how to reboot the entertainment industry

ENTERTAINMENT 2.0 AND WHY WE DO NOT HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THESE BULLSHIT COMPANIES FUCKING AROUND WITH THE INTERNET



Who are the companies who sit now, ready to completely destroy the internet in its current form. 'Who or what the fuck really is for example 'Time Warner'.

'Why they make all our beloved movies and music!' you cry.

Let us make one thing absolutely clear.

THEY MAKE JACK SHIT except money. And they want to totally destroy freedom of speech and internet culture as we know it to squeeze an extra 30 million dollars out of 'movie sequel 4'. No really. Do they direct the movies? Nope. Do they star in them? Nope. Write them? Nope. So really what the fuck do they do, what is their main contribution.

They are film distributers.

They front the money for the movie, the movie gets made using the money. They have assumed the risk that the movie may make a profit or a loss. They distribute the movie to cinemas and later on dvd etc. They make back the cost of the movie, and everything after that is the delicious profit. Now this made a LOT of fucking sense up until about 5 years ago, because movies can be expensive and still be fucking shit. As such you cannot exactly walk into a bank with a script and say you want a loan for 300 million dollars to film a movie about blue cat face aliens. The loan officer will almost certainly not approve this unless they are a furry. And these movies would not distribute themselves, they had to be put on film reels and flown around the world to theaters, and promoted to make sure they made back their costs.


Now there is a problem with this, and the problem is that none of it makes any fucking sense any more. And it is my deep suspicion that these fucking companies have already figured this out and are praying to every god that we don't. Here is the secret.

We do not need film distributers.

These companies are a redundant mechanism.

JK Rowling is self publishing her harry potter e books.
Comedian Louis CK self distributed his latest comedy set and made so much fucking money he gave a third of it to charity.

They did these things cheaply and easily using the internet.

The internet is a fucking huge danger to these companies, not because of piracy, but because it directly replaces one of the core functions these companies perform- distribution. The Internet distributes information on the DEFAULT SETTING. That is what we do, we share what we think is good, and what is so bad it is good and cat pictures. We do not need a middle man to distribute a lolcat and we do not need a company to distribute a movie.

So i guess the only thing we need these fucking companies 'who are using the money WE PAY THEM to fucking destroy our culture' for is to front the money to make the movies. I mean it is not like there is a global infrastructure in place which would allow the end consumes of these products to fund them directly via micro-transactions.... except the fucking internet.  And we already know this, because we have sites like indigogo and kickstarter.

410 people paid to make this movie.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gregorybayne/jens-pulver-driven-a-documentary-film-about-a-le?ref=video

These guys raised 230000 dollars to make a movie, directly from the people who wanted to see it made.
http://www.indiegogo.com/Angry-Video-Game-Nerd-The-Movie

So i guess when i say 'The internet is a fucking huge danger to these companies, not because of piracy, but because it directly replaces one of the core functions these companies perform'

 what i really mean is

THE INTERNET REPLACES THESE FUCKING ASSHOLE COMPANIES WHO ARE TRYING TO FUCKING RUIN ALL THE FUCKING THINGS.





So what will the world look like when we all figure this shit out. What will the movie and 'TV' industry be in this crazy lala land.



Step 1

This would remain the exact same as it is now. Very creative and competent people would make pitches, just as they do today but instead of BAD ROBOT pitching LOST or FRINGE to a distribution network, they would pitch it to us motherfuckers on a site like indigogo. They would lay down the basic premise and suggest the production budget (network average is $1.5 to $2 Million per episode for a television series). Now in the case of fringe, even now 4 million people are watching it in the US alone in its 4th season. Lets conservatively double that to 8 million world wide. If it costs lets say 2 million an episode, then a series comes in at 44 million dollars. That's a lot of fucking money. But it is only 5 dollars and 50 cents each if those 8 million people pay for it. An entire season of your favorite tv show for 5.50  And that is if only 8 million people in the world are interested in it.

