| 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. |
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...). 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...). 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.