Comment by fleitz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fleitz | Hacker News Reader

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Destroying Hollywood would not destroy ability for entertainers to entertain. If anything it would probably increase the ability for an entertainer to entertain.

Hollywood doesn't really "make" movies so much as market and distribute them.

Destroying "hollywood" according to the ideas proposed would likely open up millions MORE opportunities for entertainers to entertain and would likely change the market dynamics from a winner take all market dominated by a few "stars" to a more yeoman farmer type system where everyone does OK.

"Hollywood" makes entertainers sign grossly unfair contracts at the beginning of their careers justified only by the winner take all market they propagate. Hollywood is unnecessary in an age where anyone can put blender on their computer, buy an HD video camera and start making movies. You don't need huge budgets to make decent movies. Hollywood keeps most artists starving in order to gain leverage, if most artists did OK it would dramatically change the landscape at the bargaining table.

The average artist will do better with out hollywood at the expense of the "stars".

After Hollywood is dead there probably won't be any entertainers who have "millions" of fans but likely far more that have tens of thousands of fans.

If Hollywood dies because of the RFS it will be because the people voted with their feet and decided the offerings of the RFS are superior to the offerings of Hollywood. I believe that's called a "free market". It's not up to PG, me, Ben Parr or anyone else to decide what is best for the people, it is up to the people decide what is best for them. Any projected funded by YC will only succeed to the degree that it provides a better experience to consumers.

> Hollywood doesn't really "make" movies so much as market and distribute them.

If that was a complete listing: Then destroying them would be a pretty straightforward matter, because startups do distribution and marketing like the best.

The problem as I see it: I think you missed a function. Hollywood is a specialized VC community. Their investments are movies.

No amount of Y-combinatoring is going to supplant the money machine, without building a brand new money machine.

>Hollywood is a specialized VC community.

That's true, but we dont need a VC community that specializes in handing out tens of millions when, thanks to technology, movies can be made for tens of thousands.

That's true too, but the web hasn't introduced that. The RoR of big budget movies is potentially much greater than low-budget movies. Hollywood invests where any VC would invest, where the potential reward is greatest. I'm not sure that a VC would or could change anything here.

The average RoR of big-budget movies is less than the average RoR of low-budget movies, as well as a higher risk for potentially lower reward.

There are financial very successful (in terms of $100k's/a rather than millions of dollars) movie producers, actors, writers and directors who specifically aim for sub-segments of the market and fulfill niche demand. Christian and African-American movies being two successful segments of the market for low-budget, high-return movies.

> The average RoR of big-budget movies is less than the average RoR of low-budget movies

Sorry, no. The risk is higher, but the reward, should it pay off, is much greater and there is a much more attractive risk:reward. An indie film can indeed be profitable, but the probability of being very profitable is small.

This is the same for games, music, TV, books. As a publisher where do you concentrate your money? Where it's likely to make the most money, of course.

>thanks to technology, movies can be made for tens of thousands.

I was laughing until I realized you were serious. Of course it's possible to make a movie for a few thousand dollars. But most movies at that budget aren't worth watching. Quality (especially the talent) is expensive, and that is fact in every field.

Why should talent in movies be paid millions, when the truly outstanding in other fields are paid a lot less? The simple reason is that total expenses in movie making and distribution system are so high that these payouts seem reasonable and it makes sense to get popular actors at the prices they (artists) demand.

This system works well for the companies and the top rung artists. Ripe for "disruption".

"when the truly outstanding in other fields are paid a lot less?"

You mean like sports stars?

The command higher fees because having their name attached to a project reduces the amount of marketing expenditure of a project and increases the projects chances of success.

Aside from fees for high-paid actors and directors though there are still a LOT of people needed to produce a quality film: screenwriters, cinematographers etc.

>You mean like sports stars?

Sports is probably the closest thing we have to a true meritocracy. If you're an incredibly talented baseball player you'll have statistics to back it up.

Because of this I'd wager that almost all the top tier baseball players are currently engaged by major league teams.

However, acting is more subjective. It's much harder to objectively demonstrate that you are a top tier actor, so there are likely many top tier actors available for hire who aren't making millions.

like programmers/doctors/teachers?

Much of the expense for 'talent' comes from the artificial scarcity created by marketing. It's a vicious (or virtuous, depending on which side you're on) circle: a company spends marketing money, which attracts theaters, which means big audiences for the movie, which means that newcomer with a minor role gets exposure, which increases their appeal as a lead actor, which means their next movie will make more money. There are only so many actors who can appear in a 'major' release because a) there are only so many screens and b) there are even fewer movies showing on those screens because the blockbusters dominate the limited number of screens. There are always more actors (and directors and screenwriters, etc) that have the capacity be 'stars' than the system can accommodate. That system is built primarily on marketing, not talent.

Their is no scarcity of people who want to become stars on Youtube.

