I know two people who have bricked their gas-powered cars by going too long between oil changes. This isn't a novel problem for complex machines. You need to maintain them if you'd like to continue using them.
OK. I have to say I think you're acting bizarrely entitled. "Bizarrely" because you're acting like you're entitled to fictitious, impossible technology. Objects that exist within the physical world require maintenance to retain their use. Even with that maintenance, they will eventually degrade. Things fall apart. Tesla's maintenance requirements - "plug your car in once every twelve months" - are absurdly reasonable.
The conversation surrounding this issue reminds me of an adult explaining to a child why their goldfish died. If you don't feed the fish, the fish dies. If you don't take care of your toys, your toys break. In this world, entropy is the natural order of things. And there's no world but this world. So stop complaining and plug your car in.
With the rather off-the-cuff operating strategy I outlined above, your annual operating budget (including staff and production costs) would be ~$14 million. Initial start up costs (focusing mainly on equipment buys) would be about $4 million. This would get you 75 feature length films a year.
In total, producing our studio's first 75 films would cost $5 million dollars LESS than the total production cost of just one of this weekend's wide release films (in this case, Haywire, made for $23 million). Go see Haywire, and think to yourself about a) whether that movie really needed to cost what it did (bear in mind that the majority of its costs were sunk into the logistics of shooting abroad in multiple Euro locations and filling out its secondary cast with A-list talent; were the locations and secondary cast essential?) and b) whether or not you might have been more interested in the film had it been produced w/o studio constraints (meaning more nudity and explicit violence; a "hard R" or NC-17 as opposed to the film's "soft R" rating).
Dreamworks and Corman's AIP/NWP both produced films, but that's where their similarities end. The differences between the two can be summarized by "scale" and "intent."
In terms of scale, Dreamworks was designed to compete directly with the majors. They focused on tentpole pictures produced at Big Six scale. Even with their substantial financial backing, this meant that a single flop could (and did) jeopardize their company. Corman's films, on the other hand, with their minuscule budgets needed only draw a fraction of the business of a Dreamworks release to make a profit and so very rarely (if ever) showed up as a "loss" on his books. Corman's films rarely hit it big, but because of their relative costs, they never had to. Modest returns were sufficient for him to draw profit margins astronomically beyond those of the majors.
In terms of intent, Dreamworks was set up primarily to produce and release the films of its founders, who tended to trade in prestige films, and their desire to produce only Oscar-level films tended to paralyze their production ability; excessively high standards ruined them. When they did get a film off the ground, they tended to bet too large (out of desperation) and lost as frequently as they won. The exact same thing happened to Coppola's Zoetrope when he let himself run amok on One From the Heart.
The lesson from Dreamworks (and Zoetrope) is to manage your risk. Never put yourself in a position where a single failed project can ruin you. Similarly, never produce a film that requires broad mass market success to avoid total financial failure.
In the contemporary marketplace, where the only starting options for nearly all young filmmakers are unpaid internships with zero real creative opportunity, a three year contract at $30K/yr to direct, write and edit feature length films would be a no-brainer. Steven Spielberg doesn't have a contract with Universal because he's already Steven Spielberg. The guy who's going to replace him has no clout yet, and would jump at a an exclusive three picture deal, no matter how low the pay. There's a reason that Roger Corman never lost money, and it's probably related to his focus on fresh talent.
Guerrilla film-making is when you make a film in your parents' basement using a VHS handicam and your brother's lego collection. For $35,000, using modern production equipment, it's entirely possible to produce a genre film that meets (and often exceeds) the production and narrative value of any major studio film (http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/coldweather/).
If you're saying that there's no market for compelling stories efficiently told, then we better batten down the hatches. I'm pretty sure Revelations lists that as one of the six signs of the Apocalypse.
Exactly right. As a film person, I've always been incredibly jealous of YCombinator and the amazing talent that it cultivates. A project of its kind, geared around films and storytelling, would do wonders to change the landscape of Hollywood.
I love the Google comparison. To me, "Kill Hollywood" doesn't mean kill the movies we all love, but kill the politics and ladder climbing that keep new and unique voices from growing and finding an audience.
The thing about Kickstarter is that it fosters the unhealthy kind of competition instead of collaborative creation. The point of our studio is to grow creators. Set up a playground where people can run free, where taking risks and falling on your face are encouraged. Kickstarter often rewards projects that look like something that already exists - things on there do well if they're slightly novel versions of proven projects. And the thing about truly new ideas is that they don't look like anything you've ever seen before. Our studio would chase those ideas, and the people who dream them up.
