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Why the Film Industry Hasn't Been Disrupted Yet, Part 5

112 points by iampliny 10y ago

neom 10y ago
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- stcredzero 10y ago
  Film has shown through history that it's a robust medium. Film has already been disrupted a bunch of times through technological and cultural change. It survived the arrival of color and sound. It survived TV and videocassette. It survived all sorts of changes to its cultural and social context. It has also disrupted. The article notes a lot of things about the film industry which have analogies with industries in other mediums. (Note the parallels with the game industry!)
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  > most people get into cinema for love, not money Isn't that part 4? http://endcrawl.com/blog/film-not-disrupted-yet-part-4/ http://endcrawl.com/blog/film-not-disrupted-yet-part-4/
DigitalJack 10y ago
Bad title, should say film industry.
- 4ad 10y ago
  I agree, I clicked thinking its about silver halides.
- fezz 10y ago
  or cinema instead of film.
- dang 10y ago
  Ok, we added that. The word 'industry' appears immediately after the title so it's an easy sell.
hossbeast 10y ago
"Where would the tech industry be if every engineer’s highest aspiration was landing a gig with Verizon?" Lol irl
bbctol 10y ago
It seems more that the film industry has been disrupted, it's just that small studios have been hurt and large conglomerates were the ones to seize power. Technology changed the economics of the film industry in a disruptive way, and "disruption" shouldn't be a term reserved for small startups taking advantage of those shifts as opposed to large companies.
btown 10y ago
It's worth reading the entire series, beginning with http://endcrawl.com/blog/film-not-disrupted-yet-part-1/ http://endcrawl.com/blog/film-not-disrupted-yet-part-1/ . While large tech companies are great at attracting talent, that doesn't create a dearth of talent going into smaller startups. The driver here is Part 1: the capital requirements for any high-quality project are huge and up-front. And as entertainment is getting increasingly saturated, there's no real way for a "unicorn" franchise to be born out of an indie flick. No upstart VC will take a bet on you making the next Star Wars, even if you're already an industry insider... and in that case, per the OP, it's much more reliable for you to work within the current system. And on top of that, industry fundamentals don't look good: from one of the links in Part 4, https://redef.com/original/the-future-of-film-part-i-us-film-is-not-a-growth-business https://redef.com/original/the-future-of-film-part-i-us-film... . Perhaps film is truly an industry in decline, and the disruption is already happening - not from Netflix and other content producers, but in the form of interactivity and mainstream gaming. Perhaps the monetization model there is simply better. Time will tell.
anotherarray 10y ago
What about bootstrapped, self-funded, youtube channels that became huge?
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
  There was a really good article about this (wish I could find it) about how the majority of these aren't making much, if any money. From the outside it appeared that the artists are rolling in cash; from the inside, they were still working waiter/waitress jobs to make ends meet.
  - sndean 10y ago
    Yeah I heard from one YouTuber (over email) that only ~1000 worldwide are currently making a living solely from their YouTube career. And that includes certain successful channels that employ 20+ people.
  - aab0 10y ago
    I remember the one you're talking about: http://fusion.net/story/244545/famous-and-broke-on-youtube-instagram-social-media/ http://fusion.net/story/244545/famous-and-broke-on-youtube-i... (first hit for 'Youtube star waitressing')
jasode 10y ago
The article's Part 1 refers to an old HN thread and buried in there is a good comment from anactofgod about "disrupting Hollywood": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491584 His analysis has similar to themes to the misunderstanding of "gatekeepers" like Netflix / Amazon Video / HBO and why they exist. Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists not having money to self-finance their projects -- and -- also not wanting to mess around with tasks that are unrelated to creativity such as managing a web server farm to distribute their videos to their fans. There was a recent HN thread where people were frustrated that they had to pay for multiple streaming services (Netflix/Hulu/Amazon) to get all the shows they wanted. Several suggested that we need to move towards a decentralized P2P distribution platform. Unfortunately, as techies and programmers, we don't consider the underlying economic forces that created the centralized gatekeepers in the first place. For example... if director/producer David Fincher wants the highest payment for his project, he can go to Netflix execs and convince them give him $100 million[1]. How would he get that kind of payday from decentralized systems such as IPFS / Sandstorm / DECENT[2]? [1]http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-outbids-hbo-david-fincher-167882 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-outbids-hbo-da... [2]https://decent.ch/ https://decent.ch/
- whack 10y ago
  > Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists ... not wanting to mess around with tasks that are unrelated to creativity such as managing a web server farm to distribute their videos to their fans. This exact same argument can also be made wrt Musicians. Justin Bieber has no interest in managing a web server farm to distribute his music to fans. And yet, I'm able to go online and purchase specific Justin Bieber songs/albums that I'm interested in, without having to pay monthly fees to some Netflix-type aggregator. > Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists not having money to self-finance their projects This seems like a much stronger argument, and I agree that making a TV show is vastly more expensive than making songs. But the vast majority of new musicians do not self-finance their first few albums either. They sign up with a record label, and the record label finances the production/marketing/distribution costs. And ultimately, when consumers pay money to buy the songs/albums, a cut of that money goes back to the record company in order for them to recoup their investment. The exact same model can work for television shows as well. HBO bankrolls David Fincher $100M to produce Utopia. Customers who want to watch Utopia can pay money just to watch Utopia, without having to sign up for HBO. And as "equity holders", a percentage of that customer money goes back to HBO. I'm sure there are many other niggling issues that need to be worked out, but at a fundamental level, I don't see why this revised model can't work. Allowing consumers to pay only for the shows that they want to watch, instead of forcing them to pay for an entire monthly bundle, seems like it should be much more economically efficient.
danso 10y ago
One factor that I didn't see mentioned in this post or the author's previous post is the strength and influence of the union. I lived with an actress who had moderate enough success to do acting full time, have an agent, and be in the Screen Actors Guild. I was amazed at how much money she could pull in for just having a split-second role in a nationally broadcast ad, when it seems likely a company could finds hundreds of attractive, willing people to show up in an ad for a few hundred bucks. My impression from her was that doing non-union work as SAG member could easily kill your career, considering how most studios do not work with non union folks, as SAG would push back hard on them. That said, the film industry is very much built on sentiment and brand. I'm a fan of movies from all eras, so I don't understand why people are so thrilled to pay money to see a new movie when there are so many great movies in the past few decades, nevermind the past year. But people today really want to see Jennifer Lawrence's new work, no matter how many other equally great actresses have had great roles in years past. Same deal with franchises, in movies and in games. A fan-remake could remove Nintendo characters and assets and still have the exact same game mechanics and quality, but very few people would give a shit. We want to see the characters and worlds we grew up with and loved, regardless of whether the actual vehicle (movie, game, etc) isn't particularly noteworthy. Edit: Contrast film with other industries that have been disrupted. I like Seymour Hersh, but I don't care if a great investigative reporting scoop comes from him or from a blogger, I just care about its veracity and impact. Same with software; John Resig seems like a great human being but that's not the main reason for jquery's dominance. Meanwhile, if Star Wars Force Awakens refused Harrison Ford's demands and put someone else in as Han Solo, people would not be so accepting. Note: I'm not saying the union is bad. It's probably more useful to see the strength of the union as a reflection of the inherent strength and value that actors wield in moviemaking.
- fezz 10y ago
  Related: Peter Coyote's Open Letter To Lead Actors http://deadline.com/2008/07/peter-coyotes-open-letter-to-lead-actors-6415/ http://deadline.com/2008/07/peter-coyotes-open-letter-to-lea... "Since 1990 the earnings of the top leading actors have increased exponentially while the salaries of nearly all other actors have been systematically driven down. In many cases, the earnings of established character actors have been rolled back by 60-70 percent. This occurs, in large part, because the working professional (as opposed to the star) is at a disadvantage when negotiating in the new corporatized production environment. We do not possess a unique, marketable (and often media exploited) brand, and consequently lack the power to make or break the existence or profitability of a film. Consequently, respected, veteran actors with numerous credits and hard-earned “quotes” now routinely receive “take-it-or-leave it” offers, often at “scale”—a beginners wage."
deleted 10y ago
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WillPostForFood 10y ago
Film isn't being disrupted by new ways to make the same old film product, it is being disrupted because they time and money that used to be spent watching movies is now being spent in other ways, like watching game streams on Twitch, or YouTube personalities.
- ghaff 10y ago
  I seriously doubt Twitch and YouTube personalities have had a significant impact on movie watching. What I could believe but don't have numbers to prove is that subscription streaming TV--much of which is in serial form--is pulling audiences away from film especially given that subscription streaming movie catalogs are pretty thin.
  - WillPostForFood 10y ago
    I agree, and that matches my own behavior, but I was looking more at what kids are doing as a sign of the disruption. This is just anecdotal observation as a parent, but I see my kids and their friends spend hours a day watching YouTube and Twitch, rarely Netflix, and never broadcast/cable TV. They'll watch a movie once every couple weeks, and go to a theater a few times a year. To them Rosanna Pansino is a HUGE star, and they don't know who Steven Spielberg is.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      Fair enough. I was thinking about adults. Though, as a kid, I watched few movies--but, then, I didn't have anything like the opportunities to do so that one does today.
  - ryuker16 10y ago
    Money & time spent on other forms of entertainment doesnt come out of thin air.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      No, but movies are only one of a myriad of entertainment/spare time options. I do suspect that "What's on Netflix?" (or Amazon Prime) is often going to be a default and if a film isn't there, it will lose out. I do seek out specific films for home viewing--I have a Netflix DVD subscription--but I suspect I'm increasingly in the minority.
