[KaiserPro]

There are several reasons why Y combinator is unlikely to kill hollywood.

The Author touches on part of the problem. To make a good movie you need:

1) an excellent script (if it reads like shit, its going to look worse, if the pitch is "its like X but...." its a fail)

2) a significant amount of captial ($1million)

3) quality actors

4) ridiculously good organisation skills (you'll be organising 40+ people hundreds and thousands of pounds worth of equipment for around 40 days (or a lot more))

that's just first part. You then need to wrangle all the footage, and massage it into a cohesive and flowing narrative, something most "film" buffs fail cataclysmically ally at. (why do you think most youtube videos are only 3 minutes top?)

Once you've spent three years of your life doing that, you then need to get your movie seen. That means persuading people who think you are worse than dogshit to watch a movie that they really couldn't care about, much less actually pay you for.

This will take you the next 3-6 years. It also costs a lot.

[nileshtrivedi]

You're assuming that the content has to have the same format as movies. Short videos (like the ones produced by CollegeHumor) can have a good script and quality visuals without involving a big budget. The market isn't "films". It is "entertainment".

[KaiserPro]

I'm assuming there is a market for 90 minute narratives.

CollegeHumour is only really competition for things like Archer, Family Guy and the like. So really only a competition for TV.

There is still a market for Movies, and its a large and thriving market (in the UK movie going is at an all time high.)

You're not going to kill hollywood by stringing together a few gags into a 90minute combo. movie42 is a good example of that.

People want content, and until you can provide content that is on a par, or better than movies, you are pissing in the wind

[wj]

In college we got offered free focus group passes to see The Underground Comedy Movie on Sunset. It was gags thrown together into the worst movie I've ever seen. We also got to see King Cobra that way.

It wasn't always bad though. We got to see 2001 as part of a focus group in Woodland Hills when they were considering releasing it to theaters. We were lucky there.

[ericHosick]

> The market isn't "films". It is "entertainment".

Kevin Spacey on this subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ukYf_xvgc.

[KaiserPro]

yup, but we are talking about "killing hollywood" which is films.

Longform is largely separate. People rarely gather for a single 20 minute episode of something, they do gather for an 90 minute film.

[greenyoda]

Exactly. Killing Hollywood doesn't necessarily mean beating them at their own game. Killing Hollywood means that some competitor (or perhaps several competitors) will take away enough share of the entertainment market to make Hollywood's business collapse. For example, TV shows have taken a large chunk of business away from the motion picture industry since TV was invented, but they're not feature films. A similar example might be tablets killing the PC industry: tablets are not PCs, but they've taken a large chunk of business away from the PC market.

[mikecane]

>>>For example, TV shows have taken a large chunk of business away from the motion picture industry since TV was invented

Major studios own TV networks today. It's all the same bank account. If your money doesn't go into the pocket labeled "Movie," you're putting it in the one called "TV."

[dylangs1030]

That's fascinating...but I can't find a citation online. How did you come across this? Is e.g. ABC owned by Universal?

[jaredsohn]

ABC is owned by Disney which owns Pixar, Disney, Touchstone, Miramax, Marvel Entertainment, LucasFilm, ...

A large chunk of TV is owned by {Newscorp, Disney, Time Warner, Comcast, Viacom, and CBS} http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart

Here is who owns the major movie studios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_film_studio#1990s.E2.80.9.... Notice that with Sony the big exception, the list of companies is roughly the same.

[KaiserPro]

http://screenville.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/attendance-history...

cinema attendance has been growing for a while.

Not even netflix is killing hollywood at the moment.

[greenyoda]

"cinema attendance has been growing for a while"

Absolute attendance numbers don't mean much. More interesting statistics would be: Hollywood's percentage of the total entertainment market and the earnings (profits after expenses) of the movie industry.

"Not even netflix is killing hollywood at the moment."

Netflix is mostly just a distribution channel for Hollywood. They're showing Hollywood movies and a big chunk of their revenue goes straight to Hollywood. They may be killing local movie theaters, but they're certainly supporting Hollywood.

[r00fus]

And Microsoft's revenues and profits have been growing in the past decade as well... I don't think anyone can reasonably conclude they're nearly as relevant as they used to be.

Large institutions don't get "killed", they slowly become irrelevant (and the perhaps die), or change to suit the new market in a much diminished role.

[KaiserPro]

There is no concept of maintenance in consume movies (the closest is netflix monthly fee) microsoft has years to sort out its problems, it is also highly liquid.

if a movie distie has a run of bad movies, it will become insolvent, which means that they'll not have enough cash to progress the movies in its pipeline. (For example MGM went tits up and delayed james bond by years)

[Spearchucker]

I like feature-length movies. Short films are a way to fill an idle minute, but otherwise bore me. No one I know spends 2 hours straight just watching short clips or movies on YouTube.

[drblast]

My wife and I spend quite a bit of time watching 22 or 50 minute TV shows in succession on Netflix.

I think that format is in many ways more interesting, as you can develop a story in much more depth than you could with a 2 hour movie.

[KaiserPro]

Thats longform/episodic, which is not the same as feature length hollywood.

However you are correct that 8x25 or 6x60 allows for far richer narrative. (The BBC's sherlock is a brilliant example of this 3x90 minutes of tastily thick narrative)

[betterunix]

"Once you've spent three years of your life doing that, you then need to get your movie seen. That means persuading people who think you are worse than dogshit to watch a movie that they really couldn't care about, much less actually pay you for."

