[HN Gopher] Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on ...
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Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?
Author : shortformblog
Score : 390 points
Date : 2025-02-05 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
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| timmg wrote:
| I assume they get "monetization" from Youtube and they don't need
| to worry about hosting or discovery. Probably better than doing
| nothing with these films.
| fsckboy wrote:
| agree.
|
| as a 2nd order effect, crowds out the competition: every 90
| minutes spent watching a low value film of yours is time not
| spent watching anything of the competition.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I'm a little surprised there isn't more of this. Building a
| streaming service is pretty expensive.. a lot of the platforms
| lost money doing so and really only made it back when they
| merged into an umbrella of other services.
|
| I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the
| "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting
| there waiting to be exploited.
| wslh wrote:
| Could you please expand on your "viral indie release to
| Youtube" idea? I am just a YT basic user and don't know what
| is there and what is not beyond HN, random videos, and my
| relatively simple use cases (e.g. music videos, and movie
| trailers).
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Indie film makers release a lot of their work on youtube.
| browningstreet wrote:
| There hasn't really been a Blair Witch Project movie
| happening on Youtube yet...
| wslh wrote:
| I get that the real issue isn't just YouTube, but that no
| other horror film, or otherwise, has really matched Blair
| Witch Project's combination of impact, marketing success,
| micro-budget, and cultural phenomenon.
|
| I just speculate that if Blair Witch Project were made
| today, it would likely debut on a platform like YouTube
| before gaining wider recognition.
| mindcrime wrote:
| The best example I can think of is already mentioned up-
| thread, but just to drill down on that. Kung Fury[1] was
| initially released on Youtube (and a few other services,
| mostly in other countries I think) and became a pretty
| big viral hit. Enough so that the filmmaker eventually
| signed a deal to make a sequel[2] with distribution by a
| traditional film company and some big-name stars.
| Unfortunately the release of the sequel has been held up
| for "legal reasons" and FSM only knows when or if it will
| see the light of day. :-(
|
| Anyway, not as big as BWP, but still a decent example of
| the concept under discussion, I think.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury_2
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Just because the quality of the things people upload
| there isn't up to the arbitrary standards of "as good as
| the Blair Witch Project" doesn't mean its less valuable
| duxup wrote:
| I'm surprised a lot of things aren't more accessible.
|
| So much content not making money / available ANYWHERE.
|
| I assume, that maybe the amount of difficulty in terms of
| getting permission is too high to bother so nobody does?
| browningstreet wrote:
| I have a list of movies you can't find anywhere, not even
| for pay, not even on on obscure services. I check every
| once in a while to see if they pop up (JustWatch.us is
| great for this, IMDB is copying). Example: "Amateur" by Hal
| Hartley, though it's easy enough to buy copies on DVD.
|
| The problem is once the rights for a title end up in a
| library, the accessibility considerations operate at the
| library level, not the title level. So if some company owns
| the rights to "n" titles en masse, they're negotiating for
| the distribution rights to that library.
|
| You can't really pull a Taylor Swift or Def Leppard "re-
| record for rights" move with movies.
|
| UPDATE: Happy to be wrong about my cited example.. Thanks
| @andsoitis !
| a_imho wrote:
| Not sure how obscure you are willing to go, but a quick
| look on private trackers do list the movie.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > browningstreet 43 minutes ago | root | parent | next
| [-]
|
| I have a list of movies you can't find anywhere, not even
| for pay, not even on on obscure services. I check every
| once in a while to see if they pop up (JustWatch.us is
| great for this, IMDB is copying). Example: "Amateur" by
| Hal Hartley, though it's easy enough to buy copies on
| DVD.
|
| It IS available to stream! See
| https://www.halhartley.com/amateur
| browningstreet wrote:
| Tou-freakin'-che
| mason55 wrote:
| Yeah there are just a lot of titles with weird rights
| situations that no one cares about resolving. Maybe you
| lost clearance on a song in the movie, or one of the actors
| has a clause in their contract, or some company bought the
| distribution rights for a certain territory and then went
| out of business.
|
| Lots of situations where resolving the rights issues is
| going to cost more than you expect the movie to bring in,
| especially once you start talking about splitting the
| revenue with online storefronts.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| At a finer grain than general "permission", a lot of the
| issue is with the music. For many pre-streaming movies, the
| original soundtrack will have been licensed in a way that
| supported resale but didn't foresee streaming. Making those
| movies available for streaming would involve tracking down
| the copyright holders for every piece of music (often the
| estates or successors of the original composer, but often
| non-determinate) and renegotiating a licensing deal.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Abandonmedia. They've been posting abandoned software for
| decades now -- without a peep as far as I know.
| ANighRaisin wrote:
| There have been more niche shows that became quite popular
| after a YouTube release.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Movies are capital intensive, a movie is less likely to go
| viral than a video that is made to be viral. Thus, doing this
| is risky. Also, people wanting to create viral movies
| probably do not want to make viral videos.
| dehugger wrote:
| Kung Fury would be my go-to example of "viral indie release".
| illwrks wrote:
| Movie rights will be a big factor also. Events like TIFF,
| Cannes etc, while being a platform to show films is also
| where deals are done, distribution rights are signed always
| for different territories etc. YouTube is essentially
| international which may invalidate some pre-existing licence
| and distribution agreements.
| delecti wrote:
| Youtube has the ability to limit videos to certain markets.
| One example is that the entirety of Mythbusters was
| uploaded in the past couple years, but isn't available to
| view in the US.
| illwrks wrote:
| I wasn't really aware of this, I guess using a VPN would
| get around the issue though?
| crashingintoyou wrote:
| Have you never gotten an error about something being
| unavailable in your region on Youtube?
| illwrks wrote:
| Not that I'm aware of, but perhaps the things I've
| watched have been more vanilla and not required that by
| the content owner.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Building a streaming service is pretty expensive..
|
| It's not. At least not for companies of that size. There is
| PeerTube for that: https://joinpeertube.org/. It can even
| decrease the load to your servers by spreading the trafic
| over peers.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Creating and running a (direct to consumer) profitable
| streaming service takes a lot more than just
| "infrastructure".
| fsflover wrote:
| Which problems are you expecting if you already have the
| content, the servers and the software? It's a famous
| company; people would definitely watch their movies for a
| small payment or with ads.
| jerf wrote:
| "I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the
| "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's
| sitting there waiting to be exploited."
|
| There's a _lot_ of "indies releasing things to YouTube
| directly". However, they're limited both by the algorithm and
| by the amount of money they can generate by that, so you get
| a fairly restricted set of genres that this can work with,
| like sketch comedy or (perhaps a bit surprisingly to me)
| science documentaries, like Veritasium or Practical
| Engineering.
|
| These are basically indie filmmakers doing a very indie thing
| that doesn't fit anywhere else.
|
| Movies are, after all, as affected by their release
| technology as anything else. There's a reason they're all
| 80-130 minutes, and they have their own genre restrictions as
| a result of it, especially if you think of it in terms not
| just of binary possibility but how popular things are. It
| isn't reasonable to expect a very different distribution
| method to result in "movies" you'd recognize from the cinema
| any more than it is reasonable to expect that television
| would only ever have run "movies" and never developed its own
| genres that don't work in cinema. Taking into account the
| need for the content to match its distribution there's a
| _ton_ of indie stuff on YouTube. What I would say you are
| really seeing is the restrictiveness of "The Algorithm", and
| that is an interesting question to ponder on its own.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Got some recommendations?
| cons0le wrote:
| On youtube , watch Space King
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| In a similar vein, I remember reading somewhere that
| creating shows for direct-to-streaming is liberating
| because, although it is quite similar to TV in that it's
| telling a story in chunks (usually 30 to 60 minutes)
| without a guarantee of continuation (renewal), you don't
| have the primary constraints of traditional television:
| fitting into a specific time slot, saving time for
| commercials, and creating hooks that lead neatly into each
| ad break to get the audience to stick around.
| glompers wrote:
| Vimeo has tried to prioritize indie feature discovery from
| what I can tell. Not sure what its ownership or business
| is. Also not sure how it compares to (in music)
| soundcloud's or bandcamp's approaches.
| btown wrote:
| Part of this is that YouTube makes this viable only for
| creators whose inbound viewers are likely to stay to watch
| a majority of the content; otherwise, the algorithm
| penalizes your content for every "bounce." A comedy short
| that'll attract people who like comedy shorts, and will be
| over before many people bounce? A long-form science
| documentary that's likely only going to be clicked by
| someone who wants to watch a long-form science documentary?
| Both meet this criterion. But any kind of traditional
| filmmaking with longer character arcs will be penalized,
| and that's a really hard thing to see for your creation's
| primary distribution channel.
| pests wrote:
| This has sorta happened with the backrooms? The creator
| started via viral YouTube and meme growth, now he's making
| a movie with A24.
| Wojtkie wrote:
| Sort of happened with the guy who made Astartes. He was a
| storyboard animator for the Secret Level 40k episode.
| korse wrote:
| I think you missed a decade or two. This was already a thing
| and the mainstream didn't exactly have the appetite for it.
| Check out 'web series' on Wikipedia.
|
| I don't know what you're into but "The Guild" is pretty
| excellent example of the form.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I've seen a few things go that route - Hazbin Hotel was a
| YouTube pilot ish thing and got picked up on Amazon, I think
| amazing digital circus got grabbed by someone too.
|
| No one seems to stay on YouTube when it happens though.
| derektank wrote:
| I would argue KanePixels (Kane Parsons) is doing the Indie
| filmmaker thing very successfully on YouTube. He went from
| creating a viral hit with his interpretation of The
| Backrooms, signed a deal with A24, and has continued
| releasing his own horror short films in the interim. The
| format isn't the standard 90-120 minutes of most studio
| movies but his longest videos are nearly an hour long and
| with each narrative spread across several videos, stitching
| the whole thing together would look something like a
| conventional film
|
| https://m.imdb.com/name/nm10735410/
| wongarsu wrote:
| Rooster Teeth (of "Red vs Blue" and "RWBY" fame) did the
| "indie filmmaker on youtube" thing pretty successfully.
| Eventually they moved to their own site, then fell apart
| after a lot of drama and internal differences.
|
| Also _vaguely guestures at all of youtube_. Most youtube
| creators are independent, and a lot of them have higher
| production value than indie movies. You just don 't recognize
| them because of how the algorithm and monetization favor
| regular installments of ~10 minute episodes, causing most
| content to take that form. A documentary simply works better
| on youtube as a Tom Scott video than as a 45 minute piece
| (though there are plenty of those too)
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently one of the original Rooster Teeth guys bought
| the rights back and is going to do something ...
| nabeards wrote:
| As someone who has built a streaming service, I'm always
| amazed how much money the studios throw at it and don't have
| something good or profitable. The infra cost for my service
| was then 10% of revenue. I just wish the huge consolidation
| hadn't happened, now all of the studios are too protective of
| their content.
|
| If anyone has ideas for re-purposing or re-targeting a
| streaming service, I'm all ears.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| The only 2 companies that made money during the "streaming
| wars" were Netflix, which had the infrastructure in place
| already and didn't need to build anything from scratch, and
| Sony, which decided not to build any streaming service and just
| license all its content out. Seems WBD is following the lead of
| a winner.
|
| * https://www.yahoo.com/tech/sony-succeeded-becoming-
| powerful-...
