script.

This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not
necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age,
maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to
download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said
art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?

In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could
make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then
you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record
royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea
of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it."

~~~
reinhardt
I find this opinion more honest and convincing than the "it's not stealing if
you both get to keep a copy" argument. The latter fails to account for the
time, money, effort, inspiration, talent required to create the original work
that is subsequently copied millions of times. When the issue of how are
artists supposed to make a living in an copyright-less, free-filesharing world
is brought up, proponents come up with limited band-aids (live concerts,
donations, SaaS, etc).

At least Coppola doesn't beat around the bush: filesharing may mean that
professional artists may have the fate of buggy whip makers. Regardless of
one's stance on this prospect, this is where the debate should focus, not on
the semantics of stealing or new business model cop-outs.

Interesting thought experiment: how would the world look like if all art was
created by hobbyists? (honest question)

~~~
Drbble
It would look like free software looks as compared to Microsoft: edgy,
unpolished, more engaging with the audience as a collaborator and not just an
consumer, in more niches, non-monolithic, with a more visible connection to
the author's humanity.

    
    
        :help uganda
        :wq

~~~
SudarshanP
Free Software is not Just Vi or Emacs. It evolves into Android, Firefox,
Chrome, Eclipse, jQuery, etc. You may get to see work before it is fully
ready... But finished products in Free software can also be user friendly and
mainstream. And for niches it serves, Free software does a far better job than
than the Lowest common denominator that suits the masses.

~~~
jodrellblank
The parent question was if it was created by hobbyists - Android and Chrome
are by Google, FireFox is funded into hundreds of millions of dollars by
Google. Eclipse was founded by IBM and funded by its members, including gold
sponsors Amazon, Intel, IBM and Cisco, Novell. JQuery is sponsored by Mozilla
Corp.

Not really hobbyists, any of them.

------
pg
Incidentally, Paul Buchheit deserves all the credit for this idea. The YC
partners were having lunch yesterday and he suggested posting this RFS.
Whereupon we all turned to Jessica, who is usually the one who talks us out of
doing crazy things. I was kind of surprised she didn't try to talk us out of
it.

~~~
TomOfTTB
You’re an ass.

Pardon the bluntness of that statement but I’m home right now because this
pissed me off so much. So my tone is less measured. Have you even contemplated
all the things the industry you’re trying to “kill” does?

Make note of something: Hollywood is one of the most unionized workforces in
the United States. This isn’t a story of rich studio heads taking advantage of
people. Actors, Writers, Stage Hands, Directors, and just about everyone else
in Hollywood is in a union of some kind and there’s a reason for that.

Creativity is random and creative people can’t count on steady work. So they
need equitable pay to survive.

There’s an organization called Chanel 101 in LA. It’s basically a bunch of
creative people showing their work (they put the stuff online if you want to
google it). What the great majority of these people have in common is they
work in the industry. Not as actors or writers but as stagehands, clerks and
other low level positions. They are the people fighting their way up through
the system and the system is designed to support them while they do. The
system you’re trying to kill is what keeps those people alive. What puts food
on their table so they can keep working towards their dreams. Because they
aren’t programmers. They can’t go out and get an $85,000 a year day job that
allows them to live comfortably while they tinker on a startup in their spare
time.

The studio system, as obnoxious as it is, exists for a reason. It’s an
equilibrium that’s developed over decades of creating media. Every few years
you’ll see a famous actor form their own studio yet those studios always end
up playing by the same rules as the existing studios. Because it’s still
roughly the most equitable system available (and if you don’t believe that you
should feel free to try and start your own studio)

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. Their intention is to keep money on
the table of all those creative people. To keep paying residuals to actors who
might not find work for years at a time. To keep funding movies where there’s
no guarantee of profit and keep all those stagehands, clerks, and so on
employed.

It is quite frankly unconscionable for a millionaire to lead a bunch of people
who can make over $100,000 a year in an effort to kill off the industry that’s
paying all the folks who make less than $30,000.

(Let the down votes commence)

~~~
pg
One could have made the same argument against someone who wanted to abolish
serfdom.

~~~
TomOfTTB
I'm sorry but you're wrong. Because serfdom was largely destroyed by the death
of feudalism. Feudalism died largely because it couldn't compete with
societies that were adopting open trade policies around the ideas of Smith's
Wealth of Nations.

That's important. Because the Wealth of Nations was an alternate philosophy.
It was a way that everyone's life got better.

You're looking to tear down something without suggesting something else to
take its place. In fact if you succeed what you'll have done is to shift more
wealth to people who are already wealthy (by societies standards). You will
have destroyed a system paying thousands of people $30,000 in favor of a
startup that pays hundreds of people $150,000 a year.

But all of that isn't my point. My point is you're acting out of hate. My
point is you shouldn't encourage people to create things in order to destroy
other things because it's unnecessary. If what you're creating is better the
bad thing will go away all on its own. There's no point to add more hate to
the world.

I know record executives. I know executives at movie studios. And guess what,
they're good guys. Not everyone in that profession is a good guy. But many are
and for you to group them all into a "mean people who need to be destroyed" is
wrong (and, if I may again say so, ass-like)

~~~
Natsu
> You're looking to tear down something without suggesting something else to
> take its place.

That's why he's asking for people to give him ideas to fund.

> There's no point to add more hate to the world.

On that I can agree, but I would note that I believe that pg is acting out of
_self preservation_ rather than hate.

> I know record executives. I know executives at movie studios. And guess
> what, they're good guys.

Well, then they should be running honest businesses that won't be disrupted by
some startup trying to give artists a good deal, rather than the raw deals
they so frequently get, and they will therefore have nothing to fear.

~~~
TomOfTTB
> Well, then they should be running honest businesses that won't be disrupted
> by some startup trying to give artists a good deal, rather than the raw
> deals they so frequently get, and they will therefore have nothing to fear.

But see that's the difference between "kill the industry" and "lets beat these
guys". Kill the industry empowers people to do other things like pirate media
because "this is war". But if people do that then even the honest media execs
can't keep their business afloat.

On a larger note the issue is with our society becoming so hateful.

This is a little off topic but in 1918 Manfred Von Rechtoven , also known as
the Red Baron, was shot down and killed behind enemy lines. At the time his
record stood at around 80 kills (more than anyone else by far). And here (from
Wikipedia) is what the Allied forces did...

\----

In common with most Allied air officers, Major Blake, who was responsible for
Richthofen's remains, regarded the Red Baron with great respect, and he
organised a full military funeral, to be conducted by the personnel of No. 3
Squadron AFC.

Richthofen was buried in the cemetery at the village of Bertangles, near
Amiens, on 22 April 1918. Six airmen with the rank of Captain—the same rank as
Richthofen—served as pallbearers, and a guard of honour from the squadron's
other ranks fired a salute. Allied squadrons stationed nearby presented
memorial wreaths, one of which was inscribed with the words, "To Our Gallant
and Worthy Foe".

\----

Look at that in comparison with all the hatred and anger around here directed
at the record companies and you can see why I find it so disturbing.

~~~
dcosson
I can see where you're coming from, but I have to disagree. For one thing, I
think you're reading too much into the word kill. In the the startup
vernacular you always hear things like "company X promises to be the Y
killer", and I really don't think "kill" in this context has any kind of mean-
spirited undertones. It's just business. (Perhaps you'd like to make an
etymological argument about the connotations of startup/business terminology
being unnecessarily hateful, but that's irrelevant to the argument here).

As for your earlier point that disrupting Hollywood would mean replacing
thousands of people with $30K jobs with hundreds with $150K jobs, that may
very well be what happens. But the same argument could be made of any industry
that gets infused technology or new ideas. Instead of taking such a
reactionary approach and fighting to keep a seemingly dying industry alive
just for the sake of the status quo, why not have a more productive discussion
and think of real ways that the sometimes corrupt and, more importantly, no
longer effective Hollywood model can be improved? Whether or not it comes from
a trendy new YC-funded startup, it certainly seems like it's coming.

Personally, I find the idea of technological growth to the point of a
"singularity" in the coming decades pretty compelling, and I think one of the
biggest challenges we as a society will face is maintaining employment rates
as technology continues to make things more and more efficient. Protecting
those on the lower rungs in Hollywood and the music industry is certainly an
important part of this.

------
jerf
I think this is the sort of thing that history will record as the _true_
result of SOPA. Not the mobilization of the public, which despite how
thrilling it may feel even today is still something that will not be easily
replicated, but the fact that significant chunks of the Internet industry now
realize they are in unavoidable, open warfare with the content industry. The
Internet industry can no longer pretend to itself that it is neutral, or that
the content industry is.

There's been a lot of concern expressed about the fact that the RIAA and MPAA
will try again, and we can't count on public mobilization to save us. But I
don't think that's the true backstop. The true backstop is that the Internet
industry will hopefully become more engaged, and it will hopefully shortly
become much less easy for this dying industry to push a bill through Congress.

At least for now, consumers will win. We should keep our eyes peeled for when
that changes, because it is only a matter of time, but this should buy us some
years.

~~~
marshray
That's insightful, but your term "Internet industry" sounds like an
anachronism like "recording industry". RIAA members are a big system that now
encompasses a wide range of activities oriented around entertaining via audio
and clearly they think a lot more about lawsuits and marketing than literal
recording.

So who is the "Internet industry"? Literally it would be vendors of networking
gear and ISPs.

But I think what you mean is all the businesses that recognized their business
depended on a vibrant, free, and open Internet. Do we have a good name for
them?

~~~
jerf
"Do we have a good name for them?"

No. I agree it's klunky, but it seemed like a diversion to try to nail the
semantic jello to the wall. It's an amorphous, fuzzy group, but there's
definitely a group of companies and interests who were directly threatened by
SOPA.

~~~
_delirium
I agree the name isn't a big problem, but unfortunately I think a group who
will really consistently be on "our" side (vaguely EFFish) is quite small,
regardless of the name. When it comes to lobbying, the tech industry is for
the most part just another special interest like Hollywood, taking whatever
side is best for profits in any given dispute. Sometimes, like with SOPA,
that's good. Other times, like with Apple/Microsoft's pro-DMCA lobbying, it's
bad.

~~~
marshray
If everybody who signed an anti-SOPA petition were to put in $10 it would
exceed Hollywood's money.

------
Keyframe
I am a director, I can speak on this from experience. Primary problem with
producing movie/TV shows is money. It costs A LOT of money. Even shows you
think can be done with a lower budget, it can't... currently. Reasons for high
costs are numerous and I can expand on them (and will if someone asks me), but
lets take that as an axiom for this post.

It costs a lot of money, which means people who invest in content production
need to offload a lot of money and wish to guard their investment as much as
possible, since that's what it is - an investment in a project. Financing
cycles and budgeting is as lean as possible in showbusiness, and a lot of
money is involved both upfront for production and later when gathering yield.

IF someone can disrupt financing side and securing measurable projected yield
in this business - only then we will have a disruption. That is where one
should look at for disruption, everything else is futile, because it's as lean
as possible.

~~~
ryanac
This is great info (that you gave in a reply about production costs), but I'm
very interested in something which you may have some knowledge on.

All of the production you're talking about is live (as in using real people,
locations and equipment.) My question is, what about digital cartoon
production, wouldn't the cost of producing a digital cartoon show or movie be
dramatically less than the equivalent length live show or movie? There are no
sets, cameras, costumes, or natural location permits in cartoons. On top of
this, voice actors more than often portray multiple characters, you do not
need an actor for each person, etc.

Lets take the show South Park for example, which differs from cartoons like
The Simpsons, Spongebob and Family Guy in that South Park is produced
completely in house, they produce each episode from scratch in under a week I
believe using various digital production methods.

You still need the basic essentials, script, storyboards, sound, voice actors,
audio recording equipment, etc; but I (and I've had some small experience
here) would think the cost of the equipment needed to put out a digital
cartoon, of tv quality and length, would be significantly lower than the
equivalent live tv show.

Also, I stress that I'm talking about digital cartoons, not traditional
animation which can easily take months (tv) / years (movie) to produce. I've
produced many digital cartoons myself, but not quite at the level of quality
that would be required for a tv show (I will give examples if asked.) From my
experiences a very small group of people with almost no money can produce a
high quality cartoon in a reasonable around of time. Time being the main issue
which, in animation, can be solved with more people, and overtime is reduced
because of digital software.

Marketing and distribution would still be the same more than likely, but there
is still plenty of room to innovate there online; take Louis C.K.'s recent
example of making a lot of money (over a million dollars?) selling his stand-
up routine directly to the consumers.

I'm very interested in your thoughts on all this, especially if there are
production costs I've ignored (for cartoons) that would even things out.
Basically, do you think a cartoon with the production value of South Park, can
be produced for significantly less money than the equivalent length tv show or
movie?

I think this is something that can be done (independently produced cartoon
show at the level of South Park), but really hasn't been tried yet online (a
show that pushes boundaries and talks about critical topics,) at all. I know
it can certainly be produced faster and adapt to changes more quickly than
traditional live tv.

I'm a person who basically gets frustrated thinking of all the people right
now who are waiting for The Daily Show, Colbert and South Park to "say
something" about SOPA or other major topics, as if those shows are our voice
(which they are the best example of on tv sadly.) In the end though, they work
for Viacom, so even though people think those shows are pushing boundaries
(which they are) just remember, they can only say so much. Where as an
independently produced show released online can say pretty much whatever they
want and can respond to topics IMMEDIATELY. Thoughts? :)

~~~
Keyframe
Animation, especially CG is a wide field. As you may know animators are
hardest bunch to find. Modelers are easiest to find, texture/shading guys and
gals a little bit harder, lighting/environment artists a little bit harder
than that and TDs hardest to find... with animators hardest to find. There is
a slow production cycle (4-5 seconds of animation only per animator per week
for feature quality and 15sec per week for TV quality), there is a ton of
hardware for rendering and lieensing cost for software, and then there is
audio. Some productions even require extensive r&d and custom tools
development.

Animation can be cheaper, but sometimes it can be more expensive, it all
depends on a project.

Even if you neglect all of the story editing and layout departement you still
have a sizable production crew which require high salaries in order to produce
content of reasonable standard. South Park is an exception since they have
opted for subpar animation.

~~~
vibrunazo
Entrepreneurs should pay special attention to this post. There's a huge
opportunity here. Technology can make content creation cheaper. As a graphical
developer I can see a lot of areas which can be improved. And all that's
missing is someone to actually go there and build it.

We need to bring content creation to the masses. Think of why can't casual
users create their own movies, music and games. Then figure how we can fix
those problems with technologies. The problem of distribution is reasonably
well solved already in my opinion. Solving content creation is the last piece
of the puzzle to kill Hollywood.

I'm talking about things like xtranormal or GameSalad. These guys are in the
right direction. But are still too shy in their proposals IMHO. There's a lot
of room for disruption and a huge market opportunity in content creation.

If we can turn creative content into a commodity then we'll kill Hollywood and
replace it with the people. That's what my startup is trying to do, and there
are room for many others in this ecosystem. Think about it :)

------
cstross
Hollywood and the MPAA isn't about making movies.

Rather, it's about maintaining a distribution chokehold on mass produced
popular entertainment. This in turn means controlling what goes into the
pipeline, and how the output from the pipeline is delivered to the consumers,
and how the MPPE is marketed -- for example, the whole star system, Oscars
night hype, and so on.

What is needed is a better distribution channel, and that's why they keep
trying to kill anything that looks like it might become one. The solution is
thus going to start with (a) invent something, and (b) lawyer up, a _long_ way
prior to public launch.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Distribution is a solved problem. It's open. Even theatrical is more open than
it was 5 years ago. NATO wants competitors to Hollywood. In fact, NATO members
are beginning to openly compete with Hollywood (see Open Road Films, a joint
venture between AMC and Regal).

Production is a solved problem. The tools have been democratized.

Even financing is open these days. There's a huge range of film financing
sources, and as sites like Kickstarter grow, crowdfunding will become more and
more viable.

What is locked up is marketing. Hollywood is just better at it than their
competitors. It's what the studios do that no one else seems to be able to do.

To some extent this is an issue of discovery. You can make a film, you can get
it in front of people, but how do you get them to know it exists? To me, this
is the most productive area to focus on.

~~~
ender7
This is true, but you have to understand that there is a phenomenal amount of
talent locked up in Hollywood. I'm not necessarily talking about directors or
actors, but camera men, DPs, best boys, set dressers...the list goes on and
on. These people have skills that require many, many years of on-site
training.

(Don't forget about producers, line producers, production managers, site
scouts, and all of the logistics people who find a way to make a huge movie
happen)

Making a small, Blair Witch Project/Little Miss Sunshine/indie whatever
doesn't require an army of people with these skills. You can get away with
some rough edges and end up looking good.

But making the next Avatar? That's not a problem that will be solved solely
with technology. You have to find some way to extract these guys from an
industry that already pays them pretty well.

~~~
zerostar07
Question: Mega-productions like avatar rely mostly on special effects than
storytelling. Are people still impressed by special effects and stunts? Aren't
video games becoming more impressive to look at than movies? As a result, are
these technical skills becoming less important?

~~~
Drbble
A movie has something like 3x3 times the resolution of a video game.

~~~
cstross
Which is why the state of the art in Machinima is only a couple of years
behind the state of the art in cinematic CGI.

(What you're pointing to is a problem that can be solved by adding cpu cores.
Because movies aren't shown in real time during rendering. Yet.)

------
sriramk
Movies aren't the latest evolution in entertainment, they're the latest
evolution in _storytelling_ , something which is as old as humanity itself.
Hollwyood is the descendant of ancient man telling stories of adventure around
a fire at night.

So the more accurate question - what is a better way to tell stories?

~~~
kijin
Very interesting. A lot of people who suggest games as a replacement for video
seem to be missing this point. Games require active interaction. Not everyone
always wants to entertain themselves in a way that requires active
interaction. Sometimes we just want to sit back, relax, and let the
storyteller tell their story. Watching Bruce Willis blow shit up on a screen
is a completely different kind of entertainment than blowing shit up on a
screen myself.

Passive consumerism? Oh yes. But homo sapiens loves it.

~~~
marshray
So, give me a way to have my cake and eat it too.

Give me a medium that adjusts the interactivity demands of the entertainment
according to the recline of my chair or the open width of my eyelids.
Metaphorically speaking (or not).

~~~
politician
When playing games like Dues Ex or Half Life, I've often wanted the ability to
scale the difficulty on the fly from hardcore to easy to passive without
penalty. I'm guilty of watching "Let's Play" editions of games on YouTube for
that reason.

~~~
marshray
Come to think of it, I have a friend with some tech based around the ability
to communicate and stream video of and within various games. Maybe this is the
kind of thing that would allow you to transition easily from playing watching
your friends play (before you drift off to sleep).

------
sjtgraham
The soccer analogy is interesting because when a player is fouled in the
penalty area, the player is strongly incentivised to take a dive. A foul on a
player with a clear goalscoring opportunity in the penalty area is a mandatory
red card for the fouling player, and a penalty kick for the attacking team.
This gives the attacking team a clear advantage by having one more player than
the opposition, for the remainder of the game as well a penalty kick.
Statistically, it is very probable that a professional football player will
score from a penalty also.

~~~
pg
Yes, but in practice a forward won't take a dive unless he's lost control of
the ball.

~~~
baha_man
This just isn't true. In today's game it's very common for a player with the
ball, in the area, to go down after the slightest contact from an opposing
player, rather than stay on their feet and shoot.

------
jdietrich
The leading British film critic Mark Kermode hypothesises that Michael Bay
style blockbusters are hits solely because they were expensive to make.

He likens these films to a PT Barnum sideshow - people aren't expecting
anything of artistic merit, but are instead driven by curiosity as to what the
producers spent $140m on. Media attention is inevitable, in the same way that
a restaurant announcing a $1000 hamburger is easy fodder for a slow news day.

The logic is persuasive in light of the fact that critics and moviegoers alike
don't enjoy these films much, nor expect to enjoy them. There's a culture of
"movie events", a self-fulfilling prophecy of huge budgets and massive opening
weekends.

If the theory is valid, I have no idea how you'd beat Hollywood; I'm fairly
certain that the answer won't involve making anything with cultural or
artistic worth.

------
armandososa
I hope whatever kills hollywood also kills distribution by regions. In the
third world we are people too.