Which is exactly why Hollywood is due for replacement. When you can't say, "People want to see this movie because it is a good movie," or, "People want to see this movie because it is worth the price of a ticket to see," you should not be in the movie-making business. If nobody can make a movie that stands on its own merits, then the movie-making business is past its prime.

[KaiserPro]

Ahh, but therein lies the rub. The movie-making business is fine, its the disties that are the problem.

The problem is this, a good movie is subjective. Go to your local movie festival, 90% of the entries will be clichéd lumbering trite. 7% will be good by comparison, but you wouldn't recommend them to your friends, much less bet money on them. This leaves 3% that are quality. Of that 3% 20% might be profitable.

People go to cinemas to see movies that interest them. If they go to a cinema, they understand that the content is hand picked and is going to be high quality. This is how HBO works. They select scripts/concepts that they think are good. They are overwhelmed by wannabe directors who are frankly rubbish. In the same way the a good VC is overwhelmed by instagram clones.

There is a need for a gate keeper, to maintain quality. arguably these gate keepers are more likley to be TV execs (HBO bankrolled the new Liberace movie) or people like netflicks

[araes]

Jumping off of the HBO love, it seems they are often an example for what works in this new era, and I don't disagree that they've got a good strategy. However, another that seems often discounted, but which has proven extremely resilient is the path of Disney.

As TFA noted, where many studios are often prey to the talent agencies, Disney has done a remarkably good job of investing in and building their own roster of exclusive star power (not only actors [Gomez, Cyrus, Swift, Jonas, the list goes on and on and on http://www.imdb.com/list/20w9iZGsCI0/ ], but writers and directors too). This has allowed them to develop a vast array of content for relatively low cost as they lock in talent early and then build them over time through cross exposure in a variety of mediums and cameos.

In addition, this is good for the talent itself. There's a lot of nature to who becomes a star, but there's also a hefty dose of nurture. Disney grabs these folks when they're nothing and then helps them to get the often quoted 10k hrs to become "masters" of their craft. At any one time, Disney has probably 50-100 (I may be low-balling this) exclusive actors across a range of ages, that live within the ecosystem of Disney channel, Internet vids, Disney movies, park attractions, animated voice work, Disney concerts, and subsidiary tv.

Furthermore, they're constantly working to buy or build compelling new stories for these actors to exist in and connect with their audience. What were Marvel, Lucasfilm, even Pixar, if not purchases of compelling story properties? Marvel alone has given them so much to work with that they'll be cranking them out for years.

Folks like Netflix or aspiring competitors would be wise to look at their model. It gives you: low costs (talent early in their careers), low risk (wide pool of cheap folks gives you more chance to fail), high end pull (after 10k, people like Cyrus are talented and have draw), and lock-in exclusives (nearly every person at Disney is Only Disney). As I think about it, there's actually a lot of parallels between this and the Nintendo strategy as well - another company that's been around Forever. You just refuse to play the same game everyone else is pushing for. Movies may be 65 billion, but Disney has become 10 billion all by itself.

[johnchristopher]

Jumping off of the HBO love, it seems they are often an example for what works in this new era, and I don't disagree that they've got a good strategy.

Yeah, well... They still killed Carnivale a season too soon.

[guard-of-terra]

If there is a need for a gate keepers, why do they pass bad movies? And most movies on the screen are mediocre at best. And they also lose money.

[KaiserPro]

Because its exceptionally difficult to predict a market three years plus in advance. (which is why studios play it safe) and independent movies are highly risky, and nobody has the cash to bring them to wider release (even if they win a sundance award)

[moocowduckquack]

Hollywood did pray and spray investing long before the VC market hit onto it. The studios assume that the vast majority of films will not make money and that it is really hard to know which ones will do so in advance of them being made. So instead of spending a lot of time trying to select successful films, the studios try and spread the risk by investing wide and accepting that some years they will lose money. In the years where they lose money, the press then report that hollywood is in danger, whereas most of the studios have already budgeted for the losses.

[guard-of-terra]

No they don't invest wide. You have a few "wide" films a year. What you have is a stream of movies which are ordinary, mediocre and unsuccessful. Why fund that?

[walshemj]

$1million is a low/mid budget TV series I think Amanda Tapping's Sanctuary show had that sort of budget and they had tax breaks on top of that

Mad men is several million per episode. A cheapish movie is 30-40 Million.

[djloche]

For reference here are the production budgets for Rian Johnson's films:

Brick: $500,000

The Brother's Bloom: $20,000,000

Looper: $60,000,000

The obvious thing that is seen here is that Special Effects and High Profile Actors significantly increase the cost of films. If you had little to no CG (like Brick), you might be able to pull off a ~1M film with new-er talent (like JGL was at the time).

[larrys]

Would add that in addition to the time the chance to make money at it (in various parts) is not that great. Like any art there are many people willing to work for next to nothing in order to be in that business. I'm not seeing that with the startup industry. (Perhaps because in the startup industry you have golden handcuffs throwing money at you for your skills that doesn't happen in the movie industry for all but a few people).

[jotm]

I don't know about movies, but VGHS @ rocketjump.com did it rather well, it's amazing seeing this kind of quality from a Kickstarter project...