Brave expands Basic Attention Token platform to YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-expands-basic-attention-token-platform-to-youtube/ <comment><USER2> (disclosure, I work at google, and previously at YouTube)

This allows a user to donate to a content creator even if that creator doesn't have any way to get access the donations. That is, until youtubers start registering themselves in the payment tool, this is essentially watching someone's video, and then throwing money into a hole.

With other patronage systems, like patreon, you cannot donate money until the creator has an account. To me, that feels super sketch.

Edit: It reminded me to go and check my old bitcointip and altcointip accounts on reddit, on which I apparently had combined closed to $30 in BTC at today's prices, but which have both been shuttered and are now inaccessible. That's not promising.

<comment><USER3> The money doesn't go "into a hole". The funds are saved and a creator can retrieve them at any time once they sign up for an account: [https://brave.com/publishers/#getverified](https://brave.com/publishers/#getverified) Basically, it's their money, and whether they decide to withdraw it or not is entirely up to them.

IMO this is the right way to do it because it solves the chicken and egg problem that would normally exist with a universal funding method like this. Users don't have to worry about what payment platforms their favorite creators support; they can just browse the web like normal and the platform takes care of the rest.

<comment><USER2> It's thrown into a hole in exactly the same way that my $30 I tipped btc is not mine, because I never got it out of the system.

Edit: I said it better in response to a sibling of yours: I think it's unethical for a platform to accept payment on my behalf without my permission.

<comment><USER4> > I think it's unethical for a platform to accept payment on my behalf without > my permission.

Would it be similarly unethical to accept donations to {charity} without first getting their approval?

<comment><USER5> It would be unethical (and, quite probably, illegal) to actively solicit and accept donations for a named charity and then hold on to them until the named charity, with whom you had no previous arrangement, actively sought you out and applied for an account which would allow them to receive them.

<comment><USER6> This is effectively how Amazon Smile works, although the technical details are different: instead of soliciting "donations" they promise that 0.5% of each purchase is given (by Amazon) to the user's charity of choice. But the charity does not receive the money until they "register" their organization with Amazon, and as far as I can tell there is no way for me to know if my chosen organization has done so.

<comment><USER7> Amazon Smile only works with charities. Charities publicly list their addresses in multiple public databases. Sending a cheque to that address is easy. Not the same thing for non-charity content producers. (Not to mention, taxes.)

<comment><USER8> > Amazon Smile only works with charities.

They work with any type of nonprofit, not only charities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just tried this after reading the article here, both on the producer side and on the consumer side.

On the producer side, I registered my site by adding a file to the .well-known directory, and that's it. I can now receive BAT or just USD/EUR to my bank via some service called Uphold.

On the consumer side, it's nice, you top up to your browser directly (so no third-party wallets or anyone to know what you visited, hopefully) and it distributes the money you set per month to the sites you visited, based on the number of visits. I bought some BAT and can definitely see myself using this, if it were not for having to completely switch browsers (I use Firefox and plan to keep doing that).

Overall, good job to the Brave team, the system seems very well-thought-out (I'm not sure about how privacy is handled, but hopefully no third party will know the sites I visited, even though I guess the Ethereum ledger is public and someone could surmise this). Too bad it requires me to switch browsers to use.

EDIT: One problem I saw is with Uphold, which quotes me 51,000 BAT/BTC (and "no hidden fees"!) and then, as soon as I sent the money to buy the BAT, the "activity" page quotes 47,000 BAT/BTC. So much for no fees.

EDIT 2: And now it charges me an extra $4 to withdraw, screw that. I'm not going to spend a load of money on fees so I can spend money on content, so creators can pay more fees.

EDIT 3: And it doesn't even let me withdraw (the "confirm" button stays disabled). Also, I have special hate for forms that say "amount to withdraw", include no fees in that, give you no "all" option and make you guess twenty times which amount will withdraw the closest thing to all your money, while the fee keeps changing every five seconds because of fluctuations. Screw everything about this.

<comment><USER10> Isn't it due to price fluctuations?

<comment><USER9> No, the "add funds" page still says 51,000. Hell, 52,000 now.

<comment><USER11> That's the spread.

<comment><USER9> The "add funds" page literally quotes the mid-market price that you're going to receive when you buy coins, and then gives you fewer coins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yeah this isn't going to fly with Youtube itself, they're not going to host ad-free videos so that a 3rd party can take their nontrivial portion of the ad revenue.

Schemes like this are nice, but don't forget who pays for hosting, serving and promoting the content.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you might be misunderstanding how it works. Its essentially Patreon. Will it work? Who knows. Can youtube stop it from happening? Probably not any more than they can stop Patreon.

<comment><USER13> But then the question becomes what do these guys offer which Patreon doesnt?

Still my understanding is that Patreon doesn't automatically allow people to view YT videos ad free. Sure people get donations and the amount of donations drive the number of videos etc but they don't go into YT's territory.

<comment><USER14> I may be misunderstanding something, since I'm not a youtube creator, but couldn't someone sufficiently comfortable with the other revenue streams they have at their disposal voluntarily choose to demonetize their own youtube videos?

<comment><USER15> For now, yes. But what people are saying is that if large numbers of YouTube content creators turn off ads and switch to getting their monetary support through Brave, Patreon, or some other income stream that YouTube doesn't profit from, there's nothing stopping YouTube from changing their policy in the future to make video ads mandatory.

<comment><USER16> > there's nothing stopping YouTube from changing their policy in the future to > make video ads mandatory.

Ideally in that scenario, competition would push creators and viewers onto some other platform.

Not sure how realistic that is, given the network effects involved with YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> four-yellow From their contributor terms of service on the BAT website[0]:

"For each website receiving votes during a Calculation Period that is not a Brave Publisher by the end of that Calculation Period, the BAT corresponding to its votes will not be distributed at the end of that Calculation Period, and will instead be held in an Uphold omnibus wallet for no less than ninety (90) days thereafter. At that time, the undistributed BAT may be sent to Company's user growth pool, which is a pool of BAT that Company administers to incentivize use of the Platform (as described more fully in Exhibit B of the BAT Terms of Sale, available at [https://basicattentiontoken.org/terms-and- conditions/](https://basicattentiontoken.org/terms-and-conditions/)). But if the website receiving votes becomes a registered Brave Publisher before the corresponding BAT is sent to the user growth pool, that website will receive such BAT as Publisher Contributions in the first Calculation Period following its registration."

So if you donate money to a content creator that hasn't signed up to be a Brave publisher (and in doing so, agreed to Uphold's ToS), your donation will go to the "User Growth Pool". From their regular ToS:

"Once the User Growth Fund is exhausted, it will be discontinued, and no new BAT will be created for or transferred to the User Growth Fund"

So who knows where your donations will go if the content creator doesn't sign up to receive them.

[0] [https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of- service...](https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Lots of people here pointing out minor, easily fixable nitpicks here, completely fail to understand how bad the ad/monetization/content world has gotten. Ad fraud is still an insanely huge problem that companies like Twitch and Youtube constantly wrestle with (former Twitch employee here). Monetization policies are still arcane, unfair, and increasingly untenable for many content producers on Youtube (google "Youtube monetization drama" if you really don't know).

The whole idea that you can pay creators instead of watching ads is obviously a good one, and this is really the best attempt so far at actually solving the problem. Someone suggested implementing this as a chrome extension -- Really? They took an ambitious route with building their own browser, but that's obviously the correct move if Brave's goal is to transform the way ads and monetization work on the internet, which if you haven't paid attention, is currently destroying everything good about the Web and eating away at the values of civic society (again, see recent congressional hearings on Russian Manipulation if you've missed the news)

(Disclosure: I hold a small amount of BAT, but mostly discouraged by the finnicky nature of some of these comments that want Everything to be Perfect Overnight without realizing the scale of the problem that Brave/BAT are trying to accomplish)

Edit: If you want more reading on the subject of how screwed the digital content monetization industry is, this link is also sitting on Hacker News a couple stories below this one.

[http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/theres-a-digital- media-c...](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/theres-a-digital-media-crash- but-no-one-will-say-it)

<comment><USER3> > that's obviously the correct move if Brave's goal is to transform the way > ads and monetization work on the internet

Why? This doesn't seem obvious to me at all.

In fact, I'd argue the opposite. Depending on users installing and using an entirely different browser just so they can get one feature that could easily be implemented as a browser extension is likely to be a serious obstacle to that goal.

<comment><USER17> Well. It would a while to explain the business and technological fundamentals if you don't already understand them. Check out their whitepaper ([https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePape...](https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePaper-4.pdf)) for their long-term vision and truly ask youself if this is implementable as a browser extension.

