[tossacct]

This is not a comment about piracy.

>>>I can assure you that vast, vast majority of people you might meet who work in film spend their time thinking about making films, not price fixing.

I believe you. The people who create the content, with jobs like editing, directing, writing, acting, camera work, special effects, logistics, costuming, set design, and even the runners and gofers are all hardworking people who "spend their time thinking about making films".

The result of the hard work done by these laborers is a film. This film's "copyrights" are "owned" by the people who financed the venture, also known as "capitalists". These are people who do "spend their time thinking about ... price fixing". Under law, they have monopoly rights regarding certain elements of copyright. Armed with these rights, they employ accountants in an attempt to make as much money as possible. The most blatant and greedy of these attempts are lumped together with the phrase "Hollywood Accounting".

There is a great contingent of consumers that would like to give more of their money to the workers, and less of their money to the financiers. Please refer to indiegogo, kickstarter, and the ancient concept of patronage for well established ways of legally doing this.

This is not a comment about piracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage

Also, cheers if you are this Mr Scruff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS_CLIF1h-o

[yebyen]

A Public Service Announcement: shill is not a bad word!

If it's the same or different Mr. Scruff, I really enjoyed the dancing taco and fat cats :) would watch again, 10/10

[tossacct]

Someone who will not be named replied with the following comment, then deleted it. The commenter wasn't wrong, and it wasn't a bad comment.

>> Kickstarter ain't gonna raise enough money to fund the next Hobbit trilogy. Sorry but huge blockbusters aren't ever going to be able to find enough people willing to put down enough money via Kickstarter. Small indies yeah, hundreds of millions of dollar type summer blockbusters no.

[tossacct]

That said, I did not entirely agree with them :)

I agree that Kickstarter is unlikely to raise 300 million dollars for the next Hobbit trilogy. I disagree that a huge blockbuster will never be crowdfunded. Transformers, Harry Potter, and Avatar all cost less than 300 million dollars. 30 million people pre-paying 10 dollars is not ridiculous, when you look at how many people use Google, and how many users Facebook claims to have.

Surprisingly, movie studios don't necessarily fund the projects that they profit from. Since you mentioned LotR universe:

"New Line made enough pre-sales in foreign markets, and there were enough subsidies to pretty much cover their costs. New Zealand was not the only subsidy. There was also the British Commonwealth subsidy and the German tax subsidy in those days. New Line didn't have to put up any cash to make that movie."

Also movie studios consistently claim to not make profits from their movies.

"However, New Line later produced accounts showing that instead of making a profit, the movies made "horrendous losses". According to Hubbard: "We found it surprising because it was one of the biggest box office success of all time.""

Other funding options: a company could start making short films and then transition into making larger, more expensive ones once it gains the trust of its audience. The films could be broken into "episodes" to reduce the amount of money that each chunk would cost. This all ignores patronage, another alternative funding mode.

Lastly, most movies aren't blockbusters. Even if everything I just said is a lie, the vast majority of movies will be just fine, because their budgets are laughably small. District 9 was shot for 30 million dollars. Primer was shot for 7000 dollars. When Harry Met Sally cost 16 million dollars. Citizen Kane cost 15 million. Pretty Woman cost 14 million. The government funded BBC has produced such things like The Office, Monty Python, and Billy Elliot on less than 5 million each.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&#...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting#Examples