6stringmerc 10y ago
Always troublesome trying to balance art and commercial value in a discussion - film, music, whatever. Want to see what disruption of a formerly 'high barrier' artistic industry looks like? Photography. I'm pretty sure the ubiquity of cameras and the assists and tricks and filters that are available now have had a significant impact on the income of professional photographers. The last elephant in the room is that a large swath of people who attempt creative endeavors drastically over estimate their talent and under estimate the amount of work a polished product takes. Everybody has to start somewhere, sure. I've just noticed the modern mindset a little more expecting praise rather than understanding it needs to be earned sometimes and then crying about bullying when valid criticism comes rolling in (see: either Corey Feldman performance on the Today Show this year).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- qznc 10y ago
  > under estimate the amount of work a polished product takes I agree in general. On the other hand, Youtube shows that less polished can be enjoyable as well. This provides more and smoother ways for amateurs to level up in skill and/or professionalism. Those who survive Youtube criticism probably have a thick skin.
  - 6stringmerc 10y ago
    Oh absolutely! That's why I don't want to disparage the early works, I mean I had to begin somewhere as well. I think the 'distribution' of film has genuinely been disrupted (I recall the days on dial-up ouch) as Netflix moving from DVDs to streaming revenue indicates. The content creation though? Much bigger picture. It will take a lot of little disruptions to add up to something major, because the current model, well, just works for now. At the end of the day though the "industry" part of film or music or whatever really doesn't give a shit what they are selling as long as they are making a handsome profit on whatever it is.
    - ghaff 10y ago
hondo77 10y ago
It might help if "disrupt the film industry" would be defined. Seriously, what does that even mean? Disrupt it so "the little guy" can make movies? You can put together a feature-length movie with an iPhone, a good microphone, and free editing software. Actors might help, too. Want some snazzy vfx? You can do your own. Want your product to be seen all over the world? Thanks to the magical internet, you can have it up for sale on numerous sites. So what do we mean by "disruption"? Oh, you want people to actually see your masterpiece? That doesn't require disruption; what you're talking about is old-fashioned marketing. You need a "Paranormal Activity"-style marketing campaign (a movie, BTW, which cost $10K to make). Chances are, though, your movie is crap (as 95% of anything is) so nobody is going to want to see it anyway.
- yuhong 10y ago
  Look up "Hollywood accounting". Not to mention DRM too.
  - JamesBarney 10y ago
    Looked up "Hollywood accounting". Basically an accounting trick to screw people out of their cut of movie profits. Also familiar with DRM. Still have GP's original question. What is disrupting hollywood mean?
    - yuhong 10y ago
      Who do you think is responsible for these?
      - JamesBarney 10y ago
        Does disrupting Hollywood mean that Steven Spielberg gets his fair share of the profits?
Joeboy 10y ago
Megan Ellison's had a pretty good stab at breaking into film financing. I don't think it's impossible as long as you have, say, a hundred million dollars at your disposal. If you don't, that's basically game over as that's what you need to finance a handful of decent indie films.
- apalmer 10y ago
  your point is valid... however i think its going to get into the same feedback loop as regular movie studios. fundamentally even if you have 100 million to make 5 films, you really cant afford a 20 million dollar flop. As long as your a rational actor your going to start chasing hits and trying to minimize flops by 'standardizing' your films. The fundamental problem is in my opinion we want folks with millions on the line to not act like rational actors but instead do it 'for the art'... this will happen from time to time but will not really be the norm i think.
  - Joeboy 10y ago
    Yeah, really the point I was trying to make (obliquely) was that the reason there aren't many new entrants to the business side of film is that it's incredibly expensive and risky, even to make a single film. Occasionally you hear of an ultra-low budget horror that earned millions despite being made for less than the cost of a house, but those are a rarity. If you're a new entrant and you can actually get a film financed, you're going to make friends in the industry very easily.
SixSigma 10y ago
Film was disrupted with the release of DV cams. I have a full-length feature on DVD on Amazon recorded on DV.
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
  If they looked at stats like "hours of YouTube watched by under 18s", they'd need a change of underwear. Walking dead. Putting out comic books in film is just a symptom.
Keyframe 10y ago