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Is it really following the lead of a winner if you started by
| building your own failing streaming service, then buying
| another streaming service and merging them, and only then
| starting to license out content?
| mason55 wrote:
| Sure - that's why Sony is the winner. Other companies tried
| other things and lost. Now they see what the winner did and
| they're following their lead.
|
| When WB started all this it wasn't clear what the winning
| strategy was going to be. Now that it is clearer, they're
| just following.
| com2kid wrote:
| Warner Bros didn't buy out Discovery, other way around
| really. In return for taking on loads of debt, Discovery
| got ownership of WB.
|
| HBO Max was an incredibly lean org, around 200-300
| engineers at launch, 1/10th the size of its competitors but
| we launched a similar scaled service (tens of millions of
| domestic users, followed up by international launches one
| after another).
|
| IMHO once COVID ended and HBO Max just became a streaming
| destination instead of having movies "launched" on it,
| they'd be just fine in terms of profit (and indeed iirc the
| successor Max service is profitable). First releasing big
| block busters doesn't drive enough user growth to pay for
| the movie, but if you have an existing content pipeline
| then having a streaming service as another delivery
| platform becomes reasonable.
| jandrese wrote:
| Max has gone to crap since the merger though. They
| cancelled a lot of the quality content and added a bunch
| of cheap and awful crap like reality shows to the
| service. It's like someone bought a Rolls Royce and riced
| it out.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Agreed on all counts, Discovery is the company I was
| referring to and Discovery+ was the 'failing' platform,
| not HBO Max. Though to be fair my recollection was hazy
| and the story around Discovery+ is not that simple given
| that it has stuck around post merge and is profitable
| according to Zaslav. I don't really trust his definition
| of profitable given his general love for accounting
| fuckery but the fact that its running is something.
|
| As an aside, props to the team. It's been a while but I
| remember being pleasantly surprised after getting
| shuffled over from HBO GO. It's even more impressive to
| know it was such a small team compared to other services.
| guyzero wrote:
| Sony built Crackle:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crackle_(service) but it's
| failed at this point.
| jshen wrote:
| Disney has been profitable lately.
|
| Also odd to say that Netflix had the infrastructure already.
| They built it from scratch.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| I meant they had the infrastructure already when the
| streaming wars started roughly around Covid.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| These are movies nobody is lining up to syndicate, for a company
| desperate for cash. Why not dump them on YouTube and get a bit of
| ad revenue? It's low effort relative to the income it generates.
| Even if it's unlikely to make much money.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| The why not is because it potentially devalues the prestige of
| the individual work's IP, and the brand in general.
|
| This is short-term optimization, par for the course with the
| new Disovery-owned Warner Bros.
| marinmania wrote:
| I thought that at first, but if you look at the movies its
| hard to say any have much prestige? And you could probably
| make the case that getting more eyeballs on it will, if
| anything, make them a bit more valuable in 10 years. I still
| remember watching the same shitty movies on cable over and
| over as a kid just because they were available, and I imagine
| those movies have a higher place in the collective memory now
| because they were available.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h.
| ..
|
| Though I would imagine if you were Tom Hanks or Ryan Reynolds
| you may be upset some of your least popular work is now the
| most accessible.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This stage was set 7 years ago when ATT overpaid for Time
| Warner by $60B+. There was no way to recover from that.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| The selection added has mostly reached end-of-life on
| cultural relevance and/or prestige. This is like reopening a
| tapped mine hoping for a few more nuggets of value. If
| anything gets too much traction they'll move it to a paid
| service.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| WB has decided these movies have no prestige.
| derbOac wrote:
| I think prestige is hard to gauge from availability channels,
| and ebbs and flows. Sometimes visibility even increases
| interest and regard, if it's a sort of forgotten film.
|
| Night of the Living Dead has been freely available for some
| time for example and is still considered a classic of horror.
| I'm not sure it hurt Criterion when they released a version
| of it. People are paying for the restoration and extras.
| greener_grass wrote:
| There's a small chance they will get a cult following with more
| exposure and lead to increase in value of the IP.
| tantalor wrote:
| Oh nice they got The Science of Sleep (2006) on here, great film
| with Gael Garcia Bernal by Michel Gondry.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAyg_ENvHzc
| noneeeed wrote:
| I'd forgotten all about that film, it was delightful.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Saw that in the theater, and remembered liking it quite a bit.
| May have to watch it again. I recall the animation was quite
| impressive.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Twenty years later, I still remember the images of making a
| cottonball float like a cloud, and piloting a pneumatic tube
| of toilet paper rolls.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| As always, don't count on it lasting. Nevertheless, it's a
| welcome move from WB, even if I've already fallen out of movie
| watching. I'm quite surprised they did it region-free.
| boohoo123 wrote:
| My guess would be offloading storage space while adding
| monetization revenue.
| tombert wrote:
| Is storage space for this significant?
|
| I doubt they're deleting the master copies or the master
| renders or anything, so the only thing that would be offloaded
| would be the "consumer" renders. A Blu-ray movie with no
| additional compression added is between 15-40 gigs.
|
| A consumer like me has a 300 terabyte storage array, presumably
| Warner Bros has even more than that (and certainly could
| _afford_ more than that), so it feels like 40 gigs per movie is
| basically nothing.
| pwg wrote:
| The 'offload' might be "building an entire streaming
| infrastructure".
|
| This way, they get to ride Youtube's streaming system rather
| than have to build one out.
| vel0city wrote:
| They already have built one out, it is called Max.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| It's got Suburbia on there.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Maybe this helps their efforts agaisnt illegal hosting of those
| old movies? It is available for free for users, and they will
| keep attacking piracy.
|
| They can at any time substitute the full movies with ads to buy
| the collection, before IP expires. It is a low cost experiment.
| elicash wrote:
| > By releasing a handful of hidden gems next to some of the worst
| films it ever released, WBD is doing a disservice to its creative
| teams of past and present
|
| Making older movies publicly available at no cost (albeit with
| ads) is good, actually?
|
| Is the suggestion that there's no bad content on Max and that's
| why they should put the movies there, instead, behind a paywall?
| Instead of Youtube, he wants these movies next to Dr. Pimple
| Popper?
|
| (Ironically, I'm pretty sure this is #1 on Hacker News because
| people appreciate the heads-up about the free resource, and not
| because folks support his call to remove them from public view.)
| duxup wrote:
| I'm surprised by the quality of some of these movies, they're not
| no name failures.
| tombert wrote:
| It would be great if they started putting the canceled and
| removed cartoons on YouTube as well. Stuff like Final Space,
| Close Enough, and Infinity Train, which AFAIK has no legal way of
| watching anymore, could get a new audience on YouTube.
| meinersbur wrote:
| The problem here (and problably the reason why they were
| removed from paid streaming services) are residuals [1]: Even
| if nobody watches them, studios still may have to pay actors,
| directors, writers, etc. a share. I assume the movies put on
| YouTube don't have any residual agreements.
|
| [1] https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-tv-and-theatrical-
| residua...
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, and I suspect also potential weirdness with tax law and
| writing off TV shows as a loss makes it hard to release
| again.
|
| I actually do have legit copies of Infinity Train, I bought
| all four seasons on Amazon before the huge purge a couple
| years ago, but I would like legit copies of Close Enough.
|
| I genuinely don't know what Warner Bros actually wants us to
| do? Is their official stance "it's ok to pirate it"?
| jerf wrote:
| For your searching convenience, they do seem to have all their
| full movies in a playlist:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Y4rNBCLaU&list=PL7Eup7JXSc...
|
| That will pop up to The 11th Hour but the playlist has them all.
| akovaski wrote:
| A link to just the playlist:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...
|
| From IMDb: The 11th Hour (2007, Documentary,
| 7.2) The Wind and the Lion (1975, Adventure Epic, 6.8)
| Mr. Nice Guy (1997, Martial Arts Dark Comedy, 6.2) City
| Heat (1984, Buddy Cop, 5.5) Michael Collins (1996,
| Docudrama, 7.1) The Adventures Of Pluto Nash (2002, Space
| Sci-Fi Comedy, 3.9) Chaos Theory (2007, Comedy Drama
| Romance, 6.6) Mutiny on the Bounty (1962, Historical
| Globetrotting Adventure, 7.2) Dungeons & Dragons (2000,
| Adventure Fantasy, 3.7) Return Of The Living Dead Part II
| (1988, Zombie Horror Comedy, 5.7) The Bonfire of the
| Vanities (1990, Dark Comedy, 5.6) The Accidental Tourist
| (1988, Comedy Drama Romance, 6.7) Critters 4 (1992,
| Horror Sci-Fi, 4.1) Murder in the First (1995, Legal
| Thriller, 7.3) The Year of Living Dangerously (1982,
| Drama Romance War, 7.1) December Boys (2007, Drama
| Romance, 6.5) Waiting for Guffman (1996, Satire, 7.4)
| Lionheart (1987, Adventure Drama, 5.1) Oh, God! (1977,
| Comedy Fantasy, 6.6) Crossing Delancey (1988, Comedy
| Romance, 6.9) Price of Glory (2000, Drama Sport, 6.1)
| Flight of the Living Dead (2007, Horror, 5.1) Deal of the
| Century (1983, Dark Comedy Satire Crime, 4.6) Deathtrap
| (1982, Dark Comedy Suspense Mystery, 7.0) The Mission
| (1986, Historical Epic Jungle Adventure, 7.4) SubUrbia
| (1996, Comedy Drama, 6.7) Hot To Trot (1988, Comedy
| Fantasy, 4.5) True Stories (1986, Comedy Musical, 7.2)
| The Science of Sleep (2006, Quirky Comedy Drama Romance, 7.2)
| The Big Tease (1999, Comedy, 6.1)
| realce wrote:
| > Return Of The Living Dead Part II (1988, Zombie Horror
| Comedy, 5.7)
|
| My favorite zombie flick, if you've not seen it you need to!
| spunker540 wrote:
| Do I need to watch part 1 first?
| atVelocet wrote:
| Nope. Same applies to the third one.
|
| Awesome funny movie and i think the best part of this
| ,,trilogy".