~~~
Typhon
It's obvious that many new forms of entertainment will use the web as a medium
which, barring dictatorships, is worldwide, so you don't have to worry about
it, insofar as you have enough bandwidth.

~~~
pavel_lishin
[ This comment is unavailable in your region. ]

~~~
merryandrew
nice

~~~
marshray
(psst... there's a button for that :-)

------
InclinedPlane
I find it utterly fascinating how under the radar a lot of the new media has
been.

Only recently have some people begun to appreciate that Netflix has as many
subscribers as many large cable companies, though I think it's still flirting
with the popular consciousness so far. Meanwhile, there are many people making
their living off of original content posted to youtube or elsewhere, and in
some cases they are making 6 figure incomes.

The Guild, Penny-Arcade TV, vlogbrothers, Dr Horrible, etc, this is an
incredibly rapidly growing phenomenon. Yet good luck finding a story about it
in the traditional media, it might as well not exist.

Meanwhile, online comics are quickly upstaging print comics. There will come a
day in the next few years when the aggregate revenue from web comics exceeds
that from the traditional comic studios (DC, Marvel, etc.)

I wonder at what point these phenomena will start to penetrate the mainstream,
when the average guy on the street will start to "get it".

~~~
mtts
It's under the radar because its appeal is very, very limited. My mom will
read Asterix, but Penny Arcade is completely uninteresting to her.

We're living in somewhat of a hacker bubble where what happens on Youtube or
Boing Boing is significant. The rest of the world, however, does not care. The
rest of the world likes Hollywood.

------
socratic
I agree that Hollywood is evil, however, is the argument that it has peaked
really accurate? ("Hollywood is dying.")

This RFS doesn't really give any statistics (perhaps because it will be up for
longer than those statistics will be current). That said, based on a few
minutes of Google searching, the average American apparently watches 150 hours
of TV per month, and every few years there is a new "biggest grossing film of
all time." That doesn't necessarily constitute growth, but it hardly seems
like the type of upheaval occurring in the recording industry.

Is this analysis incorrect?

~~~
untog
_and every few years there is a new "biggest grossing film of all time."_

That, at least, can be accounted for by inflation:
<http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm>

Titanic (1997) is the most recent in the top ten (at #6). Avatar is the most
recent at #14, and one of only two movies from the 2000s in the top 30. Movie
revenue is dropping. Roger Ebert has a rundown of why 2011 was such a terrible
year:

[http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111228/COMMENTARY/111229973)

As for TV- no, it isn't in such a decline. But more and more people are
watching online, and the existing TV networks don't have the stranglehold on
content that they do on cable/etc. A lot of people watch stuff on YouTube,
Netflix is making original content... there is space to disrupt TV watching
yet.

~~~
archangel_one
Probably worth noting that the inflation-adjusted list, while more accurate
than a non-adjusted one, is only the American domestic gross. It's quite
plausible that the international gross would look different - one might expect
that the trend there for Gone With The Wind would look a bit different to
Avatar.

------
bsenftner
If course, this RFS appears on a day when I have my working demonstration site
down, (because I'm laying in new optimizations). I have been working to
seriously disrupt "Hollywood" and the media advertising industry for several
years now. There are a few places where interested parties can see brief
descriptions, I'll list them in a bit. What I'm building is globally patented
by me as well. I've developed an automated visual effects pipeline and
globally scalable distribution infrastructure for automated actor and object
replacement in filmed media - creating a new Personalized Advertising platform
where anybody can appear in prepared media with anybody else doing anything.
This is photo realistic visual effects, of the same caliber as ILM enhanced
feature films - that's the world I come from (Rhythm & Hues Studios,
actually.) Interested parties can read bits at these locations:

www.about.me/Blakes <\- my mission is described there

www.BlakeSenftner.com

www.Flixor.com <\- 3 year old demo video there

This is offline at the moment, but as soon as this is ready I plan a HN
announcement:

www.cg-general-store.com

I'm bootstrapping this, after spinning my wheels courting VC investors for too
long. Interested parties that want to collaborate can contact me. This is
real.

------
akg
Has anyone tried out Amazon Studios: <http://studios.amazon.com/>? That seems
to be a big step in this direction. Amazon.com has already created a big
threat in the publishing industry with e-books and self-publishing. I think
hollywood is next with the democratization of content and technological tools.

It used to be that to create "Hollywood grade" movies would require tons of
expensive equipment and capital. I don't see that to be the case anymore.
There is powerful software (some even free, e.g., Blender) and hardware
(<http://www.red.com/>) to create high-quality productions at a fraction of
the budget.

Having worked at a film studio for a few years, I can say that they are
definitely struggling to compete. Mostly because they are slow to adapt to the
changing landscape. Slow because they either don't want to change or are too
arrogant and feel they don't need to make an effort to change.

~~~
marquis
Many artists steer clean of Amazon because it is trying to democratize art
through crowdsourced development. Can you imagine what would have happened to
Blade Runner if Ridley Scott had even _less_ control on the final cut?

~~~
lukeschlather
Can you imagine what the complete works of Shakespeare would look like if he
were responsible for releasing any of the folios we use today?

The whole idea of being absolutely loyal to the artist's intent is a cultural
idea that has come in and out of vogue, but is largely an artifact of 20th
century America. Really, art has always been crowdsourced in some sense or
another, and any work of art is in some sense an amalgam.

~~~
marquis
Sure, crowdsourced over time (the bible..). But what is wrong with wanting to
understand the author's original intent? There is plenty of time over the next
hundreds of years for the work to be re-interpreted.

Didn't some of our greatest open-source tools start from a single source
before being disseminated among us to evolve?

~~~
lukeschlather
There's nothing wrong with trying to understand the author's original intent.
But the author's intent isn't necessarily more important than the reader's
interpretation (and trying to separate the two can miss the point of art.)

------
wj
Independent film companies are to L.A. what startups are to Silicon Valley. An
independent film company is essentially a startup with all of the uncertainty,
hard work, late nights, bootstrapping, cash crunches, etc. The odds are
stacked against them. (I closed my film company down as of the end of the
year.)

So when I hear "Kill Hollywood" I don't think you really mean what you say.
The independent film companies are going to be the ones that will produce the
content for all the new digital distribution channels that have sprung up in
the past ten years.

A lot of hard working people are employed by the industry and they understand
that the game is changing. They realize things are going to be different for
them in the new economic models. (One other thing most people don't know is
almost 99% of "Hollywood" are contract workers who work for three to nine
months and then have no guarantee of another job.)

Silicon Valley isn't defined by Oracle and Intel. Don't define Hollywood by
the actions of a few large companies. There already are a bunch of
opportunities for the entertainment industry and the Valley to work together
and we're still in the early stages of collaboration.

~~~
onemikey
One difference I would point out - every film an indie production co makes is
equivalent to a new start-up, i.e. every film is its own business. And these
aren't businesses that scale well. Or at all. Therefore, film producers are
essentially serial entrepreneurs ... but by no means will a successful indie
film grant the same kind of ROI that a successful tech startup would, e.g.
Twitter or Dropbox.

------
diego
This strikes me as a bit naïve. Hollywood can be seen as two different things:

1) An ecosystem of artists creating music, movies and TV shows.

2) A group of companies distributing and commercializing the output of the
ecosystem.

It's hard to say where one ends and the other one begins. YC, you may want to
kill #2 but not #1.

Or do you expect to fund "startups" that create TV shows, movies, or music? If
so, start looking for the younger Louis CKs of the world.

~~~
Helianthus
1) is a naive description. Ecosystem implies some sort of balance, where in
fact it is a cutthroat competition for the favors handed out by 2).

Because 2) holds the keys, 2) controls the message.

In other words, I would _gladly_ kill #1. #1 is dysfunctional: some sort of
willing imprisonment for artists for the sole benefit of #2.

~~~
eru
> Ecosystem implies some sort of balance, where in fact it is a cutthroat
> competition [...]

You don't know much about biology, do you?

~~~
Helianthus
mmm well of course there can be balance in competition, and there can be
extinction events. my comment should be read to imply detrimental runaway
effects in Hollywood's ecosystem.

------
twainer
I'm sorry but this kind of thread from the initial post on down to the echo
chamber of opinions smacks more of Jonestown than Silicon Valley. I personally
find it disturbing. The vast majority of this country enjoys some part of what
comes out of Hollywood - whether they pay for it or not. I'd hazard a guess
that the vast majority of HNers do as well. Is there some reason suddenly why
a tyranny of the minority should be such a beautiful concept?

It's as senseless as requesting people should 'kill creativity' or 'kill
talent' - not because Hollywood is their equal but because lots of talented
and creative people work there. There is scant support around here for
creative people having any right to their work as it is - so I am beyond
curious as to the foundations of business models that find 'better ways to
entertain people'.

People entertain people; with how badly the content industry is being savaged
and prejudged - this thread as a glowing example - in 20 years a pub might be
the best business model to capture that 'unique value proposition'.

~~~
icebraining
I don't get your point. What tyranny of the minority? "Killing", in the
context of the post, means "finding ways that people prefer". If new
businesses (startups or not) compete and win the market from Hollywood, it's
because the majority prefers them, no?

~~~
twainer
PG is not using 'killing' in the sense of "finding ways [entertainment] that
people prefer". To quote:

"The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they
could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way
down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their
demise."

Trying to do things better than the next guy is a positivistic approach that I
would applaud; excoriating a straw-man enemy with prejudicial overtones is
tyrannical - especially when coming from a person in a position of power. The
sentences I quote above could apply to ANYTHING: Washington DC, the banking
industry, the VC industry.

The content from "Hollywood" forms the bulk of what people who file-share or
pirate want. If there was no "Hollywood" there would be no piracy problem
because there would be precious little content worth chasing after. As noted
elsewhere, good content costs money - not because of copyright - but because
it takes a lot of time, craft and people to perfect something. Anyone who has
worked in the commercial creative arts knows this; espc. that the last 10% -
the part that makes something really 'commercial' - takes 50% of the time and
budget.

PG has a problem with this. A problem that apparently boils down to the fact
that this creative work happens under the auspices of "Hollywood". What he is
wishing for is that those 'creatives' would somehow come under the control of
the tech-media universe instead:

"There will be several answers, ranging from new ways to produce and
distribute shows, through new media (e.g. games) that look a lot like shows
but are more interactive, to things (e.g. social sites and apps) that have
little in common with movies and TV except competing with them for finite
audience attention. Some of the best ideas may initially look like they're
serving the movie and TV industries. Microsoft seemed like a technology
supplier to IBM before eating their lunch, and Google did the same thing to
Yahoo."

Come under the control of the tech-media conglomerates where I am sure they'll
be much better treated:P

Trading one master for the next doesn't solve any of the problems of the
creative individual in modern society - and THAT's the real problem I have
with the PG post. A much better realization would be to say that if we could
find a better way for the internet to equip and reward talented individuals so
that they could exist outside of production systems - THAT would be a real
accomplishment - and we wouldn't be stuck in the middle between the copyright
and piracy.

I do applaud some commenters on this thread for sketching out some solutions
that do try to mind the individual approach. But, as lovely as the Louis CK
example was [as an example of doing a successful commercial production outside
a ready system], it's telling that just as there was not a shred of organized
old-media involved, neither was there a shred of organized new-tech. What made
the Louis CK production successful was talent, time, craft, money and people.

And I will lambast PG and whomever else would ever suggest that those things
need to be 'taught a lesson'. The way forward isn't by taking oaths to new
Dons - it's by finding a way in the anonymous pool of the internet to treat
each other as a worthy community.

~~~
icebraining
_PG is not using 'killing' in the sense of "finding ways [entertainment] that
people prefer". To quote:

"The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they
could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way
down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their
demise."_

I read that quote. It says competitors. Not assassins, lobbyists or lawyers.
_Competitors_.

 _Trying to do things better than the next guy is a positivistic approach that
I would applaud; excoriating a straw-man enemy with prejudicial overtones is
tyrannical_

How is it a strawman enemy? The MPAA is sponsoring bills like SOPA and PIPA.
People like PG, but also Wikipedia, Reddit, Tumblr, and lots of others feel
they are a threat to civil liberties. You may disagree, but that doesn't make
it a strawman.

 _especially when coming from a person in a position of power._

Are you seriously saying PG is in a position of power compared to the MPAA?
That's a joke, right?

 _The content from "Hollywood" forms the bulk of what people who file-share or
pirate want. If there was no "Hollywood" there would be no piracy problem
because there would be precious little content worth chasing after._

Or maybe without the competition from the millions of marketing from
Hollywood, other content creators would appear. You need something to back up
that claim.

 _As noted elsewhere, good content costs money - not because of copyright -
but because it takes a lot of time, craft and people to perfect something.
Anyone who has worked in the commercial creative arts knows this; espc. that
the last 10% - the part that makes something really 'commercial' - takes 50%
of the time and budget._

Maybe. Or maybe Hollywood is inefficient and behind the times. Everyone thinks
they're doing things the best way possible until someone comes up with a new
way to do it.

 _PG has a problem with this. A problem that apparently boils down to the fact
that this creative work happens under the auspices of "Hollywood". What he is
wishing for is that those 'creatives' would somehow come under the control of
the tech-media universe instead:

"There will be several answers, ranging from new ways to produce and
distribute shows, through new media (e.g. games) that look a lot like shows
but are more interactive, to things (e.g. social sites and apps) that have
little in common with movies and TV except competing with them for finite
audience attention. Some of the best ideas may initially look like they're
serving the movie and TV industries. Microsoft seemed like a technology
supplier to IBM before eating their lunch, and Google did the same thing to
Yahoo."

Come under the control of the tech-media conglomerates where I am sure they'll
be much better treated:P_

If you read it carefully, he's using MS, IBM, etc as _examples_. PG is a guy
who invests in small startups that often compete with such conglomerates, so I
don't see how you can assume he's defending putting them in control.

 _Trading one master for the next doesn't solve any of the problems of the
creative individual in modern society - and THAT's the real problem I have
with the PG post. A much better realization would be to say that if we could
find a better way for the internet to equip and reward talented individuals so
that they could exist outside of production systems - THAT would be a real
accomplishment - and we wouldn't be stuck in the middle between the copyright
and piracy._

One can't exist without the other. The anti-piracy bills sponsored by
Hollywood give them the power to eliminate those potential Internet-based
systems that you're proposing.

------
malandrew
This is most awesome, however this RFS as it stands now only addresses the
demand side of the equation. It should also address the talent side of the
equation. People need to create startups that allow talent to reach their
audience better, cheaper and faster.

Louis C.K. had to do a lot of work to perform his experiment. Why is there no
startup equivalent of "Comedy Central" + "HBO Comedy Hour"? If I were a
comedian, how do I go from performing standup in a club, to selling that
comedy to as many people as possible with as little effort on my part. Were I
a comedian, I want to build an audience and make a living telling jokes.

This goes for all other forms of talent. Actors, writers, costume designers,
etc.

Hollywood's talent power is in its Rolodex. How do you take that power out of
their hand and eliminate the power brokers?

What are some talented actors that are already embracing the internet and
possibly willing "invest" in startups using their talent? Ashton Kutcher,
maybe? How about Will Ferrell?

Also, how do we allow people to easily transition from passive to active and
back again? Currently there isn't an easy way to go from the Internet to my TV
and back again. How can I go from a link in my Facebook or Twitter feed to
sitting on my couch watching a movie in one click? How do I share from my TV
to my friends? How do I organize hanging out together with my friends at my
house or apartment to watch a TV show or game? As great as products like
Google Hangouts are, nothing beats the social experience of enjoy a piece of
media together.

------
kenamarit
I'm glad there are other film/tv people on the board sharing their
perspective. Before I started writing code for a living, I used to work in
post production in NYC on reality tv shows and also in the past on films,
docs, and also at more artistic-minded places like Sundance (which is a great
place but very much tied to Hollywood, btw, if it wasn't already obvious). A
lot of my friends (and myself) are hustling to get their films made here in
the city so I must agree that the amount of money required to get a film made
is a lot less than it once was.

The real difficulty, and what needs to change, in my opinion, is creating an
avenue for independent producers to show their content and STILL have it be
considered worth watching. In a way YouTube and Vimeo lets you put your work
online which immediately makes it available to a billion people. The problem,
though, is that having your work shown on youtube means nothing. Having your
work screened on TV means something. Being screen in a theatre means
something. Getting into Cannes means something. Having Ebert review your film
means something. You can argue that Eberts opinion doesn't mean much, but the
fact that he is reviewing your work is meaningful in and of itself.

Hollywood has this huge system to help itself legitimize the work that comes
out of it, regardless of the actual quality. There's no real system that helps
individuals who want to cut out the middle man effectively convince strangers
to watch their content (afaik). There has been an insane amount of growth in
the number of film festivals that exist in the last 5 years, but all that does
is lessen the value of screening your film in a festival. (Wanna see? Just
check out withoutabox.com). Also it's just growth that in my opinion tries to
emulate and validate the current system.

So what I think is needed is something like Netflix, or a bunch Netflix-type
sites, that serve curated and independently produced shows and films. Each
site would serve a specific audience, and each site must be careful in what it
chooses to show. It must legitimize itself to "normals" as a valid mode of
entertainment, and also to artists and filmmakers as a valid mode of
distribution. This, I believe, would allow for more diversity and more
democracy in content creation, and is a viable way to legitimize quality
content that would otherwise get lost in a sea of Internet junk.

Edit: grammar and some messed up sentences that didn't make sense :)

~~~
alain94040
Agreed. Where is the TechCrunch of independent YouTube videos? A place
equivalent to Ebert that would tell me what content is worth watching online.
If you can do it and build a following of millions, that would be amazing.

~~~
cdcarter
There are many of these "content curators" out there. Perhaps none that has
gained as big a following as Ebert, but there are people out there like the
Smithian, Christine Friar, Bobby Finger, even Sasha Frere Jones running very
popular blogs curating internet content.

------
redthrowaway
In 1920 a sane person, when asked to speculate on the future of entertainment,
would have had a pretty easy time of it:

"The radio forms the backbone of social discourse. Around this hallowed box,
millions of families converge nightly to get their daily dose of news and
entertainment. Millions of people are employed by the radio industry, and
millions more depend upon it. Whatever changes the winds of time may blow our
way, you can be assured of this: The radio will remain the primary medium
through which the public gets its information and entertainment."

Scarcely 20 years later, it would have been exceedingly difficult to find
someone to defend this argument. Just as the carriage makers gave way to the
automobile, just as film gave way to digital, just as news gave way to the
web: so too, will Hollywood give way to that which surpasses it.

~~~
rphlx
Radio is a communications technology. Hollywood is a consortium of large, rich
entertainment companies which are capable of adopting and adapting to new
communications technologies, usually reluctantly, but eventually successfully.