Browsers need disruption anyway — chrome is increasingly buggy and slow, and I trust "the person who literally invented browsers, javascript, and the modern internet" to write another one.

<comment><USER18> Wow. Brendan Eich didn't "invent browsers" or the modern freaking internet.

<comment><USER17> Okay, fine, that's slightly exagerrated. A key pioneer of the early web, inventor of Javascript, grandfather of the open web movement, and somebody working diligently on core web intrarstructure for over 20 years. That better?

<comment><USER19> "Father" - I'm not _that_ old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is the "ad-free YouTube video experience" something that violates some Google user agreement? Just thinking that Brave is a high profile project and not a tool you download.

<comment><USER21> I'm surprised YouTube doesn't just block the Brave browser entirely. The entire business model of Brave is "siphon off some of the ad revenue from websites".

<comment><USER22> During an anti-trust investigation by a governmental body that has punished large company before over abusing its browser monopoly?

Yeah, I don't think so.

<comment><USER23> Do you mean Microsoft or something else I might be missing? In Microsoft's case, they were punished for their OS monopoly being used to create a browser monopoly by making a default choice for the user, not for abusing its browser monopoly.

Blocking Brave for violating their usage agreements seems very much in another league, even though it might sound like they are building a browser monopoly via their video streaming monopoly. They are not in a position where they take the choice of defaults away from the user, and as long as Firefox, Safari and Edge have some market share, the user still has a choice of compliant browsers. Blocking Brave might be more akin to enforcing their ToS for Youtube via their Play store by blocking 3rd party apps with download function (which is prohibited in Youtube ToS).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think this is a service I'd use if it were available as an extension rather than a browser in its own right.

<comment><USER3> Maybe consider Flattr? From what I can tell it does basically the same thing: [https://flattr.com/contributors](https://flattr.com/contributors)

<comment><USER25> It does the same with much more overhead for the user as far as I can tell. The point of Brave is to have everything working behind the scene for the user, so no friction.

<comment><USER26> What's the "much more overhead"? As far as I know, in the current state of Brave you have to buy tokens, just like you put money in flattr. In the future model, Brave will show you ads vs flattr taking money directly - is that much more overhead?

(The implementations might differ in other important things, e.g. privacy or fee structure, but the basic user attention model seems similar enough to me)

<comment><USER3> Flattr _used_ to require the user to click a button to indicate they like a particular page and want to support its creator. I assume GP is simply unaware that that's not how Flattr works anymore.

Flattr 2.0 works more like Brave does; the user pays a monthly subscription, and Flattr just automatically distributes those funds to creators based on what sites the user views most often that month.

<comment><USER25> I stand corrected, I didn't know about this new version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "The Brave browser provides an ad-free YouTube video experience. It also enables a direct monetary relationship between the content creator and their audience."

Is Google party to this? And if not, how is this sustainable model?

Honestly I hadn't looked into this browser previously, but I don't understand what their value proposition is, beyond handwavey promises that crypto- currency utility tokens and some future machine-learning developments can get around the ad fraud problem.

But if they need to build this out by subverting YouTube's advertising and revenue flow and replacing it with their own, that is not going to last.

<comment><USER28> > But if they need to build this out by subverting YouTube's advertising and > revenue flow and replacing it with their own, that is not going to last.

...why not? Subversion of Youtube's advertising and revenue flow sounds like a prospect which enjoys high demand and low supply at the moment.

<comment><USER29> Google kicked the Echo off of YouTube for TOS violations. [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/youtube-is-no- longer...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/youtube-is-no-longer- available-on-amazons-echo-show/)

<comment><USER28> I mean, you might then argue that the Echo (and, for that matter, Amazon generally) was insufficiently surreptitious about it. If Brave can be more difficult to distinguish, it will also be more difficult to ban.

<comment><USER29> No, _you_ might then argue that. :) Look how Uber's behavior with paging and canceling Lyft rides during their poaching days came back to bite them in the ass. And I'm sure if Amazon's small army of lawyers felt they had a leg to stand on with the UserAgent obfuscation route, they would do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What is the technical advantage of Brave using a new token like BAT instead of directly using an existing cryptocurrency like Bitcoin that millions of people already hold, and will likely be less volatile in the long term?

I feel like a lot of ICOs are simply used to try to capture a piece of the cryptocurrency/ICO hype and avoid securities regulations, but there's no advtange to users.

<comment><USER31> I don't see a technical advantage either.

But I wouldn't say there's no advantage to users-- an ICO can let the founders (a) raise funds, and (b) give them a financial incentive for the project to succeed.

So in theory, ICOs can help users win because they can lead to great products that otherwise wouldn't exist. (That said, a lot of teams/projects are total junk.)

<comment><USER30> That might be true in some cases (Brendan Eich, though?) but making your product more complex for the user just to raise easy money seems like a poor trade-off.

On top of that many ICOs seem to have unjustified valuations and reduced oversight from investors vs traditional fundraising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wouldn't it be ironic if an ad-blocking browser such as Brave gained popularity with most YouTubers because of Google's self-inflicting YouTube "ad-pocalypse"?

I think it would be sweet poetry.

</comment><comment><USER32> Genuinely asking: how is youtube supposed to pay for their own expenses when everyone uses brave and depletes their revenue stream? Won't that kill the platform itself?

<comment><USER33> That is the problem of Google, who cares how they pay their bills? Also, if they really wanted, they could block people using Ad/Ublock on their site, but they don't. Why do you care about a multibillion dollar corp? I sure don't.

<comment><USER7> > _who cares how they pay their bills?_

People having that attitude towards content creators is how we landed in this mess in the first place.

<comment><USER34> I'd just like to point out that GP didn't directly present that attitude toward the content creators - just the host/provider, which is quite a different thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice, but "discovery" is still handled by YouTube, and this is one of the most important factors that determine the income of any given creator.

What we desperately need is a discovery system that is both _fair_ and _useful_.

<comment><USER19> One step at a time...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Replacing ads on the client side is normally associated with the scummiest of malware. I'm not sure how Brave has maintained even a vaguely positive reputation.

<comment><USER37> I think your statement is overbroad in the sense that adblocking is also replacing ads, in that case with empty whitespace but replacing nonetheless. Brave allows users to put something else in the whitespace.

Brave is putting the ads shown (and more importantly reigning in the out of control user tracking and privacy invading bullshit) in the hands of the user.

A side bonus is $ collected and available to content producers and website owners.

If Brave weren't crystal clear about all -- if they marketed themselves as purely an adblocker, for example -- then I think you'd have a point. As it is, it's simply adblocking with a twist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The whole thing where they collect money on behalf of someone who may not have an account and may be completely unaware of it seems unethical. It reminded me of a similar snafu with a project called tip4commit, which allows users to give bitcoin to projects they like. It also collected the money for any project on github, without an opt-in (or even an opt-out) mechanism for the project maintainers. Here's the issue where a lot of this got brought up: [https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127](https://github.com/tip4commit/tip4commit/issues/127)

</comment><comment><USER39> I never watch youtube videos except for instruction videos and music videos. Why does google insist on going ads only rather than ALSO OFFERING pay per view?

I have the exact same gripe with facebook—their only viable method of supporting content is itself ruining the site. Both companies are just leaving money on the floor by committing entirely to a single (dying) revenue model.

This looks cool, but seems inherently untenable at actually getting the money to the content provider without the content provider working with this service.

<comment><USER40> Are you not aware of Youtube Red?

<comment><USER41> US only.

<comment><USER26> Not strictly US only, but very limited availability, yes. There were some rumors it'd launch in parts of Europe this year, but that hasn't happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "It then displays it in the Brave Payments list, enabling the user to donate back on a monthly" ... So this will block ads on Youtube, and the creators will be compensated on donations? Does someone have a case-study on content/Youtube creators potentially making a living of donations? This seems like a bad business model: make creative videos and expect people to donate so you can feed yourself.

<comment><USER43> > Does someone have a case-study on content/Youtube creators potentially > making a living of donations?

[https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt](https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt) \- 9,890 patrons - $36,214 per months in donations.

[https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey](https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey) \- 7,719 patrons - $19,439 per video in donations.

Edit: And there's [https://www.patreon.com/DeFranco](https://www.patreon.com/DeFranco) at 14,268 patrons. His revenue is hidden but that's at least around 60k/month if not more.

<comment><USER44> These are (currently) just the really exceptional cases though. Youtube is building far more monetary value on the whole through ads.

<comment><USER45> Here's a more complete view: [https://graphtreon.com/](https://graphtreon.com/)

Median income in the US is ~$42,000/yr last I knew. Call it $4K to make up a bit for benefits and such. There isn't a hard-and-fast way to count because some people hide their total, but there are clearly plural hundreds of people above that line in the top 1000 [1]. There's several more hundred people making poverty-line in most of the US (which as a relative measure, I can't do a precise cut off), and before one starts moralizing about how horrible that is, remember that they are not necessarily doing this as their only job. What may not be enough to live on can still be a very very nicely paying hobby.