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Yeah I was going to say the III one is surprisingly good.
| I used to know the director and he was super cool. Also
| produced re-animator. He also did a weird low budget
| movie called "society" which is interesting.
| uxp100 wrote:
| There are a few horror and sci fi movies with similar
| themes to Society that all came out around the same time.
| Society is probably the wildest. Worth a watch.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| One film from 1962, one 1977, the rest 80's-plus.
|
| Too bad we're not seeing 30's classics, etc.
| zoogeny wrote:
| Out of that list, The Science of Sleep stands out to me. It
| is a film by Michel Gondry who also directed Eternal Sunshine
| of the Spotless Mind. It is kind of an indie pretentious
| movie, but if you are into that kind of thing it is a decent
| one.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| "The Year of Living Dangerously" is a surprising one to show
| up. Reasonably profitable and successful film for the time.
|
| Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver - she usually doesn't get the
| romantic role.
|
| She became so enamoured with Mel Gibson that the man whom she
| eventually married resembles Gibson.
|
| Linda Hunt won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (her
| character is male in the movie), she played the "boss" on
| NCIS-LA TV show for several years.
|
| wikipedia page says 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.
| vintermann wrote:
| My guess it's that they do it to discover what "hidden gems"
| actually have potential, and that they may not _stay_ free.
| mcoliver wrote:
| Bingo. YouTube has a massive audience and builtin social
| aspects. Something will eventually go viral from this and draw
| customer acquisition to the WB platform.
| fullshark wrote:
| I can't imagine any of these have potential. The Crossing
| Delancy cinematic universe isn't coming anytime soon. I think
| they just want some short term juice.
| dageshi wrote:
| Honestly maybe just because they can?
|
| They have these relatively obscure movies that aren't really
| worth much so why not throw them on youtube and give them the
| best possible chance of being watched.
|
| I think it's a great move honestly, I know a tv show from the UK
| that's been doing the same, hopefully more shows/movies will do
| it as well.
| lxgr wrote:
| Old movies have been available on various "free ad-supported
| streaming television" for a while now, so I'm actually more
| surprised it took copyright holders that long to realize that
| Youtube also shows ads and doesn't require people to install some
| wonky app that might or might not be available for their
| platform.
|
| Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex
| etc. etc., so I could imagine it was just a matter of waiting out
| until the last person putting up a veto retired or moved on to
| other things.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running
| your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit
| makes a lot of sense.
| vlan0 wrote:
| Bandwidth is a part, but that's an easy hurdle. But running a
| CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load
| of money. The juice really has to be worth the squeeze.
|
| Similar to running on-prep vs cloud.
| DanielHB wrote:
| There are B2B SaaS services for streaming content, you
| upload the file they host and stream it for you with some
| API integrations to restrict access.
|
| Although I imagine they cost more than youtube's cut from
| ad-revenue.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require
| experience and truck load of money
|
| Take Netflix for example. Their CDN at scale is pretty good
| for VOD type of delivery, but they continue to get it wrong
| for live event streaming. Even Twit..er, X falls down with
| their large event live streaming.
|
| Adding the "live" component makes everything just that much
| harder
| ta1243 wrote:
| > they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming
|
| And truly live (which means probably under 10 seconds
| from lens to viewer - i.e. the time it takes for the "X
| win" notification to pop up on your phone) is even harder
| than traditional "live" in the 40-60 second window.
|
| Ideally you want all viewer to view it at the same time
| (so when next-door are cheering on a feed 3 seconds ahead
| of you it's not spoilt).
| Jakob wrote:
| It's actually not harder thanks to HLS:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming
|
| Live streaming with HLS is equal to distributing static
| files and can be very low latency.
|
| If you need to go below 3s of latency, yes it becomes
| harder, but everything else is thankfully solved.
|
| The bigger issue with live streaming are the peaks: 0
| views in one second and millions in the next. Even with
| static content delivery that leads to all kinds of
| issues.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > but everything else is thankfully solved.
|
| well, since it's so easy for you, you should apply at
| Netflix as they can't figure it out.
| Symmetry wrote:
| That's why companies doing streaming at less than Google's
| scale can pay Aakami or a company like them to do that,
| caching copies at datacenters around the world close to the
| people doing the watching.
| aurareturn wrote:
| I don't think it's a "hit" for Google. They'll optimize ads
| to always ensure they make a profit from a view. It's a
| win/win.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Don't let the cloud providers fool you. Bandwidth is cheap,
| especially for Googles, Netflixes and Cloudflares of the
| world which peer with every ISP that matters.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Yeah and that is their point. And it's actually highly
| problematic just how much discount the large giants get on
| traffic - it effectively blocks any competitors not backed
| by some _very_ deep pockets.
| sitkack wrote:
| Google owns a large percentage of the backbone and does
| not pay for traffic. It owns not just its own fiber, but
| also leases dark fiber and right of way.
|
| Google has been buying railroad for access to right of
| way to lay fiber since the early 2000s. Peering
| agreements using their networks give them transit for
| free on other networks.
|
| https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/02/25/183201/google-
| is-li...
| wbl wrote:
| The reality of these relationships is more complex
| especially in some markets. It's also not hard to be at the
| IX and benefit yourself.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Is Comcast still charging content providers and CDNs for
| peering?
| inopinatus wrote:
| Cloudflare _wishes_ it peered with everyone and steers its
| own astroturfing pressure groups hoping to achieve that.
| The economics are similar though; their major product
| remains DDoS sinking, so driving down the marginal cost of
| traffic is Cloudflare's strategy. The difference is that
| the content they mediate is thereby an incentive towards
| peering and not the core business proposition.
| Cody-99 wrote:
| Astroturfing pressure groups is a crazy way to describe
| the bandwidth alliance lol.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| content is by far the biggest cost for running your own
| streaming service
| dylan604 wrote:
| "good" content that people want to watch is by far the
| biggest cost. you can find content for pennies on the
| dollar, but your viewers will not make it worth the expense
| as no advertisers will want to spend money with your low
| viewer count
| SllX wrote:
| Ah, FAST services as referenced by the parent are an entire
| genre of streaming services that might have slipped under the
| radar for most Hacker News readers.[1] They'd be off my radar
| too since I'm not interested in them per se, but for Jason
| Snell's excellent Downstream[2] podcast (earlier episodes co-
| hosted by Julia Alexander) covering basically the business of
| Hollywood with an emphasis on streaming services and rights.
|
| So this is basically just using YouTube as a FAST service.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-
| supported_streaming_te...
|
| [2]: https://www.relay.fm/downstream
| dylan604 wrote:
| YouTube serving content with ads would be more AVOD (on-
| demand with ads) vs FAST. FAST typically means a linear
| feed programmed to play specific content at specific time
| just like tuning into a channel on OTA or cable networks.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's how it started, as far as I know, but these
| services now offer lots of content on-demand as well.
| dylan604 wrote:
| if it is on-demand, then it is AVOD. A company that
| started as FAST might have pivoted or decided to release
| the content they used to program their FAST channel as
| AVOD as well.
|
| I've personally been involved in doing this very thing,
| but just look at the apps for like Max where they have
| their linear channel offerings within the same UI as
| their VOD. While Max isn't ad supported, it's a similar
| concept.
| echelon wrote:
| With AI, this entire vast content library is about to be
| worthless anyway.
|
| We'll be making more long-form, quality content per month
| than entire Hollywood production years.
|
| And if you include short form content and slop, it'll be
| more content per second than entire years.
|
| When faced with infinite content, people will reach for
| content currently popular in the zeitgeist or content that
| addresses niche interests. Hollywood never made Steampunk
| Vampire Hunters of Ganymede, but in the future there will
| be creators filling every void. There won't be much reason
| to revisit old catalogues that don't cater to modern
| audiences unless it's to satisfy curiosity or watch one of
| the shining diamonds in the rough.
|
| There will be a few legacy titles that endure (Friends,
| Star Wars), but most of it will be washed away in a sea of
| infinite attention sinks.
|
| We're about to hit post-scarcity, infinite attention
| satisfiability. We've already looked over the inflection
| point, so it doesn't take much imagination to reason what's
| next.
|
| ---
|
| Edit: copying my buried comments from below to expand on
| this.
|
| ---
|
| I have direct experience with this field.
|
| I've written, directed, and acted in independent films.
| I've worked on everything from three person crews all the
| way up to 200 person shots. Even mocap and virtual
| production.
|
| We're now developing film and VFX tools for individual
| artists, and the world is full of artists. It's been
| starved for films, however. The studio production system
| only had so much annual capacity per year, and most
| creators never get the opportunity to helm a project of
| their own.
|
| You're not crying over the accessibility of digital art,
| digital music, indie games, or writing.
|
| Film production and distribution has been bottlenecked at
| the studio level for far too long due to capital,
| logistics, and (previously) distribution barriers. That's
| all changing now.
|
| Films are going to look more like fanfiction.net, Bandcamp,
| ArtStation, and Steam. That's a good thing.
|
| I have friends in IATSE (film crew union) and AI is going
| to hurt their work. The nature of work changes, and new
| opportunities arise. But what's hurting them right now is
| that film productions are being offshored to Europe and
| Asia to break up their unions and bank on cheaper local
| labor. Production in Atlanta is one sixth of what it was
| just a few years ago.
|
| I also have friends who write and direct that are looking
| at this as their big chance to build their own audience.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Yeah, just like how the Odyssey became worthless when
| people started writing things down, the bible fell into
| obsolescence with the printing press, and Ulysses was
| usurped by the internet.
| kouru225 wrote:
| >With AI, this entire vast content library is about to be
| worthless anyway
|
| That's just not how humanities work
| xp84 wrote:
| Yeah, even I, who is pretty bullish on AI in general,
| agree in doubting the premise that AI is going to make
| movies that are so good that people stop having any
| interest in older movies.
|
| I think it's more likely that once Gen Z is the oldest
| surviving generation, maybe no one will watch _any_
| content longer than a TikTok due to attention span
| degradation and Hollywood just churns out vertical 2
| minute videos direct to phones rather than release
| movies, and those would be some mixture of AI and human-
| created work.
| almostdeadguy wrote:
| Yeah I can't wait for "Forest Gump 2", The Simpsons Live
| Action starring John C. Reilly as Barney, and "Lord of
| the Rings But It's A Wes Anderson Movie". AI distilling
| the absolutely worst and most cynical Hollywood trends
| into full length motion pictures. I've yet to see
| anything remotely approaching non-slop from AI-generated
| video.
| genewitch wrote:
| Birdemic 3, deathstalker 4, star wars episode N, star
| wars episode N+1, star wars non-episode A, star wars non-
| episode [...]
|
| Yeah, boy, I'm glad humans are making novel stuffs.
| almostdeadguy wrote:
| Yeah that is literally all the movies being made by
| people, unlike AI which has produced groundbreaking
| creative works.
| echelon wrote:
| This already happens without AI, it's just that studios
| can only produce so many films given the budget, labor,
| and time constraints.
|
| Tell me that any of the "Jurassic Park" films beyond the
| first were necessary. Or the "Lord of the Rings" films
| and shows beyond the original trilogy. These are products
| of the classical studio system. They keep trying to
| remake "Back to the Future" and as soon as Zemeckis dies,
| they'll have their way.
|
| There will be amazing art made using AI, and AI will
| enable extremely talented creators that could have never
| made it in the classical studio system.
|
| Don't be so pessimistic.
|
| We're going to have "Obra Dinn" and "Undertale"
| equivalents in film soon. Small scale auteurs sharing
| their mind's eye with you.
