[mekoka]

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

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

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

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

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

[MrScruff]

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

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

http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/

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

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