It's a multi-tiered problem with each one with its own complexities. I don't want to write a long story now, but I want to emphasise one and one thing only. If you want to disrupt film and/or tv industry then you have to disrupt people, not technology (by much). It's a people problem. It takes a lot of people in a collaborative manner to work on a product like that, with each person being skilled and expensive. You need a lot of people like that for a long time. You also need wood, nails, paint, cars, space, energy... lots of those in order to build sets. And someone to imagine them and someone to design them. Having a fancy camera, grip, lenses is a tiny tiny proportion of any reasonable-sized budget. Most of the money goes to people and towards materials, rentals and space for sets. It's a lot of money too, if you want to make something reasonable. Not everything can be made on a small budget with innovative story. Some products can, but not majority. What it means is that you need a lot of cash, and for that you need investors (or deep pockets and then you don't care, maybe). With investors there are expectations of return on investment. And with that you're in the realm of distribution.. and then real complexities come forward. You can't expect to raise anything moderate in crowd-funding for these types of products. It's too much for the level where that is now. Note: I work in this industry. I have or have access to free state-of-the-art cameras, grip, lenses, even studio facilities and more, yet I can't make a movie just like that. I still need to pay lots of people to do their job and pay the materials for (at least some) sets or set dressing. It's a people problem. They need to eat and pay bills and they don't care (much) about your grand vision if you're not paying.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  Excellent summation and glad you could share your perspective. Like you point out, it genuinely takes money to create a quality product that meets expectations - you know, feels like a good film. I guess that's why it's kind of funny to watch knock-offs / direct-to-VOD like "Transmorphers" and instantly see why "Transformers" cost something like $100,000 per day during some of their more elaborate scenes (outlier I'm sure but I believe that figure / rumor). The professionals in industries like yours make things look easy, so to speak, in that understanding behind-the-scenes effort and organization is absolutely staggering to witness first hand. I've done some minor level sound work (boom mic) but also drop in on some sets when filming around town, like Fox's cancelled "The Good Guys" and I can really appreciate the intensity and costs associated with such productions. The internet is a lot like an open mic night, and in this regard, there are some gems to be found, but it's going to take wading through a whole lot of...ugh...
kingmanaz 10y ago
While slapstick, check out Kung Fury for an example of successful collaborative filmmaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg
- Joeboy 10y ago
  It's great, Stranger Things definitely seemed less fun as a result of having watched this first. On the other hand, it's an extremely successful crowdfunding effort, and still probably didn't make anybody any real money. In fact some people paid to be in it. And being a pastiche of bad movies allows a lot of latitude in production value. It's incredibly impressive for the budget, but no serious film would work with those production values. It's also a third of the length of a feature film.
ryuker16 10y ago
The film industry has been disrupted. Youtube? Piracy? Online streaming? Digital cameras? Bigger tent pole movies are still traditional becuase theyre less art and more so investment sschemes. Nobody wants disruption there: thats for quirky indie mmmovis
guard-of-terra 10y ago
It was definitely disrupted. By TV shows. Fifteen years ago, TV shows was what housewives view, and something you can throw in when no blockbusters are on the screen. Today, movies are laughable. Characters are so unnatural. Plots are so old. FX take so much screen time. On top of that they're so awfully long while lacking enough detail and consideration. TV shows are so much superior these days it's not even funny.
tomphoolery 10y ago
John Waters, in my opinion, has done way more for "disruption" of the film industry than anyone else I can think of. Maybe Herschell Gordon Lewis, but John Waters was basically using the same tools but didn't have nearly the commercial slant that the H.G. Lewis movies did (since Lewis was, by trade, an advertising executive...he basically made movies on the side for fun). You can make films, and release them to the public, without involving Hollywood (called "the film industry" in this article, which is just as incorrect as calling the 5 major record labels "the music industry", though not 100% inaccurate) right now. I don't understand where the "disruption" part comes in. As far as I can tell, it's already been disrupted...
shams93 10y ago
Movies are not being disrupted because like recorded music they are being displaced by the game industry. Just take a gander at Sony's income breakdown and games are as big as music and film put together. You don't want to disrupt an industry that's being displaced you want to get into the new industry that's displacing it. https://www.statista.com/statistics/297533/sony-sales-worldwide-by-business-segment/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/297533/sony-sales-worldw...
eva1984 10y ago
Isn't the first question to ask is ... why? Why certain industry will need to be disrupted and why it is considered a good thing? I didn't see any content creation industry has been disrupted, only the funnels/media are. There are just that many people on this planet can produce high quality music/movies/stories and even proven figures could lead to high profile failures. The risk is HIGH, and there isn't too much technology could do to improve that.
anindha 10y ago
The reason why two people can start a world changing technology company is because tools have evolved to reduce the cost of production. The same thing has to happen in the movie industry. This is happening, but slowly. Final Draft costs $249 for a text editor, and Amazon is creating a cloud version for free. You can take a lot of interesting shots with drones that would have costs lots of money to shoot with a helicopter in the past. There will come a day when someone can create an MVP of their movie using animation software on there iPad. Use this to spark imagination in investors and produce a full movie at much lower cost because all the shots have been fully planned.