| almostdeadguy wrote:
| Seems like we should have seen these groundbreaking
| creative works that have been totally inaccessible to
| create without AI by now rather than a million "X as a
| Wes Anderson Movie" trailers. Filmmaking has not been an
| inaccessible creative endeavor since like the 1910s.
| Budget price cameras have been with us for a long time.
| It's a weird AI company invention to suggest there are
| people who've been shut out of this pursuit for some
| reason. Creators don't need to wait around for AI to
| generate slop out of prompts, they can make movies.
| echelon wrote:
| You've got the cart before the horse.
|
| The technology has to exist first. The technology is
| first picked up by early adopters: hustlers, marketers,
| hypsters. Not by practicing professionals.
|
| It takes time for the new tools to work their way into
| the creative field. It first gets pushback, then it
| happens a little, and then all at once.
|
| We're still super early days into this tech. Give it more
| time and it'll be all-capable and everywhere.
|
| The canary in the coal mine is all the young people
| playing with it.
| saint_yossarian wrote:
| Thanks, I hate it. Can you point me to any examples of
| AI-generated content that's actually worth
| reading/watching/listening to?
| echelon wrote:
| It's super early, and a lot of artists have issues with
| controllability that make the tools hard to incorporate.
| This is quickly changing.
|
| Here's a really small scoped short film made with the
| limited tools available half a year ago. It accomplished
| simple storytelling with limited tooling:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t_SgA6ymPuc
|
| You're going to see more and more ambitious stuff soon.
| We're beginning to have the ability to control
| characters, have consistency, block, and steer.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| Silicon Valley Brain Rot claims another victim. Sad to
| see.
| echelon wrote:
| I have direct experience with this field.
|
| I've written, directed, and acted in independent films.
| I've worked on everything from three person crews all the
| way up to 200 person shots. Even mocap and virtual
| production.
|
| We're now developing film and VFX tools for individual
| artists, and the world is full of artists. It's been
| starved for films, however. The studio production system
| only had so much annual capacity per year, and most
| creators never get the opportunity to helm a project of
| their own.
|
| You're not crying over the accessibility of digital art,
| digital music, indie games, or writing.
|
| Film production and distribution has been bottlenecked at
| the studio level for far too long due to capital,
| logistics, and (previously) distribution barriers. That's
| all changing now.
|
| Films are going to look more like fanfiction.net,
| Bandcamp, ArtStation, and Steam. That's a good thing.
|
| I have friends in IATSE (film crew union) and AI is going
| to hurt their work. The nature of work changes, and new
| opportunities arise. But what's hurting them right now is
| that film productions are being offshored to Europe and
| Asia to break up their unions and bank on cheaper local
| labor. Production in Atlanta is one sixth of what it was
| just a few years ago.
|
| I also have friends who write and direct that are looking
| at this as their big chance to build their own audience.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| > Films are going to look more like fanfiction.net,
| Bandcamp, ArtStation, and Steam. That's a good thing.
|
| It is already starting too. Click on some random 'read a
| sci-fi story' and your YT feed will be full of AI
| pictures with moderate coherency (depending on what AI
| tools they are using). Sometimes it will be very short
| videos with moderate in scene and poor inter scene
| coherency. It was utterly garbage a year ago with most of
| them sticking to static pictures. Voice clone is like 98%
| there and hard to tell at this point. If you listen to
| the story structure you can tell an AI probably wrote the
| story too.
|
| There are services out there were you can say 'write me
| the lyrics to a metal song about ducks and chickens' and
| then take that paste it into another service and say
| 'make a metal song with these lyrics' then paste the
| results into another service and put an AI voice of darth
| vader over it using the lyrics. That this is coming to
| video is not that big of a leap. That has gone from
| random limbs popping out of peoples foreheads to weird
| little janky things.
|
| I can today just use chatgpt and say 'write me a SCP memo
| on a man eating couch that stalks elephants of keter
| class' It will. I can add some small details and it will
| be an acceptable waste of my time. Written form is today
| being consumed quickly by the likes of chatgpt. The other
| types are next in line.
|
| People are already doing this. It is all over YT and
| tiktok.
| Frederation wrote:
| Art doesnt cease to be art when _new_ forms of art are
| materializing. Its up to the viewer.
| echelon wrote:
| That wasn't the argument.
|
| The argument is that few will watch the majority of WB's
| back catalogue, because their time is being spent with
| all the other attention sinks.
|
| This places a monetary value on the content, not a social
| or cultural value.
| spratzt wrote:
| I absolutely agree.
|
| It's also a silly to believe that because it's old it's
| culturally significant. There's plenty of ancient dross
| in the back catalogues.
| echelon wrote:
| 100%.
|
| The back catalogue will have a few scattered gems that
| you can find amongst the sea of mass media that appealed
| to its audience at the time. Most of that content no
| longer relates or makes sense to us. There's also a
| massive load of dreck and garbage.
|
| People should be realistic about this instead of
| emotionally invested against AI as the news media has
| tried to sway this. It's just a tool, and artists are
| starting to use it productively.
| kelnos wrote:
| "Culturally significant" is the wrong metric, and shows
| that you don't really understand why people watch what
| they watch.
|
| People watch all sorts of things, from all different time
| periods, because they _enjoy_ them. Sometimes those
| things are "culturally significant", but I'd expect
| that's not the most common case. Sometimes those things
| are B-movies from the '70s or brain-candy sitcoms from
| the '90s.
| inopinatus wrote:
| This was already true irrespective of any emerging media.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't agree with that argument. I am constantly finding
| new movies and TV shows to watch that I genuinely enjoy,
| but I still (reasonably often, even) watch or re-watch
| older content that I end up enjoying just as much.
|
| Flooding the market with AI-generated content -- even if
| that content is good -- is not going to stop me from
| watching (or re-watching) older human-created
| productions.
|
| I don't think I'm all that unique. I don't watch
| broadcast/cable television anymore, but I know people
| (especially those less technologically sophisticated, of
| any ages) who still flip through the on-screen TV guide,
| and are happy to tune in to watch a 1980s movie on some
| random channel, ads and all.
| flessner wrote:
| I agree with that, although for me it's books that I
| really enjoy currently.
|
| After quitting most of social media, the jump-cutting in
| a lot of shows and movies nowadays gives me headaches
| weirdly... maybe that's just me though.
|
| Also, everyone that's at least a teenager has grown up on
| human produced content - most of this worry will only
| manifest if there's a generation that strictly prefers AI
| produced content instead of it just being a complement
| (e.g. the generated pictures in articles, or automatic
| clips from Twitch streams)
| hatmanstack wrote:
| It seems most of the things Netflix produces is optimized
| by the algo for attention. When I feel it directing me
| gives me the ick. Looking at you Squid Game.
| xp84 wrote:
| It's part of the same phenomenon we see in social media.
| The first waves of social media and YouTube were
| predicated on the idea that you either seek out content
| yourself or view a feed of content you'd already taken
| action to subscribe to/follow. Services like Twitter,
| Facebook and YouTube pivoted to go from "pull" where
| users select content or stay within their own networks,
| to a "push" model where the algorithm predicts and
| autoplays content, mostly from strangers, based on highly
| accurate predictions of virality and eyeball-retaining
| potential.
|
| Things like Netflix realized it too and buried the
| "Continue Watching" at a randomized index in an endless
| carousel, added Autoplay and even starts autoplaying
| something different after you finish a series. And of
| course, newer things like TikTok have always been this
| way. All these things are, I'd argue, user-hostile in
| that they're optimizing toward, in the extreme case,
| complete addiction.
| Yizahi wrote:
| No need to suspect, they are advertising that openly and
| are proud of it. Famously, years ago they invented House
| of Cards TV show by looking at the most popular search
| tags and picked the most popular ones to select a genre
| and theme of a new show. It was a story of many articles
| about Netlix back then.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Famously, years ago they invented House of Cards TV
| show by looking at the most popular search tags and
| picked the most popular ones to select a genre and theme
| of a new show_
|
| This does not appear to be true based on any articles I
| can find. I do believe they heavily follow the trends
| from their analytics in what the shows they buy and what
| they cancel, though.
| jsnell wrote:
| No, that's not at all what happened. House of Cards was a
| highly regarded UK TV series from BBC (made in the early
| 1990s). Like many UK TV series, it was ripe for an
| American adaptation. Netflix won the bidding war for that
| adaptation.
|
| Making up "famous" examples doesn't make your case
| stronger, but the opposite.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Tell you what, let's make a bet. I'll bet you $100 that
| there will not be a successful long form (more than 20
| minutes) AI production in the next 10 years.
|
| By that, I mean something where either the dialog or the
| video (or both) is completely done by AI. By successful,
| let's say something that wins a non-AI award (For
| example, an Oscar or Emmy) or receives something like a
| 70% positive review on rotten tomatoes, IMDB, or some
| other metacritic platform that is not specifically made
| for reviewing AI art.
|
| I do not believe the AI will live up to the hype of
| "We'll be making more long-form, quality content per
| month than entire Hollywood production years."
|
| I think we'll see long form AI, I don't think it will be
| high quality or even something that most people want to
| watch. The only people that will want to watch that sort
| of AI slop are AI enthusiasts who want AI to be amazing.
| echelon wrote:
| > By that, I mean something where either the dialog or
| the video (or both) is completely done by AI.
|
| I don't think LLMs can write nuanced character arcs, so
| let's not include them.
|
| On the subject of the visuals being completely AI, we
| need to be able to steer the video with more than just
| text prompts. Do you remove the possibility of using
| motion capture performances, compositing, or other
| techniques?
|
| I think we'll see 100% non-photon, non-CG visuals. I just
| think those performances will be human and the films will
| have a very human touch.
|
| If you can make that adjustment, then I think we have a
| bet.
|
| AI is just a tool. And artists are going to use the tools
| that can get the job done.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > On the subject of the visuals being completely AI, we
| need to be able to steer the video with more than just
| text prompts. Do you remove the possibility of using
| motion capture performances, compositing, or other
| techniques?
|
| Yes I exclude that, because the primary reason to say
| "We'll be making more long-form, quality content per
| month than entire Hollywood production years." is that AI
| has eliminated or vastly eliminated the need for human
| actors. I'd accept a model trained on motion data or
| whatever, but I do not think something that augmenting
| that visual input data counts towards actually reducing
| production costs and speeding up the process of creating
| media.
|
| I'd accept modifications to the bet that would still
| allow for rapid media production. If the human staffing
| is virtually identical to what it is today then that's
| not AI actually reducing costs. Hence, AI needing to do
| the majority of the labor.
|
| For example of what I'd accept, a 2 person team that
| creates a 20+ minute ensemble film in less than a month
| or 2 that meets the success criteria above. I'd reject it
| if the film is "Watch ted go insane in this room" (I
| think for obvious reasons).
|
| > I think we'll see 100% non-photon, non-CG visuals. I
| just think those performances will be human and the films
| will have a very human touch.
|
| We already have that AFAIK. But again, I don't think
| that's a huge cost or time savings.
|
| > AI is just a tool. And artists are going to use the
| tools that can get the job done.