They will not be replaced easily.

~~~
redthrowaway
I'm speaking of radio as an entertainment industry, not radio as the induction
of current on a wire loop and subsequent vibration of a crystal by
electromagnetic radiation. The former very much resembled Hollywood in its
heyday; the latter, more analogous to film. The introduction of film killed
not radio the technology, but radio the industry.

Here in Vancouver, on the AM radio station CKNW, there's a show called Dan
Russell's Sport Talk that succeeds each Canucks game. I used to listen to this
show back in the day, parking my car at the beach and smoking a joint as I
heard talk of trade rumours and coaching strategies. For reasons previously
alluded to, I would occasionally find myself sitting in my car listening to AM
radio at 1:00 in the morning. If you live in Vancouver I highly recommend you
do this at least once, for you'll encounter an interesting anachronism: the
Radio Drama.

Late at night, CKNW plays dramas from the Golden Age of Radio. There were
murder mysteries and detective stories and comedies, tales of adventure and
romance. There were radio stars, known for their rich voices. There were famed
writers and common tropes, much as you find in Hollywood today. In short,
there was an industry that many today would recognize, now long dead and
forgotten.

This industry was, at one time, the pillar of entertainment and news. Before
the silver screen it was the radio that conveyed fact and fiction, that drew
families together in the evening. This industry would have seemed just as
indomitable as Hollywood does now. Indeed, many of the great radio
broadcasters persist today in television, having made the necessary
technological leap.

Hollywood shows no signs of being capable of such a leap. Granted, the music
industry until recently showed no such signs either. It may be that Hollywood
will, as market forces dictate, slowly gravitate to a streaming and on-demand
model, but we've seen no signs of it. Their active hostility towards Netflix,
combined with their lack of interest in offering an appealing alternative,
suggests that they simply lack the industrial agility to adapt. If Hollywood
could have continued to produce the content they do on Netflix dollars, they
would have. They can't, and so they either must adapt their production to much
different revenue streams, or die. Either way, streaming and downloadable
video is here to stay. It may well be, as pg hopes, that a new form of
entertainment rises up. We shall see. What is undeniable is that the old
_distribution mechanisms_ are dead and gone.

------
ryanjmo
Ha, the timing of this is pretty funny. I have had a start-up in LA for the
last year, in the entertainment industry. I spend time in the professional
YouTube community (like freddiew, annoyingorange) and spend a lot of my free
time meeting people and learning about Hollywood. I especially find the people
who are in both industries really interesting.

It is very interesting for me, because there are few programmers in the
Hollywood and YouTube communities, so there are a lot of interesting
opportunities available.

I literally just today turned my head towards building the most entertaining
thing I possibly can. My thought on it is a site that is super branded for
entertainment like break.com or collegehumor.com or smosh.com. And combine
that with a big YouTube channel, just like those websites do.

But at the same time, it is necessary to see where the eyeballs are currently
heading. I think reddit is a wonderful example of a modern entertainment site
which can be seen in its huge growth. I would be nice to combine the usability
of a site like reddit with the targeted branding of a site like collegehumor.

The super interesting thing to me is that a project like this is much more of
a lifestyle business than a venture business. BUT THAT is currently a huge
difference between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. I see LA as the land of the
cash businesses and Silicon Valley as the land of the VC businesses. All of my
professional YouTube friends are making straight cash and building large
audiences, but will never have a public exit or a huge windfall.

It seems to me Hollywood's culture about cash business verse Silicon Valley's
culture, is an advantage for Hollywood in creating entertainment properties.
Entertainment properties require a careful and focused branding for a focused
demographic and audience, you can make millions off something like this, but
it is hard to IPO.

~~~
marquis
>a project like this is much more of a lifestyle business than a venture
business

If you can gain enough market share there is plenty of money to be made in
advertising and affiliation, also consider if you had a successful platform
you could offer space for independent film. I am reminded of AtomFilms from a
few years ago (I think it has since degraded in quality). I spent many an hour
watching independent shorts and animation that couldn't be found elsewhere.
There is now mubi.com which seems to do well, I pay for content there, but for
sure - there is space for a main-stream non-hollywood media delivery network.

------
rdl
Sometime over the past year I went from thinking YouTube content was
insignificant compared to Hollywood, to the point where I'd happily give up
all broadcast/cable/DVD/Netflix content for YouTube type user generated
content. I suspect this will be more widespread in a year or two more.

~~~
Steko
What's really needed is the next level of authoring tools. Here's the startup
I'd do:

(1) buy up a near dead MMO, preferably one with impressively realistic
character graphics.

(2) retool it as a machima authoring tool

(3) hook it into kinect for motion capture

(4) leverage the userbase to crowdsource additions to the 3D library.

With just this talented hobbyists and unfunded indy talents would begin to
swamp Hollywood in an flood of "good enough" tv shows, shorts and full length
films.

~~~
ohyes
I like this idea.

On the graphics end, it might be better to modify an FPS engine, like the
DOOM3 engine. You will get better graphics, and if you are simply generating a
TV show, you don't really need the scalability that an MMO provides. And the
graphics for most failing MMOS are not that great. You could distribute the
machima via a youtube like service that is specific for machima.

You might even get a completely new form of media, because it is not necessary
to distribute a machima as a straight up video.

Viewing it could be like 'ghost' mode in an FPS, viewer gets to pick the angle
from which the drama is watched.

If you read 'Count Zero', one of the ideas there is that going online into a
3D chat didn't really catch on until there were realistic human faces. I think
this is a really insightful concept. It will be important to spend a lot of
time on getting faces just right, so that humans react to them in the same way
that they react to actors.

Looking at a human face is a really big part of TV viewing for a lot of
people. We are conditioned to be attracted to them.

~~~
thristian
_If you read 'Count Zero', one of the ideas there is that going online into a
3D chat didn't really catch on until there were realistic human faces._

One of the characters in _Snow Crash_ by Neal Stephenson mentions that
accurate modelling of human facial expressions was a key component in the
success of that world's VR environment.

Fictional anecdotes are even less like data than real-life anecdotes, but I
think it says something that when humans try to annotate text with emotions,
faces are the closest graphical analogue:

    
    
        :) :( O_o

------
MrScruff
Disclaimer: I work in film.

This discussion is very strange. Hollywood films are extremely expensive and
difficult to make, do you think the studios would spend all that money and
effort if they could get the same return of investment knocking out budget
films shot in someone's living room with a DSLR? I'm quite sure film won't
remain at the top of tree for mass market entertainment forever, but it's
going to be replaced by ever more immersive games, not tech startups. And
those are pretty expensive to make as well.

~~~
polshaw
You balk at DSLRs but (whilst not the go-to option) they are increasingly
being used by the industry. This[1] is an article just about the use of
cannon's 5d mkII. You can add Slumdog Millionaire and 127 hours to this list.
If it's good enough for an oscar winner?

1\. [http://canon5d.wonderhowto.com/blog/canons-5d-mark-ii-
invade...](http://canon5d.wonderhowto.com/blog/canons-5d-mark-ii-invades-
hollywood-0129387/)

~~~
berkut
Those were just reference images for the lookdev and environment mapping (at
least in Iron Man) or set background plates in the compositor - feature films
are generally recorded at 2K (2048x1556) or (these days moving to) 4K
(4096x3112), DSLRs aren't capable of that resolution for movies.

~~~
polshaw
That's not always the case, scenes of Slumdog millionaire (in the streets)
were filmed purely with DSLR, same for the subway scenes of Black Swan. Not a
feature film but the entire season 6 finale of House was exclusively shot on a
5D mkII, and a couple of small BBC series have been.

I appreciate that of course 'proper' digital cinema cameras are better, but
this shows that DSLRs are very much competent, and they are only going to get
better.

------
ypcx
Make a Github for movies.

If I don't like a part of your movie, I can fork it and make it better. People
collaborate, and the system tracks their share in the project, and when the
movie makes it to the cinema, TV, Netflix, etc., they are remunerated
accordingly.

Initially, a resistance is to be expected in the established distribution
channels, therefore a new distribution channel is to be built. Perhaps a P2P
on pay-if-you-like basis. Do you like your new Firefly series? Do you want it
to continue, to thrive? Then contribute as much as you see fit. Contribute
financially. Or submit screenplay ideas to the project. Make the 3D CGI scenes
better, add more details, make animations more fluid. Offer acting - maybe you
will be selected by the audience in a democratic process.

This must be funded, filming equipment and studio time is expensive, rendering
time in the cloud is also not entirely free. But once the equipment is
purchased and studios built or contracted, the projects can share them.

Go get 'em.

~~~
untog
I really don't see how that would work. Do the actors get phone calls every
day? "User1232 has proposed a rewrite of scene 22. We need you back in to see
how it comes out on film. Oh, User3423 will be directing it".

While there's plenty of space for innovation, I'd be _deeply_ wary of applying
too many programming models to artistic endeavors. A lot succeed precisely
because they are the work of one single person with a vision. As a director I
might be horrified if some hack could take my work of art, play fart noises
over it, and make money from it.

~~~
ypcx
These both are technical issues. The first one - maybe there is no need for a
director, when you can have multiple versions of a scene - which then can be
voted on. The second - the system would have to ensure that that hack would
only get paid proportionally for contributing the farts.

I know it all sounds crazy, but I'd be wary of underestimating the power of
community. There may not be processes to convey such group endeavor yet, but
then these are a matter of discovery - also a group effort.

~~~
mminer
It's an interesting idea, but I'm unconvinced that a community effort can
produce results (in this case, films) superior to that of a highly skilled
artist. Has such a system worked in any other medium? We have the technology
available now to collaborate on books on a massive scale, but are there
examples of this happening and succeeding with results that rival Kurt
Vonnegut or F. Scott Fitzgerald? Similarly, a GitHub for music is certainly
feasible with today's tech, but I don't think this recipe guarantees results
better than a small dedicated group of artists like Radiohead or Nine Inch
Nails or <insert favourite band here>.

Don't get me wrong, I think the system you're proposing would be fascinating
and could produce interesting material, but sometimes great artists produce
their best work when every aspect is under their control.

------
bambax
What about a Youtube Recommendation Engine That Works?

I've been on Netflix for about 6 months now, and I'm flabbergasted at the
quality of their recommendation engine (which maybe owes much to their Netflix
Challenge -- I don't know how efficient it was before).

For every show listed, they predict how much I will like it, and their
prediction is almost always right.

On the other hand, Amazon is almost always wrong, and so is Youtube; my guess
is Amazon bases its recommendations on what I buy instead of what I like, and
Youtube does the same (what I watch instead of what I actually like).

A recommendation engine for Youtube (or all video sites) that would actually
work would have a lot of value for users.

There's a chicken-and-egg problem: how do you get enough ratings to be able to
make recommendations; this can be addressed by starting in a small niche of
specific content: start with a small community of people passionate about a
subject.

My two cents.

~~~
jc79
I'll second this.

From my personal experience, I occasionally try to see some stuff from the
Youtube channels, but for one really good video there’s lots of stuff that
really doesn’t appeal to me.

And I can’t really say nothing about Netflix, since it is not available in
Portugal.

There is already lots of good independent production out there, amateur or
professional. I just don’t know how and where to find it.

The solution, thus, is simple:

* Develop a boxee like setup box for around 50$/50€ with an internet connection;

* Distribute it around the world, no region locking whatsoever;

* Have a really good recommendation engine, based on social or whatever. It should allow you to input ‘titles’ that may not be available on the platform, but work as a ‘preference indicator’ (for example, ‘I like House and Battlestar Galactica’)

* It should allow for social subtitling, perhaps even with a reward system - for free;

* Charge 1€/1$ or less per paid TV episode, 2€ or less for film. Better yet, 10€/$ flatrate per device. But make the device still useful for anyone not willing to pay for that, with lots of properly selected free content;

* Commercials are acceptable: one brake per half an hour, not more than one minute : for non-paying customers.

This is not something terribly innovative (except for the recommendation
system), but properly implemented it could be quite disruptive.

------
nirvdrum
This RFS makes a lot of assumptions, some through analogies, that are all
predicated on some level of rational thought. And ultimately, I think that's
where this is flawed. Hollywood may be dying -- I don't really know. But the
fact they're going after pirates or filesharers or whatever could just be a
principled stand for them. I've certainly wasted time and money trying to
rectify things that are wrong in my eyes, even if it's not exactly rational or
in the best interests of the bottom line. But, to me, it's a matter of
principle. And I think for some of these distribution folks, they very much
believe it's a principled stand for them as well _shrug_

------
dageshi
If you define killing hollywood by not actually consuming any of its products
either legally or illegally then video game playthoughs are doing it for me.

<http://www.youtube.com/user/SSoHPKC/videos>

He uploads between 6-10 ten to fifteen minute video's per day on most major
releases. Plus multiplayer games like killing floor, pay day the heist,
minecraft e.t.c.

A weird mix between talk radio, motion picture and reality tv. And genuinely
I'm hooked, if I want to wind down at the end of the day watching half an hour
of skyrim walkthrough followed by some minecraft custom maps is perfect.

Now here's the interesting part, this guy and a bunch of his friends who call
themselves The Creatures (long obscure story) are going to go live in a house
somewhere so they can all record video game playthoughs together.

That's maybe 10+ people producing collectively 3-5 hours of unique content per
day who're getting between 25-100k unique views per video.

And that's before they've put themselves in a single physical location. I
don't know what they'll end up producing once they are all together in one
place, but I'll be watching and a lot of other people will as well.

~~~
bambax
Thanks for this comment; this is news to me, I had no idea these things
existed.

I just watched one video and it's just like you said: a combination of talk
radio, motion picture and reality TV (sort of like Jackass meets NPR...)

Who would have thought watching someone else play a game could be
entertaining, but if the player has funny comments and insights, it sure is.
That could become big (or is it already...?)

~~~
dageshi
Will it be big? I think so and I think minecraft will be the enabler which
really lets it flourish, there are already people out there making custom
minecraft maps which these guys play. I could envisage a situation not far
from now when they're actively commissioning maps with certain aspects which
make watching them being played through even more entertaining.

Ultimately I think minecraft will be the ultimate world/set building tool and
these guys will use it to make great entertainment.

------
brianstorms
YC: take a look at Nettle. Backed by Google Ventures, 500 Startups, Advancit
Capital, etc. Our product is MovieGoer (<http://moviegoer.com>).

"Kill Hollywood" is a kneejerk, negative way to go about it. I prefer a more
positive approach that makes for a better world. In our case, it's all about
EMPOWERING MOVIEGOERS. If you empower moviegoers, who are after all the heart
of the $31B movie ecosystem worldwide, then you wind up improving the entire
ecosystem -- movie theatre chains and studios do whatever moviegoers want. So
give moviegoers more power, more choice, the ability to set the pace,
direction, and the industry will be happy to comply.

Historically moviegoers have historically never had much if any power. As a
result, we have the theatres we have, and the studios put out the content they
think movieogers want. A lot of it is, shall we say, not great.

If anyone at YC wants to talk to me (and if they're serious about this issue,
why aren't they!?), ping me: brian@nettle.com. I will be in the Bay Area all
next week. Happy to meet with folks and talk about this more.

~~~
kmgroove
More power, more choice, to make the same decisions that they have made over
and over again.

------
dboat
I'm a pretty massive gamer, and one thing I think bears mention is that game
companies show similar signs of customer-contempt as the Hollywood middlemen.
This leads me to think that the problem is not the people who are creative,
the problem is the middlemen who have found exceptional margins and do not
want to let them go.

For signs of game publisher contempt, see safedisc, securom and similar cases
in which game performance, reliability and convenience (in other words, the
user experience) have been compromised in order to ineffectually impede
piracy.

Rather than kill Hollywood, producers of things many do so enjoy, I think
startups need to focus on finding ways to allow the creative network of the
industry to thrive by reaching people without the need for the collective
organizations and legacy businesses who are willing to attack the end-users.

Issues or morality and legality aside, suing your users, interfering with
their freedom by legal meddling and otherwise tarnishing their experience is a
poor choice for purely pragmatic reasons.

Killing, ever a tempting solution, is not the best answer here.

------
theoj
Hollywood, the recording companies, RIAA / MPAA are all intermediaries between
the artists who need the funding to create video and music content and the
consumers who crave that content.

What we needed is a YCombinator for artists. Invest in each artist like he/she
was a startup, then take losses on the flops, win big on the successes.
Everything is in place for significant disruption: the artists are upset about
low royalties and the consumers are upset about draconian copyright
enforcement -- should be easy to offer more favorable terms to both parties.

------
iamdann
Free idea: Create an app that provides a TiVo-like experience to all web
video. You could "record" channels from YouTube the same way you'd queue TED,
or even Hulu+, Netflix, et all.

Your app would automatically pull new streaming episodes for you to watch and
manage the same way people use DVRs on televisions.

If internet TV, and "television app" really are the next thing...if you build
an amazing version of this now, you'll be set.

Not only that, but you'd encourage more people to produce content, since
viewing it and following new episodes would all happen in one place.

~~~
krshmda
I've been doing this instead of satellite TV. $8/month for HD comedy, news and
educational stuff (H+, CNN, YT). I think downloading will dominate the future
more than streaming. It's just a better experience, you can skip forward ads
and you can download off peak hours.

Of course, capturing the RTMP data violates the user agreements but it should
be fair to store the incoming data to play it back later.

~~~
Professa
I think it may be the other way around. With the right curated lists of
content, it would be more worthwhile to stream instead of downloading
everything.

------
slater
Why does H'Wood have to be killed? All they have to do is change their
business models a bit.

I've been wondering if an apps-like model would work for TV shows and movies.
EG, if you like The Daily Show, you have a Daily Show app, instead of having
to subscribe to a whole slew of channels you'll never watch. Or for sports:
Like Formula 1? Get the F1 app. Need some news? Daily News app, done. After
you've got all your apps, you can mix & match, set whether you want to be
interrupted (watching the daily show and some F1 qualifying is starting,
switch to that app y/n?), heck, even set the number of ads and length of ads
(longer ads means less ads, and vice-versa).

Similar for movies. There, you could split up the apps either by genre,
franchise, favorite star. Like Leo DiCaprio movies? D/L the Leo app. Like the
Batman franchise? Get the app, and have everything from the 60s TV show (yes,
I know, mixing TV and movies, here) to The Dark Knight.

------
llambda
Why was my submission killed? -->
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491539>

Edit: incidentally, because this submission was made after my submission, when
I saw it I flagged it thinking it was a dupe. Now it seems I've lost the
ability to flag entirely. :(

~~~
mooism2
I saw pg's submission first, and _it_ got killed. (Or deleted.)

~~~
llambda
Yes you're right, I actually didn't see that... What's going on?

~~~
bane
I've had a bunch of random stuff killed recently too. It's so fast it has to
be an automated thing.

------
re_format
A while ago I found myself accidentally reading about the origins of Hollywood
on the web. There is a surprising amount of writing posted about it. I'm
wondering if others are aware where Hollywood "came from". Specifically, who
brought it to the US. And why does it have the rules it does, e.g., about what
are good or bad characters and themes, about carefully crafted endings, etc.

This might provide some insight about Hollywood is going in the future. As the
generations pass from one to another.

I'll let the curious reader chase up the history on their own. But what I
gathered is Hollywood was founded by outcasts, refugees, young men who came
from difficult circumstances and were faced with growing up without role
models.

Are there parallels to today's young hacker crowd?

------
sanjiallblue
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 work in production as a media
producer (reality TV, variety TV, single-camera, digital magazines, games,
social media, features, etc.). I was also very fortunate to be mentored by one
of the former ranking executives of MGM.

That mentor taught me a great deal, but one of the most fascinating things I
learned was that these executives do not understand how the internet works, at
all. Their days are scheduled down to the letter so they simply don't have
time to figure this kind of shit out. So they pay their lawyers to figure it
out for them and that's the source of the cancer of misinformation in
Hollywood studios, Copyright/IP lawyers. Their jobs have evolved to depend
solely on finding 'infringement' wherever they can and then making it seem as
terrifying as possible to the execs that employ them. These are the people
responsible for outright lies such as "100 billion in lost revenue".

This misinformation eventually became the dogma of the entertainment industry.
I can't tell you how many people I've worked with in the industry, wildly
intelligent people, that honestly believe piracy is the single greatest threat
to the entertainment industry. What's worse is that they conflate basic
concepts like file-sharing with the selling of boot-leg DVDs in some back-
alley market in Calcutta. The disconnect with fact and reality is just truly
astounding.

That's why the first line of defense should be to open a dialogue with
Hollywood. Before we vote any Congresspeople out and before declaring "War on
Hollywood" there needs to be an open campaign to combat the lies that are
pervasive in Hollywood itself. Because honestly, after all we've been through
in the last 10 years, do we really need more wars? Is that the lesson we're
going to take away from Iraq and Afghanistan?

The people who work in Hollywood are fellow humans and fellow Americans. They
aren't malicious invaders, they're people who are just irrationally scared for
the future of the industry they love. If you declare "Let's Kill Hollywood",
you immediately become part of the "Them" to Hollywood's "Us". You fire the
first shot of a War that you never had to fight in the first place and one
that will only hasten the urgency with which even more draconian legislation
would be pursued. All of which could be easily avoided.

Creating effective channels for communication between the informed members of
the tech industry and Hollywood should be the first priority of any initiative
that was realistically and maturely seeking change to the kind of legislative
agendas being advocated by groups like the MPAA (the RIAA is a different
story, that's a case of rats on a sinking ship trying to prevent anyone else
from getting on the ship so that they can make money off of the glass-botton
tours.)

That being said, I'm not against (in any way) the idea of funding start-ups to
explore exciting new maxims of entertainment or helping to shrink the cost of
production for film/television/gaming. That's brilliant and deserves praise
for being supported. However, it's the call the War I find so very unsettling.

I think I've made those points clear enough so I'll follow-up this post with
some ideas to kick around that would help bring production costs down for
smaller-scale film/television production along with some notes concerning
certain realities surrounding the different aspects.

EDIT: Grammar

~~~
sanjiallblue
Okay, so some ruminations:

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.