You are certainly correct that _overall_ , more money flows through YouTube. I am much less convinced that that's a good thing in general, though. The incentives on YouTube fluctuate a lot, but in general tend to support quantity over quality. In fact as I think about it, I wonder if Patreon is helping prop up YouTube a bit by helping the quality producers resist that; if YouTube banned alternate monetization and tried to survive just on their own quantity- over-quality metrics I wouldn't be surprised they would eventually experience an eat-your-own-seed-corn collapse. I've listened to the YouTube videos of a couple of the people chasing the quantity-over-quality treadmill that YouTube ends up putting them on to stay on top, and it's not a life I'd want or wish on anyone.

[1]: [https://graphtreon.com/patreon-creators](https://graphtreon.com/patreon- creators)

<comment><USER44> Many of them are businesses >> 1 person, and they're not all video. There's no doubt some successful video creators on patreon, but it's still a pretty small number.

Plenty of the video-based ones are in erotic media, too. It's definitely a new and interesting income medium for that genre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Coincidentally, I was just looking at MetaMask which links to Brave. Can someone explain LI5YO how they're related? I understand MetaMask is a browser extension to access distributed transactional content on Ethereum. Not sure how Brave monetisation relates to that.

<comment><USER19> We support MetaMask, as a chromium extension. It's really for developers and power users of Ethereum, not part of our BAT platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> What happens when the receiver can not (or will not due to legal issues etc) create a Brave account to retrieve the donation? It's lost forever? Will the donator know if their donation was actually accepted or not and if not, can they get their donation back?

</comment><comment><USER48> Would I technically owe taxes on tokens received even if I'm never notified of having received them?

Yes, I understand that if it's not reported it's unlikely anyone will be caught, but by the letter of the law does receiving a token mean I've received income?

<comment><USER37> If you haven't signed up, you owe about as much taxes as you would if I put your name on an envelope with $5 inside it and placed in my desk drawer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Interesting list of people on the about page. Marshall Rose for example.

</comment><comment><USER50> This won't block ads people put in their videos. It has to be youtube that could enforce that.

</comment><comment><USER51> Cool, but how do you get users to install it?

</comment><comment><USER52> Isn't this basically the same as flattr?

</comment><comment><USER53> The screenshot shows their staging site: [https://publishers- staging.basicattentiontoken.org/publisher...](https://publishers- staging.basicattentiontoken.org/publishers/email_verified)

[https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-expands-basic- attentio...](https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-expands-basic-attention- token-platform-to-youtube/images/image3_1.png)</comment>


The Return of Email Startup Acquisitions - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@omar_w_qureshi/the-return-of-email-startup-acquisitions-fb0ce12a0c17

<comment><USER3> This is an excellent idea. In fact, I'd love to see this expanded into a complete dataset of acquisitions with at least the following data: major subject area (e.g., email, storage, etc.), year founded, year bought, amount bought for, number of total staff after one year, revenue after one year, number of total staff at acquisition, revenue at acquisition).

This could be useful to detect broader M&A trends by subject area. (Which is one possible way to decide on a business - by likelihood of M&A exit - <USER2> necessarily a great way, but worth thinking about.)

<comment><USER4> My next article will be on current state of un-acquired email startups. I'll cover funding information, employee count, year founded. The funding information alone would be quite useful.

As a side note: I predict that we'll see a significant increase in email startups in the next 2 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would nice if you could also show a chart/graph of which companies and acquisition count. So I think Yahoo is leading the way close to 5 acquisitions or so

</comment><comment><USER6> It would be worth mentioning Opera's acquisition of FastMail, and FastMail's subsequent split from them.

</comment><comment> lost-theory Missing Mailgun & Rackspace.

<comment><USER4> fixed. added Mailgun and FastMail.</comment></comment>


Foursquare data shows international tourism to the U.S. is down - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/24/foursquare-data-shows-international-tourism-to-the-u-s-is-down/ <comment><USER2> Makes sense; you could have a whole trip planned and end up getting turned away at the border. I just talked to an American who was held upon her return for 36 hours.</comment>


The death of the engineer - <AUTHOR> http://codingprime.com/blog/2016/12/true-engineers-are-a-dying-breed/ <comment><USER2> There's a valid point being made in this blog post, about doing your homework and having a deferential attitude when learning a new skill set, but its couched in so much angry self-righteousness that its a bit hard to take in.</comment>


Show HN: Top 2017 Websites – With Daily Updates - <AUTHOR> https://statvoo.com/top/sites <comment><AUTHOR> These lists are curated and change every day as rankings adjust. If you notice anything out of place, simply update a category!</comment>


Hollywood as We Know It Is Over - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/why-hollywood-as-we-know-it-is-already-over <comment><USER3> Production cost is a problem, and technology has made it worse. Look at that long, long list of animators and technicians at the end of any effects-heavy film today. A cast of thousands.

In the late 1990s, when I was working on physics engines for animation, I was talking to a major Hollywood director. He'd done some of the first films that had both live and photorealistic CGI characters. He wanted to get the cost down, so he could make $20 million movies. At $20 million, he could direct; at $100 million, he was running a huge operation that had to have everything pre- planned in great detail.

His model was the early CGI cartoon, "Reboot". Reboot was a weekly half hour cartoon made by a staff of about 30. He wanted to get to that level of productivity at theater quality - make a 2 hour film in a month with 30 people.

That didn't happen. Not even close.

It's been tried. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" started as a low- budget picture rendered on Macs. In that film, if nobody touches it, it's CG. Ended up costing $70 million. Worldwide box office $50 million. Fail. "Iron Sky" was made for €7.5 million. Worldwide box office $11.5 million. Fail.

There were successful low budget directors in the past, Roger Corman being the prime example. (His autobiography is titled "How I made a hundred movies in Hollywood and never lost a dime".) It's harder to do that today. Viewers today expect incredible production value. Most TV shows have more production value today than 70s movies did. Hollywood has so many people on set because they bring a team together on short notice to do a job, then disband the team. They need many competent people with different skills to make that work. If you cut corners, it looks like Youtube crap.

On big movies, we've mostly replaced set painters and carpenters with people who sit at workstations and do the same job with CG models. "Big" is now cheap, but "detailed" remains expensive. Procedural visual content generation can generate good landscapes and vegetation now (check out SpeedTree), but as yet, nobody has been able to procedurally generate one convincing block of a city street seen at ground level. Making GTA V cost $265 million. Not seeing an incoming reduction in production cost.

Netflix has no huge advantage. HBO is in the same position - they make content to sell to their own customers, and know exactly what sold. Data collection is retrospective. Trying to figure out what movies will be box office failures in advance remains hard. That's why Hollywood generates so many sequels - predictability.

<comment><USER4> > Viewers today expect incredible production value.

Not really, no. I expect interesting movies, and I'd say being an interesting movie doesn't have anything to do with CGI. I'm a film buff through and through and it almost literally pains me when I see that people involved in the movie industry don't seem to understand what their problem is: they don't make films for grown-ups anymore.

The only outlet that has provided interesting movie-like content in the last 10-15 years was television. There's almost no CGI in shows like The Wire, The Sopranos, Black Mirror (to just name a few), shows that have made me casually think about them while I was riding the tramway and the like years after I had last seen them.

I miss great movies.

<comment><USER5> Agreed.

I don't think there's any CGI in Pulp Fiction (1994) and it cost around $9 million to make in 1994 dollars. It made around $200 million worldwide. Whiplash (2014) , a more recent movie with little to no CGI, cost $3.3 million to make and made around $49 million worldwide.

The point is that people want interesting, well written movies with great stories. If that warrants CGI sure, but it's not a requirement.

A boring movie is not good. But a boring and expensive movie is terrible and that's what's mainly being put out: boring and expensive movies.

As far as movies with huge production budgets for every great movie with a justified fair amount of CGI there's tens of crappy ones many that break even or don't make their money back.

Creatively speaking there's probably never been a worse time for big Hollyood movies.

<comment><USER6> Pulp Fiction was one of the first movie that came to my mind as well. It's a beautiful movie (visually), and could be made today for the same cost as it was in 1994.

Looking back at movies from several decades ago, the credit scroll had a few hundred people at most. Now there are a few hundred animators for something like Arrival. Interestingly, Arrival's credits list about the same number of people as Terminator 2. Both excellent movies, but one is small and intimate, and the other grand and explosive - same size crew, much higher balance on visual effects in Arrival vs. practical engineering and effects in T2. Would Arrival have been significantly different or less effective if made with 1991 technology? Probably not.