|
| I agree, it is a tool. I disagree with claims of how much
| content it will ultimately enable to be produced.
| echelon wrote:
| > Yes I exclude that,
|
| So humans steering diffusion is off limits? No Krea, no
| Invoke, no articulated humans?
|
| It's like you're taking away Premiere or Final Cut here.
| Text prompts are not the currency of AI film.
| Controllability levers are essential to this whole
| endeavor.
|
| > I do not think something that augmenting that input
| data counts towards actually reducing production costs
| and speeding up the process of creating media.
|
| You haven't spent much time on set, then. An animator can
| do a performance capture on their webcam and adjust the
| IK. That's way different than booking a sound stage,
| renting an Arri Alexa and lenses, and bringing out a
| whole cast and crew. Set dec, wardrobe, makeup, lighting
| versus the moral equivalent of a Kinect and a garage
| studio.
|
| My 6 AM call times, early mornings climbing up to the top
| shelf of the prop house to grab random tubas and statues,
| and signing countless legal forms and insurance paperwork
| all beg to differ with your claims here.
|
| > AI has eliminated or vastly eliminated the need for
| human actors.
|
| I don't think it necessitates this at all. Kids are going
| to be flocking to the media to turn themselves into anime
| VTubers and Han Solos and furries and whatever they can
| dream up.
|
| Artists want to art. They're going to flock to this.
| We're going to have to open up the tech for that reason
| alone.
|
| I'm sure fast moving marketers and the cottage industry
| of corporate workplace training videos won't use humans,
| but the creative side will. ElevenLabs is great, but
| there's also a reason why they hired Chris Pratt, Anya-
| Taylor Joy, and Jack Black in the Mario movie.
|
| > For example of what I'd accept, a 2 person team that
| creates a 20+ minute ensemble film in less than a month
| or 2 that meets the success criteria above.
|
| I'll posit this: a two person team will make a better
| Star Wars, a better Lord of the Rings, a better Game of
| Thrones. An ensemble cast of actors piloting AI diffusion
| characters (or whatever future techniques emerge) will
| make a film as well acted as Glengarry Glen Ross. Perhaps
| even set in some fantasy or sci-fi landscape. I bet that
| we'll have a thousand Zach Hadels, Vivienne Medranos, and
| Joel Havers finding massive audiences with their small
| footprint studios, making anime, cartoons, lifelike
| fantasy, lifelike science fiction, period dramas, and
| more. And that AI tools will be the linchpin of this
| creative explosion.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > I'll posit this: a two person team will make a better
| Star Wars, a better Lord of the Rings, a better Game of
| Thrones. An ensemble cast of actors piloting AI diffusion
| characters (or whatever future techniques emerge) will
| make a film as well acted as Glengarry Glen Ross. Perhaps
| even set in some fantasy or sci-fi landscape. I bet that
| we'll have a thousand Zach Hadels, Vivienne Medranos, and
| Joel Havers finding massive audiences with their small
| footprint studios, making anime, cartoons, lifelike
| fantasy, lifelike science fiction, period dramas, and
| more. And that AI tools will be the linchpin of this
| creative explosion.
|
| If that happens in the next 10 years and we judge "as
| good as starwars" using my above criteria. You would win
| the bet.
|
| We on?
| echelon wrote:
| I think so.
|
| > we judge "as good as starwars" using my above criteria.
|
| Just to clarify, this would be an AI film or "tv show"
| winning at traditional awards: Emmys (The National
| Academy of Television Arts and Sciences), SAG Awards,
| Oscars (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences),
| etc. Or traditional film festivals such as Sundance and
| Cannes, eg. winning the Palme d'Or. I would even be happy
| setting a threshold whereby a film or long-format show
| must win more than one award from several such
| institutions.
|
| Maybe a preponderance of praise (20 or more) from major
| film and media critics like Roger Ebert (RIP), Leonard
| Maltin, Richard Brody, et al. could also be a criteria
| that must be met. Though perhaps that's a necessary
| condition anyway.
|
| This all sounds good to me.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yup, with the small caveat that the category for the
| award isn't something silly like "best use of AI in a
| film". I'm fine if it's like best VFX or whatever, but
| I'd have a hard time if the awards committee created a
| new category specifically to give awards for AI.
| echelon wrote:
| Perfect. You're on! :)
|
| No special category, and I'm even willing to bank on it
| being a category that isn't the moral equivalent of VFX.
|
| Let's remember to check back.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Let's remember to check back.
|
| :D Probably the hardest part of this wager.
| echelon wrote:
| Absolutely, haha :P
| gausswho wrote:
| By a whisker, I would bet you're right. But only because
| of your clause 'completely done by AI'. And I think that
| renders the bet kind of irrelevant.
|
| I would also bet that sometime in the next 10 years,
| we'll have a masterpiece of cinema on our hands where the
| heavy lifting (visuals, sound, even screenwriting) was
| largely done by an AI, helpfully nudged and curated at
| important moments by human experts. Or, by just one
| person.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I'm willing to modify the bet to "Just one person does
| all the labor with AI as the primary tool".
|
| What I meant by "completely done by AI" is that AI is
| doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting. Sound,
| visuals, script and ultimately humans are just acting as
| the director of that AI.
|
| In otherwords, a masterpiece of cinema created by one
| person and AI prompts. Masterpiece being judged by the
| above success criteria. I won't accept some spam film
| that an AI magazine touts as being a masterpiece.
| echelon wrote:
| > humans are just acting as the director of that AI.
|
| My pro-AI director friends tell me this is ultimately
| what they've been doing with humans all along. Sometimes
| he humans don't give them what they're looking for, so
| they ask again. And they have to fit within logistical
| and budgetary constraints.
| hathawsh wrote:
| Is there such a thing as a "HN Vote" post? Because this
| would be a great vote to put on the front page. The
| question would be "How much of the production will AI be
| doing in the movie/TV industries in 10 years?" and these
| would be the choices:
|
| 1) Everything. A single prompt will generate a full-
| length, high quality movie.
|
| 2) One person will be able to spend a few weeks or months
| to produce a high quality movie using purely AI generated
| visuals and audio, with at least part of the script
| written by AI.
|
| 3) AI will never replace some aspects of high quality
| movies, although it's not quite clear yet which aspects.
| It could be writing, acting, directing, or something
| else.
|
| 4) AI will never replace most aspects of high quality
| movies.
|
| 5) Society will rebel against any form of AI in movies;
| it doesn't matter how good AI gets, nobody will watch
| movies touched in any way by AI.
|
| My guess is 2.
| echelon wrote:
| #2, minus the part about AI script writing, and with a
| caveat that changes "purely AI generated visuals and
| audio" to something human-driven, AI-accelerated.
| buzer wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll
| hathawsh wrote:
| Wow, cool! Here's my poll. We'll see if anyone notices.
| :-)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42955244
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| In the same way AI will replace bland techno and run of
| the mill lofi hop hop, it'll do the same for all the cgi
| crap Dreamworks puts out twice a year.
|
| AI can copy things that are already copied, but you'll
| never get something as paradigm shifting as Toy Story 1.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| I agree with parent that the bigger issue is distribution.
| Installing random apps sucks. YouTube has distribution. If
| they can make more money off esoteric movies by using YouTube
| then that makes more sense than having an extremely long tail
| of content in your app that probably no one will discover.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for
| running your own streaming service, so letting Google take
| that hit makes a lot of sense.
|
| Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on
| 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix,
| Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max), I'd say the biggest
| cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test
| team. There are complexities here, like making these things
| work on different TV brands, versions, older models, etc.
|
| Pushing all the complexity to YT seems like a total no-
| brainer.
| jmholla wrote:
| > Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences
| on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except
| Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max)
|
| With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps
| are similarly buggy and painful to use. I run into an at
| least issue daily (usually multiple times a day) in every
| streaming app I use except Netflix.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >With the exception of Netflix, these other companies'
| apps are similarly buggy and painful to use.
|
| Yeah it's really annoying that they all recreated the
| wheel instead of just playing ball with netflix or paying
| netflix to license their technology. The only feature I
| miss from another service is that x-ray view stuff that
| Amazon has to let you know who is in a scene.
| sfilmeyer wrote:
| >or paying netflix to license their technology
|
| Does Netflix license their technology to anyone? I know
| of examples like BAMTech, although I don't even know if
| they still take on outside clients or just do Disney now.
| I get that their might be good options to license and
| that fewer companies should build crappy in-house
| products, but is Netflix one of them?
|
| From Netflix's perspective, it's not clear to me that the
| payment for licensing technology to e.g. NBC is worth it,
| versus hoping that they end up with an inferior product,
| especially when they're competing with each other for
| customers and licensed content.
| Yizahi wrote:
| I don't know about Netflix specifically, but some
| companies do sell all-in-one package solution to create
| your own kinda Neflix on prem. Don't know how great these
| solutions are, but I imagine with sufficient budget they
| should work ok.
| Suppafly wrote:
| I don't know if they license it specifically, or if
| anyone has even approached them about it. I do think it's
| ridiculous that all of these companies are making their
| own solutions that are all terrible.
|
| What they really should do is license their content to
| netflix for a fair price and just let netflix be the
| service people use.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Why do you think Netflix wants to buy it?
|
| There is no point buying everything as a streaming
| provider. It doesn't get you more customers and it costs
| money.
|
| Heck, Apple will not even let you put up anything on the
| iTunes store to purchase - they have to be very confident
| it will recoup their costs for encoding, ingest time etc
| etc.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> From Netflix's perspective, it's not clear to me that
| the payment for licensing technology to e.g. NBC is worth
| it, versus hoping that they end up with an inferior
| product, especially when they're competing with each
| other for customers and licensed content.
|
| Apple and Amazon Prime and Youtube seem to enable other
| services via their platforms, presumably for a cut. If
| the cut is large enough, seems like a good business move
| for Netflix also -- let the content owners focus on their
| business rather than some random broadcasting company
| trying to hire AWS infrastructure engineers and 3rd party
| platform testing experts.
| deelowe wrote:
| I LOATHE peacock. I don't know what checks they do at the
| start of the stream, but they always peg me at 720p or
| lower resolution despite having over 300mb. Its not an
| issue on any other streaming app and they give you no
| option to set it manually. Streams look like a dog's
| breakfast on my 4k TVs.
| palmotea wrote:
| I wonder if that's more an issue with them than you. I
| subscribed to peacock for one month during the Olympics,
| and it was terrible. Streams frequently were stuck at
| something super-low 320p, or just halted to that stupid
| sad cat error page.
|
| Cutesy error pages are cute exactly once, then they're
| even worse than a minimally viable error page.
| znpy wrote:
| Maybe the issue is on their side. Their best outcome is
| you paying for 4k hdr and streaming 720p. Bandwidth is
| expensive and slow to provision.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Bandwidth is expensive and slow to provision.
|
| Not enough to hurt a paid service. Let's say 6Mbps for
| pretty solid 1080p. And at peak maybe we have .5 streams
| per account going simultaneously (I bet the real number
| is significantly lower). So we need 3Mbps per account.