112 points by iampliny 10y ago

neom 10y ago

stcredzero 10y ago
Film has shown through history that it's a robust medium. Film has already been disrupted a bunch of times through technological and cultural change. It survived the arrival of color and sound. It survived TV and videocassette. It survived all sorts of changes to its cultural and social context. It has also disrupted. The article notes a lot of things about the film industry which have analogies with industries in other mediums. (Note the parallels with the game industry!)
steveklabnik 10y ago
> most people get into cinema for love, not money Isn't that part 4? http://endcrawl.com/blog/film-not-disrupted-yet-part-4/ http://endcrawl.com/blog/film-not-disrupted-yet-part-4/

DigitalJack 10y ago

Bad title, should say film industry.

4ad 10y ago
I agree, I clicked thinking its about silver halides.
fezz 10y ago
or cinema instead of film.
dang 10y ago
Ok, we added that. The word 'industry' appears immediately after the title so it's an easy sell.

hossbeast 10y ago

"Where would the tech industry be if every engineer’s highest aspiration was landing a gig with Verizon?" Lol irl

bbctol 10y ago

It seems more that the film industry has been disrupted, it's just that small studios have been hurt and large conglomerates were the ones to seize power. Technology changed the economics of the film industry in a disruptive way, and "disruption" shouldn't be a term reserved for small startups taking advantage of those shifts as opposed to large companies.

btown 10y ago

It's worth reading the entire series, beginning with http://endcrawl.com/blog/film-not-disrupted-yet-part-1/ http://endcrawl.com/blog/film-not-disrupted-yet-part-1/ . While large tech companies are great at attracting talent, that doesn't create a dearth of talent going into smaller startups. The driver here is Part 1: the capital requirements for any high-quality project are huge and up-front. And as entertainment is getting increasingly saturated, there's no real way for a "unicorn" franchise to be born out of an indie flick. No upstart VC will take a bet on you making the next Star Wars, even if you're already an industry insider... and in that case, per the OP, it's much more reliable for you to work within the current system. And on top of that, industry fundamentals don't look good: from one of the links in Part 4, https://redef.com/original/the-future-of-film-part-i-us-film-is-not-a-growth-business https://redef.com/original/the-future-of-film-part-i-us-film... . Perhaps film is truly an industry in decline, and the disruption is already happening - not from Netflix and other content producers, but in the form of interactivity and mainstream gaming. Perhaps the monetization model there is simply better. Time will tell.

anotherarray 10y ago

What about bootstrapped, self-funded, youtube channels that became huge?

HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
There was a really good article about this (wish I could find it) about how the majority of these aren't making much, if any money. From the outside it appeared that the artists are rolling in cash; from the inside, they were still working waiter/waitress jobs to make ends meet.
- sndean 10y ago
  Yeah I heard from one YouTuber (over email) that only ~1000 worldwide are currently making a living solely from their YouTube career. And that includes certain successful channels that employ 20+ people.
- aab0 10y ago
  I remember the one you're talking about: http://fusion.net/story/244545/famous-and-broke-on-youtube-instagram-social-media/ http://fusion.net/story/244545/famous-and-broke-on-youtube-i... (first hit for 'Youtube star waitressing')

jasode 10y ago

The article's Part 1 refers to an old HN thread and buried in there is a good comment from anactofgod about "disrupting Hollywood": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491584 His analysis has similar to themes to the misunderstanding of "gatekeepers" like Netflix / Amazon Video / HBO and why they exist. Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists not having money to self-finance their projects -- and -- also not wanting to mess around with tasks that are unrelated to creativity such as managing a web server farm to distribute their videos to their fans. There was a recent HN thread where people were frustrated that they had to pay for multiple streaming services (Netflix/Hulu/Amazon) to get all the shows they wanted. Several suggested that we need to move towards a decentralized P2P distribution platform. Unfortunately, as techies and programmers, we don't consider the underlying economic forces that created the centralized gatekeepers in the first place. For example... if director/producer David Fincher wants the highest payment for his project, he can go to Netflix execs and convince them give him $100 million[1]. How would he get that kind of payday from decentralized systems such as IPFS / Sandstorm / DECENT[2]? [1]http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-outbids-hbo-david-fincher-167882 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-outbids-hbo-da... [2]https://decent.ch/ https://decent.ch/