EDIT: My big thing is that a kickstarter like project wouldn't be geared around in-house talent. That's what made Roger Corman (and the golden age studios he modeled himself around) special. All the talent was under one roof.
Hollywood has backed itself into a corner using the exact same methodology that you outline in your new studio: both assume that films are widgets, and great ones can be reliably produced with high frequency if the secret formula is discovered. No such formula exists. Every film is a one off, and many of the biggest hits were perceived as certain flops before their release (Star Wars), just as many sure things have tanked (Cowboys & Aliens).
As I've said before, the solution isn't to become more cautious, but more bold. You studio should be based around locating new, young talent (writers, directors, actors and producers), giving them steady work in exchange for reasonable salaries (kids right out of film school are thrilled w/ $30K a year) and creating an environment where said talent can work on a high volume of projects over a short time period with limited commercial risk. No one should ever feel that failure on any particular project will result in a ruined career - the omnipresence of that fear is what has given rise to timid film-making in the mainstream. Projects should be shot in under two weeks, and should have budgets ranging from $10 - 100K. You should be designing your studio to accommodate modest returns, while accounting for inevitable flops. Never presume you know what will sell, and you might make it.
Film-making isn't a business. Film-making is an art. The best art is achieved via iteration: practice, release, refine, practice, release, refine. Build a studio designed to lose money for two years. In the first year, plan to attract at least 50 young directors, 100 young actors, and 100 young writers. There's no shortage of talent in LA (300 hungry young artists step off the bus in LA every day) but sifting the wheat from the chaff will be exhausting. Do the work, it will be worth it. Build a production schedule geared around low budget genre films, produced in 12 days and costing an average of $35,000 a piece. Ideally you'd be releasing 50 - 75 films a year. Over the first two years of your studio's existence, you'll have released 100 - 150 films. With each film, you'll be able to try new and different release and marketing strategies. You'll be able to gather detailed audience feedback on each film, and at the end of that two years, with a mountain of data behind you, you'll start to have a very strong idea of what sells and what doesn't. What kinds of films your audience is interested in, what kinds of actors, plots and situations they enjoy, and how you can produce films with those elements in the cheapest, quickest way possible. In the third year of your studio's existence, you might start to break even. In the fourth year, every major studio will be begging to work with the radical young talent that your studio has done such an amazing job at cultivating.
I'm not sure if this thread is dead at this point, but I want to put forward my suggestion to founders. What you should really be trying to to do, is found a new AIP or New World Pictures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Corman#.22The_Corman_Film...
You want to create a place dedicated to locating and attracting young talent (directors, writers, actors, and producers) that's capable of producing high volumes of low cost product. You want to design a golden era Hollywood studio for the modern age.
This studio would have two main components. Production and distribution. The production side is essentially a no brainer. You grow a pool of talent, and you keep that talent working 8 days a week, producing a diverse slate of low cost filmed entertainment on an aggressive schedule. Ideally, pictures would take 12 days to shoot, and would have budgets in the thousands instead of the millions. You'd be producing so many stories, that you could afford to make them highly specialized in their appeal - you wouldn't have to generate "four quad" films, you could instead afford to cater to smaller audiences but satisfy those smaller audiences more completely. People have tuned off Hollywood films in the last decade because those films have become too focused on mass market appeal - in having "something for everyone" they have instead produced stories with something for no one. The idea of our hypothetical studio is to reverse that trend. Tell stories that only appeal to select audiences, but REALLY appeal to those audiences.
This leads to the second half of our hypothetical studio (and frankly, being a filmmaker and not a businessman, the half that I have less competence with): distribution. This would in fact be the more critical and difficult component of the company to build, because it would be the side dedicated to identifying, locating, and reaching those smaller, more specialized audiences. Our creative talent - the writers, directors and actors - tells the stories, and our distribution team gets those stories in front of the right audiences. It wouldn't take long for a deep and sustaining feedback loop to develop between the two halves of our studio - close communication with our audiences would give the creators more guidance in learning what works and what doesn't on screen, leading to better stories which would grow a more dedicated audience or fan base. In their own ways, this is what Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon have done by reaching out to and learning from their fan bases.
The hypothetical studio I've outlined is exactly what golden age studios did to great effect before theater ownership became a losing battle and the star system began to crumble. In the modern era, we have the advantage of dramatically lowered distribution costs - a computer in every home - but the disadvantage of a greater signal to noise ratio. But this system - small studios producing a high volume of targeted stories at low cost - has proved repeatable and profitable. You could make the argument that Corman, with AIP and New World Pictures, saved Hollywood filmmaking during the New Hollywood period by using exactly the system I've outlined above to locate and nurture new talent while maintaining a high profitability.