| How much does a Mbps cost? "Across key cities in the U.S.
| and Europe, 400 GigE prices range from $0.07 to $0.08 per
| Mbps."
|
| Peacock doesn't even offer 4K most of the time or on the
| olympics, but for services that do a $1 upcharge should
| be more than enough to cover the bandwidth difference.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I laughed.
|
| Netflix 4K is some bs in my experience. A 4K file of the
| same show, pirated, is vastly better quality. Whatever
| they do to it is just vandalism.
| bb88 wrote:
| Are you behind a CG-NAT? Not all companies have caught up
| to the fact that one IP is used by multiple customers
| now.
|
| Things like throttling by IP Address which used to be a
| viable option is not effective anymore.
| recursive wrote:
| Could be a DRM thing. You might not have a trusted
| display/decoding device, so it gives you the low res.
| jampekka wrote:
| Gotta love how streaming torrents through shady debrid
| and indexing services with Stremio is a smoother
| experience than what these megacorporations with massive
| budgets manage to scrape together.
| cs-78 wrote:
| YouTube painful to use compared to Netflix ? Last week I
| noticed my video froze on netflix while audio moved
| ahead.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> With the exception of Netflix, these other companies'
| apps are similarly buggy and painful to use.
|
| I agree -- if I could separate these out into 3
| categories rather than 2, Netflix/YT would be in a class
| of their own, way ahead of the pack.
|
| I am constantly surprised how Apple TV offers such a poor
| experience despite their excellence in Product Management
| in other product areas. I was watching Apple TV last
| night and my wife and I slogged thru the recap and intro
| because we were so afraid of the app chocking on the
| "Skip" button.
|
| Aside from Apple, which seems to be a Product Management
| issue, I find other platforms to bucket into two areas:
|
| 1. Poor performance, probably due to bad threading and
| poor cacheing
|
| 2. Incompatibility with older TVs. TVs last 8-10yrs
| easily these days, and features have topped off so people
| do not upgrade. This means you have a LOT of target
| builds and compatibility to check and I dont think they
| test all the possible builds.
| dade_ wrote:
| don't forget the burning paper bag of shit that is
| Paramount+ on PS5. There is no shame anymore.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| It's gotten better over the past couple of years. Even
| Disney+ has a lot of issues like some kid shows will play
| like 10 minutes of end credits after an episode instead
| of going to the next one. Not sure if that is finally
| fixed. In general, Netflix is still light-years ahead of
| the competition.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Paramount+ on iOS was terrible the last time I used it,
| too. I tend to binge Star Trek on flights, so I like to
| download a bunch of episodes. Paramount+ had such a
| terrible experience (at least 10% of the time videos
| would be downright corrupted), I ended up cancelling my
| standalone subscription and getting it through Apple TV
| so I could use the Apple TV app.
| adrr wrote:
| Biggest cost is generating an ad platform that can get enough
| data to serve relevant ads to people increasing the
| effectiveness of the ads. You can't beat googles ad platform
| in terms of data and targeting.
| myself248 wrote:
| If they just wanted to throw this stuff out there at minimal
| bandwidth costs, a page of .torrent files and a seedbox would
| get it done for pennies.
|
| "Streaming", who gives a hoot, just download it like
| everything else. "Service" can take a hike, video player
| software already exists and all the UI work is done. That
| part is utterly superfluous.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It would be really nice if YouTube could give uploaders the
| ability to schedule ad slots, rather than them appearing
| randomly.
|
| Unless they do this already and stuff I watch just does it
| badly, of course.
| meithecatte wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is a feature that's available at least
| to big creators - I remember a Tom Scott video doing a bit
| involving scheduling an ad at a particularly fitting moment.
|
| You might have to be a YouTube partner or something like that
| to make use of this stuff, though.
| jonas21 wrote:
| You need to be in the YouTube partner program, but that's
| not just available to big creators.
|
| You need at least 1000 subscribers and a certain amount of
| video watch time per year to qualify, but even fairly small
| channels can meet this bar. When people talk about getting
| monetized on YouTube, this is what they mean.
| slongfield wrote:
| Yeah, YouTube's UI lets you set where the ads go. The creator
| tools let you set how many, and where midroll ads will play.
| However, most creators just click the "insert automatically"
| button.
|
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6175006
| mrandish wrote:
| > However, most creators just click the "insert
| automatically" button.
|
| That seems like a good opportunity for a neural net feature
| that's smarter than simple scene cut detection. While most
| theatrical films lack many _good_ spots for commercial
| breaks, there are certainly a lot of "less bad" spots.
| Sadly, I doubt YT will bother since they no longer seem to
| care about viewer experience in recent years.
| not2b wrote:
| YouTube doesn't even bother with scene cut detection;
| they'll insert ads mid-sentence. A lot.
| heywire wrote:
| That's one way to keep you watching, you've at least
| gotta hear the rest of the sentence! /s
| not2b wrote:
| It appears that the intent of the ad scheduling is to be so
| annoying that it motivates people on the fence to pay for
| premium.
| genewitch wrote:
| Would ABC make more if everyone switched to premium, or if
| everyone was ad-suppported? Be thorough, include ad sales
| people, telephone lines, lawyers, etc.
| paulddraper wrote:
| They do.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| South Park has been available on their website free to stream
| with ads.
| tootie wrote:
| Does YT offer more revenue than something like Tubi?
| xattt wrote:
| I'd like to note that older movies have often been "live
| streamed" in an ad-supported format for many decades.
|
| You were even able to use your own equipment to "download"
| these movies to local "storage" and keep a collection with
| enough determination. The resolution was often terrible,
| somewhere around 240i and 360i.
|
| /s
| nix0n wrote:
| > The resolution was often terrible, somewhere around 240i
| and 360i.
|
| It's gotten better, though! The digitization of broadcast TV
| added a bunch of new channels, which are in HD. They have
| decimal channel numbers.
| beretguy wrote:
| > Youtube also shows ads
|
| Not on my devices :)
| paulddraper wrote:
| It takes _a lot_ of YouTube views to add up to a Apple
| /Amazon/etc rental.
| ldoughty wrote:
| But it also takes very little effort or cost... It's
| effectively free money at their scale.. no bandwidth fees, no
| storage, no user membership, etc... it's hard to sell a pile
| of junk no one wants to watch in a subscription too -- okay
| that might be harsh, but a LOT of old stuff is do do hard to
| watch nowadays... So there's certainly some great classics..
| but also a lot of stuff that most people would never watch
| outside a class assignment
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It didn't take them this long.
|
| Several studios have done this for years. Paramount literally
| did it more than a decade ago.
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/...
| shrikant wrote:
| The full list:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...
| godshatter wrote:
| Mr. Nice Guy has 15M views so far. I don't know what that comes
| out to in ad revenue, but it seems like maybe this was a good
| idea. Most of the others don't have anywhere near this, though.
| andix wrote:
| Free money?
|
| It's probably zero effort to upload them to YouTube. People watch
| them. YouTube generates ad revenue and pays out Warner Brothers.
|
| They probably choose the movies nobody wants to pay for any more
| on VoD/DVD and nobody views on paid streaming services.
| sureIy wrote:
| I wonder if any of them will make back the amount of dollars
| the intern was paid to upload them.
| andix wrote:
| I would say 1 million views should roughly pay the interns
| salary for a month. Some of the movies accumulated around a
| million views within the first 10 days.
| HighChaparral wrote:
| It's Zaslav-era WB so there's probably some kind of weird tqx
| write-off happening, or some contractual agreement that they're
| living up to in the cheapest way possible.
|
| Some good stuff on there - shout out to The Mission, which
| includes one of Morricone's greatest scores.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| This is a good point. They may lose rights if they fail to
| distribute for a certain amount of time. They may revert to the
| filmmaker or someone else. This is a way to comply
| contractually.
| ValentineC wrote:
| My first thought upon reading the headline was that it's better
| that they put everything on YouTube, than delete more stuff like
| what they did to Cartoon Network's website:
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2024/08/david-zaslav-warner-bro...
| rwmj wrote:
| When Jeremy Irons was asked why he did Dungeons & Dragons (2000),
| he replied _" Are you kidding? I'd just bought a castle, I had to
| pay for it somehow"_
|
| (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190374/trivia/)
| fullshark wrote:
| Michael Caine's quote about Jaws 4 is similarly great:
|
| "I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was
| terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it
| is terrific."
| falcor84 wrote:
| As someone with more modest means, I'm wondering - was that
| just a quip, or is it really possible for rich people to buy
| property first, and then figure out how to pay for it? How do
| they finance it?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > How do they finance it?
|
| The same way most people do, with a mortgage. The difference
| is what a bank is willing to lend you if they see you have a
| significantly higher than average income.
|
| It's also possible he wasn't just talking about the purchase
| payment. Large, old, valuable buildings also often require
| very large upkeep bills.
| abofh wrote:
| It depends on levels of money. At musk levels, it's cheaper
| to borrow from your shares on margin, spend that, and never
| repay anything but interest - no financing involved except
| lending out your own assets. At multi-million illiquid,
| you're going to go to a bank, show them accounts and historic
| income, and because you're an actor with bursty income,
| they'll smooth out the line and decide if the loan you want
| is above it or below it. He likely had the means for the down
| payment and the assets for enough monthlies that the bank
| felt it was de-risked, but you can also do hard-money loans
| and similar if you have expectations of payment - but they
| tend to come with heavy duty strings.
|
| Which is to say - for musks, not like you or I, for the
| illiquid, very much the same process, but with money managers
| and the like doing the actual bank negotiation.
| bombcar wrote:
| For the type of rich people like actors, sports stars, etc,
| yes.
|
| You may have an actor of a certain budget who has no roles
| lined up currently, but is a pretty safe bet he will get some
| lined up eventually, and so he's a decent risk for a loan.
|
| This is private lending and is a completely different world
| than a home loan that is resold. Depending on the dollar
| amount, the lender will have their own appraisers, etc taking
| careful look at the collateral (which might be the castle
| you're buying, or that and more, or something else entirely,
| like royalties due, etc).
|
| They will then structure it so that it's a heads they win,
| tails they don't lose - only lending as much as they're sure
| they'll be able to get back out (up to and including having
| alternate buyers lined up to purchase the property if it gets
| foreclosed, etc).
| HighChaparral wrote:
| This is the castle in question:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilcoe_Castle
| https://jeremyirons.net/kilcoe-castle/
|
| It's quite something. He bought it for IEP 150,000 (around
| EUR190,000) but likely spent an order of magnitude more
| restoring it.
| bena wrote:
| I love this.
|
| It's been ages since I've seen "Oh God" or "Hot to Trot". Not
| great movies, not genre or culture defining, but fine. These are
| movies I'd watch if they were on.
|
| I hope they do more. And I hope other distributors follow suit.
| Basically, I want Critters 1-3.