~~~
crewtide
I totally get why this rfs was posted. SOPA is pretty egregious, and the
YCombinator folks went beyond complaining and decided to do something about
it. There's nothing more positive than funding startups to create the better
world you envision.

I certainly appreciate that they didn't gloss over the fact that SOPA's
potential damage to civil liberties and the world economy was what raised
their awareness of the viability of startups in this space. People should
publicly stand up for causes they believe in.

I've been looking into this space for a while with plans of disruption. I see
a lot of posts on here from people who work in the industry talking about how
expensive it is to create high-quality video. As an independent filmmaker and
entrepreneur, I only somewhat agree (on the price of hiring indie filmmakers:
[http://crewtide.com/2011/11/03/price-of-video-narrative-
vs-v...](http://crewtide.com/2011/11/03/price-of-video-narrative-vs-
videography/)). There are a number of things that make Hollywood productions
so expensive, like name actors or car crashes/explosions. But another big one
is location, location, location. Hollywood production studios are expensive
because they can create any location you can imagine. Crowdsource to award-
winning independent filmmakers (as my startup will do) and each of them will
shoot in whatever amazing-looking locations they know they can shoot in for
free.

sanjiallblue writes as if every independent film shoot uses non-professional
cast and crew -- that is ridiculous. In my recent shoot (we're releasing a
six-episode thriller-romance web series around Valentine's Day) the only
conflict was that one of our leads got into a play with the American Repertory
Theater. I'm interviewing 20 independent filmmakers for my blog this month and
all of them are full-time filmmakers -- some have day jobs shooting for local
TV stations or editing for production studios, but most are full-time
freelancers doing commercials, corporate work, music videos, and their own
shorts and features.

By the way, brands are beating Y Combinator to the punch. Who has funded
television since it began? Brands, and they're starting to skip tv and the
exorbitant price of advertising there and create their own content. Since
BMW's The Hire series early last decade, plenty of other brands have jumped on
board creating their own mini TV shows
([http://crewtide.com/2011/10/14/branded-entertainment-
example...](http://crewtide.com/2011/10/14/branded-entertainment-examples/)).
You should really read these guys take on it: <http://www.reelseo.com/every-
brand-will-be-a-studio/>. ReelSEO always has the latest news & best commentary
on this industry.

Right now BMW, Kmart, YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu are still going to Hollywood
to get their content produced, and they're paying through the nose. Kmart
spent $100,000 per 8-mninute episode of a low-budget web series by going to
Hollywood; an indie filmmaker could have made that for 1/10th the price with
an all-professional crew.

~~~
costee
Well said, crewtide. There's a positive paradigm shift taking place, and you
seem to be facilitating it.

------
runevault
At least to me, the most important part of trying to make a current media
killer is remembering that storytelling is still a fundamental part of
society, and not all forms of entertainment (including a subset of video
games) do not scratch that itch. To truly replace Hollywood I think you need
to come up with new ways of filling that need.

Since books obviously don't quite do it (need for visual/audio component for
some people, perhaps?) something else will need to do it.

Perhaps focus on interactivity with real story behind it in games and taking
that to the next level? Lots of potential, but have to keep in mind what niche
they're filling.

~~~
lazerwalker
I think you're confusing the medium with the distribution method.

If you accept that modern-day Hollywood is in trouble, it does not necessarily
follow that a solution needs to replace video as a multimedia narrative
medium. While that very well might happen, the root of the problem is the
distribution channel, not the content.

~~~
Detrus
Yes but it's expensive to mass produce the type of content that Hollywood
does. You may need a cheaper form of entertainment, where the content can be
crowdsourced, where the production is quick, cheap, etc.

Making custom crap for MMORPGs, short youtube clips, vblogs, podcasts, rage
comics etc. are cheap and quick, but not entertaining enough.

<http://www.xtranormal.com> style tech isn't there yet.

------
DocSavage
"Some of the best ideas may initially look like they're serving the movie and
TV industries."

Somehow, I think it'll be difficult for your startups to partner with or serve
movie and TV industries if they've been funded under a "Kill Hollywood" RFS
:-)

Although leadership in Hollywood may be cruel and tech-stupid from our
standpoint, they have a tremendous amount of talent at their disposal. Seems
like a production system for what comes out of Amazon Studios could threaten
their system if it was stocked with Hollywood-level talent -- actors, editors,
cinematographers, etc -- and coupled with a smarter distribution system.

~~~
JamesLeonis
If we take a cue from Apple with iTunes, you could set up a service that does
cater to the industry while stealthily eating up market share. Once you become
too profitable and control too much of the market, you turn that on Hollywood
and start dictating your own terms. The music industry was entirely unprepared
when Jobs started twisting its arms to get the terms his way.

I agree though that eventually Hollywood will need to be replaced if the
situation is to improve substantially.

------
MatthewB
PG - When you say kill Hollywood, who are you talking about exactly? I assume
you mean the middlemen of Hollywood - people who add zero value to the
entertainment industry. If so, I completely agree.

Startups need to offer content creators a better/cheaper/easier way to
distribute their content. Distribution is where startups can really succeed.
When I say distribution, what I mean is the method by which people consume
content. The problem is the middlemen control the true content creators.

The biggest problem is quality. Youtube is a dead simple way to distribute
content but the problem is you'll never see anything on Youtube that rivals
the quality of something on NBC, HBO, CBS etc. I believe Netflix has the right
idea by funding their own high-quality content to distribute on their own
"network." However, Netflix may just end up becoming another NBC, HBO, Warner
Bros. over time.

As I mentioned before, the best was to achieve the goal of killing the
middleman is by providing high-quality content creators a way to get funding
and distribute their work to large audiences without giving up the rights to
their work. Additionally, there are plenty of ways to increase margin by using
technology to get viewers more involved with the content. We've only just
begun to scratch the surface of interactive entertainment.

I've been thinking about this stuff for a while and it's a difficult, complex
issue. I'd love to chat with anyone who has thoughts about this, feel free to
email me or respond here (email in profile).

------
aestetix_
I think pg is actually completely 100% on the money here. Kudos to him and YC
being bold enough to come out and say it so bluntly.

Here's why I agree with him: I see a lot of comments from people suggesting
that Hollywood works on a cycle, where things move along, start to stagnate,
and then a dark horse director comes along and creates magic. Altman, Lucas,
etc all fit this bill, and they've produced amazing hits. Using money from
Hollywood.

So, if this cycle is indeed perpetual, and Hollywood simply has to wait for
the next big thing, then why don't they? Instead, we are seeing prosecutions
on a massive scale, and grossly out of touch legislation proposed like SOPA
and PIPA.

If Hollywood were so confident, and had so much money, why should they care
about these infringers? Is it that copyright infringement makes Hollywood lose
that much money, or is it that the economic model has changed dramatically,
the execs are scared shitless, and are trying dearly to hold on to their once-
empire?

I don't think anyone can challenge the assertion that the field has changed
dramatically. I also don't think anyone, including the Hollywood execs, has a
clue where it's going now. Laws like SOPA seem to be about preventing this
change from happening, to keep the power where it was. It sounds like YC's
approach is to encourage people to be creative and try to come up with a
viable suggestion as to where things are going.

------
zupatol
This proposal is not just an attack against Hollywood, it aims to replace
cinema with something else. It's about actively working to destroy an art
form. It sounds just as over the top as shutting down the internet to curb
piracy.

If you really want to devote your life to destroying something, please don't
just jump on the latest annoying thing. Make a list of the most evil things
you can do something about, and see if Hollywood's political influence really
makes it to the top.

------
Stevenup7002
If you can get the artists on your side, you can kill hollywood.

~~~
SudarshanP
Hollywood only allows a tiny fraction of people with talent to suceed... The
remaining 99% who never got into hollywood would want to work if they could
succeed. Probably becoming millionares rather than billionares.

------
wavetossed
Here is a free idea that I tried to get implemented in another country while
working for a telecom company that was branching into TV services over their
DSL connections.

Simply build a site like YouTube with lots of content to view. But unlike
YouTube, this site would be pay per view and 100% of the content would be
provided by teams of content creators. No backroom licencing deals.

The end user pays a fixed monthly fee for what they watch. After you watch a
show, you must rate it before you get to watch another. That means 100% of
viewings are rated. At the end of the month all the shows are ranked according
to the ratings, and the portion of the monthly fee that goes to content
creators, would be divided according to the rankings.

OK, maybe this is more like Netflix than YouTube. The UI is not as important
as the system of acquiring and paying for content which is directly tied to
viewer rankings. You would need to have a multiple factor ranking system so
that cat videos with shot with a shaky video camera can rank high in
entertainment value but low in quality and thus earn less. Also a longer show
should earn a bigger share than a 2-minute short.

There are other types of things that would also work for this YC request, but
I hope to see this as one of the ones that YC funds.

------
RichardBennett
Reading the post and the comments, I really miss Steve Jobs.

Look, guys, Hollywood is not your enemy, you're not going to kill it, and it
doesn't need killing. Hollywood's use of technical and business model
innovation has advanced faster than most other industries over the past five
to ten years.

Similarly, Congress and the carriers aren't your enemies and they're not going
away either, although you certainly didn't win any friends in Washington with
the tactics you used to stop SOPA and Protect IP for the time being.

Perspective is important here: Congress has been working on copyright and on-
line piracy since the Napster days, and this one just one small episode in a
struggle to rationalize creator's rights with new technologies of
distribution. This fight emphasized the universal human right to speech, but
there's also an article (27b) in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
respecting copyright. So it's not a simple black-and-white, good guys and bad
guys issue.

Congress also has a long memory, and you can't steer the ship of state
blacking out Reddit or cloaking Wikipedia (in a way cleverly designed to
preserve page rank) every time there's a debate on the Hill that makes you
uncomfortable. And be aware that Congress deals with tech industry issues
several times a year, every year, no matter what.

Tech (I won't say Silicon Valley because the San Francisco Web 2.0 social
media sharing cabal is on a completely different tack than the Valley in its
heyday) needs to refine its marketing skills, develop better relations with
Hollywood, Congress, and infrastructure providers, and to think about what it
does well and what it's never going to do well.

Gaming and information processing are more up your alley than narrative,
character development, and story arc. Get real.

Lots of people around the world have spent a lot of mind time on developing
better forms of interactive entertainment, infotainment, augmented reality,
education, and more. Even people in Washington who work in the policy space
can fill you in on the details. See the latest Congressional Internet Caucus
State of the Net conference that took place when you were staring at blank
screens this week: <http://youtu.be/4VF-EIXQCzE>

But it's a good start, get beyond the anger and think about where you want to
be in five years.

------
tansey
> Some of the best ideas may initially look like they're serving the movie and
> TV industries.

So that's interesting. My startup somewhat falls into that category. Hollywood
is so entrenched that the only way to change it may be to work around it until
you're big enough to take it on.

As far "dying"-- I'm not so sure. Celebrity, status, fashion, and passive
entertainment do not follow the same set of rules as search engines, cloud
storage apps, or apartment subletting sites. There is no way to say
objectively one form is better than the other from the consumer side of it.
Some people still insist on listening to records, but hardly anyone would
argue that they search on Alta Vista because they think the results "feel"
more authentic than Google.

Also, Hollywood has a long history of doing this. If they are dying now
because they're fighting this, then were they also dying when the VCR was
introduced? Or the cassette tape? Isn't it possible that they simply use the
legal system to slow down innovation until they can catch up?

------
seagreen
As someone who loves tricks and tactics it pains me to suggest this, but one
sure way to replace Hollywood would be a frontal assault. Get a ton of money
and make your own movies. You would definitely distribute them better than
Hollywood, you might be able to make them better too. Do this for long enough
and eventually you'll reach a tipping point.

------
haberman
> SOPA brought it to our attention that Hollywood is dying. They must be dying
> if they're resorting to such tactics. If movies and TV were growing rapidly,
> that growth would take up all their attention.

I'm not sure this follows. I'm guessing that Hollywood sees piracy and
filesharing as vast amounts of unrealized profit for the work they're already
doing -- "free money" essentially.

I think it's personal too; look how bent out of shape Scott Rudin got just
because David Denby published a review for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" a
week ahead of a previously-agreed-upon embargo:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/dec/05/girl-dragon-
tatto...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/dec/05/girl-dragon-tattoo-early-
review)

Hollywood seems to like having control over when and how their material is
released, and on this level piracy offends them on a moral level.

~~~
bandushrew
"I'm guessing that Hollywood sees piracy and filesharing as vast amounts of
unrealized profit for the work they're already doing"

right, but the fact that they are chasing it implies very clearly that they
believe there is more money in chasing free cash for work they have already
done, than there is in creating new work.

That is the _sure_ sign of an industry (or business) that has stopped growing.

------
shapeshed
I agree that Hollywood is in decline because is failing to change and
innovate. Creativity has always been sold by record labels and movie studios
and technically this looks an increasingly irrelevant role. Production,
distribution and marketing of content can all be handled by the web, not
monolithic entertainment companies.

The challenge is to create applications that remove that middle layer and keep
things open for the creators of content. To date the pattern is repeating
itself. App Stores and streaming services are take huge cuts from creators of
content. Proprietary formats are prevalent everywhere, designed to protect
marketplaces that exploit the creators of content.

Please prove me wrong but I'm currently watching a terrible show where
Hollywood is morphing into VC-backed entrepreneurs and big Internet companies.
They are no better.

------
froo
This is something I'd been thinking about awhile ago (it's buried somewhere in
my comments.)

Show production isn't necessarily out of the scope of whats possible as I've
posted about the disconnect between cost of entertainment in the past on HN

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552394>

I still believe digital animation is an environment where a small startup
could produce content to pave the way for the online market. This was
something I looked at some years ago - it turns out that I'm simply not
talented enough as an animator to do anything like this.

However, I am reposting links to my previous thoughts in the hope that someone
who is talented enough can potentially make it work. I'd love to see someone
beat Hollywood at their own game.

~~~
Irfaan
We actually treated this as an opportunity - we invented our own animation
style geared towards quickly and cheaply producing large amounts of rich,
life-like animation. Here's a sample:

<http://vimeo.com/27841597>

Rather than try and create something realistic, we opted to go with something
stylized and life-like - pseudo-rotoscoped silhouettes. Yeah, it's a bit
jarring, but we're trying to twist that to feel like a stylistic choice. And
silhouettes are waaay simpler to capture, are easy to reuse, and let us
massively simplify the lighting and perspective issues of traditional green
screen work.

It's painful slogging through it - we're basically inventing everything we
need. And because this is content heavy, it's cost is more daunting then a
traditional web startup. _BUT_ , by tackling the animation problem head-on
we're hoping to move forward in a way most startups can't.

------
ivankirigin
Did you just make it really hard for YC companies to get deals with movie &
music studios?

------
sambeau
Here's my suggestion:

 _Trailer Pitch_

This is a simple design for a site and business where filmakers can
crowdsource investment. It uses a simple mechanism to sell tickets and shares
in advance based on the popularity of premade movie trailers. It uses a
mechanism based on ideas tried by _Pinboard, Kickstarter, YouTube, Vimeo,
Betfair_ and _Louis CK._

One: filmakers make compelling trailers for films they would like to be made
(or potentially films they would like to see others make). They fund this part
themselves although if the site is successful it might consider grants to
improve on good ideas whose trailers lack finish.

Two: Professional looking trailers are placed on a website for the public to
watch, enjoy, download and share.

 _(so far so normal)_

Three: credits are sold to users of the site for the pupose of voting and
investing in the films. 1 vote initially costs $1 but the price will rise as
the film becomes more successful. Each person who votes for a film that is
eventually made will get a ticket to 'see' the film. This is essentially a
ticket to a high-quality download.

Four: Voting for a film becomes gradually more expensive. The final vote (and
thus the final ticket sold) will be based on the budget of the film but will
hopefully be in the _'Louis CK'_ ballpark of $5. No more than $10.

Five: Other special tickets are sold alongside the standard: Boxed collectors'
DVD, ticket to special shows + meet the cast, ticket to the premier, ticket to
the after-party.

Six: Votes & tickets are refunded if the film fails to make its investment or
fails to be made.

 _This is where it gets interesting:_

Seven: As well as tickets, shares are sold. These, start out cheap but will
also rise in price as they are sold. Thus a keen smart eye might be able to
make real money if they spot a winner early and invest. Investing always
incurs a percentage fee. Shares are _real_ shares in the _real_ profit of the
film and its merchandising. Shareholders get access to the film-making process
and limited creative input during the development. Shareholders always get to
go to the party. The filmmakers and Trailer Pitch will always get to keep some
shares for themselves.

Eight: Shares are transferable and can be bought and sold in the in-built
online market. The price of a share is wholy determined by the market and can
continue to be traded even after a film is made. If shareholders agree to a
dilation new shares can be issued and sold on the market. Transferring shares
always incurs a fee which will be split between Trailer Pitch and the film:
both should benefit from a runaway success!

Nine: If the film sells it's shares and advance tickets it goes into
production: an executive producer is assigned and the filmakers are helped to
make the film. In the case of totally inexperienced teams substantial help may
be provided.

Ten: If the film fails to reach target all money (and $1 credits are
returned).

Eleven: Once the film is made it is launched online with fanfare and parties.
Each film launch gives a projector&hifi system away to a lucky voter so they
can watch it in style. For some films a theatrical release might be
considered. The eventaul plan would be to do both.

Twelve: Profit is handed out to all and continues to be paid out to whoever
holds the shares at any time. Some films will have long tails especially those
with merchandising.

Obviously this is a quick sketch of my idea, there would have to be a lot more
thought put into the legal and financial details (as well as the enormity of a
site with so many levels) but with the right backing it certainly could work.

 _Who's in?_

~~~
losvedir
> _Seven: As well as tickets, shares are sold. These, start out cheap but will
> also rise in price as they are sold. Thus a keen smart eye might be able to
> make real money if they spot a winner early and invest. Investing always
> incurs a percentage fee. Shares are real shares in the real profit of the
> film and its merchandising. Shareholders get access to the film-making
> process and limited creative input during the development. Shareholders
> always get to go to the party. The filmmakers and Trailer Pitch will always
> get to keep some shares for themselves._

If I recall correctly, not too long ago there was an effort being made to set
up a futures market for box office receipts, although I haven't heard of it
recently.

One concern, though, was of sabotage. It's relatively easier to make a movie
bad (or a good movie do poorly) then a good movie. If you sell shares in a
movie, then people will be able to set up derivative contracts on their value
allowing you to bet negatively, essentially. And if someone bets negatively on
a movie, that could spell trouble.

~~~
coreyrecvlohe
This was actually something the MPAA successfully lobbied to kill.
<http://www.ifc.com/fix/2010/07/futures>

------
batruler
I'm a filmmaker and killing Hollywood is the best thing you can do. It is
burning to the ground and Nero plays the White House. But they cannot stop it
since WE are remaking it. I worked pretty much my whole live in the
entertainment industry, writing directing, plays, tours you name it I have
done it, to a very high level. In 2007 I released a film and within a day it
was on torrents and I was so MAD. Mad at everyone IRL but the internet. Why
because before I'd released the film I had build the biggest game online at
the time to promo the movie <http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/334475>. It
was kinda popular. I'd built a site to support the film which got massive and
all I wanted to do but put the film online because I knew it was the biggest
way to promote it, it was already happening. But the investors and the sales
company would NOT allow the film to go online for free, they just didn't get
how big it could have been. They spurned the millions of viewer and plays we
were getting daily to delay the release by going through the bullshit analogue
route taking months to get it onto Amazon. It is something that taught me a
lot. NOW I am building two start ups to rip a fucking huge hole in Hollywood.
one is going to be a live performance/entertainment site open to anyone
anywhere to enjoy live global talent to rise to the top and the other will be
a live investment site. If you code if you're good and if you want to work
with me hit me up mrsimoncathcart@googlemail.com I will respond to you
message.

------
radagaisus
>> There will be several answers, [...], through new media (e.g. games) that
look a lot like shows but are more interactive

Some genres will not be replaced soon by games. The archtypes of How I Met
your Mother are the same as in Friends, and they serve to appease our
loneliness and self worth. The 'entertainment' TV Shows and Movies are our
fantasies coming real in front of our eyes. While action movies are clearly
replaced, fantasies on the Social level are a tougher problem we are a long
way from solving.

------
jasonabelli
EdTV. But interactive also with multiple Ed’s (channels). Free to watch. With
adds on the parameter or occasionally a commercial during slow moments. How
would it be interactive? There can be options for what your Ed might due.
People could “donate” a micro-purchase towards making that option happen.
Options, get a new car, go on a trip, get jewelry. Friends could chat while
watching a particular Ed and get momentum going towards certain scenarios via
social networking.

Sorry this is choppy just in a rush.

