Never press RM* on a linux machine – that’s the lesson the team at Pixar learned….the hard way. During the making of Toy Story 2, someone pressed the RM* command (directory erase command) which started systematically erasing everything the team had been working on. By the time people figured out what was happening and were able to stop it – about a year’s worth of work had been erased. How did they get the movie back? Check out the video…
Transplanted to Mars, a Civil War vet discovers a lush planet inhabited by 12-foot tall barbarians. Finding himself a prisoner of these creatures, he escapes, only to encounter a princess who is in desperate need of a savior….
“In the futuristic action thriller Looper, time travel will be invented – but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past, where a “looper” – a hired gun, like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) – is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good… until the day the mob decides to “close the loop,” sending back Joe’s future self (Bruce Willis) for assassination…” Trailer after the break.
So i came across this article about “The Waning Originality of Hollywood” yesterday and while I had always contemplated why it was so hard to find a great film (especially an original Sci-Fi movie) it wasn’t until I got a glimpse of the above info-graph, that it all started to make sense – so yes, info-graphs work. Simply put, Hollywood has been making sequels for the last 20 years because they are too chicken-shit to take risks on new ideas – they have always been “big-business” orientated but the present state of Hollywood studios is “bank-esque”.
Source: ImgClean
Reddit: It’s like the Library of Alexandria for the modern technological age – this is not to say the information on the site is always clear/thought out but when it is…….it’s so beautiful and revolutionary. Hence, Solidwhetstone’s Reddit post detailing his/her solution for two major issues: Hollywood’s desire to stop piracy and the consumer’s desire to devour Hollywood’s media.
Here is how he/she breaks it down:
- Digitalize and distribute every movie Hollywood’s made
- Sell the media/movies for less than it costs to buy a BlueRay disc
- Have daily/weekly/seasonal sales on movies
- No DRM: Allow users to download their purchased media (various formats) to their home hard-drives
- Allow special features that are included on BlueRay version
- Include box art and other included art in HQ jpg formats
- Create applications for various devices: PC, Smartphones, Home Theater Devices, Game Consoles, etc to play back media
- Allow users to gift media/movies to friends
- Integrate with all major social media networks and show a news feed of purchases (depending on preferences)
- Buying media/movies means you own always own it, even if you switch computers or devices
- Give users access to new movies before they hit store shelves
- Make it easy for users to burn purchased media/movies to Blueray/DVD
- Make building a library of media/movies satisfying
- Sell collections (i.e. Westerns, SciFi, Romance)
This might sound extreme and too far fetched to even be considered as an option but what Solidwhetstone proposes is essentially Steam. No, I don’t mean water vapor, I mean:
Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute games and related media online, from small independent developers to larger software houses. Steam also has community features, automated game updates, in-game voice and chat functionality.
As of January 2012, there are 1504 games available through Steam, and 40 million active user accounts. The concurrent users peak was 5 million on January 2, 2012. Although Valve never releases sales figures, Stardock, the previous owner of competing platform Impulse, estimated that, as of 2009, Steam had a 70% share of the digital distribution market for video games.
It has been said time and time again, the way to beat piracy is to compete with it and the way to compete with it, (in a capitalistic economy) is to: Make buying the media you want super easy, ultra organized and amazing cheap, that pirating the exact same media is actually more time consuming and difficult. Case in point: iTunes! The music industry went through the same growing/shrinking pains that the movie industry is going through now and after they fell rock bottom (no inventive thinkers) they fell on their knees to Apple (and subsequently got squeezed). The movie industry has a chance to solve their own problems before falling to their knees to Apple or Amazon or Google.
There you have it – the Hollywood Piracy solution but it won’t be adopted, not anytime soon. The people in charge of movie creation and distribution do not live in modern times and more importantly, do not understand the modern consumer. They are obsessed with archaic business models, that have worked in the past and are unwilling to consider anything that might change their existing strategy. Modern consumer are surprisingly cleaver and move/adopt new buying styles quickly – with the digital revolution, these same consumers expect brands to evolve with them and offer products molded around their needs, not products revolving around the needs of content creators/distributors.
p.s. If Hollywood doesn’t adopt a Steam like distribution model – just wait until broadband speeds increases to 100mbps (Full DVD downloaded In Minutes) and see how pirates destroy the industry.
Source: Reddit – Source: Steam - Source: Wiki
Netflix, Hulu and LOVEFiLM are all ways to enjoy movies and TV shows but now a somewhat beautifully+ludicrous thing has happened. Paramount has decided to start selling their movies direct at www.paramountmovies.com - sounds good right? After all, I’ve always said: “Why would I pay any third party service, when I can get it straight from the source?” So when I heard the news, I got super excited but then I visited Paramount’s website and I started crying…
As Devin Coldewey so eloquently put it over at TechCrunch and the reason for my tears:
As the service is still in its infancy and the selection is fairly limited, this strikes me as more of a testing-the-waters thing, checking the system for leaks and so on. That has to be the case, really, because there’s no marketing behind the effort and the prices aren’t even close to what they should be. Want to buy an HD digital copy of Braveheart? $20, please….
That’s right – $20 for Braveheart direct from Paramount! Let me take a look over at Amazon…… Pricing ranges from $1.15 and go to $18.90 for the BlueRay Version. Shouldn’t buying direct be cheaper? Come on Hollywood and Paramount! This is why video is in the dark ages on the internet - idiotic suits, in tall buildings, making decisions about things they have no idea about. I seriously can not wait until the music and movie industry crumble into ash!
Source: TechCrunch