| jeffwask wrote:
| This is what I thought digital content would be two decades ago.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I don't know about officially sanctioned releases, but I feel
| like I've watched entire movies through YouTube shorts at this
| point... there's a really simple grift that rockets to the top of
| the algorithm and also pushes people into a pipeline for other
| clips of the movie:
|
| 1. Clip a movie scene and crop it for vertical aspect ratio
| (maybe some AI is used here to choose the focus point of the
| scene)
|
| 2. Add royalty-free background music and possibly other tweaks
| like mirroring the video
|
| 3. Title it something generic that doesn't acknowledge it's a
| movie/show, like "College dropout beats Harvard Law grads to the
| job" for the scene from Suits (Note: for shorts, the title
| doesn't matter if it's algorithmically chosen to play next... in
| fact at this point the more relevant title is the optional link
| to a different short... the real title is barely visible)
|
| 4. Do not mention the name of the movie/show in the title or
| description
|
| There are hundreds of accounts producing these shorts on an
| industrial scale. It's easy to see how the automation works and
| also why it's successful. It's clickbait (people want to comment
| or ask for the title, or correct the title to mention it's
| actually from a movie); it's addicting (it funnels people into
| watching more clips from the same movie... funny how YouTube
| knows to do that but not that it's copyrighted, btw); it's self-
| optimizing (if the algorithm _doesn't_ surface the next short,
| people go looking for it specifically); and of course, it's
| automatable (everything from curation to editing can be
| automated, and just a sprinkle of AI is apparently enough to
| obfuscate the automation).
|
| What's fascinating is that YouTube hasn't stopped this. The
| shorts algorithm can obviously detect the similarity between
| clips from a movie, but the copyright/spam detection algorithm
| can't detect the same.
| atVelocet wrote:
| What i never understood:
|
| Why not use some kind of interlacing and randomly sort the
| lines. The result is a valid video file which could be uploaded
| to YouTube. Then deinterlace with a browser plugin and the
| random pattern used to scramble the lines. Same can be applied
| to the audio.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Not sure I'm understanding you, but it sounds like you're
| asking why not upload a video that's scrambled until viewed
| with a browser plugin that knows how to unscramble it?
|
| That would be cool, but it won't be very effective as a viral
| video if everyone needs to have a browser plugin installed :)
|
| The challenge here is to circumvent the copyright algorithms
| while still looking like a normal video to the user (who has
| no external tools installed).
|
| However, for things like hosting pirated streams or sharing
| content out-of-band, it would be interesting. It's basically
| the a minimally lossless form of steganography.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Because that requires extra effort from users. The intention
| here is to maximize the number of viewers reached, not to be
| maximally evasive.
| coliveira wrote:
| Youtube doesn't want to stop things like this. It is only when
| studios get furious and go after Alphabet that they'll finally
| move to do something about it.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Yeah I guess that's the interesting thing - where are the
| normally litigious studios?
|
| Tinfoil hat time - I've noticed these shorts cropping up from
| shows which are about to be re-released on Netflix...
| genewitch wrote:
| Then that's not tinfoil bat that's just "oh they had a
| small marketing budget"
| spelunker wrote:
| Ok but how am I going to watch the first three Critters films??
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _Anyway, Waiting for Guffman still holds up, and you can watch
| it on YouTube, for free._
|
| On top of that it never was released outside of the US before! As
| a European fan of Spinal Tap I'm quite excited to finally be able
| to see this film.
|
| Also: no mention of The Mission, which is also in the list?
| That's quite a critically acclaimed one. Just look at these
| opening paragraphs from its wikipedia page:
|
| > _The Mission is a 1986 British historical drama film about the
| experiences of a Jesuit missionary in 18th-century South
| America.[4] Directed by Roland Joffe and written by Robert Bolt,
| the film stars Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally, Aidan
| Quinn, Cherie Lunghi, and Liam Neeson._
|
| > _The film premiered in competition at the 39th Cannes Film
| Festival, winning the Palme d 'Or. At the 59th Academy Awards it
| was nominated for seven awards including Best Picture and Best
| Director, winning for Best Cinematography. The film has also been
| cited as one of the greatest religious films of all time,
| appearing in the Vatican film list's "Religion" section and being
| number one on the Church Times' Top 50 Religious Films list._
|
| Oh, and the score is by a certain Ennio Morricone.
|
| [0]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IpNXw6Y05M&list=PL7Eup7JXSc...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mission_(1986_film)
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Certainly "The Mission" is a great film. Absolutely top notch.
| And with one of Morricone's better scores.
| tomaytotomato wrote:
| I discovered the Mission through an Ennio Morricone playlist,
| and didn't regret it.
|
| Not a religious person but it made me aware of who the Jesuits
| were and read up on them. Truly a fascinating part of the
| Catholic Church, they're like crack Navy Seals in religious
| terms, or 10x engineers of the Vatican :)
|
| I sometimes program whilst listening to "Gabriel's Oboe" on
| repeat for hours and hours
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OIna_nXFxM
| wbl wrote:
| What is the similarity between the Dominicans and the
| Jesuits?
|
| Both were started to fight heresy: the Dominicans the
| Cathars, the Jesuits the Protestants. Both were started by
| soldiers. Both have unique spiritual disciplines.
|
| What's the difference? Meet any Cathars lately?
| cptnapalm wrote:
| 10 out of 10. Would guffaw again.
| richiebful1 wrote:
| To be fair, the Protestants had the printing press and
| significant political support on their side
| taurknaut wrote:
| Luther also showed up just as the HRE's centralization
| was beginning to show major major cracks. Luther wasn't
| the first "heretic" to challenge the catholic church, but
| he was the first one with major political support (a duke
| or a prince, I can't recall which).
| bregma wrote:
| Jesuits are usually ordained priests. Dominicans are
| usually not. The difference is black cassocks vs. white
| tunics.
| zeristor wrote:
| For some reason I thought the Eurythmics single "Missionary
| Man" which came about at the same time was the film tie in.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionary_Man_(song)
| Mistletoe wrote:
| This is wonderful news. My Waiting for Guffman dvd was lost at
| some point and I often open its case wanting to watch and
| remember again and get disappointed like Corky.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Waiting For Guffman is a great movie...Christopher Guest has
| done quite a few in this vein but IMO Guffman is the best.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Waiting For Guffman is perfect, up there in my Mount Rushmore
| of comedy films.
|
| The true genius is that where it would be really easy to be
| mocking these small town people and their hokey play, the
| movie toes the line flawlessly of making sure the viewer
| isn't really laughing AT them all that much. It's also worth
| noting that the play itself at the end isn't a disaster but
| actually a wonderfully produced show that the audience and
| town love.
|
| I think Guest's more recent films went a bit too far into the
| "mocking" part of the Mocumentary, but Guffman doesn't.
|
| Also worth mentioning Catherine O'Hara drunk in the Chinese
| restaurant might be one of the most realistic portrayals of
| being drunk I've seen in a movie.
| mrandish wrote:
| > As a European fan of Spinal Tap I'm quite excited to finally
| be able to see this film.
|
| You're in for a treat. While somewhat similar, Waiting for
| Guffman is a bit different than Spinal Tap. It has layers to
| the satire that are even more subtle. Not as many call back
| lines destined to live in memes forever (eg "It goes to
| eleven"). It's more of a character study that's willing to
| simply bask in the absolute vacuum of unself-awareness long
| enough to let it wrap back on itself and evolve into sincere
| charm. Eugene Levy is a treat as always and Fred Willard's
| performance evokes echoes of his legendary work on Fernwood
| Tonight.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| This is a desperation move. Warner, like many other studios fed
| Netflix the content to make the service that is destroying them.
| Then a WB had a disastrous acquisition by ATT-- admittedly made
| worse by a Trump grudge that held it up for years. Then an
| acquisition by Discovery, that added very little to WB except bad
| management. Destroying the HBO brand, DC, etc.
|
| Why is this dumb? They get pennies for their assets today while
| they bolster the other tech giant that is going to kill them.
| Studios like WBD don't have the capital or the strategic vision
| to operate in this environment.
| croes wrote:
| Last time I checked there was no age check on the horror movies,
| which is especially strange for access from Germany
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| They do no longer remember who holds the IP but have copies
| laying about. So post them, if they do not get a strike by a ip
| owner- they might be actual yours?
| schnable wrote:
| It's not strange that they are attempting to monetize movies that
| don't generate subscriptions or VOD revenue. WB/Discovery doesn't
| have a free streaming service like Tubi, PlutoTV, FreeVee, etc.
| so why not YouTube? The CPMs are great.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Why are some great films mixed with some duds? This is classic
| Hollywood accounting. They sell N files for $M and then split the
| revenue evenly. The great film gets $M/N and so does every dud.
|
| In practice, the great film's revenues have already "earned out"
| any advances so that $M/N must be shared with outsiders. Often,
| the duds haven't made enough so the studio gets to keep all $M/N.
|
| I don't know that's what they're doing here. Certainly, they have
| enough data to accurately allocate revenues. But it's what's been
| done in the past.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The "Hollywood accounting" meme makes no sense. Anyone in the
| media production business can take 5 min to read the Wikipedia
| article on it (or use common sense) and learn that they should
| not accept compensation on terms completely controlled by the
| opposing party.
|
| If they do, then they had no negotiating power in the first
| place, and so had nothing to lose by accepting those terms
| (because they were not going to get a better offer such as more
| cash upfront).
| dark-star wrote:
| Within the last 2 or 3 months, I have noticed that a lot of old
| movies are popping up on my YouTube feed. This includes full
| movies from the 30s to the 90s, and some are even in other
| languages. They are being uploaded, often with a small watermark
| in the corner, and they are not taken down.
|
| I am rather curious as to why this is happening now (and
| happening across multiple countries, apparently) but I kinda like
| it.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| This is cool!
|
| I do get it, these movies are most likely basically "worthless"
| for WB at this point.
|
| Hell, I remember seeing Deathtrap and True Stories in the Wal-
| Mart $5 DVD bin 20 years ago.
|
| This is still better than letting them basically be completely
| lost/unavailable and the ad revenue makes it a positive cashflow
| proposition I bet.
| anothercoup wrote:
| For the same reason the guy wrote an article/ad about it. To make
| money.
| S_Bear wrote:
| Now if only whoever owns the rights (Fox? Disney?) would follow
| suit and drop the old Fox TV catalog (Herman's Head. Whoops!,
| Parker Lewis Can't Lose) on youtube so I could rewatch the shows
| I loved as a kid, but never stream anywhere.
| kindatrue wrote:
| The problem might be music rights clearance if they used a lot
| of contemporary music from actual artists.
| blackoil wrote:
| Many Indian movies are available on YouTube. Particularly old
| movies or dubbed from South Indian languages to Hindi. Some of
| them of 100s of millions of views. Considering home video market
| is more or less dead. YouTube is the best pay per view (via ads)
| available.
| genewitch wrote:
| VOD not PPV
| pentagrama wrote:
| YouTube playlist with the movies
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Eup7JXScZyvRftA2Q5h...
| tetris11 wrote:
| surprisingly not that many
| Galatians4_16 wrote:
| Could be for market research. Whichever is the most popular, gets
| remade or whatever.