~~~
WesleyJohnson
I came here to post something similar to this. With all the adoration over so-
called "Reality TV", I'm surprised there isn't more of a movement towards true
reality TV. JenniCam and other sites from days gone by come to mind. That sort
of thing's entertainment value is questionable, but then so is watching the
Kardashian sisters.

~~~
jasonabelli
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley>

100 million weekly views in its prime and there was really nothing to it. Add
interactivity and the social network and some interesting subjects..... Boom
there goes the dynamite! LOL

------
Xlythe
Why not a startup that focuses on user-generated funding that releases movies
into the public domain? In the age of digital media, everything is a fixed
cost. Once the initial investment is paid for, distribution is free. Give
producers, indie or otherwise, a platform to ask for money and promote their
shows. On the user's side, offer options like direct donations and
subscriptions. Give them the choice to say "I'll pay 30$ a month. Recommend me
shows and split my subscription among them"

------
boyzo
I am co-founder of Nuflick.com, we've been working since June in a model that
challenges the traditional distribution of entertainment.

We have a model where users can browse a catalog of films to stream on demand
by unlocking them through social interactions like inviting a facebook friend
and we encourage to support creators. Like a reversed kickstarter where
contributions give access to rewards related to the movies.

The day of the blackout we published a blogpost on our take on SOPA and new
models of distribution: <http://blog.nuflick.com/?p=129>

Quote <Partially and oblique legislation will never be the right answer to
protect intellectual property from piracy and prevent copyright infringement.
Large copyright holders haven’t been working creatively around regulations,
technical difficulties or thought of different approaches to offer consumers
what they want and are willing to pay for.

The right answer is coming from bold people that dare to challenge the status-
quo creating flexible models that allow distribution, availability and safety
to consumers and creators. In the end it all comes down to “supply and
demand”; the future requires copyright holders to understand that supply of
entertainment will never cease and the success will be measured in relation to
their understanding of what the consumers demand.>

On the end, we believe that hollywood, as a whole, have been damaging
consumers in order to protect a business that would be nothing without them
and their money.

------
Kavan
I quite like Hollywood. Some of the best entertainment has and will come from
their studios. It is the old guard that don't get that Piracy has had very
little impact on their industry and would be a waste of tax payers money to
legislate against it: ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/01/21/does-
online-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/01/21/does-online-
piracy-hurt-the-economy-a-look-at-the-numbers/), [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2012/01/internet-reg...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2012/01/internet-regulation-and-the-economics-of-piracy.ars))

I don't think we need to do too much here as I think the suits will get rid of
themselves by repeatedly showing how inept they are by not understanding the
digital world. But if you do want to put pressure on the old boys I would
suggest:

1\. Don't buy Popcorn and Cola at the cinema. The ridiculous margins on these
goods are the 'cream' that makes the movie houses their money. Literally your
popcorn and coke'sie cash is what lines the studio's pockets and allows
Brangelina to live lavishly. Hollywood == Popcorn + Coke sales

2\. Support awesome UGC like:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7ezeYJUz-84)

------
bytenotes
The RIAA maybe.

Artists need initial help to rid of the startup fears which sends them in the
arms of the enslaving RIAA.

Create an open pool of "service providers" that abide by an open contractual
agreement securing musical talent with supporting talent.

Name it OpenRecordingAlliance.net or something more friendly.

Credentialed designers, developers, accountants, advertising skill bands
together to create a supporting nucleus for aspiring artists. Affinity, past
experience, geography are the free coalescing agents.

Artists post their intent, biography and whatever rules require. This in
formation is visible to registered users which sign up to help. A minimum
number of supporting skills will be required to secure success.

The artist will mind the guitar, voice or whatever gift may be. Within a given
time, legal paperwork is completed, a website, recordings, accounting, trade
marks etc. Timelines and rules are set by the OPA.NET governing body.

Contractual agreement expires within few months. Ensuing success is shared,
credits given. The team may continue to work together with renewed contract as
each party agrees.

Details of the agreement and its scope are of course, key to the success of
this idea. I believe that given such a platform, many artists, designers, web
developers would gladly work together to succeed. All activity remains public
and auditable during this process.

The artist only maintains copyright.

We open source the music. As it used to be.

------
mikeleeorg
Here's what I would love to see. And I'm 90% sure there are companies already
thinking & working on this.

I'd love to see a service that offers various "channels" of video content.
These channels would be genres, like food, home, comedy, action, etc. The
content would be a mix of amateur videos (like home videos), semi-pro videos
(like amateurs who've worked hard to create near-professional quality videos),
and professional videos (created in formal studios with a full staff).

I could subscribe to particular shows within a genre, or just let a channel
play random shows for me. Shows could also be recommended to me in a Pandora-
like manner that uses my previous viewing behavior + my active ratings to
determine my tastes. Most popular shows could also be shown somewhere, in case
I wanted to browse what's hot right now.

As an example, my wife loves cooking shows. She's found a few amateur/indie
chefs on YouTube that seem just as good as "professional" chefs with their own
produced TV shows. It would be great to view both types of videos in one
place.

I love sci-fi and action movies. And you know what? Twitch.tv is pretty damn
cool too. As are some cinematic game trailers. I'd love to see all of that in
this service too.

This service would come with integrated hardware, much like Roku. In a way,
this idea is like Roku, but with YouTube videos bundled together. Plus, a
"video genome," a Pandora for videos. Oh, and a much better UI.

To the people who are already thinking & working on this, please hurry. I
can't wait to give you my money and subscribe to your service.

~~~
silverlake
youtube is already doing this

~~~
mikeleeorg
Almost. And I certainly hope they're going to go this way. Their concept of
"channels" right now aren't genres, but specific accounts, like CollegeHumor.
I'd love to see a generic "comedy" channel that included CollegeHumor,
comedians (amateur & professional), clips from TBBT, etc.

------
jfoster
I'm not sure the suggested approach is right. Trying to replace the medium is
overkill, because it's actually just the companies that need to be removed.

The companies are able to exist because the $-to-quality ratio is currently
very high. It has always been decreasing, but the way to kill the companies
quickly is to lower all of the barriers to entry toward $0 sooner.

I think it's easier for startups to lower production costs than it is to
replace mediums. Shouldn't take too long, either.

~~~
dmragone
I am still digesting all the comments, but think I agree.

Storytelling has existed as a form of entertainment for quite some time. The
primary change has been the delivery mechanism, which provided for alternative
ways to consume the content, altered how it was made (think putting on a play
vs making a film), and also shifted the power structure. Seven years ago it
cost over $60 million to make a Hollywood blockbuster, and nearly another $40
million was spent on marketing
(<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3564377.stm>). Getting that kind of
reach requires deep pockets, hence few large players.

I may be thinking small here, but I think any significant changes to this
power structure in the near-term will have to start with new delivery systems.
At least in terms of consuming video content in the home, I imagine most of it
occurs in front of the tv. I know there are various ways to watch movies,
shows, and sometimes even sports without needing a cable or satellite
subscription, but the options are still limited and way too spread out. The
content that I want isn't available where I want it to be, when I want it to
be, in a manner easily usable by most people.

I'm sure this is only one piece of the puzzle. I imagine if more content was
more readily available, that would change things as well. Ultimately I think
people are willing to pay for content they enjoy, but the current availability
and especially packaging are outdated.

------
chegra
My tweet about a month ago in my ideation session for a weekend project: "I'm
thinking cinemas are obsolete, and movies should be streaming in my house on
their premier." <https://twitter.com/#!/chegra/status/150519505636950016>

I was thinking maybe groupon / kickstarter for movies. A studio large or
small[ie individual] creates a trailer and people pledge to it. Initially, I
was thinking about streaming, but now I'm think just have a download of the
movie[better quality].

In terms of what would happen in 20 years, I'm banking on the singularity
would have happened by then. Films would be generated on the fly to match your
mood, personality and preferences to guarantee maximum pleasure.

Coming back to the present, the advancement of strong AI[1] would be the
natural end to Hollywood.

Edit: Took a look at this picture:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PPTSuperComputersPRINT.jpg> . Apparently
2013 is the year when we are suppose to have enough computing power to
simulate the human brain[feels less crazy for suggesting it.].

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI>

~~~
waterlesscloud
Experiments along these lines have already been performed. The struggle
between VOD and theatrical is one of the major battles underway in Hollywood
right now.

Contrary to what you might initially suspect, the studios are in favor of VOD
over theatrical.

It's the exhibitors (theaters) that are fighting it.

Here's a youtube interview with the NATO (theater owner trade association)
president which focuses a lot on the VOD issue.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5_Habwshog>

------
beilabs
Checkout <http://setkick.com/>

They just got accepted to StartMate, seems to be targeting the right industry.

*Disclaimer, in no way affiliated with SetKick!

~~~
chrisrickard
I am affiliated with Setkick,

and yeah - Setkick is aiming to digitise the project management of film & tv
productions.

Managing a large scale film or tv show still relies on some quite archaic
practises (and zillions of dead trees) - so again this is something that needs
to be disrupted.

------
jay_kyburz
Is there a social network / kickstarter like site for making movies. A
LinkedIn for Actors, Writers, Directors and everybody else you need to make
film and television.

I'd be interested in building a site that helps people find each other, review
projects and scrape together whatever funding they need to make indie films
happen.

There have got to be hundreds of people floating around Hollywood trying to
get into the mainstream industry.

How hard is it for these people to find each other right now?

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Most good blogs and communities are more specialized than that. Aspiring
screenwriters go to John August's blog [1], documentary filmmakers go to The
D-Word [2], cinematographers go to forums like DVXUser [3] and RED User [4],
sound folks go somewhere else, etc.

Your idea sounds swell, though. I think a lot of people would be interested in
a such a site, if done well.

[1] <http://johnaugust.com/>

[2] <http://www.d-word.com/>

[3] <http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/>

[4] <http://www.reduser.net/>

~~~
wj
Francis Ford Coppola has a site that is a "virtual studio" called Zoetrope
(<http://www.zoetrope.com/>). I haven't visited in a few years but it was a
lot of aspiring screenwriters at the time.

I'm currently working on a collaboration tool for filmmakers and am hoping to
launch it in a month or two.

------
greentea
My idea is this:

A website where you create an account, are able to transfer money into it, and
are able to search for a film or episode of a TV series (for a list which we
have licensed somehow). When you find the film you want to watch you are given
the option to buy it using your credit, if you have bought it there will be
download links available: direct/HTTP download as well as something more
robust (able to stop and restart half way through with ease). What you get to
download is simply a video file (mp4, mkv, something like that) of the episode
itself: No adverts stuck onto it, no digital hand cuffs, no hidden water marks
than identify you personally: Just the video you want to watch. You can then
watch it on your computer as many times as you want but you are not allowed to
upload it to the internet or broadcast it publicly etc.

I think this is a good idea because it gives people freedom from DRM and
harassment and similar such things (many people that currently use torrents do
so because they do not like these anti-freedom technological devices). I do
not know whether or not any publishers would actually sell licenses for a site
like this to use though, I imagine they will argue that as soon as one person
downloads it then you can't stop them uploading it and giving it to everyone
so they'll get no sales.. in fact this is not a good argument because all this
stuff is already available on torrent and file sharing sites.

I hope I explained this clearly and suitable for this site. Have been thinking
about ways to end DRM (something I am terrified of strangling us even more
painfully in the longer term future than hollywood could ever do) for many
years but I am not going to make my own startup so I hope someone might find
some insight in my idea.

------
fchollet
Well, this might be the solution :
<http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=1028109>

When a few students can do Pixar quality animation, you know where the world
is headed, right? Sotfware makes the barrier to entry to creation lower and
lower, while the Internet makes the barrier to entry to distribution lower and
lower.

Entertainement startups will take-over the old giants.

------
rjurney
One area I would encourage startups to get involved with is hollywood
analytics: predicting the revenue of films based on their properties. Ryan
Cavanaugh has revolutionized film funding, and there is a real opportunity for
analytics startups to compete in this area.

[http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-
brightest-2009/ryan...](http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-
brightest-2009/ryan-kavanaugh-1209)

------
jonah
I have two friends doing content in new ways:

* The New Kind - CG Television show, created by a global group of artists with the development posted to Facebook day-by-day: [https://www.facebook.com/pages/THE-NEW-KIND-series/246243672...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/THE-NEW-KIND-series/246243672095519) <https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=127971893907947>

* "'One Day On Earth' is the documentary new media project about the amazing diversity, conflict, tragedy, and triumph that occurs in one 24-hour period on this planet. More than a film, 'One Day on Earth' is a multi-platform participatory media project. The flagship of this project is a documentary to be released theatrically. Through a creative commons we will establish a community that not only watches but participates.' <https://www.facebook.com/onedayonearth> <http://www.onedayonearth.org>

Both community created on a global scale, they could only exist in the
internet age.

------
methodin
Also consider the thing that got movies into the forefront in the first place
was excellent use of the medium. The movies of old, due to lack of
technological advancements (or even in some cases due to them) were
masterfully crafted in the context of the medium. There have been relatively
few movies since that era that have utilized dialog so intimately and
intelligently as those that were made in the era where all you really had were
cameras and audio. I would tend to think that this would translate into where
we are currently. The next initiative that can masterfully take advantage of
the obvious things at their disposal and package them up into a tight, sound
package will be the ones that excel at the craft - and the ones that can get
steer us into a new entertainment era.

That being said the only thing I can really think that is equivalent to the
old era of movies is mobile or streaming. Both of these have potential to
disrupt, but both are trying to force old idioms into new technologies.
Youtube at least is trying some new things, regardless of how well that works
out.

------
sek
When we are serious about disrupting the industry we need insiders, the whole
Hollywood network is very powerful.

They have a very weird scheme, with production companies who always make a
loss and agencies who make enormous amount of money with the whole star
system. It's very complex, but totally artificial. Look at South Korea, they
made a star system out of computer games.

This scheme works only in combination with media, what gives them the ability
to make marketing and stars at the same time. The big cycle is:

Make a movie -> your newspapers write about the movie or the actors -> people
watch the movie, actors become stars -> make money with print

This is the whole reason these conglomerates exist, there are not many synergy
effects in print. It would be totally decentralized/commoditized, but when you
sell your PR as content.... big profits.

These big schemes have always have flaws, but we need insiders who know where
to find them. I am interested in this topic, but all i know are from very few
sources. Most of them books, or public funded contend. When i think about it
right now, it's totally obvious.

------
Applebucks
I'm gonna revive the TwitchTV thread with a true story. I've killed the cable
and gone with higher-speed broadband, ordered but not yet installed. I was
tired here on Saturday night and went looking for some NBA, and not reading
the links closely wound up watching NBA 2k12 on twitch for a few minutes until
I snapped it wasn't actually live NBA. That tells me the animation is close to
passing for photorealistic, and even that might not be important if the
players (the humans [or AIs] playing, I mean) are so good that it is as
interesting to watch as it when watching live giant humans really play
basketball.

Second true story was chaperoning a 15-year-old overnight birthday party right
after Skyrim came out. Watching seemed to be quite acceptable entertainment,
although there were occasional switches to the Fallout channel. This despite
enough controllers for actually multi-play.

As has been noted, this is still somewhat Hollywood-y in the movie-sized
investment in those games, but the revenue is definitely not going to
traditional motion picture studios.

------
jdietrich
The leading British film critic Mark Kermode hypothesises that Michael Bay
style blockbusters are hits solely because they were expensive to make.

He likens these films to a PT Barnum sideshow - people aren't expecting
anything of artistic merit, but are instead driven by curiosity as to what the
producers spent $140m on. Media attention is inevitable, in the same way that
a restaurant announcing a $1000 hamburger is easy fodder for a slow news day.

The logic is persuasive in light of the fact that critics and moviegoers alike
don't enjoy these films much, nor expect to enjoy them. There's a culture of
"movie events", a self-fulfilling prophecy of huge budgets and massive opening
weekends. The theory would have it that the re-introduction of 3D is part of
this phenomena, with mainstream commercial cinema slowly morphing into the
kind of superficial novelty thrill that was once the preserve of IMAX
theatres.

If the theory is valid, I have no idea how you'd beat Hollywood; I'm fairly
certain that the answer won't involve making anything with cultural or
artistic worth.

~~~
malandrew
You first fragment the audience so that earning a return on $140mm becomes
less and less likely. The goal is to bankrupt the incumbents by keeping them
on the same spending path, while reducing the likelihood of big returns.
Amazon is doing this with publishers:
[http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/17/confessions-of-a-
publisher-...](http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/17/confessions-of-a-publisher-
were-in-amazons-sights-and-theyre-going-to-kill-us/)

IMHO, movies will be the last to go, but attacking the TV industry is doable
now.

------
Eeko
There is at least one startup I know trying to do that:
<http://www.wreckamovie.com/>

------
jasomill
One obvious, if nontrivial to implement, idea: simple, low-cost, distributed
authoring tools to enable collaboration of geographically distributed
production teams in creating YouTube-like content, including "one-click
publishing" to YouTube and similar sites and strong integration with consumer-
level capture devices such as mobile phones (e.g., flexible iPhone and Android
recording apps).

Perhaps a less-ambitious place to start, at least bandwidth-wise, would be
music — some sort of "GarageBand in the cloud" to enable easy yet powerful
"spacetime distributed multitrack recording", again with strong device support
and easy publishing of the results, possibly even including track sales, or at
least an "e-tip jar", and possibly even an "instant compulsory license" tool
for cover songs.

In both cases, I'd focus on tools to create "entry-level" original content
rather than "mash ups" or "remixes", though the latter would, of course, not
be actively discouraged (modulo "unfair use," of course).

------
zerostar07
Well the next big step in entertainment must involve something like brain-
computer-interfaces that induce whole-senses experiences. But storytelling
won't go away. Games will not replace movies or theater or books, it's a
different genre. People like stories, they crave for stories, even little kids
love stories; stories move people; it's what art is about.

------
bengl3rt
What I wonder is, what role does talent play in this transition? I am a hacker
by trade but am always thinking about how to "break in" as an actor and be in
movies and on television. A myriad of other challenges (including finding the
time to compete with a large talent pool) aside, one thing that I realize
again and again is that participating in traditional media means supporting
and receiving a paycheck from precisely the companies that fund bills like
SOPA and think of their customers as "eyeballs with wallets".

With the costs of production and distribution ever falling, more and more
content is being created outside the traditional media ecosystem. How would I
position myself (as an actor or set designer, or sound mixer or etc) to take
advantage of the coming transition?

Live theater comes to mind as something that might be inline with PG's last
paragraph, which suggests more recreational time be spent _not_ looking at
screens but engaging with other people.

------
rcmorin
Musicians and film production companies need to start acting more like tech
startups. Bootstrap, find an audience (traction), raise funding to pay for
production costs (friends, family, fools, or kickstarter.com), distribute in
iTunes or elsewhere, make money from digital downloads.

You could create a tech startup to sell user generated digital content and
give back 100% of revenues to the artists. Got a great idea for a film? Find
investors, gather the talent, shoot it, and sell it online. Forget about
Hollywood.

Hacking new ways to distribute user generated digital content is only one part
of the solution. iTunes and Youtube already exist for garage bands and film
school students to bypass the entertainment industry to sell their work. And
most of it is terrible.

Technology companies could take an active role in financing the production of
quality digital content. Invest $20k into 10-12 artists to seed an album or
film leaving enough upside for the company to get back a return.