So anyways. That's what I think. We shouldn't be focused on producing a new form of entertainment. As consumers, we don't really need or want a new medium; the bump and decline of 3D sales has proved this, I think. Novelty only carries you so far. What is needed is instead a more economically savvy model, focused on generating stories geared towards smaller audiences that will embrace those stories more passionately. We need a studio that will take as it's battle cry "We'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than 100 people's ninth favorite thing." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAFo3kONbdE) You need a new Roger Corman. I am, of course, always available for the job.
Films aren't entertainment. Films are stories, and stories are primal.
Farmville is entertainment. Memes are entertainment. Entertainment is distraction.
Trying to fight stories with entertainment is a losing battle. There's a reason that despite terrible profit margins (4-9%) six studios have had a lock down on narrative filmmaking for nearly a century. It's an incredibly stable industry, and the stories of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
Of course, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if you conjure up the right form of short-term brain crack, you'll be able to "destroy hollywood." If you really think that the secret to sniping the Big Six is building a better, faster Nyan Cat, well then . . . be my guest.
"there is change afoot; whoever can make the awesomest, most loved art / entertainment of the next wave will win big"
I think the reason this ycomb call to action is going to fizzle out is because all you excited engineers keep using this language - "art" or "entertainment."
Hollywood doesn't produce entertainment. It tells stories. It's an industry of stories. Stories are deep and primal. Entertainment is distraction.
Despite having terrible profit margins (4-9%), six companies have had a lock-down on narrative film production for nearly 100 years. It's one of the most stable industries in the country. The initial ycomb call to action is probably the most misguided thing I've seen them release. Trying to beat back the most efficient and long lasting storytelling machine of all time with "entertainment" is like trying to dam the colorado river with a cheese cloth.
I like youtube quite a bit, but if someone told me I could either: a) have unlimited youtube forever or b) re-experience my first viewing of a favorite film (say, No Country for Old Men), I would always choose b.
This is likely my own personal bias, but great youtube is great entertainment. Great cinema is magic.
And just to add to the "everything is a copy of a copy": the French New Wave was a reaction to Hollywood itself. Godard and Truffaut were infatuated with genre studio pictures, and most of their best work was a result of their passionate desire to tell Hollywood style stories. They told them with the resources available to them, which gave their films a particular aesthetic. You could call that aesthetic "enthusiastic budgetary disregard." Check out Shoot the Piano Player to see what I mean.
I love FFC. I'm a current UCLA film student - Coppola's alma mater. One thing to think about: UCLA has always been the "indy, intellectual" film school. It's our rep, internally and (to an extent) externally. When Coppola left UCLA to work in Hollywood, he was branded a sell-out by his fellow students.
One thing to think about w/ this whole "crush Hollywood" thing is this: most of your favorite movies (assuming you've got a boner for the New Hollywood period like I do) were a result of an aging, out-of-touch entertainment monopoly making desperate, reactionary moves to save itself. The old system didn't work, the people in charge had no idea how to fix it, so they went crazy taking risks on young directors. FFC, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman, de Palma, Lucas - all the really top-drawer American filmmakers, honestly - were a result of this period of blind desperation.
There would be no Godfather without Hollywood. No Apocalypse Now. (also no Taxi Driver, no Star Wars, no Indiana Jones, no MASH or Nashville) In the absence of Hollywood, you get movies like Youth Without Youth and Tetro - two wonderful oddities, but you'd be hard pressed to make the case for them against Coppola's early masterpieces.
The beautiful and horrible thing about Hollywood is that it's a system designed to throw huge stacks of cash at storytelling problems. It's fucking absurd, because money has never been capable of solving those kinds of problems - practice and gut instinct are what create good stories. But when strong storytellers are placed in an environment which supplies nearly unlimited resources, totally amazing things happen. Yes, we can all point to Heaven's Gate, New York New York, and Coppola's own One From the Heart, but flops like those are the inevitable flip side of the system I've just described: talented people can abuse unlimited resources just like anybody else.
I guess what I'm saying is: I'd be seriously depressed if Hollywood were to vanish. Yeah, it produces a lot of shit, but its high water marks have never really been replicated by any other mode of production.
What about Deus Ex? Though the original game doesn't have an overworld, it's levels are quite large (and open ended) and it seems to meet all the other criteria. I'd never thought about it before, but this might be why I enjoy the game so much - it's a Zelda-type experience. I will admit that it lacks the specific weapon/enemy combos the Zelda thrives on. And really, there's only one way to play a Zelda game, while there are a number of very different ways to play DX.