"[They] were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

<comment><USER7> How "accurate" are credits lists though? Couldn't it be that the credits simply list every employee of every company that did any contract work for the film? It seems plausible that many of the people listed didn't even work a full day on the film.

<comment><USER8> While this is possible, longer credits mean more filmstock to be duplicated and fewer showings per theater screen, so there is an economic incentive to keep them as short as possible. I know when I worked in the VFX industry an artist had to clock a certain number of hours on a given show to be given credit for the work.

<comment><USER7> Surely the difference is nearly negligible. With the exception of movies with popular after-credits scenes, I assume people leave when the credits start anyway, and I suspect the employees can begin cleaning when people clear out even if credits are still running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love movies. Whenever I visit my dad (other side of the country), we go to see movies. However, most of the year I live with my girlfriend who falls asleep in theaters and can't justify the cost. This leads to me not seeing movies in theaters anymore.

Now, I am subscribed to two streaming services. I don't pirate. I refuse to watch anything with ads, happy to pay, and somewhat ironically, the only ads I watch to completion are trailers that I haven't seen. I would love to catch movies as they are released but I have to wait until they're available on the streaming service. When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! They've priced their digital content in such a way that I will only pay to see the movies that I really want to see. If it was cheaper, I'd be a constant consumer.

It seems that is how most things in society get priced. Not for ultimate consumption, but to maximize the profit curve. I get that is how capitalism works, but that logic doesn't make sense to me for digital goods. They are practically zero cost to distribute once they are manufactured and your competition is people pirating them. If you're worried about audience size, lower the cost. You'll enable a lot more people to see a lot more movies.

<comment><USER10> Assuming you are a software developer, I think you should reconsider your "price should approximate production cost" reasoning. I think it will hold you back if you eventually try something entrepreneurial.

When I started a small software company, I originally had a similar understanding. I subconsciously thought that the software should be priced to pay for its development cost, plus some profit. I was not very successful, until I realized that the product should be priced as a percentage of the value it delivered to the customer. Customers don't want you to do a lot of work, they just want their problem solved for a price that is reasonable relative to the benefit of the solution.

This idea reverses several of your conclusions:

1\. The product should be priced based on how much value it delivers, and only those companies that can deliver the product for significantly less than that price will stay in business. Once a company finds a need that people will pay for, it generally makes sense to drive the cost of production down while maintaining the same benefit, thus maximizing profit.

2\. The more value a company creates with the resources it uses (the greater its margin), the more left-over resources it will have to invest in producing still more benefits, or to return profits to its original investors.

So, going back to the cost of digital content, I am happy to pay for it, as long as I end up feeling the movie was worth watching for the price. And if they can produce great content without many resources (or with lower cost of delivery), all the better. My problem, right now, is that there is so much great content I cannot ever hope to watch it. But that is not a problem that really bothers me, I am happy to keep paying to have a long list of shows I'd like to watch, if I could just find the time.

<comment><USER11> There is a name for that: price gouging.

Maybe you can justify selling an ebook for 800$ because when using it the customer will recover their investment.

What if your hospital/doctor/insurance starts doing that? After all, wouldn't be a good investment to not be DEAD or suffering? Wouldn't you give them a shit load of money for all that value they created for you?

It's a bullshit justification for milking people out of their money.

I prefer the Amazon/walmart approach. Commoditize aggressively and keep the competition away by having low profit margins. Make your money off volume instead of gouging a small pool of customers.

The same applies to this Hollywood crap. They are price gouging with licensing deals, geo-location restrictions, delayed releases etc. Then wonder why aren't enough people willing to pay us what we ask them to? Fuck off.

<comment><USER12> >I prefer the Amazon/walmart approach. Commoditize aggressively and keep the competition away by having low profit margins.

Yes, and pay everyone in between absolute peanuts. Enjoy your sitcoms farmed out to overworked Amazon Turk writers.

Amazon can get away with it because buying a book on Amazon is the same as buying one on Barnes and Nobles. Good content however costs money, and decent writers won't work for the same wages as Amazon warehouse workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > An algorithm generally provided better suggestions than an actual in-store > clerk.

Could use another pass or two of editing. And the whole thing smells like an anti-union hit piece.

Funny thing, I was just in a shared ride with a production person from Hollywood. They might agree on the face of it, "Hollywood as we know it is over", because you and me baby, we KNOW Hollywood. But that Netflix and Amazon have fueled an explosion of new content that is outside of normal channels and normal timelines. Production houses all over the country have more work than they know what to do with. If the title was, "Hollywood as we know it is transforming" it wouldn't sound so dramatic.

<comment><USER14> Yea this is one thing I was thinking. Part of the downfall of music and newspapers, which are the prime examples cited in the article, are that those industries were ripe for disruption by everyone with a little talent (and even some without). Anyone with a guitar and some practice can create music and anyone with a little money for a personal sound studio can even create pretty good music that can go up on Spotify. The newspaper industry had even less barrier to entry. Anyone with a computer can setup a blog and write an op-ed piece. Film isn't unique because anyone with a good camera and some basic lightning and sound equipment (which aren't very expensive these days) can put together a movie. But really good films also take more than one person to make, unlike the other industries cited. You need crew and actors to bring everything together on a set and none of those come cheaply. I do think film is ripe for disruption, but not in the same way as these other industries where only a single person was needed.

<comment><USER15> You say that... But have you compared the quality of youtube videos today to those from 10 years ago? The quality of writing, effects, and production have escalated sharply, even when done by a single person.

Youtube is unlikely to disrupt Hollywood, due to it's format (video shorts), but it makes it clear that there's potential for someone else to step in and fill the gaps.

<comment><USER16> Also note that YouTube continues to push longer and longer content over time, not only as the platform grows but as the hobbyists that dominated it grow into pros.

<comment><USER14> I would question the quality of those longer videos though. The long form videos I usually see are easily made rants over stock video. They aren't typically stories like you would see in a professional shoot. Well-done youtube videos clearly have a team of people behind them doing lighting and set work, plus good editing and even some animations. They cost money too! But I'll concede that movies aren't truly special at the end of the day and they can still be disrupted in the same way as the industries I mentioned above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article reads more like an anti-union piece than anything else. Yet, Hollywood has been making TV shows in Vancouver for the last 20 years to avoid this union overhead, so it's not really news to anyone paying attention.

Lord of the Rings was famously filmed in New Zealand and brought accents to our movies. Now you'd be hard pressed to watch a recent film without a couple accents.

Post-production is pretty much all that's left in Los Angeles.

Edit: Sorry, in my quick commenting, I meant to imply that accents are more a symbol that Hollywood films its big blockbusters outside the US now. In re- thinking it, it was a bad form.

<comment><USER18> What do you mean by the accent remark? America didn't have a shortage of accents in movies before LOTR, that's for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The 'raindrop story' is meant to emphasize the union aspect, but the author apparently knows nothing about continuity in filming and editing. If the actor is supposed to have drops of rain on their shoulder, thats a part of wardrobe, and seeing a wiped off shoulder before it rained (because editing) is the reason they are so fastidious. For example, a filmed discussion over drinks where the actors glasses gradually fill up rather than empty.

continuity fails: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WibfRyQK0kY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WibfRyQK0kY)

</comment><comment><USER20> The writer has little sense of history and doesn't understand what "Hollywood" as a business, is. Hollywood is content creation. When Netflix creates their own content, they are becoming part of that business. The theater business is a different thing and the author neglects to mention that long ago the studios also owned theaters, so integration of that kind is not new. The author thinks that the fact that the price paid for studios recently means something. The history going back thirty years or more is of companies paying too much for studios because of the glamour of the business and later selling when they realize they have no idea how this crazy business works.

<comment><USER21> It's the same people making the content, it's just different people paying for it. Netflix and Amazon are just wave number #928288919 of funding sources for Hollywood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Which really isn't a bad thing. If we can kill off the big budget movie that is all terrible writing and only effects (Ben-Hur, $100 million budget, $26 million gross) and replace it with smaller budget movies with great scripts and acting (Hidden Figures, $25 million budget, $104 million gross), I'm completely fine with that.

Add in movie theaters like Metrograph in Manhattan, where I can buy an assigned seat for, say, a Kurosawa double feature, then I think we're moving in a good direction.

<comment><USER23> > smaller budget movies [...] $25 million budget

Movie budgets have always astonished me. Even your low number is so extravagant. I mean, twenty five million dollars. Thinking what this represents for a company or a city.

<comment><USER24> Watch the credits until the end, and that doesn't even include the catering.