------
caustin93
This comes across as very reactionary and frankly silly. YCombinator believes
we should actively work toward making narrative video obsolete? It isn't
itself inherently a faulty product or art-form. Do you really believe film's
potential to produce creative and commercial success is over, or even
implicates being so in the foreseeable future?

~~~
swalsh
I don't see the initiative as the full scale take-down of an artform, but
rather an industry built around an artform. What will probably prevail when
hollywood is beaten to death is an even more vibrant representation of the
artform!

------
incub8or
The problem with "killing" Hollywood and replacing it with other forms of
entertainment is that GOOD movies fulfil a very specific function: through
storytelling they shed light on the human psyche and give us an insight into
life itself and our journey through it. This has been the function of stories
since our ancestors sat in the dark around fires. (It could be argued that
when we sit down in a dark cinema we are tapping into this latent desire to
share a common story experience.) The idea of a shared experience hearing a
story is as old as the humanity itself.

Good novels give us insight into life/ourselves but I doubt video games or
surfing the web can be held up as providing the same. They are just ways to
pass the time, which could also be said for 90% of Hollywood's current output.

Independent film makers therefore have an opportunity to tell the stories the
studios do not. So, this begs the question; why haven't we seen the first
internet blockbuster?

Movie studios' sole focus is money. Money allows them to hire movie stars, to
use the best equipment, to buy ad space and to rent movie theatres. In short,
money (and how much they are prepared to spend) is what separates anyone with
a video camera and an idea, and the major movie studios.

Indie filmmakers cannot compete on a level monetary footing. So they must
disrupt and stay lean, not only in production but ALSO in marketing and
distribution.

This is where I believe a lot of indie film makers need to focus on:
disruptive distribution.

As an example, I directed a movie and treated it as a lean startup from pre
production.

We are looking to disrupt traditional movie distribution by offering
individuals and businesses something tangible and of intrinsic value when they
buy our movie: to feature them on a billboard on Times Square. More info on
our strategy can be found at: <http://on.fb.me/osp0oE>

------
JumpCrisscross
Let's jump out way into the future first. Ideal entertainment would be full
immersion Matrix-style virtual reality.

Closer than that, as a New Yorker, I have found going to the cinema
increasingly rare. It feels quaint - arranging my schedule around a place and
time of another's choosing.

Based on this, I think the film will become more personal. Some have
interpreted this as meaning interactive. I think this violates the human need
for story telling and receiving - interactivity changes the social function of
storytelling profoundly.

Instead, I see a more intimate experience. The key part would be
entertainment, films, specifically designed for the format.

Note that intimate and social are not mutually exclusive. Better than
interactivity would probably be characters and settings that build off their
audience. Down to the dialogue.

That is something that I don't think Hollywood can do today.

------
os2
Right now Hollywood make money out of the game by converting them to a movie.
I think the next "big thing" would be creating artificial game polygon, where
people can go in, pay the same amount of money as they pay for the ticket and
play the game as player, not just watcher. People can were all artificial
gadgets ( helmets, gloves, even the full suite) and be part of the action.
Imagine you can create avatar and play Quake 3 arena death match, or be part
of the Fallout, etc. Computer power is already there to create it, it's just a
matter to allocate money and gaming developing will begin. It will be win-win
scenario, since this new type of entertainment will attract all industry from
software / hardware to graphic designed and script writers. And then it can be
monetizing the same way as movie.

------
ctwk
I believe that the first step is to shrink the role of the middlemen by
enabling content creators to distribute and market their content effectively
online. In fact, the internet has provided a great way to do just that (it is
the perfect distribution and marketing channel)! All of us are constantly
sharing and reproducing the content and this helps expose users with all sorts
of content. Now if there is a startup which focuses on "following" and
"chasing" the content and sell products related to the content itself, I
believe that many users will buy the products that interest them. For
instance, when we watch "Mission Impossible" we may be interested in the music
tracks, the movie DVD, the clothes that the characters are wearing, toys &
merchandises etc. If more products are being sold, this is a reflection of the
quality of the content itself. Product companies would then want to sponsor
and fund for quality content creators to carry on producing content. Apart
from that such a platform may allow more quality content to be placed on
Youtube where users are abundant!

The next step is to make content interactive. PG mention "what are people
going to do for fun in 20 years instead of what they do now?" and I thought of
the notion of having the viewers of the content to dictate the direction of
the show and making the content engaging that it makes me feel like I am part
of it. Currently in many games (esp rpg) I decide the route/path that the
character follows and this leads to different game endings. This can be
applied to movies as well. A movie can have 4 parts and after each part, the
movie may request me to buy a certain choice (eg. the character has 3 roads to
choose, which do you choose and this will dictate the progression of the
story) or product (there are 3 guns to choose, buy 1 from your local store
lol! and key in product keycode or something). This can tie in very well with
the idea on paragraph 1 where product companies can help sponsor for the video
production.

What do you think about these ideas? I am working on idea 1 and I would be
keen for some feedback and would love for people to contribute to this
startup. Hit me up!

~~~
shoham
Check out Feed-Forward.net, I'm the founder and CEO I think you'll like what
we're doing, given your interests.

------
jeffool
If you see a film that no one else has seen, you'll spend all your time
telling others about it, and to go see it. Despite film viewing being a
largely solitary experience, even when holding a girlfriend's hand watching a
movie... It's still important in a communal aspect. Just like great songs;
they always make us think about other people or our interactions with them.

That's why games will eat film's lunch. One day, they'll master that.

If I had a startup capital? I'd focus an mmo-like server based game on small
communities. Maybe base them around a few hundred players, so you KNOW the
people you game with. And your actions have consequences to people you know.
The fun of Skyrim, the familiar face of FarmVille, without the crass
exploitation of metrics like Zynga, with the heart of Team Ico.

Hey, a guy can dream.

------
david927
Here's my proposal: "Vertical Facebooks", social networks for certain
industries, are a big opportunity. Hollywood is the biggest and best
opportunity for this. If Ben Stiller needs to pitch his new project to, say,
Mila Kunis, it's pretty inefficient. If a screenwriter has finished a script
and wants to tell people about it, same thing. IMDB is already used by studios
to vet people -- this is broken and could be made much better.

Once you've built and instituted such a Hollywood Facebook (where privacy is
everything and joining requires clearing some big barriers), if they try
something like SOPA again, you can just go dark. They would be helpless and
quickly back down. Don't kill the horse -- just give it a harness.

My email is in my profile if you like this.

------
mckilljoy
If the killing the movie industry is anything like the dead software industry,
I predict another 10 years of billions in profits before they.. keep making
billions in profits?..

<http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html>

------
thetabyte
I know that ideas are easiest part, but it's also important we find a viable
alternative to classic Hollywood studios and distribution. The solution is
actually strikingly similar as to the one for piracy--provide a solution more
convenient and effective then traditional methods.

What about a vertical launch platform for media--a combination of Kickstarter,
LaunchRock, and more, specifically tailored towards media like music or video.
Incorporated social aspects to publicize your project while you fund it.
Provide reliable recommendations for resources classically provided by a
studio. Allow artists a platform to collaborate and share resources. Etc.

Make it more effective then going to a classic label. Won't be easy, but it
certainly seems lucrative.

------
koko775
As an engineer working at a startup that is actively challenging the
entertainment status quo through a slightly non-traditional vector, this RFS
strikes me as amazingly naive and lacks any realistic suggestion for what kind
of challenges might be most effective.

Hollywood isn't dying, nor is it anywhere close. Shedding some excess, maybe,
but not dying. It's an overweight person rationalizing away his weight problem
instead of committing himself fully to do whatever it takes to become lean and
efficient. Apologies if that offends; I don't mean any malice. I simply mean
to point out that even without Hollywood, there are any number of
entertainment pieces constantly being produced and distributed. Indeed,
Hollywood is, in my opinion, little more than a destination and mini-society
that brings together and publishes works, as well as an ecosystem of funding.
Try finding an animated movie that truly, terribly falls flat like some films.
It'll be harder than it would be for a fully live-action film, because they
know that without star power or explosions as a fallback, that much more
effort needs to be spent on narrative to produce something that, if nothing
else, will not tank incredibly. Is it any wonder that the animated versions of
large or popular franchises typically have terrible movie productions†?

(† in this case I am also including live action movies with a very major
animated component, i.e. a mix of live-action and animated characters)

The people who build the technological platforms hosting today's entertainment
are, by and large, not dumb people. It takes some real skill to scale a site
that serves up any number of combinations of video profiles and different
target platforms. This, especially, is somewhere the cloud has trouble with
cost-effectiveness. Video loads are large, and can be CPU, RAM, and I/O bound
(if you're trying to make the most of your resources), and iteration and
improvement on the process can take hours or days, not simply minutes, for
almost-imperceptible but possibly still important improvements. There are
reasons it works for Netflix and reasons that it's more expensive for smaller
companies to scale. There's also the fact that DRM is often a contractual
obligation, and the start-up costs can run well into the several hundreds of
thousands of dollars range, not including high upkeep contributing to a
gargantuan TCO by any startup's standards. Then there's the revenue sharing,
of course.

The problem is not technology, or throwing more startups at the problem. The
innovation _must_ come from hacking the business side, or altering the deal
with how content providers bring their content to the masses. Building more
technology without doing this will waste people's lives and embitter them,
because entertainment is being held back not by the available channels to get
it to you, but because taking risks and failing fast nets you a blacklist from
the people licensing you the content. Put another way, the content providers
are choking off new media, not the actual proponents of new media. The
pipeline of people making a living off of this stuff leads into hollywood and
anything that can be done to divert them away from that walled garden and into
a content bazaar will do more to kill Hollywood than actually targeting
Hollywood ever will.

The solution, in my opinion, is to empower the entertainers and the content
producers to reach their audience more directly, more broadly, and with more
engagement than a TV or, let's say, a comic book will ever be able to give
you. As a medium for entertainment production, YouTube falls flat. It's not
the product online entertainment wants to be. It's not a product designed for
simulcasts, and it's not a product designed for building communities, or for
social watching, or for alternative media formats, or for worldwide publishing
with subtitles of customizable language or styles, with pre-roll, mid-roll, or
post-roll ads, or for subscription-based monetization. And even if some of
these exist separately, they're not all in one place.

Also, large video ad tech is fucking terrible and poorly specified, except for
Hulu, which has full access to its own tech, which it doesn't license out, as
it runs its own in-house ad network. Ad companies tend to have shitty
engineers or get bought by Google. But Admob's video ads monetize poorly
compared to the other (technically worse) options, surprisingly.

------
sbt
While I would like to see Hollywood get competition, I suspect real changes in
this industry will eventually come from industry insiders. The success of
Spotify is essentially one big lobbying campaign.

In the meantime, I would like to see startups that manage to keep an eye on
congress while making money. I don't know how, but here are a couple of loose
thoughts.

\- A service that helps people determine who to vote for and who to avoid
voting for.

\- Something that keeps track of representatives based on current issues and
where they stand.

\- An easy way to visualize where backing for new legislation comes from.

I'm sure stuff like this already exist, but I suspect it's not easy enough for
most people to bother using. It should be dead simple and connect with
ordinary stuff people follow in the news.

------
AznHisoka
Anyone else remember the days before the internet/smartphone? I distinctly
remember spending the majority of my time hanging out with friends, playing in
the park, etc. I can't recall the last time I even went to a park anymore...
Maybe we need to do more of that.

~~~
marshray
We were younger back then too. Now put that in a bottle and you could replace
more than Hollywood!

What I miss from that time was the ability to sit around with friends and
argue about simple issues of fact. E.g. "who was the actor in that old movie
blah.." "no it wasn't, it was ..."

Smart phones + IMDB & Wikipedia killed that. How could one bring that back?

------
lifeisstillgood
Internet's killer app will be interactive. But the Hollywood killer will be a
passive mode of consumption (I still do like just to be entertained)

Add to this the rise of Facebook and I would do the following.

Put a microphone and speaker in the corner of each room of the dorms at MIT or
Yale (not cameras note, we know where that will lead). let people talk to
their friends, whilst not "using" a device. Let others listen. Vote up
conversations. Eventually most people are listening in to the most interesting
conversation in College. I would love it to scale so I can spend an evening
listening to the most interesting conversation in the world.

Reality TV, Social Media, no longer shouting through to the next room. It's
got everything.

------
chrischen
I think Hollywood's (and also the Music industry) problem is that the talent
and artists are commoditized, instead of the financiers. Compared to the tech
startup industry, there are only a few major studios that finance most of the
films people watch. This concentrates too much power in too few entities and
that's ultimately what has created this Hollywood problem. I don't think
movies and tv shows are going away anytime as a form of entertainment.

Killing Hollywood is going to require some way to reverse balance of power and
commoditize the financiers just like in the tech industry. Then tv shows,
movie franchises will more resemble startup companies and hopefully become
more forward thinking as well.

------
asdkl234890
I very much disagree that what Hollywood thinks is killing them now, is not
killing them.

It is!

There are two parts to Hollywood:

1\. Being the distributor.

2\. Being a source of funding.

That's it!

The internet has been disintermediating (fancy economic term for killing
middle-men) industries since it began.

Piracy often offers not just a lower price but a far better product. How many
stories do we all know of people willing to pay who can't because of how
shitty the distribution of Hollywood is? People frustrated by all their legal
options to the point of seeking out pirated content despite their ability and
willingness to pay. I am one of those people!

Better distribution is one half of killing Hollywood.

The other part is financing. Big Hollywood studios are in the well known
business of managing high risk investments. You spend a lot of money on
developing movies, shows, etc, on most you lose money, on some you make a bit,
on a few you make all the profit you need to keep going.

Who has the same business model? VCs! Also video game publishers.

So all you need to kill Hollywood is a tone of cash to fund talent, attract
better talent by giving them a better deal and then distribute it better.

But here is the catch, a company like that would exist with much lower profit
margins than a traditional Hollywood company. It has to! Because that's what
killing the middle man is. You take his share of the profit and drop it.
Prices of the end product drop, end consumers have more money, the middle man
is out of luck.

And that is why you can't hasten the end of Hollywood. It's going to be ugly
and painful and they know it. That's why they are lobbying like they are going
out of business, because they are.

The only thing you can do is limit the damage. We should aim for an equal and
opposing lobbying arm. If we libertarian minded, super individualistic, detail
obsessed, disagreement loving, intellectual bunch of geeks can make that
happen, I highly doubt. But I don't see any other way out.

------
malandrew
Question on Quora to explore possible market opportunities:

[http://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-major-discrete-
parts-o...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-major-discrete-parts-of-
producing-a-film-that-could-be-disrupted-by-technology)

------
spinfrontier
In my mind, there are two ways to "kill" the movie and TV industries:

1) Replacement of the medium--have movies and TV go the way of Vaudeville
through a more popular form of entertainment. Comcast makes upwards of
$150/month per customer (2010 data), so there's money waiting to be made, and

2) Competition in the medium--low the barriers to entry for movie and TV
production to displace today's power centers. Data from GE shows consumers are
willing to spend $15-16/month for VOD-like services, so there's a market to
foster alternative content in the medium.

That said, it's a difficult market. People's habits don't change easily. I
worked for a Sequoia-funded streaming movie startup that just went out of
business.

------
oldstrangers
"The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they
could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way
down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their
demise."

This seems hypocritical considering YC's funding of companies like Cloudant
that go on to work with companies (Monsanto) actively engaged in the worst
kind of subversive geopolitical work. Compared to Monsanto, Hollywood is a
shinning beacon of freedom and peace.

Of course, going on to read the rest of the article it sounds as though YC is
more interested in the financial interests of killing Hollywood than the
potential political impacts.

~~~
pg
That's the sort of disingenuous remark a politician would make. It's
hypocritical of us to want to fund companies doing good things because one of
the 383 companies we've funded has one customer you don't like? We don't have
any control over who companies we fund do business with.

~~~
diego
I take issue with the name-calling: "the people who run it are so mean..." You
could say the system is corrupt, broken, blinded by self-interest, etc.

There are probably all kinds of people running Hollywood, like in any other
industry. There must be some execs with sociopathic tendencies, others who
simply go with momentum or believe they are doing what's best for their
shareholders, etc. In my opinion, stating that people who run the industry are
"mean" is inappropriate for an investment fund.

~~~
defen
I read "mean" in the older sense of "low, sordid, base, penurious" rather than
the modern sense of "not nice" - because I agree that when you use the modern
sense of the word it comes across as schoolyard whining. But with the
interpretation I offered, I think it's merely an accurate description of their
motivations.

------
Jenna_Treg
Perhaps we could start with the elements of films that inspire and delight?
The array of emotions that they evoke makes us feel human and connected to a
greater human experience; something that I have yet to experience through a
game. (Good) films build empathy - they invite us to engage with a different
perspective (a miner in Nicaragua, a ballerina etc) and impassion us. This
requires effort. Tech often gives us an escape from the effortful human
experience, with quick hits that appeal to our egocentrism and primal
instincts. Instant gratification. Long-term dissatisfaction. Perhaps why
Hollywood is dying.

------
SkyMarshal
_> When a striker is fouled in the penalty area, he doesn't stop as long as he
still has control of the ball; it's only when he's beaten that he turns to
appeal to the ref. SOPA shows Hollywood is beaten._

Love the futbol analogy, but it opens the door for counterattack - many times
when the striker is beaten it's by an illegal tackle (dangerous, from behind,
or where the defender went for the player rather than the ball) and his appeal
to the ref is justified.

Of course, many times he's faking and acting, but Hollywood would argue that's
not the case here - if they're being beaten it's by illegal means and requires
ref intervention.

------
saalweachter
What's the timeline for killing Hollywood?

This year, a normal movie year, Hollywood will make a profit of $X million.

Now let's suppose we "kill" Hollywood. We produce 100% of the new content in
2013, Hollywood produces 0% of the new content. However, Hollywood still has a
massive catalog of copyrighted works which they continue to sell. What
fraction of that $X million per year they currently make comes from selling
old content? What fraction comes from selling works which are two, three, ten
years old?

Basically, what is a realistic timeline for Hollywood to wind down
sufficiently that they can no longer maintain a significant lobbying presence?

------
gojomo
Hollywood might answer this with a 'Request for Discovery' in some future
lawsuit.

------
ogterran
I think killing Hollywood shouldn't be about killing movies and tv shows. It
should be about killing the large content providers who is pushing SOPA/PIPA
by spending astronomical amount of money on lobbyist. We need to find a way to
bring the cost of production and distribution down to a point where creative
contributors like directors, actors, and screen writers have more control and
majority piece of the pie. Similar to how cost of starting a technology
company came down in recent years and founders control and own more. We also
need a Y-combinator for movies and tv shows.

------
AdamFernandez
Yes! I was thinking the same thing. I'm hoping many more will come to this
conclusion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3490496>

Artists are the key. Can we offer them something better than the existing
system? The answer would suggest content production, but how is it funded
initially? Is it crowd sourced? Do investors take on the initial risk? Do we
make it easier for people to purchase subscriptions to the (new) content they
enjoy while giving artists a much higher percentage of revenue?

~~~
bsenftner
I'm addressing this: www.about.me/Blakes

------
andreiursan
I believe that this is a very good idea. Actors right now are products, and
they might go into some kind of startups where they can have a better share of
what they worth.

Maybe I didn't understood it very well but look what Johnny Depp says: ~"after
beeing turned in a product by a very huge corporation, that the hands over
me"~
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dxCaOzmV0LE#t=85s)

Hence I believe that here is a problem that can be solved by startups.

------
caublestone
I believe in creating a mix of a.empowering the content creators to create b.
quality content that is c. distributed in the most accessible way for
consumers and is d. financially sensible for all parties involved.

PirateBay pointed it out yesterday; the entertainment industries got greedy
and started demanding more rights and driving up costs to fill their pockets.

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could have a healthy career, making $60,000+, by
entertaining people with what you love? As in, do you really need to make
$20,000,000 to act/sing/write etc?

------
robotjosh
Hollywood won't die until the movie theater monopoly on new releases ends.
Most people have comparable bigscreens and surround sound systems already. All
that is left is the ability to pay $12 to see a new release in your home. Film
producers would make more money by cutting out the middlemen. People would see
more new releases even at $12 each you could see 6-10 movies per month for it
to cost as much as cable. Some people would see most new releases and cause
middle and lower tier movies to make more money.

------
jeffg2
Ok, here is the plan: cut them off from the internet:

1) Open source service that identifies every hollywood agency, movies studio,
and major individual by IP. 2) Home IP address as well. 3) Attach tracking
cookies to them 4) Open source API that operates just like an ad server does,
and instead of checking home for ads to serve up to these customers, we serve
404 pages. Just black them the hell out.

The result: hollywood is now unable to use a sizeable portion of the internet.

They fired off the nuclear missiles first, fuck it, it's time for DEFCON-1.

------
Tycho
What's all this about 'predetermined' ?

~~~
wtvanhest
That was exactly what I was going to ask. PG, would you mind explaining the
predetermined wording? It seems counter intuitive for someone who funds
disruptive companies to say so I have a sense that there is more to it.

~~~
eru
Look back a hundred years (or so). Even if you shot the people who invented
colour film or sound in films, somebody else would have developed those.