But wait, networks often don't operate like that, they pay for a pilot, and if the pilot is good they fund the series. The viewing figures for the PILOT of fringe were 10 million in the US, so again a conservative 20 million world wide. And the pilot cost about 10 million. Which means if we as the public liked a pitch for a show like fringe, we would have to pay 50 cents to see that concept explored in a pilot.


For movies the process would be the exact same.
Micheal Bay wants to make a movie where SHIT BLOWS UP for 120 mins. If 250 million people in the world want to see shit blow up, and each cough up a single dollar, then you get a 'blockbuster' quality film. I WOULD BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR.

Would this have a negative effect on cinemas? That depends. Cinemas make as little as 20 percent of the money you give them for a ticket. That means if a film was paid for in advance by the people who wanted it to be made, and disributed for free online, there would be no need to charge the movie theater to show the movie. Which means the movie theater would get the film for free, and only have to charge for the running of the business. So i ask again, would this have a negative effect on cinema attendance? The answer is, would you go to the cinema to see a movie on a giant screen with fucking awesome sound in 3D if the ticket cost 3 dollars. Do you really think you would go to the cinema more or less in that situation.



Step 2

There is no step 2. The project is funded by the end consumers at a fraction of the cost they would have paid for it originally. The funding pays the wages of everyone involved in the production of the movie. The movie is released online, in high definition, peer to peer. People can watch it, copy it etc to infinity. There is no one freaking out about piracy, because no one profits from the distribution of the movie. Everyone who helped make the movie was paid in advance. If people want to see some indie movie or even an episode of a particular tv show in a cinema, they can suggest it to the cinema. If you are a hardcore fan of a show and there are enough hard core fans like you to fill a cinema locally then you could pay for a season ticket at your local cinema to catch new episodes of say fringe or 24 on a giant screen with awesome sound. I would argue that under this model you would need to build A LOT more cinemas.

And if you think this makes sense for movies wait till so see how much sense it makes for fucking games and music.

Most high end games cost 50 -60 million dollars to make. Halo 3 cost 55 million for example and has sold at least 8 million or so copies. So funding a game is just like funding a season of a tv show, and more often than not, depending on the game, it ends up being at the very least a similar volume of content, often times much much more. So if everyone who likes halo could get a halo game made for 7 dollars why the fuck wouldn't they. 7 dollars. From a bunch of people who would end up paying 30-60 dollars for it currently. And again once released, that's it. Shared peer to peer. No distributer.

I am not even going to touch the economics of the music industry. You sit in a booth and record a fucking song. For the money being paid in total by people to listen to the song you could throw in a fucking 90 minute blockbuster movie as the songs music video. How the fuck does the current system make ANY SENSE AT ALL. for 99.9999999 percent of the people it touches.



As a final note to i would say this. So many shows  we start watching on TV get canceled because they are not profitable enough. It is not that they cannot cover their production cost, it is that they are not profitable enough. And i am fucking sick of it. Firefly had  4.7 million viewers per episode. It would never have been canceled in this new system because its production cost would have easily been covered by that viewership. I'm taking that show as an example, but it is an example that proves the point. These companies want maximum profitability from programs. Maximized profit comes from appealing to the lowest common denominator. If you want to do something that is in any way not 100 percent mainstream you are fucking doomed. If you want to make people think, or explore a philosophical idea you are fucking doomed. If you want to do anything bold, or imaginative you are fucking doomed. And not because people would not cover the cost of making such a thing, but because it cannot make 10 times the cost to produce it from DISTRIBUTION.


And now, because these DISTRIBUTERS... these fucking fossils want to make the maximum profit imaginable from THE PUBLIC they are going to fucking destroy free speech and the internet, and they are going to bankroll it with the money they make FROM US. So i say, kick these mother fuckers to the curb, we can finance and distribute our own entertainment.