whack 10y ago
> Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists ... not wanting to mess around with tasks that are unrelated to creativity such as managing a web server farm to distribute their videos to their fans. This exact same argument can also be made wrt Musicians. Justin Bieber has no interest in managing a web server farm to distribute his music to fans. And yet, I'm able to go online and purchase specific Justin Bieber songs/albums that I'm interested in, without having to pay monthly fees to some Netflix-type aggregator. > Gatekeepers are an emergent property of artists not having money to self-finance their projects This seems like a much stronger argument, and I agree that making a TV show is vastly more expensive than making songs. But the vast majority of new musicians do not self-finance their first few albums either. They sign up with a record label, and the record label finances the production/marketing/distribution costs. And ultimately, when consumers pay money to buy the songs/albums, a cut of that money goes back to the record company in order for them to recoup their investment. The exact same model can work for television shows as well. HBO bankrolls David Fincher $100M to produce Utopia. Customers who want to watch Utopia can pay money just to watch Utopia, without having to sign up for HBO. And as "equity holders", a percentage of that customer money goes back to HBO. I'm sure there are many other niggling issues that need to be worked out, but at a fundamental level, I don't see why this revised model can't work. Allowing consumers to pay only for the shows that they want to watch, instead of forcing them to pay for an entire monthly bundle, seems like it should be much more economically efficient.

danso 10y ago

One factor that I didn't see mentioned in this post or the author's previous post is the strength and influence of the union. I lived with an actress who had moderate enough success to do acting full time, have an agent, and be in the Screen Actors Guild. I was amazed at how much money she could pull in for just having a split-second role in a nationally broadcast ad, when it seems likely a company could finds hundreds of attractive, willing people to show up in an ad for a few hundred bucks. My impression from her was that doing non-union work as SAG member could easily kill your career, considering how most studios do not work with non union folks, as SAG would push back hard on them. That said, the film industry is very much built on sentiment and brand. I'm a fan of movies from all eras, so I don't understand why people are so thrilled to pay money to see a new movie when there are so many great movies in the past few decades, nevermind the past year. But people today really want to see Jennifer Lawrence's new work, no matter how many other equally great actresses have had great roles in years past. Same deal with franchises, in movies and in games. A fan-remake could remove Nintendo characters and assets and still have the exact same game mechanics and quality, but very few people would give a shit. We want to see the characters and worlds we grew up with and loved, regardless of whether the actual vehicle (movie, game, etc) isn't particularly noteworthy. Edit: Contrast film with other industries that have been disrupted. I like Seymour Hersh, but I don't care if a great investigative reporting scoop comes from him or from a blogger, I just care about its veracity and impact. Same with software; John Resig seems like a great human being but that's not the main reason for jquery's dominance. Meanwhile, if Star Wars Force Awakens refused Harrison Ford's demands and put someone else in as Han Solo, people would not be so accepting. Note: I'm not saying the union is bad. It's probably more useful to see the strength of the union as a reflection of the inherent strength and value that actors wield in moviemaking.

fezz 10y ago
Related: Peter Coyote's Open Letter To Lead Actors http://deadline.com/2008/07/peter-coyotes-open-letter-to-lead-actors-6415/ http://deadline.com/2008/07/peter-coyotes-open-letter-to-lea... "Since 1990 the earnings of the top leading actors have increased exponentially while the salaries of nearly all other actors have been systematically driven down. In many cases, the earnings of established character actors have been rolled back by 60-70 percent. This occurs, in large part, because the working professional (as opposed to the star) is at a disadvantage when negotiating in the new corporatized production environment. We do not possess a unique, marketable (and often media exploited) brand, and consequently lack the power to make or break the existence or profitability of a film. Consequently, respected, veteran actors with numerous credits and hard-earned “quotes” now routinely receive “take-it-or-leave it” offers, often at “scale”—a beginners wage."

deleted 10y ago

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WillPostForFood 10y ago

Film isn't being disrupted by new ways to make the same old film product, it is being disrupted because they time and money that used to be spent watching movies is now being spent in other ways, like watching game streams on Twitch, or YouTube personalities.

ghaff 10y ago
I seriously doubt Twitch and YouTube personalities have had a significant impact on movie watching. What I could believe but don't have numbers to prove is that subscription streaming TV--much of which is in serial form--is pulling audiences away from film especially given that subscription streaming movie catalogs are pretty thin.
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  I agree, and that matches my own behavior, but I was looking more at what kids are doing as a sign of the disruption. This is just anecdotal observation as a parent, but I see my kids and their friends spend hours a day watching YouTube and Twitch, rarely Netflix, and never broadcast/cable TV. They'll watch a movie once every couple weeks, and go to a theater a few times a year. To them Rosanna Pansino is a HUGE star, and they don't know who Steven Spielberg is.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Fair enough. I was thinking about adults. Though, as a kid, I watched few movies--but, then, I didn't have anything like the opportunities to do so that one does today.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  Money & time spent on other forms of entertainment doesnt come out of thin air.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    No, but movies are only one of a myriad of entertainment/spare time options. I do suspect that "What's on Netflix?" (or Amazon Prime) is often going to be a default and if a film isn't there, it will lose out. I do seek out specific films for home viewing--I have a Netflix DVD subscription--but I suspect I'm increasingly in the minority.