~~~
wtvanhest
I cannot think of a good counter argument to that. This could be a totally
different way of thinking about investing than the way I previously thought.

Assuming the investor can figure out what the next big thing is, their only
goal is to find the team with the highest likelihood of success.

~~~
saalweachter
The savvy investor doesn't even need to do that. If the payout is high enough,
he can invest in _all_ the teams with any chance of success.

------
jackfoxy
OK, off topic, and I got down-voted last time I asked this question, but here
goes... _predetermined_ occurs twice in this post, so what is it,
_determinism_ or _free will_?

------
scriptdude
The movie itself is no longer the value. You have your 50" TV at home, with
your own drinks and friends.

Why would you go out and pay a lot of money if you can One-Click-Download your
way to better "value" watching the movie at home?

So focus on creating extra value. The movie ticket has a dual role as a
lottery ticket. Maybe you can win 1% of the revenue -or- your can win a trip
for 2 to a Hollywood red carpet event.

Hell, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory style golden ticket: win yourself a
chance to star in the movie studio's next big production.

------
jkeel
A big THANK YOU from me. I have been talking to my wife for some time about
how I'd like for Internet companies to start taking aim at the same people
that are aiming at us. It's not about revenge though, but as a way to move
forward past what I see as the old ideas of IP.

Besides, entertainment can be better. I believe in what this post says about
getting people to actually spend real time together. I know a lot of people
who's idea of quality time is sitting in front of the TV wasting away, albeit
together.

------
Irfaan
Golly. We're sooo close to getting a rough, web-playable demo of what you're
looking for it hurts - a better way to entertain people (with a gamery blend
of TV and interaction).

It's been a painful slog, though - trying to create rich content's been both
more expensive and more daunting then most web-centric MVPs.

Is there anyone else already actively working in this space? I'd love to find
more folks to network and bounce ideas off of. (And I'd like to hear how
you're dealing with the cost of content production. :P)

------
os2
What need to be done, is to move games into real poligon games, where people
come comein pay the same amout as for movie tickets, but wear all virtual
reality gadgets ( helmets, gloves, maybe full suite) and play the games in
virtual reality. Imagine poligon for Quake arena, where several team can
fight, or Fallout, etc. Its sound expencive to create now, but once it
running, it will be much better than go to movie. Gaming industry will like it
and will start develop for it.

------
adnam
I sense real anger in this RFS, which is uncharacteristic for pg.

------
aninteger
I think if you really want to fight Hollywood it would be best to boycott them
at the movie theaters and try to support their competitors (Does Netflix count
as a competitor?) as much as possible. That means not going to see Nolan's
"The Dark Knight Rises". Wait for the DVD/Blu-ray release and don't purchase
it. Rent it, or borrow it from someone who has purchased it. Spend as little
money as possible on Hollywood. Rinse and repeat with other movies.

~~~
molmalo
But sadly, that would be used as an argument of why they need to pass new laws
to protect them. And anyway, they would simply make the physical discs
disappear earlier, so there's no borrowing anymore, replaced by something like
Ultraviolet.

~~~
marshray
But they're already arguing exactly that, using garbage statistics. So what
would we be losing?

Keeping your economic adversary content and well-funded kinda doesn't seem
like a great strategy to me.

------
codex
Mankind has an evolved evolutionary need to tell and listen to stories. Before
writing, it was the primary means of knowledge transfer across generations.
Most human conversations, in fact, consist of telling stories to one another.

Hollywood fills the storytelling need. It's so primal that I think there will
always be an industry manufacturing stories, and thus there will always be
content owners who want to get paid when someone consumes their work.

------
trzmiel
Sad and naive.

One day art was about a meaning, and works of art carried a message. That used
to be true about movies, and it sometimes still is, though rarely so in
Hollywood.

Now people mix art with entertainment in its lowest form.

To me the range looks like: Classic, deep, inspiring, thought-provoking
stories on one end; and shallow and worthless entertainment on the other.
Sorry, somehow I'm not trading movies for Farmville, even though it's huge,
social, addictive and so on.

------
melling
Actually, what should be done is make it easier for small groups of people to
make movies. There's always going to be a need for what Hollywood produces.
However, for example, if we could start by making Pixar type movies then
distribute them somehow for a small fee then lots of independent movie studios
would appear. At some point in the next decade or so, we'll be able to create
"real people" that replace Hollywood stars.

------
lukeholder
Here is MY idea.

Anyone can post a movie to the web service (website access/roku access).
Hollywood, or freelancer gets to publish on the platform free.

Anyone can stream a movie completely free, but every 10-15 minutes the price
to see the last 10 minutes of the movie cost 1 dollar more. (ratio variable)

You can pay a dollar after the first 10 minutes and watch the whole movie for
just a dollar, or you watch all of the movie free but dont see the last 15
minutes ending.

/end crazy idea.

------
scotty79
Lifelike voice synthesis (with emotions) and lifelike simulated actors. With
such tools anyone who can write a soap opera script can make soap opera.

------
capkutay
I think the best way to kill Hollywood would be a large amount of
independently funded/produced tv series that are solely broadcast on youtube
or some other website. Once entertainers figure out that they don't need to go
to Hollywood to become famous, more will follow. Perhaps services that could
help web-based entertainment shows reach a larger audience would be a step in
the right direction.

------
trout
I don't believe you will replace movies with another form of entertainment.
They are just stories when distilled when distilled. The stories are a fabric
of values, beliefs, morals, and culture that is inseparable from society. Some
stories are so representative of the culture it becomes a direct part of
culture. Replacing movies will require a more creative way to spread that
fabric of ideas.

------
luigi
It's the studio and record label system that needs killing. The creative,
skilled people who make entertainment and art need to be able to thrive.

------
odnamra
I just left this comment over on Fred Wilson's blog (<http://disq.us/536i4t>).
I hope that the message I'm attempting to convey is meaningful to the "Kill
Hollywood" crowd on HN as well...

There are a lot of comments on this post, but I'm going to attempt to chime in
from the EVIL Hollywood perspective.

First, let me make it known that I am 100% anti-SOPA/PIPA (I called my
representatives six times), but the armchair punditry and belligerent "Kill
Hollywood" explosion I've witnessed over the last few days has infuriated me
to no end. When I left Paramount to do a software startup, at least I knew
what the hell I was taking about.

Regarding Nat Torkington's rant: It's true that the tech industry "gave" us
many things, HOWEVER, MP3's are meaningless without audio content, MP4 is
meaningless without video content, Netflix is meaningless without movie
content, iTunes is meaningless without music content... you get the point. In
fact, between bittorrent and Netflix, it appears that half of the Internet (if
not more) is used to share CONTENT. So yes, thank you for the pipes, but for
the love of all that's holy, try and keep in mind what people are ACTUALLY
paying for here! Hint: it's not 3G, wifi, iPads, or iPhones, those are merely
the vessels to what is actually valuable to the user: the content! What do you
think is the driving force behind the evolution of technology? Sheesh! I'm
asking that all of you engineers take a breather and try to gain some damn
perspective.

Yes, the film industry's organizational structure appears to be outdated. Yes,
the theatrical distribution model seems counterintuitive. Yes, yes, yes!
But... Record revenues (or close to it) continue year after year. Revenue from
theaters still represents $30 billion of the ~$90 billion dollars the industry
rakes in each year. Growth in China is almost 40% annually. The film industry
isn't exactly in a hurry to abandon the scarcity model.

Bottom line, there are a lot of elements at play here. Please, please, please
get some perspective before you go off extolling the virtues of your newest
"platform." There are ways to disrupt Hollywood, both in a Schumpeterian way,
and in a collaborative way, but I have yet to see anything that truly
encapsulates the content industry's needs in a meaningful way.

Thanks for listening to my rant!

P.S.Crowd funding is to killing Hollywood, as Kickstarter is to killing Apple.

------
thebigshane
What monetization options are available in a hyper-efficient distribution
model like the one killing Hollywood? Anything besides advertising? Is
advertising even enough considering digital media can be manipulated and ads
can be parsed out? Are we going to rely on DRM?

What about micro-payments? Can we make small payments easy and efficient
enough to work? Is flattr scaling well?

This sounds like the first hurdle.

------
jefreybulla
Virtual Trips with your friends to explore the real world. Something like
Street View. You will go in your car with the possibility to invite people to
join your car. Your friend could take the drive too. The platform would have
video chat and would create environment sounds(city buzz, birds in the park,
etc). There will information layers for history, culture, restaurants, etc.

------
adrianwaj
Fine by me.

"I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will
be pedophilia. That's the biggest problem for children in this industry. ...
It's the big secret," Feldman said.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/corey-feldman-
pedophilia...](http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/corey-feldman-pedophilia-
problem-child-actors-contributed-demise/story?id=14256781)

------
dspeyer
Might you consider directly funding artistic startups?

It would make sense for each movie or television show to be a corporation
mostly owned by its founders (the author, director and major actors). The
model looks a lot like conventional VC, except for the shape of the exit.

It's not clear if long-form video can be made on YC-like funding. If not,
maybe start with music, which clearly can.

------
solnyshok
I tried to read all comments, but after roughly half of it (300/625) I give
up. I think HN discussions could greatly benefit from introducing quota on the
number of comments/day and words/comment. I am firm believer, that if you
cannot fit your idea in a couple of sentences, you need more time to polish
it. I am not suggesting 140 symbols. Oh, wait...

------
evertonfuller
So you want to kill and industry that thousands of people love and live for,
because you want to 'recreate' it for your own financial gain because you're
'tired' of it. Even though you have absolutely nothing to do with it. Just
woke up one morning and went. "Oh, let's kill Hollywood because I have a new
idea as to how I want it". Great guys...

------
ig1
It interesting to see how narrow the responses are here, what may be the
standard entertainment in 20 years time might be something that unlike
anything mainstream today.

It could be something completely new or something that's incredibly niche
right now (for example machines which induce lucid dreaming - what happens
when they become reliable and cheap?).

~~~
omarchowdhury
Which machines do you know that induce lucid dreams?

~~~
ig1
Googling results in this: [http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/lucid-dream-
machines....](http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/lucid-dream-
machines.html)

------
robryan
In terms of TV, disrupting the current measurement norms would be a great
start. The current methods of measurement are horrible at recognising new
media, the success of a TV show and it's ability to attract more funding to
continue is far to highly dependant on a small number of users on free to air
and traditional cable.

------
corin_
I know this is completely off-topic, but pg: reading that football analogy
from an American makes me love you.

On topic, is there not space for (if there was enough funding put into it) a
new studio, one that understands the internet and modern culture? I'm not sure
it's the content that's wrong, it's the business models around it.

~~~
ig1
You realize pg was born in England to welsh parents right (although he grew up
in the US) ?

~~~
corin_
I had absolutely no idea, that explains it!

------
nekomata
This battle will be long and tedious gentlemen with setbacks for both sides...
but I can see it slowing degrading for Hollywood and you can bet new
legislations will make sure they will remain with considerable power for
decades after their market lost all appeal and logic sense of existence in a
digital world.

------
barce
Right now <http://machinima.com/> is killing it. Their monthly stats for video
game play views (ya just people watching videos of people play video games) is
better than any TV ever was. Lost only had a small percentage of what
Machinima can field for audiences.

------
sroussey
Such BULLSHIT.

This is a meme that comes up every few years like clockwork. Unfortunately,
this one, like others before it, just shows how little people know about
Hollywood. I guess it doesn't matter, as it makes for great link-bait. So
maybe they know more than they let on, but dumb it down to "mean" people and
"dying" industry. Yet, if that were the case, no one would want to take it
over. The industry is, however, closer to a zero sum game than not. Offers to
be a "partner" are offers to "take" some of the revenue.

There are two "modes" of entertainment (I am not counting learning or
socializing, which are separate): "games" and "story-telling". I've pitched
ideas on a cross-over between the two (over ten years ago), but really the two
are very different, right down to how the brain behaves in each mode. Music is
interesting because it doesn't take our full attention -- it would interesting
to see other entertainment that had that same quality.

But anyhow, that doesn't mean that there aren't opportunities in the space, or
opportunities for other ways to spend our time.

Take music, for example. Drive a brand that curates indie music, and let
people invest in the bands (real money), drive that band to their friends, and
eventually take a token of their success some day (a 360 deal, not just
records, but everything including merchandizing, live performances, etc --
that way each band can determine the best mix, which may be all album sales or
free music distribution). Early fans have skin in the game, bands that pick up
fans get money to accelerate their reach, and everyone can have fun in the
process since they are all partners.

And as far as time, think of teenagers and college students (and 20
somethings), hormonally driven to socialize. It was a huge catalyst for AOL
(chat rooms), Friendster/MySpace/HotOrNot/Facebook, etc. Later in life there
are children, and the need for everything to be all about them, understand
them, get away from them. But competition for time is such an open thing, that
it seems out of scope unless it is a form of entertainment, even if it is
entertaining, like sex.

It would be nice to get people to vote on movie selections so a theatre could
get it and show it knowing that there is an audience. I'd love to see "Go!"
again. There is a business idea for you.

So instead of "killing Hollywood", I'm going to see Rocky Horror Picture Show
in PacHeights next weekend. It is not an iSomething, it is not virtual, it
means real warm bodies and a preset schedule. See ya there!

~~~
sroussey
I forgot to mention some other side things: how about ideas on "Killing
Piracy". (Also would be cool to Fix Privacy, but that is not really
entertainment related per se).

Note to self: I use a lot of "quotes" (and parentheses)...

------
shashishekhars
I have posted a rejoinder on Ben Parr's rants at my blog
[http://manku.thimma.org/2012/01/in-defence-of-y-
combinators-...](http://manku.thimma.org/2012/01/in-defence-of-y-combinators-
declaration-of-war-against-hollywood/)

Essentially I believe the time is ripe for disruption to happen at Hollywood.

------
ak2012
Does anyone have a connection at Netflix, preferably in biz dev or online
partnerships of any kind. They make it notoriously hard to get in touch with
anyone there, no emails listed, phone call leads to call center support who
cant transfer you to anyone worthwhile, no reply from twitter msgs etc..

------
faramarz
Fix the way the Electoral College works, and you've liberated the market. Only
then will good ideas actually flourish, and bad ideas/companies fade away.

Until we abolish the "first-past-the-post" system and adopt Proportional
Representation, there is no hope in fixing the corruption that takes place in
Washington.

------
harold
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.

~~~
notahacker
The tech wave already happened; it's called CGI. Like any effective tool,
whether CGI augments or substitutes for creativity depends largely on the
creator.

------
mg1313
What's the opinion of people from Hollywood? [http://www.quora.com/Future-of-
Entertainment/What-are-all-th...](http://www.quora.com/Future-of-
Entertainment/What-are-all-the-major-discrete-parts-of-producing-a-film-that-
could-be-disrupted-by-technology)

~~~
krishaamer
Thanks for spreading the Quora link.

------
prtamil
Possible Solutions 1\. Invent System like The Matrix. My own Personal
Movie,All we need to do is somehow combine neuroscience , Dream Technology, AI
etc.. 2\. Improve Internet Technology like Private Satellite, Distributed DNS,
True internet without Government Intervention.

my two cents...... 3.

------
cumulus
There was a possibly insightful comment on a reddit thread on the topic of
killing hollywood:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/oqbo5/the_entertai...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/oqbo5/the_entertainment_industry_is_never_going_to_stop/c3j7gzv)

------
parka
The main point is not to kill Hollywood but to force them to compete and
evolve.

Hollywood sell entertainment services that demand the time of people.

The ultimate goal of winning would be to compete and win the time of people.
E.g. Newspaper industry is dying because the Internet won the time of people.

------
sampsonjs
Graham's Randian techno triumphalism(teh haxxors shall inherit the earth!) is
becoming increasingly asinine I see. Movie studios are in decline? I thought
their profits and share prices were public record, once you get past any
creative accounting, but what do I know:
[http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/13/movie-executives-
see-r...](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/13/movie-executives-see-record-
profits-salaries-despite-piracy-fear-mongering/). If anything a switch to
streaming would throw the ball back into their court. In fact someone already
created what Graham is asking for, you can see it at www.youtube.com. What's
that? Youtube was built on copyrighted content? You say creating footage and
promoting it ain't cheap? That the advent of digital video didn't kill
Hollywood with a flood of indie films about ugly looking people and their
depressing lives (which don't involve vampires and werewolves)? Oh...

------
zallarak
This is excellent, why should a convention be preserved solely for the reason
that some want to continue to extract profit? It's like having a great new
technology that cures everything, but physicians opposing it because it
endangers their livelihood.

------
rmorrison
It's definitely possible to kill hollywood, think about how Old Time Radio was
killed by TV.

However, whatever kills Hollywood must revolve around storytelling and not
just generic entertainment. People won't completely move away from story-based
entertainment.

------
EwanG
My idea is to build a strong AI system. Point it at your TV and Movie
directory/directories. Let it scan through to evaluate what you watch. Then
let it start "pitching" ideas for your evaluation. You now have the basis for
a personal Pandora of AI created shows (primarily animated initially, although
with CGI advancements you could "rig" humanoid video actors to almost a live
effect). You can even share your results with others, and perhaps particularly
popular ones could be "picked up" by a YouTube or Netflix for wide
distribution (though do you pay me or my AI for it).

I fully expect that by the 20 year goal that you will see this happening. I
suspect someone willing to work with an engine such as Blender and build XML
files to control it externally could have a rudimentary version in 2-3 years.
I will be happy to discuss further if someone is seriously interested.

------
apo
The first thing that came to mind when I saw 'Kill Hollywood' was Guy
Kawasaki's 'Killer Gene' theory of business plans:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4etXBEq-ug>

Just sayin'.

------
techiferous
Idea: Open-source "movies". Both the tools and the resulting content are open-
source.

(Incidentally, making a good movie doesn't necessarily have to be expensive.
However, making yet another boring car chase scene does.)

------
VikingCoder
I honestly believe that technologies like Flatr will make this possible.

You have to lower the barriers to having people purchase content. There's a
mental barrier which stops you from spending $1 to watch another episode of
House. Even though you like House, and you'd like to watch another episode.

And for "free content," well, ads suck. Nobody likes ads. We don't like being
forces to watch ads, before we watch content. People who buy ad space don't
like you to be able to skip their ads. YouTube is trying to pitch "skippable
ads". Still not close enough, I think.

If I watch Sherlock from the BBC and like it, I Flatr it. I think that model
works. I'm not sure - but that's my hunch.

Humble Indie Bundle is another great example - but I don't think it works for
broadcast video.

------
keecham
Disappointed that an RFS is just a thinly disguised rant. I love HN, YC, and
PG, but this tit-for-tat attempt at retaliation is childish and unworthy of
the great minds that populate this forum.

------
readme
With all due respect to the authors of this, I think this kind of writing is
just going to fuel the opposition. Imagine if some journalists get a hold of
this and do a piece on it.

------
psawaya
The Apple TV (if it's real) would definitely facilitate this. Imagine the
opportunity to build apps that compete directly with television programming,
on the same device.

------
TamDenholm
Id like to see more content production companies, like revision3 or some of
the big youtubers, but aimed at mainstream audiences. I think that would be a
good first step.

~~~
AtTheLast
It would nice to see other people start creating quality content or shows that
could really connect with people. Heck, there is probably a lot of good
content already online that I don't know about it. But, I really like what
revision3 is doing by creating and I hope they can add more shows.

------
dmoney
Three things that would help to kill Hollywood:

1\. Make it less expensive to create entertainment.

2\. Raise the quality level of what amatuers can create.

3\. Turn people who would ordinarily be consumers into creators.

------
thomasgerbe
As a minority, I'm fine with this. Hollywood constantly casts minorities as
stereotypes and almost always casts a white lead with the occasional African
American.

------
statictype
Movie/TV Show industry != Hollywood.

There could still be a movie industry that doesn't involve Hollywood in the
same way that there can be a music industry without record labels

------
elorant
You don't have to "kill" Hollywood as a whole. All you need is to heavily
disrupt the distribution channel. Control distribution and you control the
game.

------
stubsy
My suggestion for YC: As an experiment, get some people together and produce a
full length feature film. I think you'll learn a bit about how hard it is.

------
potch
I interpret this as a call to use innovation and creativity to produce
something constructively that will bring Hollywood the fear, and I approve
100%.

------
mid
Let's kill one of the few remaining private industries where we're still the
best in the world?!

How about "let's build the next Hollywood" instead?

