Comment by scottdw2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottdw2 | Hacker News Reader

Here is the recipe for killing Hollywood:

1. The Hollywood Business Model

The Hollywood business model is based on 2 things:

1. Control of distribution

2. Financing of production

The Internet has solved #1. Any content can be distributed to any one in the world for an effective cost of $0.

The reason they are not dead yet is because no one has solved #2. They still control production of most content.

2. It's like Kickstarter, but for movies

So, the solution is to attack film financing. Make it diffuse, and distributed. Create a platform for film makers to seek financing in small amounts from normal people. You could call it "slushpile.com" or something line that. A film maker posts a 60 second trailer and a budget. People invest small amounts in the film. When the budget is reached the film maker gets the money, and he makes the film.

You then distribute the film through the site, for a fee. Split the revenues 70 / 20 / 10. The film makers get 70%, the "producers" (the funders) get 20%, and the site gets 10%.

3. A key first customer.

The obvious best choice is Kevin Smith. He understands the Internet, he makes entertaining films with small budgets, and he has an avid cult following. He's like the Ron Paul of film makers.

Its a schlep. You have to seduce movie stars. But, pulling it off would kill Hollywood, overnight.

Taking your argument as a premise, for cinema 2) is well in progress. Canon EOS SLR's, stuff to hang them on, and digital editing are knocking down a big part of equipment costs. (You still have lights and all that, but there are ways to keep that manageable.)

You're left with wages, permits, and stuff I won't try to guess (e.g. catering, etc., etc.).

High level professional abilities will continue to be a minority of interested parties. But, with cost of entry so lowered, the population to draw from will be much larger. And with the lower barrier to entry, people old and particularly young will be able to practice these skills and have the motivation of a distribution channel to fuel them on, without fight for a place and clamor to buy into such an entrenched regime.

Another big, undersung aspect of such a transition is to get the writers, and the artisans, to work for the new model. Really good writing does not come easy. But there is still plenty of talent, and compensation under the new model(s) should not have too much difficulty being competitive for these jobs (maybe I'm wrong, but based one what I hear/read).

Oh, the other 800 lb gorilla: Unions. Movie and TV production is very heavily unionized. If they want to strongarm their members and potential members from participating, this could present a significant problem. A question might be whether beginners/outsiders can build enough momentum if there is little or no support from seasoned professionals.

This is all off the top of my head. I may be wrong.

Go to film festivals; Sundance, Cannes, Venice, etc talk to young directors/producers making shorts. They know lots about how to run a production.

Hollywood is insanely inefficient. For $2m a shot you could throw away 49 out of every 50 films your young directors make for the price of a $100m Hollywood blockbuster.

Inflexible unions? -> Don't make movies in the US.

> The Internet has solved #1. Any content can be distributed to any one in the world for an effective cost of $0.

And thereby created a new problem: Any content can be distributed to any one in the world for an effective profit of $0.

> You then distribute the film through the site, for a fee. Split the revenues 70 / 20 / 10. The film makers get 70%, the "producers" (the funders) get 20%, and the site gets 10%.

This would be illegal unless everyone is a qualified investor. It's the reason Kickstarter requires you to "donate" money and you cannot return any kind of financial compensation.

Kick starter can't be used to start a corporation. That doesn't mean it couldn't be used to fund R&D. 20000 people can pay me $100 to make a movie, in exchange for a percentage of its sales. That's called a contract.

I can hire a production crew to make a movie.

No such activities constitute investment. They are just works for hire.

There may be liability issues. Potential breach of contract problems. You could get around that with the right contract structures (who hires whom, and what the terms are).

The funders wouldn't have the same rights as investors, but that seems ok.

Am I missing something?

I'm not quite sure how they work, but one example of a better way to do movies might be the "Wreck a Movie" people. That Iron Sky movie they've been working on for a while is coming out early this year apparently.

>> The Internet has solved #1. Any content can be distributed to any one in the world for an effective cost of $0.

Very few people actually have the ability to distribute content on the web at an effective enough level to make money off of the content produced. Currently the majority of these people are people with huge YouTube channels.

It is very hard for anyone to distribute good content even if they have money. The problem of good content getting distribution is not solved.

Hollywood controls the distribution pipeline (Theater,TV,DVD,etc) and the timing of each (the release). Hollywood advertises each to build up demand. So you can also beat Hollywood by solving the "advertising to build up demand" over the internet part of the equation. Right now it's Facebook?

4. Controlling print media for unlimited marketing. There is a reason why News Corp has so many newspapers and magazines.

Print media is dead.

It's a nice idea, but I'm very unsure even this democratic model will be enough to convince enough consumers to actually _pay_ for content. If there is to be a future for commercial cinema of any sort, income will probably not be generated from sales, it will be be something like royalties from subscription (Netflix, Amazon, etc) revenues, which for the majority of inhabitants of the long tail will be woefully small, or we see the trend of films being glorified commercials continue with ever more egregious product placement.

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