6stringmerc 10y ago

Always troublesome trying to balance art and commercial value in a discussion - film, music, whatever. Want to see what disruption of a formerly 'high barrier' artistic industry looks like? Photography. I'm pretty sure the ubiquity of cameras and the assists and tricks and filters that are available now have had a significant impact on the income of professional photographers. The last elephant in the room is that a large swath of people who attempt creative endeavors drastically over estimate their talent and under estimate the amount of work a polished product takes. Everybody has to start somewhere, sure. I've just noticed the modern mindset a little more expecting praise rather than understanding it needs to be earned sometimes and then crying about bullying when valid criticism comes rolling in (see: either Corey Feldman performance on the Today Show this year).

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qznc 10y ago
> under estimate the amount of work a polished product takes I agree in general. On the other hand, Youtube shows that less polished can be enjoyable as well. This provides more and smoother ways for amateurs to level up in skill and/or professionalism. Those who survive Youtube criticism probably have a thick skin.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  Oh absolutely! That's why I don't want to disparage the early works, I mean I had to begin somewhere as well. I think the 'distribution' of film has genuinely been disrupted (I recall the days on dial-up ouch) as Netflix moving from DVDs to streaming revenue indicates. The content creation though? Much bigger picture. It will take a lot of little disruptions to add up to something major, because the current model, well, just works for now. At the end of the day though the "industry" part of film or music or whatever really doesn't give a shit what they are selling as long as they are making a handsome profit on whatever it is.
  - ghaff 10y ago

hondo77 10y ago

It might help if "disrupt the film industry" would be defined. Seriously, what does that even mean? Disrupt it so "the little guy" can make movies? You can put together a feature-length movie with an iPhone, a good microphone, and free editing software. Actors might help, too. Want some snazzy vfx? You can do your own. Want your product to be seen all over the world? Thanks to the magical internet, you can have it up for sale on numerous sites. So what do we mean by "disruption"? Oh, you want people to actually see your masterpiece? That doesn't require disruption; what you're talking about is old-fashioned marketing. You need a "Paranormal Activity"-style marketing campaign (a movie, BTW, which cost $10K to make). Chances are, though, your movie is crap (as 95% of anything is) so nobody is going to want to see it anyway.

yuhong 10y ago
Look up "Hollywood accounting". Not to mention DRM too.
- JamesBarney 10y ago
  Looked up "Hollywood accounting". Basically an accounting trick to screw people out of their cut of movie profits. Also familiar with DRM. Still have GP's original question. What is disrupting hollywood mean?
  - yuhong 10y ago
    Who do you think is responsible for these?
    - JamesBarney 10y ago
      Does disrupting Hollywood mean that Steven Spielberg gets his fair share of the profits?

Joeboy 10y ago

Megan Ellison's had a pretty good stab at breaking into film financing. I don't think it's impossible as long as you have, say, a hundred million dollars at your disposal. If you don't, that's basically game over as that's what you need to finance a handful of decent indie films.

apalmer 10y ago
your point is valid... however i think its going to get into the same feedback loop as regular movie studios. fundamentally even if you have 100 million to make 5 films, you really cant afford a 20 million dollar flop. As long as your a rational actor your going to start chasing hits and trying to minimize flops by 'standardizing' your films. The fundamental problem is in my opinion we want folks with millions on the line to not act like rational actors but instead do it 'for the art'... this will happen from time to time but will not really be the norm i think.
- Joeboy 10y ago
  Yeah, really the point I was trying to make (obliquely) was that the reason there aren't many new entrants to the business side of film is that it's incredibly expensive and risky, even to make a single film. Occasionally you hear of an ultra-low budget horror that earned millions despite being made for less than the cost of a house, but those are a rarity. If you're a new entrant and you can actually get a film financed, you're going to make friends in the industry very easily.

SixSigma 10y ago

Film was disrupted with the release of DV cams. I have a full-length feature on DVD on Amazon recorded on DV.

B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
If they looked at stats like "hours of YouTube watched by under 18s", they'd need a change of underwear. Walking dead. Putting out comic books in film is just a symptom.