<comment><USER25> Or locations fees, travel, and accomodation budgets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _And it's only a matter of time—perhaps a couple of years—before movies will be streamed on social-media sites. For Facebook, it's the natural evolution. The company, which has a staggering 1.8 billion monthly active users, literally a quarter of the planet, is eventually going to run out of new people it can add to the service. Perhaps the best way to continue to entice Wall Street investors to buoy the stock—Facebook is currently the world's seventh-largest company by market valuation—will be to keep eyeballs glued to the platform for longer periods of time. What better way to do that than a two-hour film?

This might begin with Facebook's V.R. experience. You slip on a pair of Oculus Rift glasses and sit in a virtual movie theater with your friends, who are gathered from all around the world. Facebook could even plop an advertisement next to the film, rather than make users pay for it. When I asked an executive at the company why it has not happened yet, I was told, "Eventually it will."_

Really interesting point - would expect to see Facebook/Netflix converge on this idea, perhaps even enter some type of M&A action. If it were legal, perhaps Alphabet would be wise to move first and bolster YouTube with Netflix content to create a quasi monopoly on video content - both user created and studio produced. The other giant player to consider would be Amazon with Twitch and their original series as well.

Seems like a bit of a fight to the bottom, but I'm not sure what the margins/financials look like for these businesses.

</comment><comment><USER27> There are two kinds of "disruption":

* The first merely inconveniences people who already work in a given industry, by forcing them to learn new tools or workflows.

* The second unseats incumbents and fundamentally shifts power dynamics.

"Hollywood", "Film" et al have by and large not been disrupted yet, in the second sense. Digital change came late to film & tv. We are just now on the tail end of digital transformations that will enable the second wave of disruption.

I've written about this extensively, it's kind of my bag: [http://endcrawl.com/blog/two-digital-revolutions- disruption/](http://endcrawl.com/blog/two-digital-revolutions-disruption/)

<comment><USER28> The first is people incorrectly using the dictionary definition of the word without understanding Organisational Strategy. The second is the "canonical" definition of the term as defined extensively by Christensen.

The state of the film industry and streaming services fits into Christensen's parameters of "disruptive innovation" but it's a long way off given that something like 90% of houses pay for network TV services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It occurred to me that the cinema as we knew it would be soon over as soon as I saw the first episode of Lost. Technology is definitely driving the price of content production but also content consumption to the bottom and there is no way escaping it, except maybe what Netflix is currently doing - <USER2> content - which they are getting better and bette at.

It is kind of a medium between hollywood productions and youtube - fun, engaging and most importantly agile. According to Netflix reports they spent a lot of money last year but the amount of original content produced in a single year is astonishing. That being said, younger generation prefer watching youtube which is 95% free - and I can see the appeal.

I doubt that we will stop watching movies anytime soon but I am more than certain that the format will change to make it bite-size, more engaging and instantly available for a small fee that makes it actually rather annoying to use torrents to consume pirated content.

Netflix is right there but what I find even more interesting is what Amazon is doing because of the way they package everything up into a single service. Let's be honest, the most annoying thing with subscription services, regardless how less you are charged, is the renewal. I know this first hand because I run my own SaaS. Amazon packages everything into their prime subscription which is annual and for a small fee not only you get to receive expedited delivery on many of the items but also original content and music and that is quite a killer feature that is hard to compete with. Combine this with the fact that almost every modern TV you can buy since 2016 is preloaded with Netflix and Amazon Video - you start to get the bigger pictures.

I am sure others such as Google and Apple will follow but they might be too late in the game.

</comment><comment><USER30> The three act structure of most "film" is also killing it. Television, cable, streaming and Youtube have introduced much richer versions of content formats... a 100 minute action movie, or historical drama, will follow so many familiar beats nowadays that there's almost no way to make it compelling.

<comment><USER31> While I agree that we could use some structural novelty, I would be hard pressed to believe that mainstream audiences care.

<comment><USER32> They care far more than you'd expect.

Almost everyone watching a movie has seen hundreds if not thousands of movies. They're _experts_ on movies.

They might not be able to explain their expertise, or turn it into creation, but they recognise and have feelings about the structures and the tropes.

They may like them or they may hate them, but assuming your audience is ignorant of the cinematic form is one of the big newbie filmmaker mistakes.

<comment><USER33> The mistake is assuming audiences don't want the age-old well established hugely popular and profitable cinematic forms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Article mentioned the CGI characters in Rogue One, but those ruined the movie for me, among other reasons. For one I think I've seen better graphics in video games and while I concede it must have been the contrast between real and fake, what really pissed me off is the realization that either they lacked the imagination to come up with a credible alternative story or that this was some sort of sinister "fan service".

The other thing that pissed me off is that in Rogue One, like in other recent movies, nobody is kissing anymore, but people dying of violent deaths is totally OK.

The primary reason for why Hollywood is having problems is because they make really shitty movies, full of CGI but with no story. I can even understand the violent deaths, after all, given the lack of story, you can't relate to those characters, so they might as well die spectacularly, before the audience dies of boredom.

Oh yes, I'm not from the US, so not sure what audience they are targeting, but it ain't me. I like some kissing to go with my action.

</comment><comment><USER35> Seems relevant:

* Kim Dotcom on Twitter: "How to stop piracy: 1 Create great stuff 2 Make it easy to buy 3 Same day worldwide release 4 Fair price 5 Works on any device" || [https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/288199968932630528](https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/288199968932630528)

</comment><comment><USER36> Unions and filesharing are not killing hollywood. (Did the mpaa write this?) The fact that 70% of revenue comes from overseas is to be expected. 70+% of people live there.

Unionized, wage earning, labour costs are not high. Look any large production. Compare the headliner (stars, directors etc) takehome to the union workers. The rise in production costs has far more to do with on-camera talent than cameramen.

"Hollywood" is dieing, but only if you are one of the old guard, the handful of old production studios that make up the mpaa. Netflix, youtube and amazon show us that there is plenty of money out there should you produce something people actually want to watch, delivered in a way people actually want.

Ditch the commercials. Stand up to your a-list talent during negotiations. Actually pay the writers (see the Goodfella fiasco). Cut the focus groups. And make something worth my time to watch.

<comment><USER37> I've seen what entertainment industry looks like without unions; animators in anime get paid below living wages, even though that industry is bigger then ever.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, and the state of western animation (especially hand-drawn) looks pathetic in comparison. So it's either unions, or cheap entertainment, you can only pick one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> YC RFS9: Kill Hollywood

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/160491053080776706](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/160491053080776706)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542)

Mission complete?

<comment><USER25> I'd have to say mission incomplete. Part of the whole 'Kill Hollywood' meme was that a ground-breaking startup would appear with a business model to succeed the current production and distribution systems. Anyone nailing that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > "We're different," one producer recently told me. "No one can do what we > do."

Any industry whose leaders make a claim similar to this is probably one you can safely bet on a severe disruption to come, if one is not already in progress.

</comment><comment><USER41> Hollywood, as we know it is dead for 10+ years. The mass of super hero movies is appalling.

Where are the action movies and funny comedies, that were so great in the late 1980s, 1990s and earlier 2000s.

Last year's San Andreas was pretty good, but so many other movies are just boring, unfunny, too dark, too shaky camera, too much CGI, etc. That TV series got too much attention by Hollywood studies hurts movies a lot. The only TV series I saw last year was Silicon Valley, I don't know were people have the time to watch that many series - I would trade TV series for great movies all day.

<comment><USER42> Forget the action movies and funny comedies, where are the sci-fi movies??? And I don't mean some stupid movie about a guy living in what appears to be the modern world sans display screens and talking to his earphone, I mean movies with spaceships (and especially spaceships with elaborate corridors). The 70s and 80s were chock full of these movies. And no shaky-cam back then either. So far, all we've had is Star Wars--blah (yet again, Hollywood milking an old franshise), and Prometheus in 2012 (again, milking an old franchise).

Supposedly we're going to get a few spaceship sci-fi movies this year, including "Passengers" which looks promising. But we've gone quite a long time now without much in the way of sci-fi.

<comment><USER43> That's funny, I was just looking at a list of big budget releases in 2017 and I was thinking that sci-fi is making a comeback in a big way. At least half of the films in the list had some sci-fi element to them. Of course, the two biggest (blade runner and ghost in the shell) are unnecessary sequels/remakes, but any port in a storm, right?

Edit: Can we get a Red/Green/Blue Mars miniseries on HBO, please? That would make my decade.

<comment><USER44> "Edit: Can we get a Red/Green/Blue Mars miniseries on HBO, please? That would make my decade."

(spoilers follow, although this book is 24 years old so if you haven't read it, you're probably never going to read it. Also Vader is Luke's father)

I also enjoyed that trilogy but the problem is the studio execs don't define "adult" as above room temp IQ or for actual adults, they define it as using the word Fuck every five minutes, disgusting bloody gore, and plenty of ratings boosting sex, because in their twisted freak world that is in fact the only difference between kindergartners and adults. "Hollywood" is too screwed up to relate to real people.

