Continued from above..

5. MARKETING. We touched on this in the Cost of Production bullet, but let’s expand on this. Studios have hundreds (and in some case thousands) of employees dedicated to nothing but marketing. At any given time a studio could be spending upwards of over a billion dollars just marketing their current slate of films that are set to be released. This is where most of the risk in film financing occurs because it costs VASTLY more than just the production of the content. In fact, many films are made and then shelved until a later time (or never released, or go straight to video, or are only released in a foreign market, etc.) because either the marketing is too risky, there is another studio releasing something similar, one of their actors got caught in some damaging publicity, etc. Timing is CRITICAL to the release of a film. And, if a studio knows they will be vying for Oscar contention (which they apply for and then spend another $987359872460982456092486 campaigning for votes.. you think the ACTUAL political campaigns are bad, you should see the campaigns for the oscars!) then they release that particular film around the end of the year. It gets them qualified for Oscar contention and they hold it back so another studio has less chance of competing against it.

6. Measurement. The least sexy of the bullets is arguably the most important. Studios and ESPECIALLY television networks positively rely on measurement to gauge the success of their product prior to or post, distribution. (Generally, prior for film, post for television). Surveys, pre-screenings, press feedback, etc. is heavily relied on by studios to understand the best possible release strategy for their product. Even more money is spent on this endeavor and is billed to the film’s cost center.

Millions of people work in this industry. Thousands of companies rely on the entertainment economy to survive. A war on Hollywood would also mean a war on Joe’s Camera shop, where Joe has been renting cinematography equipment for the last thirty years. And also a war on Miguel’s Lighting, which rents lighting packages to studios and also helps out independent filmmakers because they have the revenue to give back to those passionate individuals that have a story to tell but don’t have the money to make it. And, all the other thousands and thousands of freelance professionals that depend on each project to pay their rent, their car payment, their water bill and to eat.

If you think of Hollywood as some Leona Helmsley world of mean, then you are both right and very wrong. Getting to the top of this food chain is like climbing Mount Everest, without a guide.. twice. It’s that fucking hard. So sometimes you encounter a little arrogance (ok a lot), and some entitlement. But MOST of the people that work in this industry are hard working, shit-shoveling, awesome, fucking people. They are your next-door neighbor, your son, your friend. And they choose to work in this industry because most of them can’t imagine working in any other field. They love what they do, they pay their dues (and then some) and they work harder than you could ever imagine.

I once worked on an independent film when I was living in NYC, trying to make it as an assistant director. I remember one day in July being in a 10x10 room with no air conditioning, no windows, 1000 watts of light, on take number 28 with 17 other people in the room. We started the day at 6:00am and we ended that day at 3:00am. On our feet all day in 98 degree weather, 104 degrees inside the room. And we fucking loved it. And you know how much I made that day? 50 bucks…. Fifty.

So, although I applaud Y combinator for finally shedding some light on the media start-ups that have been vastly ignored over the past years by VCs (HELLO! We need some funding people!), what they don’t understand is that Hollywood isn’t just a few folks that make up an entire global economy worth $2 trillion dollars. It’s a community of millions of people, representing millions of jobs that have fed the economy of this country for almost a hundred years. And that’s worth fighting for.

While I significantly oppose SOPA and PIPA in their current forms, the people of this country have already sent a message to our government that this is not the right legislation. Y Combinator should spend their energy and their vast reach across the capital investing landscape to fund smart media companies based on their merits, not on their short-sighted agendas.