I think you are wrong. Maybe a few thousand dollars isn't enough to make a movie with good production values. But there are lots of low budget movies that are amazing works of art. Also, a lot of movies made with massive budgets "aren't worth watching". Clearly the funding isn't directly correlated to the quality of the film.

Movies like Primer are just the beginning, and a Y-combinator for movies/tv could push the change even quicker. I'm thinking of a forum of 1000 movie/tv enthusiasts putting up maybe $100 each and funding 5-10 creators or maybe one larger project, holding open talent calls online.

Movies like Primer are a great rarity. There are many, many, low-budget movies out there; very few of them are created by bona fide visionaries.

Don't laugh. He's right.

With the right setting (no fancy costumes, no fancy sets, no tough-to-reach locations), the right setup (digital HD camera and ~$2000 computer to edit and render SFX if any), and unknown actors you can make a film that would be indistinguishable from Hollywood quality (without any famous faces however) for low tens of thousands of dollars.

Also, there is plenty of great talent that hasn't "made it" in Hollywood, and that talent is probably artificially cheap.

Tens of thousands was a bit of hyperbole. However cheap special effects are getting very close to good enough to compete with Hollywood movies.

>Quality (especially the talent) is expensive, and that is fact in every field.

There are plenty of quality actors that are paid much less than millions of dollars per movie.

In addition, price is a function of what consumers are willing to pay and what sellers are willing to charge. If piracy drives down what consumers are willing to pay (and thus what actors can charge), what do you want to bet actors will still act (for much lower wages).

Most movies in the tens of millions aren't worth watching either.

So let's build a brand-new money machine!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3492153

Very true. I think the new money machine will be crowd sourcing. Recent statistics for kickstarter say that they funded nearly 100mil for projects in 2011. Out of which nearly half (50% in money) are media related (film/music/comics etc). People ignore crowd sourcing or discount its power, but we have to remember that crowd sourcing involves the whole world - thanks to the internet.

"Destroying Hollywood would not destroy ability for entertainers to entertain. If anything it would probably increase the ability for an entertainer to entertain."

Agreed. If anything, new tech could create a new medium for truly determined entertainers to reach a large audience. Right now it seems like most of the youtube celebrities are, for the most part, jokesters. But perhaps a new sphere of entertainment can be created where the next great actors/directors can make it big without Hollywood.

>Destroying Hollywood would not destroy ability for entertainers to entertain. If anything it would probably increase the ability for an entertainer to entertain.

How does that follow? No one needs to follow Hollywood as it is. Anyone can create and post their product on their personal site or Youtube etc.

What Hollywood gives artists is a great vehicle. No one needs to use that vehicle. People are free to act in local productions, etc. Besides, I think there are at least two kinds of artists, ones who do it for the joy/love and others who do it for fame/recognition. The latter would likely feel out of place in new environment where they were not widely known. I admit, that's my impression, and not based on any study or such.

It feels almost as if people would wish that artists/actors, etc. would return to a time of travelling acts like vaudeville shows. Those people barely made ends meet. A modern, technologically enhanced version of this, but still.

>It's not up to PG, me, Ben Parr or anyone else to decide what is best for the people, it is up to the people decide what is best for them. Any projected funded by YC will only succeed to the degree that it provides a better experience to consumers.

This I agree with.

What Hollywood gives artists is a great vehicle.

True, but you have to ask why it's such a great vehicle. And the reason is that Hollywood uses marketing to ensure that millions of people all watch the same movie. This audience doesn't come out of nowhere---it represents at least in part the potential audience for other, less rabidly-marketed films. That 'great vehicle' is running over other artists. We create a handful of multi-millionaires at the expense of providing a living wage to thousands of others. Our copyright law doesn't incentivize artists, or even distribution anymore---it subsidizes a marketing machine.

I think the argument is that the marketing and distribution institution that is Hollywood can be remade more efficiently. This streamlined Hollywood would capture fewer rents, exhibit less social malignancy, and pass on more of the value-added income to the creatives. This would, theoretically, increase the rewards to creativity.

I think a decent case could be made for the fact that the internet tends to cause people to converge more, not less - the same anti-long-tail arguments apply (for example, see http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2011/11/08/t...).

That being said, the general point is valid - the current business model for generating entertainment is broken, leaving it ripe for disruption, and the OP's fallacy is the assumption that the current business model is the only way for content to be created and distributed.

i loked hard for any arguments in the linked article from your comment,sadly i could not find any. yeah, the long tail is about distribution and about filters. the long tail is not about bocoming a mainstream hit withot effort, its not about the lack of hits in the future.

there is a great book called "he long tail" -it`s a hihly recommended read. p.s. the example about video games is outdated, there is a long long long til of videogames now (please see your iphone or android market for references )

Who will miss Mission Impossible 4, when the alternative is something new? Hollywood killed the art in most of his movies already. Think about this Viacom coolness-metric-optimization-crap and stuff like Zookeeper.

People like Nolan will still make gigantic hits with decent movies.

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