So imagine KSR's series absolutely brutalized and... I don't want to think about it. Imagine 30 minutes of steamy sex between Hiroko and Coyote (Vlad's home life is probably even more photogenic) then Phyllis has every spoken phrase contain the word Fuck and when Maya kills her we get at least five minutes of gore-pr0n of dismemberment and blood and organs lying on the ground. And to save money they rewrite the entire story to be a scientific research station in antarctica and vampires are still hot so we'll add some of those. Just horrible.

If you really want a mind-warper, imagine modern degenerate media execs trying to do a on screen Bible.

We're in an era of narrowcasting where only trash is made and only trash sells.

<comment><USER45> > imagine modern degenerate media execs trying to do a on screen Bible.

Actually, they'd probably treat it well: sex, violence, vengeance, sodomy, incest, torture. Sounds like a perfect script for a Hollywood movie. Just ask Mel Gibson how well "Passion of the Christ" did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My personal belief is what will kill (and is killing) Hollywood is what (effectively) killed TV: Scale, and blandness. Hollywood had a hard enough time being interesting when it had to appeal to a broad swath of Americans. Now they want to make world-friendly films, which has already sparked a race to the bottom in terms of common denominator. This will continue as more and more markets are able to access maintstream films, and the end result will be nothing but the least-offensive, most-broadly-kinda-appealing pablum.

</comment><comment><USER47> I guess $COMIC-$REBOOT-7 isn't all that appealing.

<comment><USER48> I actually think it's this rather than technology that is killing Hollywood. They've overfit to the teenager demographic and have stopped producing films of any substance. It's now just a factory churning out film versions of comic books.

<comment><USER49> Eh. This sounds an awful lot like there's no good music/books/films/TV any longer which various people have been saying pretty much forever. There is a lot of crap out there, but Sturgeon's Law...

Personally I don't have any trouble finding sufficient quality films to fill my (fairly limited) time for watching movies.

<comment><USER45> > This sounds an awful lot like there's no good music/books/films/TV any > longer which various people have been saying pretty much forever.

No. People in the know have noticed the decline in originality in Hollywood, and predicted it would get worse, and they were right:

[http://www.gq.com/story/the-day-the-movies-died-mark- harris](http://www.gq.com/story/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris)

Don't get me wrong, the plethora of film available now is astonishing and nice, but you really have to dig for the gems, especially as it seems they are not advertised. It doesn't help if, like me, you browse TVTropes and watch "Honest Trailers", "How it Should have Ended" and "Everything Wrong With" on Youtube. You start to realize how truly _bad_ and cliche the vast majority of movies are.

<comment><USER50> It also seems like the Thoughtful Adult Movies get squeezed into December after 11 months of schlock. I don't get to the theaters much, but I went more in the past two months than the previous 10. And it's so depressing when you go to see Best Picture Nominee and the trailers are all for Robot Wars 6 and Shyamalan's freshest turd - it's just a reminder that you won't be back for a year.

<comment><USER51> I think that's a function of awards eligibility windows. It's better to release late in that window, to be fresh in the minds of committee members, and it will cost less to advertise to them.

<comment><USER45> > I think that's a function of awards eligibility windows.

Only marginally at best; read the GQ article from 2011. "Summer" has been starting earlier and earlier and ending later and later for decades, mostly because studios realize that "Summer" blockbusters can make a ton of money. Check the cross-over between highest grossing films versus AFI's top lists.

<comment><USER49> >"Summer" blockbusters can make a ton of money

Which is in part also a function of the fact that international distribution has become a far more important piece of the gross of films in general. And the summer action blockbuster does well in non-English-speaking markets. The "small" character and writing-driven film, not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is (to me) the most revealing quote of the article:

 _Some 70 percent of box office comes from abroad, which means that studios must traffic in the sort of blow-'em-up action films and comic-book thrillers that translate easily enough to Mandarin_

</comment><comment><USER53> Who cares about Hollywood? In the last few years I've seen a handful of movies in the theaters: Frozen (I have a 4-year old), that documentary about Anthony Wiener (not Hollywood), and Fantastic Beasts. Almost all my consumption has been Netflix, Amazon, and HBO original content. These companies are hitting it out of the park when it comes to good storytelling.

(Which, incidentally, is a good illustration of the good side of copyright. Not being able to just be a cheap distribution outlet for existing Hollywood content forced Netflix and Amazon to start making their own content. And the movie/TV industry is far better for that.)

<comment><USER54> Ha--exact the same three. Plus one more, I think, though I can't remember which one right now.

On the other hand, I've been hooked to _The Man in the High Castle_ , _Black Mirror_ , strings of documentaries and cartoons bought through iTunes, _et cetera_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The upside of this is that there will be fewer celebritites who think that because we are interested in their acting we are also interested in their political views.

</comment><comment><USER56> Globalization, technology, union decline, foreign-bankrolled censorship (of course original Red Dawn is wildly propgandistic), feedback loop of banality, monopolization---for one, Netflix and co practicing the same vertical integration that was broken up at the end of the golden age. It's all here.

The article adopts the classic disruptor snide and glee, but seeing the political blowback of the past few months, and the inherent dubious benefit of some of the things I listed, I'd have adopted a more ambiguous tone.

It's one thing for David to kill Goliath, it's another for Goliath to kill his parents.

<comment><USER56> "The good news, however, is that we'll never be bored again."

Ok, please have that final, ominous line mean the tone of the piece was at least somewhat satirical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I LOVE going to see movies in movie theatres. When I watch movies at home it's hard to focus. Pretty much constantly someone will feel the urge to check their phone. They will talk during movies, get up, etc...

At a theatre that ever happens. Everyone is focused and there are, in general, few distractions.

<comment><USER40> I also love going to movies. The giant screen, surround sound (or at least sound that is properly equalized so I don't need to constantly turn the volume up and down), and the mental shift to "I'm in a movie, my phone is off" all wildly improve my enjoyment of the movie. It's also a huge reason why I saw so many more movies in theaters when I lived in Austin and could go to the Alamo Drafthouse, since it simply built the experience around the things that make theaters great. Since moving to the Bay Area, I find myself seeing far fewer movies in theaters though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Things have evolved based on time and change in people's habits due to technological advancement. You noticed that the TV industry is thriving, particularly the studios which are positioned to deliver slow-paced but epic shows like Games of Thrones (which stands as a barometer for the others to compete). People are just better suited to keep up with their entertainment needs, in different settings and environment. The movie industry would need to adjust itself.

</comment><comment><USER59> In another part of the world which consumes movies voraciously. An Indian movie called "Bahubali" which had lot of special effects (of varying quality), was made for 40 million USD. It is a two-part release so each one cost about 20 million and made ~100 million. The second part is yet to be released.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baahubali:_The_Beginning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baahubali:_The_Beginning)

One can imagine the special effects from efforts like these become mainstream, reducing the cost.

A related read: [https://qz.com/674547/hollywoods-special-effects-industry- is...](https://qz.com/674547/hollywoods-special-effects-industry-is-cratering- and-an-art-form-is-disappearing-along-with-it/)

Another movie that was heavy on special effects and story (but light on the wallet) was Pan's Labyrinth (Cost 20 Million USD, made ~80 Million USD).

</comment><comment><USER60> I live in Los Angeles, specifically the west side; hardly a day goes by that I don't see a Ferrari pull out of the Sony Studios facility, a 50-person crew filming 2 actors talking next to a cafe, or an action scene that closes down part of a freeway, with 100s of police, security, helicopters, etc. around. Many scenes of Grey's Anatomy are filmed in what is almost my back yard, and they often involve a dozen camera-crew trucks, staff of 60+ people, etc. I just cringe when I think of the cost.

What most people want is a great story, and great dialog. I'm not talking about the audience for a Transformers movie, I don't watch them but some do; that is a different story, and the animation can be done, and is being done, more cheaply outside of Hollywood already. But what I'm saying is that if you can write a great script and have a great story with great dialog, there are plenty of hungry, often young (age isn't relevant BTW) people with RED 4K cameras who can film and edit and put together a great product for $3M, not $30M or $100M.

The days of Brad Pitt getting $30M for a movie, of Julia Roberts getting $25M, are coming to and end. It might take 5 years, or 10 years, or even a generation, but it will happen. Same thing to studio execs; the days of drinking champagne for breakfast and lighting Cuban cigars with $100 bills will end. IT JUST IS NOT SUSTAINABLE, NECESSARY, OR COMPETITIVE ANYMORE. (Sorry for shouting, but that is the crux of my point). 30 years ago, there was no internet to speak of, there were no RED (or Canon, etc.) cameras, there were no "prosumer" drones with HD cameras, non-western countries were isolated and not part of the global workforce, etc.

