[froo]

The majority of cost of any TV/Film project goes into equipment and salary realistically.

The way I figure it, the minimum number of people you need in any traditional production is essentially the cast and base operators (which could also be cast members if multi-skilled)

However if you go into 3D animation, this number can actually go down - to the point where you have a content production team around the size of a small startup.

The model I'm looking at could be described as a digital aniation studio, a "mini pixar" if you will, that uses open source software (Blender, Cinelerra) and homebrew motion capture (both facial and performance) to get performance across in a quick manner and using a significantly smaller team. I'm also looking at leveraging EC2 for rendering instead of investing in purchasing multiple servers for a render farm.

The model isn't scalable across the entire film/tv industry of course, but I figure it could work for a couple studios and this is what I'm working on trying to prove right now.

[thetable]

A while ago, I heard a talk by the CEO of Wreck A Movie (http://www.wreckamovie.com/). They made a sci-fi movie in an open-source manner: People from anywhere contributed 3D models of spaceships and other graphical assets.

If you could tag your contributions with CC-Attribution licenses and have your name appear in the credits, that might be enough incentive for a lot of people to bring down production prices even more.

[rms]

Awesome, hope you guys are applying to Y Combinator.

[pg]

Yes, this sounds interesting.

[froo]

Thanks, unfortunately I wont be applying this round, but I'm sure you will be seeing our application next round.