Keyframe 10y ago

It's a multi-tiered problem with each one with its own complexities. I don't want to write a long story now, but I want to emphasise one and one thing only. If you want to disrupt film and/or tv industry then you have to disrupt people, not technology (by much). It's a people problem. It takes a lot of people in a collaborative manner to work on a product like that, with each person being skilled and expensive. You need a lot of people like that for a long time. You also need wood, nails, paint, cars, space, energy... lots of those in order to build sets. And someone to imagine them and someone to design them. Having a fancy camera, grip, lenses is a tiny tiny proportion of any reasonable-sized budget. Most of the money goes to people and towards materials, rentals and space for sets. It's a lot of money too, if you want to make something reasonable. Not everything can be made on a small budget with innovative story. Some products can, but not majority. What it means is that you need a lot of cash, and for that you need investors (or deep pockets and then you don't care, maybe). With investors there are expectations of return on investment. And with that you're in the realm of distribution.. and then real complexities come forward. You can't expect to raise anything moderate in crowd-funding for these types of products. It's too much for the level where that is now. Note: I work in this industry. I have or have access to free state-of-the-art cameras, grip, lenses, even studio facilities and more, yet I can't make a movie just like that. I still need to pay lots of people to do their job and pay the materials for (at least some) sets or set dressing. It's a people problem. They need to eat and pay bills and they don't care (much) about your grand vision if you're not paying.

6stringmerc 10y ago
Excellent summation and glad you could share your perspective. Like you point out, it genuinely takes money to create a quality product that meets expectations - you know, feels like a good film. I guess that's why it's kind of funny to watch knock-offs / direct-to-VOD like "Transmorphers" and instantly see why "Transformers" cost something like $100,000 per day during some of their more elaborate scenes (outlier I'm sure but I believe that figure / rumor). The professionals in industries like yours make things look easy, so to speak, in that understanding behind-the-scenes effort and organization is absolutely staggering to witness first hand. I've done some minor level sound work (boom mic) but also drop in on some sets when filming around town, like Fox's cancelled "The Good Guys" and I can really appreciate the intensity and costs associated with such productions. The internet is a lot like an open mic night, and in this regard, there are some gems to be found, but it's going to take wading through a whole lot of...ugh...

kingmanaz 10y ago

While slapstick, check out Kung Fury for an example of successful collaborative filmmaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg

Joeboy 10y ago
It's great, Stranger Things definitely seemed less fun as a result of having watched this first. On the other hand, it's an extremely successful crowdfunding effort, and still probably didn't make anybody any real money. In fact some people paid to be in it. And being a pastiche of bad movies allows a lot of latitude in production value. It's incredibly impressive for the budget, but no serious film would work with those production values. It's also a third of the length of a feature film.

ryuker16 10y ago

The film industry has been disrupted. Youtube? Piracy? Online streaming? Digital cameras? Bigger tent pole movies are still traditional becuase theyre less art and more so investment sschemes. Nobody wants disruption there: thats for quirky indie mmmovis

guard-of-terra 10y ago

It was definitely disrupted. By TV shows. Fifteen years ago, TV shows was what housewives view, and something you can throw in when no blockbusters are on the screen. Today, movies are laughable. Characters are so unnatural. Plots are so old. FX take so much screen time. On top of that they're so awfully long while lacking enough detail and consideration. TV shows are so much superior these days it's not even funny.

tomphoolery 10y ago

John Waters, in my opinion, has done way more for "disruption" of the film industry than anyone else I can think of. Maybe Herschell Gordon Lewis, but John Waters was basically using the same tools but didn't have nearly the commercial slant that the H.G. Lewis movies did (since Lewis was, by trade, an advertising executive...he basically made movies on the side for fun). You can make films, and release them to the public, without involving Hollywood (called "the film industry" in this article, which is just as incorrect as calling the 5 major record labels "the music industry", though not 100% inaccurate) right now. I don't understand where the "disruption" part comes in. As far as I can tell, it's already been disrupted...

shams93 10y ago

Movies are not being disrupted because like recorded music they are being displaced by the game industry. Just take a gander at Sony's income breakdown and games are as big as music and film put together. You don't want to disrupt an industry that's being displaced you want to get into the new industry that's displacing it. https://www.statista.com/statistics/297533/sony-sales-worldwide-by-business-segment/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/297533/sony-sales-worldw...

eva1984 10y ago

Isn't the first question to ask is ... why? Why certain industry will need to be disrupted and why it is considered a good thing? I didn't see any content creation industry has been disrupted, only the funnels/media are. There are just that many people on this planet can produce high quality music/movies/stories and even proven figures could lead to high profile failures. The risk is HIGH, and there isn't too much technology could do to improve that.

anindha 10y ago

The reason why two people can start a world changing technology company is because tools have evolved to reduce the cost of production. The same thing has to happen in the movie industry. This is happening, but slowly. Final Draft costs $249 for a text editor, and Amazon is creating a cloud version for free. You can take a lot of interesting shots with drones that would have costs lots of money to shoot with a helicopter in the past. There will come a day when someone can create an MVP of their movie using animation software on there iPad. Use this to spark imagination in investors and produce a full movie at much lower cost because all the shots have been fully planned.