That has all changed. It is just very easy to put together a great product for less, and all must adjust. It happened to IT, computing and programming, and it's happening to entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER61> > If you could give a computer all the best scripts ever written, it would > eventually be able to write one that might come close to replicating an > Aaron Sorkin screenplay.

This is nonsense. Children's programming, however, Thomas the Tank Engine episodes, are ripe for disruption.

</comment><comment><USER62> Hollywood is dieing because of tech and stuff so we should kill unions?

</comment><comment><USER63> It's worth noting that a big part of what hit Big Print and Big Music was democratization, not just SV. Where it used to be only a few people could publish blogs and make music to the quality of a Real Recording Artist, regular Joe's and Jane's all over (and a number of big name DJ's) all got started making shit with Garageband and the like. Audio editors used to be exclusive software and required beefy (for the time) computers to use, now? A low end Macbook can easily stand in for the majority of what you'd find in a recording studio, as long as you output in mp3 at a reasonable bitrate, the mainstream consumer could never tell the difference.

Same thing is now happening to movies, GIF makers on Imgur belt out effects that look like pro movie work for the cost of Adobe After Effects (or not, their morals depending) and I've seen fan films for various franchises that could easily stand toe to toe with budget movies.

I think this trend toward the costs of entertainment creation going down are what's really going to eat the creative industry's lunch, including Netflix and the like eventually. Once we get to the point where a few friends can create something on the level of, just pulling something out here, Orange is the New Black over a few weekends at an investment of 20 grand? Why even pay Netflix at that point? We're already seeing a near infinite amount of free content created by people who just wanted to make things, without even intending to get rich in the process. Sure, the quality is hit and miss but how is that terribly different from Hollywood these days?

Sorry for the ramble, hope I got my point across.

<comment><USER20> The price of the tech goes down, but with so much choice the quality of the writing, acting and so forth, if anything, needs to be higher

<comment><USER63> Right, but Hollywood doesn't seem to be attempting to scale that mountain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> It's wonderful to witness the fall of these rotting "industries". It's taken way too long.

Being required to organize my time around some TV channel's programming just isn't good service. Internet-based services like Netflix have no such requirements. Yet these aging TV companies are still relevant to me just because they have exclusive rights to the series I like and won't let Netflix have them.

Why do I have to go to the cinema just to watch a new movie? To me it's not that good an experience. I'm basically paying more than a single month's worth of Netflix to watch a single movie on worn out and uncomfortable seats in a crowded theater with half an hour of irrelevant ads before the film actually starts. My only other choice is waiting months until it finally arrives on TV, only appearing on Netflix much later if at all.

Even when they do arrive, it's significantly delayed just because I'm not American. It's beyond irritating to discover I can't view something on Netflix or even YouTube just because I'm not in the US. Maybe it's due to some copyright issue I'm supposed to care about.

This "industry" treats me like a third rate customer and acts as if I was lucky to get whatever scraps of stale content they decided to make available. In reality, most of the movies and series they release aren't that good. Given enough convenience I'd watch them but as it is now it costs way too much in terms of money, time and dignity. The only relatively new movie I'd actually pay to see again in theaters is Mad Max: Fury Road.

Is it any wonder people pirate stuff? Pirates consistently provide much better service with much lower operational costs. If anything, they're the state of the art.

</comment><comment><USER65> The "disruption" of the music industry by the Internet, Napster, etc.. ultimately led to users being given greater control over the music they listen to. You can now legally purchase DRM-free single tracks from the various online stores.

Maybe a similar thing needs to happen with movies? I think the fansub community, the Tolkien edit of The Hobbit, and MST3K and Riftrax are examples of what "greater control" could look like.

Suppose there were a standard video format that accepted a separate stream of commands to skip or re-order scenes, insert audio or subtitles or splice in video from external sources and remove or alter vocal/sound effects/music from the original content.

Now, users could create alternative versions of their favorite movies and share them with each other. Suppose a movie with an alternative sound track requires songs that you already own? No problem, it just uses them. Suppose it requires songs that you don't already own? Maybe it pops up a window "would you like to buy these tracks from Amazon/iTunes/whatever for 99 cents each?" and then when you buy them it adds them to your music library. If you don't want to buy all the tracks, maybe there's just no music in that part of the movie.

I could see this as a really great way for movies to increase music sales, and for people to get excited about and re-watch old movies and have a way to participate in the creative process. It also can be done in a way that's respectful of copyright law, by giving users a convenient way to purchase all of the copyrighted content they need to watch the movie in its edited form. I suspect a lot of traditional Hollywood types will hate the idea of people watching movies in any way other than how the director originally intended, but I think they should just get over it.

<comment><USER66> _Maybe a similar thing needs to happen with movies?_

It won't. Consumers got the level of control over their music library that they did as an accident of timing. The quality of the popular home format (CD) was very good, home computers came with the hardware to read them, the power of home computing and network speeds were just good enough for audio piracy. So music piracy became ubiquitous before the pieces were in place for DRM to stop it.

Video piracy only hit big at the tail end of that window, so the market doesn't expect as much flexibility when buying video as with music. Every year we're stuck with more and more DRM technology coming standard in the products we buy and software we use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> The XBox mention was interesting. I wonder if there's a market for a machinima-style series, with distribution done via the Microsoft Store (if they have subscription pricing). Lots of Hollywood actors do voice-over work on the side. And since it's all virtual, you wouldn't have the overhead of union-rate costumers, craft-services, lighting techs, and so on.

<comment><USER68> That mention actually made me question the genuine understanding of the author. As much as mircotsoft is pushing to be a big player in this, I do not see them taking a significant part of the market for home media center. There are just too many android box doing the same job for media streaming and big players pushing their own (Holu and Amazon come to mind).

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Sounds good to me. Hollywood is a trash heap and every single person on Earth would be better off if it didn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER70> Called this five years ago: [https://rocknerd.co.uk/2012/10/08/no-film-is-not- in-unique-n...](https://rocknerd.co.uk/2012/10/08/no-film-is-not-in-unique- need-of-blockbusterism/) Not that it wasn't obvious.

Filmmakers plead their uniqueness and that only they can deliver blockbusterism. Record companies did the same! and then the studio turned out to be a computer with a DAW program on it, and you can literally record something of full professional quality at home. You _can_ use a full studio if you want, but now it's _optional_.

</comment><comment><USER71> "This might begin with Facebook's V.R. experience. You slip on a pair of Oculus Rift glasses and sit in a virtual movie theater with your friends, who are gathered from all around the world. Facebook could even plop an advertisement next to the film, rather than make users pay for it. When I asked an executive at the company why it has not happened yet, I was told, "Eventually it will.""

This is so profoundly implausible, I have to assume it is a paid advertisement from Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER72> I'm a bit surprised Amazon, as an example, has not been more disruptive to Hollywood. Take "Manchester by the Sea" \- gross about $40m in box office. Amazon has chosen a traditional window approach to the film.

Now imagine, instead, the released it for 2 weeks (or whatever the requirement is for Oscar consideration) then pull it from theaters and make it available on Prime. I wonder if they would have made more than $30m on new Prime subscriptions. That to me would be more disruptive.

</comment><comment><USER73> Claim: Hollywood movies are going to become less profitable and less viable to make!

Sane response: What was the last Hollywood movie that actually turned a profit on paper for tax purposes?

</comment><comment><USER74> I think hollywood's main issue is that there are too many over-paid & useless actors who drain the resources that can be used to make a better movie.

</comment><comment><USER75> Technology has also created a market where the number of high quality films available for movie goers increases at a constant rate. If someone has a collection of high quality movies to watch, a new film coming to market is competing with the previous titles. It wasn't too long ago when an improvement in CGI meant the movie got an automatic increase in quality.

</comment><comment><USER76> Regarding the raindrop thing. Why would the production company ever hire someone for that? The article makes it sound like they are forced to.

<comment><USER20> I doubt that is the persons only job. She might be the costume person or in charge of continuity. It's like how the union guys who are in charge of moving everything (teamsters I think) won't let you move anything

<comment><USER77> It depends what you're moving - and for good reason. Unions remain strong in industries that continue to have dangerous work environments. Film sets are controlled chaos with very high powered electric lights/equipment, cables and cords everywhere, and sometimes uniquely unusual (read: dangerous) work demands - high ropes, scaffolding, helicopters, pyrotechnics, intentionally crashed cars and other practical effects.

When I was starting out in the industry - before I was Local 600 (camera dept.) - I think I scoffed a little bit about the "my job"/"not my job" stuff; however, in most cases there are some legitimate safety/efficiency/equipment protection requirements backing those decisions.