| daggersandscars wrote:
| They're not being dumped. Putting them on YT lets WB make passive
| money while maintaining control of their rights with little
| effort on their part. If WB makes a better deal down the road,
| they can hide or delete the movies from YT.
|
| This also makes some of the movies more valuable by revealing
| hidden demand. WB will see their YT stats for their films and see
| where future investments or licensing deals may pay off. A
| streaming company is disincentivized to tell the movie owner how
| the film is doing.
| quxbar wrote:
| I've been using Youtube to re-discover a lot of fun movies from
| the 80s-00s that I never saw when I was a kid. It's quite nice to
| tune in and out while working.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Anything from before the 1980s should just be on YouTube, its
| easy cash for them on films that are sitting idle otherwise.
| Anything they aren't licensing to anyone anywhere should just be
| on YouTube. Or any sort of streaming platform that has sane ads,
| and anyone can see. It is really sad to me there's no genuine
| YouTube competitor.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| "you should just do X" generally means you don't have the full
| picture. You're completely disregarding all the union stuff
| that needs to be considered. You're forgetting all the little
| guys that make movies happen. Yeah the directors and actors
| probably don't care, but the other 100s of other people
| involved in making films probably do.
|
| Edit: You're right. Just disregard any laws and contracts in
| place. HN knows best. It must be that easy.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Early US copyright was something like 20 years + 20 years if
| they were still alive.
|
| Under that, everything before 1985 would be free of copyright
| already.
|
| I think the majority of Americans would greatly prefer that
| model; but, The Mouse had other plans and has extended
| copyright to approx 100 years.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I'm not saying that shouldn't change. But you're right!
| Just change copyright law! Easy. Brilliant.
| greiskul wrote:
| Apparently it was super easy to change copyright law to
| extend it over and over again.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Are the little guys receiving royalties from these movies
| decades later? I recall instances where actors paid some of
| the little guys out of their own pocket to keep movies going,
| Deadpool is an example of this.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yes, I'm pretty sure they do.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| > You're forgetting all the little guys that make movies
| happen. Yeah the directors and actors probably don't care,
| but the other 100s of other people involved in making films
| probably do.
|
| We're talking about movies that are 45 years old _at a
| minimum_. The majority of the people "involved in making the
| film" are dead at this point.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| > Anything from before the 1980s should just be on YouTube
|
| Agreed, but because all of that _should_ be public domain at
| this point. The idea that some company needs rent-seeking
| motivation to allow people to view 50-year old media literally
| until everyone who could have consumed it when it was published
| is dead is absurd.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I wanted to say that too, but I rather take any wins we can
| get. I mean, the best part is, if they made their movies
| public domain THEN put them all on youtube, they would earn
| so much ad revenue from them being on their YouTube accounts.
| bsimpson wrote:
| It's such a scandal that even though the original Mickey
| Mouse cartoons are finally in the public domain, the Mickey
| Mouse Protection Act is still preventing anything created in
| our lifetimes from ever joining the public domain during
| them.
| brudgers wrote:
| Why? My guess is the data Youtube Analytics makes available and
| the potential for making something a cult classic.
|
| To boot, if there's no revenue, there's no need to pay creative
| people. Indeed, if it boosts expenses under Hollywood accounting
| practices, those expenses might offset other income that would
| otherwise be owed to artists and their estates.
| penjelly wrote:
| people talking about ad revenue... It feels more like a
| reputational play, ie: throw some free movies out with the WBD
| logo, more people recognize the brand strength of WBD, then
| subscribe to Max. Though the selection is small and the movies
| don't look very good at a glance..
| pinebox wrote:
| I imagine the selection seems random because these are films that
| WB has the most favorable contracts for -- So there is no need
| for them to track number of streams so they can send some
| director or production company penny checks every month, etc.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| There is an increasing amount of UK TV uploaded to YouTube from
| whoever owns the rights. Have seen The Bill (26 seasons) and
| pretty much all of Gordon Ramsey's work recently (including a 8hr
| entire season video). ITV appears to have even created the brand
| "Our Stories" for their YouTube fly on the wall telly content.
|
| Much of this not-fantastic-quality TV could probably be easily
| found on YouTube even without the rights holder being involved
| anyway - so better they get paid?
| jsnell wrote:
| Also 18 seasons of Taskmaster, which at least I think is
| fantastic quality.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| Just watched one for the first time today! You are correct.
| n0rdy wrote:
| Since those are mostly old movies, my immediate thought was:
| "maybe it's a new creative way to create a new income stream for
| hard-to-sell-otherwise assets?". If a decent enough number of
| users watch them, it could bring some cash to the publisher,
| couldn't it?
| cptnapalm wrote:
| That's my thinking too. In fact, I was in a mood to watch OG
| film noirs, but between 3 streaming services, the only movie
| available was Sunset Blvd. Also failed to find any of the 1950s
| sci-fi movies I went looking for.
| n0rdy wrote:
| Indeed, nostalgia is a great selling point
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Because they need all the money they can get, they are a sinking
| ship. Next question.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Check out Peroscope films.
|
| They take public domain footage, mostly us government stuff, and
| release it and claim copyright over it.
|
| I took some of their public domain footage and put it on YouTube
| and they freaked out.
|
| Through logic and reason I was able to get them to admit they
| have no copyright right, as they were initially claiming.
|
| But they did have the YouTube terms of service.
|
| So, back to this.
|
| If they had public domain stuff they wanted to protect, this is
| another less obvious way to do it.
| m_ppp wrote:
| That's interesting, how did you find these guys?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| They found me. I found public domain old black and white
| military training videos on a public resource on the internet
| and put them in YouTube. Then they did the YouTube strike
| thing and I called them and the guy was a total jerk on the
| phone. Like Jerry McGuire or that other guy Tom Cruise played
| in Tropic Thunder.
| m_ppp wrote:
| They put a strike on you because they had the film
| themselves and were claiming copyright?
|
| Were you putting up those films just as a public good
| service or was it for something else?
| Gshaheen wrote:
| A friendly reminder that your local library has a ton of free
| online access to news sites, movies, and ebooks! Libraries are
| amazing! Support them!
| kouru225 wrote:
| The wind and the lion! Took me years to find a digital copy of
| that movie about 7 years ago
| dehrmann wrote:
| There just isn't much value in most old films. There are a
| handful of standouts per year, and anything in a major franchise,
| but the demand for everything else is low, so you might as well
| make it as easy to find as possible and get what money you can
| from it.
| personalityson wrote:
| All of Tarkovsky is on Youtube
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hBLv-HLEc
| georgeecollins wrote:
| It's been discussed here before but there are amazingly good
| soviet films available on YouTube.
| mrandish wrote:
| There was a time fairly early in Netflix's streaming era when all
| the studios were just dumping their old back catalogs on Netflix
| to get _some_ revenue from 'dead content' that I thought "Wow,
| someday soon pretty much _all_ the old content will just be
| available on a central streaming service. The future will be
| good. "
|
| Then the stock market started inflating the value of streamers
| because of ARR projections and studios adopted a gold rush
| mentality, pulled back all their content and each tried to launch
| their own service. Of course, this quickly fragmented the
| streaming market as few consumers would subscribe to more than
| one or two services at a time. As stock valuations dropped back
| to reality, the server plus bandwidth costs started piling up and
| the also-ran streaming services became break-even boat anchors
| for most studios.
|
| Now we're left with the cultural 'worst of all worlds'. A dozen
| inaccessible walled gardens each neglected by their owners and no
| easy, central way to find and watch an old, low-value film.
| Retric wrote:
| Most things are on Amazon if you're willing to pay for them
| individually. It's more buffet style streaming services that
| splintered.
|
| Per movie may seem expensive, but at the low end of hours per
| month watch time streaming services are a bad deal.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I don't like buying DRM-encumbered digital copies. I'm OK
| with streaming subscriptions because their catalogues are
| fundamentally ephemeral, but if I _buy_ a movie I want to
| know I can _keep_ it forever, even if the platform I bought
| it from disappears entirely.
|
| To that end, I only buy physical media that can be copied and
| have its DRM removed. On the plus side, Blu-Ray turns 20 next
| year and _still_ provides better image quality than your
| typical 1080p stream.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Even though the article says this initiative is not part of
| YouTube Movies/Premium, assumedly if one does have YT
| Premium/Music, then these movies should be ad-free, correct?
| billyjmc wrote:
| That's my experience with movies on YouTube so far, yes.
| futhey wrote:
| They're ad-free for Premium subscribers, but some small amount
| of the premium subscription fee is supposed to be divvied up
| between everything you watch, so it is technically being
| monetized.
| dade_ wrote:
| Good luck getting kids to watch them. Kids today have a hate on
| for movies or TV older than themselves. It makes sense since
| there has only been a handful of great movies in the last 20
| years. Dumping B grade and lower stuff on YouTube is only going
| to reinforce the idea.
|
| It's hard to believe how far Hollywood has fallen. I haven't paid
| much attention to trailers in years.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I work at Google, and I didn't even know that there are good
| movies you can watch for free with a YT Premium subscription
| until I saw this article:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/feed/storefront
|
| Includes Roger Rabbit, Billy Madison, Good Will Hunting, Wayne's
| World, Mars Attacks, Grumpy Old Men, Osmosis Jones, the 90s TMNT
| movie...
| bsimpson wrote:
| Now do Coyote v. ACME!
|
| (It was a Roger Rabbit-style live action + cartoon character
| blend, based on an awesome newspaper parody, that was completely
| created, received rave reviews, and then shitcanned by the
| befuddling new accounting practices of Warner Bros. Discovery.)
| whycome wrote:
| Sony has this thing they call Bravia Core (which they no renamed
| to Sony Pictures Core) and as far as I can tell, it's restricted
| to Bravia TVs (okay also PlayStations and an Xperia phone
| apparently). You get a certain number of credits when you buy a
| tv I guess. And then I don't think you can even buy more. I get
| that it's Sony trying to monetize their content in a way (though
| I'm not sure it really incentivizes the TV purchase if people
| don't really know about it...) but it seems like a step in the
| wrong direction if other studios are looking to make their
| catalogs more accessible. The killer feature for the Sony service
| though is that it's super high bandwidth and really high quality
| stream. (But, in testing it, it seems some of their tv processor
| hardware or memory limits can't handle the load).
|
| It's like the most bizarre version of a walled garden.
|
| At least using YouTube kind of makes it accessible to more
| people. And YouTube does have some high bitrate options
| aurizon wrote:
| All paid for, near zero cost to distribute, small crumbs of
| revenue, but from enough crumbs - a loaf can be made, and they
| have a lot of crumbs. I have poked around and watched a few and I
| liked them. Good for you WB = adapt and prosper
| xchip wrote:
| TL;DR: because they dont have a streaming service
| firebirdn99 wrote:
| because no one watches them, so better be available, and in
| peoples minds, grab attention (which is the #1 commodity in the
| world) than fall to obscurity
| tonymet wrote:
| They are not old they are classics
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