~~~
artursapek
I interpreted it more as "Let's kill off the Hollywood way of doing things."

------
re_format
Give me the programmers, UI geeks, the money to pay them to do as they are
told, and I will build it. I have the idea, and it's actually a proven winner,
among a smaller segment of users. Like most other internet phenomena, it's
something that was once only done amongst computer nerds only to be later done
by the general public as if it was just another usual day-to-day practice. And
it actually involves more friends and family and ideally less mass market
products.

~~~
eru
Pitches don't work like that. If you want other people's time or other
people's money, you better throw some more skin into the game. The most simple
thing to imagine is creating a small prototype. But there are other ways.

~~~
re_format
With this "RFS" who's pitching who?

I'm working on the prototype to prove the concept. But there is no GUI, I am
strictly a command-line user.

What are the "other ways" you allude to?

~~~
lukeholder
you're strictly a "command line user" and you are reinventing the visual art
and entertainment world?

~~~
re_format
It's a platform not an application. Nothing needs to be reinvented. We simply
reuse what's already been invented and tested. But we do it in a "new" and
useful way.

------
lispm
Wait, this has detected now? Not seen the bullshit that has been published by
hollywood over the last years? The stuff that promotes false images and
militaristic views? Hollywood looks like an extension of the department of
defense for a decade now. Now that the industry wants to control this output
in the digital age, people are waking up? I hope it's not to just defend the
possibility to copy the war movies for free.

------
laxk
Select an actor for main role in the movie. ie: Samuel L. Jackson in the Fight
Club movie instead of Bard Pitt.

------
potomak
I hope SHADO [1] will do it.

[1] <http://entertainment.shado.tv/>

------
EGreg
Don't you think that is a bit extreme?

------
kul
Cool, but, I don't think framing it as "killing" something is the best way to
name the RFS.

------
colinm
there is plenty of independent movies, the trouble is getting it into cinemas.

------
diziet
Companies working in a space like twitch.tv will eventually kill Hollywood.

------
justinlkarr
I'm struck that there are great sites for learning how to code and how to
build a small business around software development. Nothing like this exists
for the entertainment industry. We have BFAs and MFAs that are roughly
equivalent to your terminal degrees. But, as in software, many of our
superstars and journeymen emerge from an entrepreneurial path instead of
academia.

Most people who learn-by-doing in entertainment do so without a clearly
structured path or often even identifiable short-term goals. They meet and
impress people, get on a gigs doing (relatively) menial labor and learn as
they go. As their career grows, they learn both craft and business: how do
what they like and where, with whom and on what they should be doing it.

Sound familiar?

As with software, folks who hit the ground running on their own without much
skill or business knowledge generally fail quite a bit before they succeed,
even if they are in the top 1% on smarts and ambition.

Sound familiar?

Boards like this one, the various VC blogs and services like Code Academy,
StackOverflow and umpteen Rails training sites all help software entrepreneurs
focus their early efforts and move through the learning-to-do-it phase of
their careers as quickly as possible.

Where is this for entertainment? We need a Code Academy for people who want to
tell stories and get paid to do it.

Start with the basics: What is a story? How does it work? How is something
funny or sad?

Move to the specific: Write a story to be read. Tell a story to your friends.
Tell a story in a video.

Cover the business: Where to tell your stories. What different audiences
expect. How much money do people expect to pay.

Get Detailed: Editing, lighting, acting, advanced wordplay, making-sure-every-
single-thing-in-frame-is-perfect.

For the startup-makers: The absurd proliferation of MFA programs in every
discipline of entertainment suggests that there is a large market for a
service that caters to people who want to learn to entertain people
professionally.

And for the user-students: 1\. The emerging industry of professional YouTubers
suggests that there is a viable marketplace for entrepreneurs with the skill
to make small-scale entertainment people want see. 2\. The value that smart,
well-trained MFAs bring to the "big entertainment" world suggests to those of
us on the inside that some training is totally worth it. We would love to see
a way for people to come to us a little less green and with a lot less debt.

From an insider's perspective, this would be hugely disruptive.

Disclosures: I work in commercial theater, not in film. I have an MFA.

------
joel--k
Narrative visual storytelling as an entertainment form won't be killed any
more than books will be killed.

If you're trying to kill movies and the idea of a shared emotional experience
I don't think it'll be done.

If you want to kill Hollywood as overly powerful force on our planet then TAKE
THEIR TALENT.

Enable artists to make money more easily without Hollywood. Save musicians and
freedom of speech at the same time. That seems to be the true essence of this
thread. Not killing movies per se, right?

Check it out: I'm a low budget movie shooter. I've been living this industry
for about 8 years. Like a starving artist. I get hired by a string of dreamers
that almost always lose money. The movie doesn't always lose money. The artist
does. Usually the producer does too. The funds to make the movie have always
come from another business or job.

"Hollywood" is a marketing, publicity and distribution juggernaut: An
independent investor that produces a $100K movie can not invest $15 million in
marketing and distribute that movie traditionally. If they could they would.
They literally have to go through a Hollywood Studio.

Find a major release - other than Passion of the Christ - that wasn't a studio
release. I don't think it exists. Plenty of movies get made independently. The
tiny few of those that make it to theaters go through a studio. The studios
are part of a vertically integrated marketing, news, publicity and
distribution system and that is "Hollywood".

Conglomerates own the Studios, TV Stations, cable channels, newspapers (they
wine and dine critics and reporters on top of that), talk shows and radio
stations. Hell, they own the billboard companies. And a chunk of the Internet.
But the Internet scares them. It's not piracy that scares them. It's the news
/ marketing / publicity monopoly they currently own that they fear losing.

The Theater Scam: Hollywood studios prebook all the movie slots available at
all the theater chains. Theater chains give deference to the studios when
booking movies all year long to ensure they get "The Hobbit" when it comes
out. If the Theater chains knocks a Hollywood offering out in favor of an
Independent movie then maybe they won't get the Hobbit until 1 or 2 weeks
after the open. It's a barely legal, "nod and wink" oligopoly that replaced a
previously completely illegal monopoly.

The clear evidence of this truth is that the most powerful people in Hollywood
can't break out of that system. If Tom Cruise could make a $2 million dollar
movie and market it for $20 million to make $200 million using his name and
fame to skip the studio system he would. Tom does own his own production
company. But he can't build a distribution company. 95% of the media is owned
by a handful of companies. And they control the theaters too.

The Internet is the ONE thing the conglomerates don't own. Barely.

A chink in their armor - THE DEAL: Replace the licensing system used to sell
movie rights worldwide with an online marketplace. The studios don't own that.
Connect the rights buyer and artist directly. In turn, all ARTISTS are joined
together in a devastatingly powerful way. David Lynch and Lars Von Trier would
be at the head of the pack. Everyone else would follow. A truly independent
union of entrepreneur artists. Even independent of a union.

Here's how it currently works: Right now, little distribution companies that
are actually movie sales reps (not owned by Hollywood) get in the middle of
every low budget non-Hollywood movie transaction. They do Hollywood style
accounting against the filmmaker so the filmmaker never sees a penny of the
money Germany pays for the film. Worse still, you've now lost your rights to
YOUR movie in that region. If money is actually made it takes 18 months to get
to the filmmaker. That puts a ton of people out of the business. *EDIT -
Important point here. This is where all the best talent is funneled into the
Hollywood system. You can't make a living as an artist unless you join them.
That's a crucial part of my rationale. You don't change Hollywood. You create
an alternative to Hollywood that works better for the TALENT. That's how you
bring Hollywood down. Steal the next generation of talent from them.

A friend of mine works for one of these companies actually DOING the deals so
I'm positive I know what I'm talking about here. He's a filmmaker too. He
can't even get a good distribution deal out of the company he works for.
That's how bad it is. Every indie filmmaker hits this killer brick wall and
they are all frustrated.

The Money: Paying my bills: If I could sell broadcast and DVD rights directly
to German broadcasters without going through a SLEW of middlemen I'd make good
money. They pay decent money for decent content. Even stuff without movie
stars garners OK cash. You probably can bring in $100K to $300K for a tiny
movie if you do it well and maximize the value of your rights. If you win
Cannes and Sundance with a commercial piece then you'll sell to a studio (sad,
but true). They'll give you the most money for a commercial product that is
ready to go. But that's a handful of movie per year.

FALLACY- "They wouldn't keep making little movies if they didn't make money"
Most little movies are funded by wealthy people for tax benefits, glamour,
fun, publicity or to meet an actor. Or a bunch of enthusiasts make a labor of
love for free. Some little movies do make money, it's just rare.

Public Exhibition rights: Major theaters have to run movies for weeks at a
time. Small independent films can't put enough butts in seats to justify that.
The theater won't risk their relationship with the studios by running much (if
any) content that is not studio content. Technically they "could" legally run
independent content. But most theaters require newspaper advertising in
support of a movie run. That huge expense kills the deal right there. Who owns
the newspaper? The Conglomerate corporations . So they buy advertising from
one of their own companies. No real loss. If a little guy wants to "compete"
guess what? The big media players STILL take a cut of your profit via
Newspaper/TV/Billboard ad revenue.

The Internet to the rescue again: If a local art house cinema (or Coffee Shop,
Club, Church or ANYONE) could license a digital showing of my movie and pay me
even "SMALL X" dollars and sell tickets then both of us may have a viable
business model. They could do a SINGLE SOLD OUT showing and move onto the next
indie film. They market my movie to their Facebook Fans or Meetup group. Or I
market my movie in your Zipcode via Facebook and send people to your theater
and provide a sold out show. None of that can happen with Hollywood content
and without digital distribution. Indie theaters could more profitably promote
Indie content if it was easy to find, preview and acquire. They could show
1000 different titles a year! Finally a competitive advantage over Hollywood
for the small theater.

Amazon, Google, Youtube, iTunes, Spotify and Netflix are all theoretically in
position to help indie artists. They would have if they wanted to already.

Currently Spotify and Netflix pay one royalty (high) to major studios & music
labels and another royalty (very low) to independent artists. In fact,
Hollywood has jacked up the licensing costs to Netflix returning most Netflix
profits back into the Studio System. There's no getting around those mofos.

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20080205-261/what-was-
holl...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20080205-261/what-was-hollywoods-
role-in-netflix-price-hike/)

That's the power of Hollywood. They essentially own a monopoly on talent and
content because they have longed owned a near monopoly on Marketing &
Publicity. You will go through a studio if the money is BIG. Period.

Netflix is fighting back by creating their own show. They'll need to create a
lot of shows before they become another HBO but it's a reasonable plan of
attack. They really could build what I've described here if they wanted to.
Maybe Vimeo could do it too.

THE REAL PAYOFF: Now imagine a central marketplace for movie rights has
aggregated all independent content creators. How tough would it be to start a
centralized streaming service for Internet viewing? Internet rights & revenues
are always owned by the artist and never sold.

THEN all the best content creators in the WORLD would end up creating all the
BEST ADVERTISING in the world promoting this new shared "Network". And they
probably wouldn't share their content elsewhere. Hollywood would still make
blockbusters and larger budget fare. But they'd be locked out of everything
else. Hell… even large budget stuff would make it into the system and
Hollywood might actually get killed. How long would it take 500 million
Internet consumers to switch from Netflix or Youtube? Facebook fast.

Completely change the world in 3 years. But all artists have to unite. They
have the REAL power.

It couldn't be a traditional company that exists to maximize profits. The
organizing principle is to maximize artist exposure and/or artist revenues.
Perhaps it would have to be a cooperative. I don't think any American company
would ever have the balls to do this right. Unless a wealthy artist funded it.

So that's the real stuff to wrap your brain around if you want to protect free
thought and expression.

Oh... Paranormal Activity was purchased for $100K, the STUDIO made $100
Million+ and now SAG is going after the lowly creators (who got the $100k) for
royalties of $4 Million. Yeah, the studios and unions are our protectors and
Hollywood is the land of milk and honey if you have talent. LOL.

------
techiferous
Another idea: choose your own adventure movies.

~~~
eru
Some people tried that already.

------
bambax
Garage Band + open distribution platform?

------
jfornear
Film school already killed Hollywood.

------
wturner
What problem does this solve?

------
holdenc
Bollywood > Hollywood

------
cranklin
Hollywood needs to shut up and evolve just like everybody else.

------
harrylove
I haven't read all 655 (current) comments so correct me if I've missed
something. It seems like there are two threads: 1) "how do we reinvent the
screen entertainment and distribution business" and 2) "how do we make
something that currently exists more popular".

I read the RFS differently. Semantics aside, it seems like the point is to
find something better to do with ourselves. It's not to streamline Hollywood,
or redistribute the wealth in Hollywood. And it's not to figure out how to
make current gaming technology or social networks more popular.

I think a key question to ask is, what did we do for fun 300 years ago? What
did we do for fun 700 years ago? How about 5,000? If there was no Hollywood,
what would we do for fun 20 years from now? Don't assume the internet or video
games will play a part, even though they may. Don't box yourself into that
corner yet. Don't assume it means replacing movies with more movies.

Here are just some examples from the sports world that take us out of our
element and, for many fans, create mania: FIFA World Cup. The Tour de France.
The Superbowl. The Indy 500. Formula One. The Kentucky Derby. Dakar Rally.
Cricket World Cup. Wimbledon. French Open. The Masters Tournament. The PGA
Championship.

And please don't look at it from the ticketing perspective. I know that sports
ticketing is as much of a scam as Hollywood. The point is, how would you
create something that excites that mania in people?

Don't limit yourself to something YC would fund, either. Perhaps the internet
startup will be dead in 20 years. Think about it.

* Use semiconductor technology to create real-life quidditch. * Invent hover shoes and create a sport around it. * Invent the successor to the book (the entertainment/information wise, not medium wise) * Invent the successor to the skateboard * Be the next Tim Berners-Lee and invent whatever comes after the web * Invent a way to make friends with every person on the planet * Invent a near-instantaneous means of artistic self-expression that doesn't involve more than $50 up front cost and doesn't require a laptop, tablet, or smartphone * Invent whatever comes after NASCAR * "Kill (your pet peeve)" * Invent a game that involves moving your money away from investment banks * Invent a team sport that a person in any physical condition could excel at and potentially become a highly recruited, highly paid, international star. * Invent a game that kills internet piracy AND Hollywood. * Create a movie that creates a game that creates a movie. * Write a bestselling novel that is optioned by Hollywood and that, by the very creation and production of the film, signals the end of Hollywood, such that Hollywood has no choice but to eat itself. * Create a race of robots whose mission is to kill Hollywood. * Convince everyone in Hollywood that they never wanted to be in the movie business: they've always wanted to be lumberjacks.

Or none of those. But just, let's get away from the meme of "Hey, now we're
going to do Hollywood internet startup style."

------
gartdavis
While I appreciate the sentiment of this RFS with regards to the sclerotic
dysfunction of the legal system of copyright (and the business models that
perpetuate it), truth be told, as a life-long citizen of startupworld I've
often found myself quite jealous of the Hollywood business model. Hollywood is
a start-up machine that places huge bets and enables entrepreneurs to form
teams, create product, and achieve success or failure 10 or more times in a
decade. What a liberating notion!

Looking at the talented nerd in their third or fifth year slogging away at a
successful enterprise with the possible monetization of their efforts still
years over the horizon, I find myself asking: are there ways to make
startupworld more like Hollywood? Perhaps there is something to learn from the
way that the 'talent' in hollywood works with the 'money'.

As a thought exercise, what if doing a start-up was like making a film. Teams
assemble, shuffle, and disassemble in an orderly fashion. Artisans are
measured in a regular and public way and trade on their value. Quality results
are rewarded in short iterative cycles. Its possible for the very best young
talent to rise to the top of the profession in ~5 years. Entrepreneurs are
funded by the 'money' with terms that are transparent, reasonably standard,
and public, so shockingly free of embarrassingly predatory clauses. Shorter
cycles, quicker valuation/monetization, a system that screens talent and
quickly elevates the best.

Oh wait a minute, PG and the Ycomb revolution is actually making all this
stuff happen. Which is why I find this conversation amusingly ironic. "Kill
hollywood" coming from the institution that is doing the most to re-make the
money/talent relationship in startupworld in Hollywood's image. So what keeps
them from finishing the job?

So this is my real point. Startupworld has its own legal system with sclerotic
dysfunction every bit as entrenched as copyright; it effectively bars start-
ups from achieving a plurality of investors in common shares at any revenue
level below $200m. There's lots of manifestations and motivations for this,
but fundamentally, its bad for startupworld and to stretch just a bit, bad for
capitalism and democracy.

There was a time not too long ago when an excellent young company with $20m in
revenues could sell common shares to common people. What a liberating notion!
How can we put a SOPA/PIPA-like focus on this issue and sway lawmakers, change
votes, write legislation and move governments.

While I appreciate the 'kill hollywood' discussion of revolutionizing
entertainment... I have to confess that its just not nearly as big a problem,
and not nearly as broken as the world all of us work in every day. I'm jealous
that Hollywood, through its own ignorance, has managed to marshal our
industry's best efforts to midwife its own creative rebirth.

What about us?

------
jaekwon
challenge accepted

~~~
robertocr
hehehe :)

------
SlipperySlope
Here is an idea for the taking: bypass big-studio production, theaters, cable
& physical media sales/rental, and go direct to streaming video rentals, e.g.
to Amazon or Netflix, or set up your own streaming infrastructure. This
business model is disruptive by capping allowed production budgets and greatly
reducing distribution expenses.

Produce content digitally. Have subscribers pay a recurring fee to genre-
oriented channels like TV but implemented as streaming rentals only. IP is
protected similar to existing streaming content.

Avoid content production competition from Netflix or Amazon by genre focus,
e.g. just military sci fi, or youth romance.

Non-broadcast, video on demand can be also targeted at adult audiences -
imagine something like the original content HBO produces but with direct-to-
consumer streaming video bypassing cable.

Exit by selling startup to Amazon, Netflix, Google (YouTube), etc.

~~~
mattmiller
There are not enough players in the streaming industry to negotiate. If you
lose one you will not be able to make enough money from the other 2. They know
this and will be able to low ball you. They also pay a flat fee up front based
on how much demand you can prove for your product. Small studios cannot prove
demand very well.

You would be better off going straight to the physical distributors like
RedBox and selling the rights to Netflix once you can show some demand for the
product.

Or, you could set up your own streaming site that lets users view the pilot
for free. If they like it that can preorder the first season. With enough
demand you can afford to sign that show.

~~~
SlipperySlope
Agreed.

Your last point is what I had in mind. The startup sets up its own non-
Hollywood streaming video infrastructure, reusing existing services in its
software stack when reasonably priced - or for scale. It creates its own
customer service back end, and uses HTML 5 for content delivery.

------
infocaptor
You don't need a startup to kill hollywood.

Here are simple steps

Cut down your TV time by 1 hour daily Go to movies only 1 every 2 months

-So here is an application idea An application that can be installed on as a plugin somewhere (don't know where) that would automatically flash a alert on the TV screen if you go above 1 hour time limit.

But again think about why the human has become so dependent on external
stimulus for being constantly entertained.

For e.g My kid wants constant attention or entertained.

He either wants me to play with him all day Or Watch TV continuously OR Play
video games

Finding other ways of getting entertained in order to kill hollywood is not
the sane idea. The root of the problem is becoming more dependent on external
medium for entertainent

------
drhowarddrfine
Reading through that, it shows the writer has no clue how entertainment is
created. It looks like he feels it can be manufactured by anyone with a slight
interest in the subject. I doubt anyone here, save @Keyframe, has ever been on
a set to see the hundreds involved at every skill level to put together a
motion picture. Or the large group needed to put together any TV show.

Kill Hollywood? That's like saying kill Silicon Valley. And equally as stupid.

------
wavephorm
What replaces big budget Hollywood movies is independently developed (cheap)
short-films like the crew of freddiew:

<http://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew>

If I was a VC I'd buy invest in them to create a new Youtube-ish site for high
quality content like that.

------
mdg
I see the line between television and commercial blurring so much [more than
it already is] that everything is grey. Shows wont exist anymore, there will
just be "characters" with shows, movies, music albums, etc orbiting around
them.

------
hastur
I'm really happy that finally someone with considerable clout has noticed that
the business side of the content industries is a threat to our society and
needs to be eradicated.

------
powertower
This is what Youtube is already doing...

Creating millions of channels that anyone can tune in to.