<comment><USER20> Not only that, with a large group of people you can't trust everyone to have the judgement to tell exceptions to the rule. So it works better to just have everyone learn a simple rule like "don't move anything"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> The big studios with big budgets for big blockbuster movies are a very proven model. At least until the model goes bust with too many losses compared to wins. Happens with Music Labels plenty as well.

I like to think "Hollywood" is changing, and A24 is at the forefront of doing things right.

</comment><comment><USER79> Here's Lynda Obst talking about what, how and why it happened: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_oHW31jQfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_oHW31jQfg)

tl;dw; DVD dead, Netflix ruins it further, New markets

<comment><USER68> There is the digital locker the film industry has been trying to move forward for quite a while without being able to make it the standard: [http://www.techradar.com/news/home-cinema/ultraviolet- what-y...](http://www.techradar.com/news/home-cinema/ultraviolet-what-you- need-to-know-1077658)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> And good riddance!

</comment><comment><USER81> Carpenter's debut: Darkstar (1974) is estimated to have a budget of 60k...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_\(film\)).

</comment><comment><USER82> In summary, Hollywood is a dinosaur on its deathbed losing their strength to control the market as SV seeps into every crevice of consumers lives providing solutions Hollywood was too stubborn to embrace.

</comment><comment><USER83> The assertion at the end of the article is absurd - "The good news, however, is that we'll never be bored again." No matter what changes, people will find a way get bored of it.

</comment><comment><USER84> I have been thinking about how lawyers took over Hollywood and the recording industry in the first place. Remember the Betamax case, not to mention the history of DAT tape too.

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Great, it'll be like the novel-rewriting apparatus from 1984, except instead of Winston Smith switching around names and scenes, it'll be a neural network.

I'll bet $100 that in the next ten years we will be able to create content on the fly. Instead of one single _Game of Thrones_ that everybody watches, the TV microphones will pick up on people's sentiments and adjust the plot line accordingly. Don't want your favorite character to die? They survive. Hate another's guts? They'll be gone. Prefer a lighter tone? The entire set has been replaced with Disney World and the cast now consists of the characters from _Arrested Development._

</comment><comment><USER85> Hollywood isn't over. The "we" in the article title is hollywood, i.e how it understands itself. We as HN, and pretty much everyone else knew this in 2010.

</comment><comment><USER86> [http://www.the-numbers.com/market/](http://www.the-numbers.com/market/)

The whole article is based on false assumptions.

</comment><comment><USER87> Hollywood is being disrupted as we speak. Look at the incredible success of Annapurna, A24, and the original content by Netflix and Amazon.

<comment><USER88> Original content by Netflix and Amazon is produced by the same companies, people, and tools as the rest of Hollywood's output, just for a different distribution system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> People want to watch movies. Maybe at theaters, maybe not. Hollywood will be fine.

</comment><comment><USER90> What a coincidence that this gets written right as I decide to ditch television and begin going out to see films again. I already watch the least television out of anyone in my peer group(when I do watch anything, it's usually educational & self-development content on Youtube), yet I feel that I've come to an understanding about what this "television renaissance" really is.

* from here on out, I'm using the word "television" to mean both TV & streaming.

While there we have seen some excellent writing for television in recent years, and while there are more than 400 scripted shows being produced for both television and streaming, I'd argue that most of it is trash. Now hear me out, because I know that word gets used in a relative sense, but I'm trying to be objective here. I call it trash because as well-produced as these shows are(in terms of acting, sets, effects), few people that I know, including myself, actually watch these shows all the way through to their last season. From the conversations I've had with people, it sounds like a common thing to binge through a couple of seasons of a given show, get bored of it, and then move on to another one of the hundreds of available shows. Is this really such a good thing? Is this better than the state of the film industry at its height? I've started asking myself these questions a lot lately, as my experience tells me the average person isn't getting a whole lot of lasting satisfaction out of a given show yet they are spending an inordinate amount of time "bingeing".

The film industry screwed itself in the behind for more reasons than are in the linked story. Big studios are well-known for destroying the creative process and watering down what might otherwise become a classic. Evidence of this can be found in interviews by writers & producers who, years after they've cut their ties with studios, feel safe to talk about what "could have been" if the executives didn't return scripts with a bunch of notes and lines crossed out. So not only did we end up seeing a lot of inferior products at the cinema, but we were paying out the ass for it; somehow we were paying over $20 to watch mediocre films while sitting in dirty theaters, and people gradually caught on to the fact that it sucks. On top of that, we they began subjecting us to loud video advertisements before the trailers would run.

But then why would I go back to film, you might ask? Well, I'm fortunate to live in LA, and we do have a lot of "arthouse" cinemas that have a far superior experience, if you are willing to look for them. There are still lots of independent and foreign films being made that are at least decent and break the mold of the average Hollywood blockbuster. More importantly, I think it's healthier to see a film every once in a while, and actually be around other human beings, than be at home eating diet ice cream while Netflix autoplays. Films also tend to have a story that has to be complete in at least 1.5 hours; contrast that with the J.J. Abrams style of television show that's common these days, where we're lead by a carrot on a stick for several episodes(possibly entire seasons!) by some idea that seems neat but actually has very little payoff, only to be then redirected to a more enigmatic carrot on a stick(e.g. Lost's "hatch" or the "maze" in Westworld). With film, the worst that can happen is you lost a couple hours out of your life, and that doesn't happen that often for me. Meanwhile, I've known people who watch entire seasons of mediocre shows just because those shows are new, and that's a lot of hours that could definitely be spent doing something better. What a coincidence that those same people have energy levels far below what they should have for their age!

EDIT: I forgot to include the real point I want to make: people will realize that they are overvaluing the time they are spending in front of the tube, and there will come a point where the film industry makes a comeback.

<comment><USER49> >From the conversations I've had with people, it sounds like a common thing to binge through a couple of seasons of a given show, get bored of it, and then move on to another one of the hundreds of available shows.

Long before streaming was widespread, I would say that I had a "five season rule." What I meant by that is that, for a given series, by the time five seasons (give or take) had passed, I was just tired of the characters, style, setting, etc. Some series do a better job than others in mixing things up but, even when a series arguably maintains a level of quality, I'm ready to move on.

Of course, the ready availability of more quality streaming video than I have time to watch probably accelerates that process even more. There are at least a couple of series I can think of where I loved the first season but didn't really get into season 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Snap are the new Hollywood.

</comment><comment><USER92> There's definitely a move from the theater to on-demand streaming platforms for all movies except giant movies like Star Wars, so I think the author is right that the theatrical experience will see audience attendance continue to drop. Also making movies that can play for audiences around the world does mean that the dialogue has to be very simple and/or reduced. I think Jason Bourne had 50 lines of dialogue total in the latest Bourne movie for this reason. Without dialogue it does get harder for great actors to shine (Chaplin & Keaton excepted). As movies have gotten less culturally specific, they've also gotten less culturally relevant and this minimizes the importance of directors, writers, actors, and movies as art.

The author's inexperience in the industry shows though in this article. Crews are extremely efficient. Movies are made one shot at a time and when you have big crews made up of different departments (art, camera, sound, lighting, vfx) they have to work essentially in very quick shifts. For example, the camera move is set, then the actors step out and the lighting crew lights the scene, then lighting steps out, art dept. steps in and works, then the actors come back in, etc. To an outsider it looks like 90% of the crew is just standing around doing nothing, but it's much more efficient to work that way and safer too. So I think the author is putting too much blame on union crews for inefficiency.

Also, the author completely omits the marketing costs of films which increased hugely once TV advertising was used to market movies. Marketing costs are one of the main reasons that movies have to basically be blockbusters to make money. A TV ad spot for Star Wars costs the same as a TV ad spot for an indie film.

The idea that CG actors are going to replace real actors en masse is not realistic. I work in visual effects and, trust me, it's a lot more work than this author realizes and is not cost effective unless an actor has died in the middle of your shoot.

I also don't see editors getting replaced by A.I. for films or TV/streaming. Maybe for wedding and vacation videos or perhaps as a tool for reality TV editors to help select shots from the massive amount of footage. But film/TV editing is now an extremely efficient process thanks to digital editing tools like Avid or Premiere. A single editor can cut a film almost as fast as they can think at this point (okay a bit slower). Having to screen 50 versions of an edit produced by AI (and then do rounds of editing notes that way) would take longer than having a good editor just cut the movie.

Don't get me wrong, the theatrical movie experience is going to keep going down hard. I think the biggest threat to movies is that for the most part they don't matter much to the culture any more. But this author's lack of experience in the industry makes some of his predictions suspect.

</comment><comment><USER93> about time</comment>