Dear Netflix, Dear Hollywood, Dear Cannes Competition, etc etc etc
Dear artists,
You face tough times. Your audiences are bigger than you ever imagined. Your movies, your creations are now very easy to access, by anybody, from everywhere. But you can’t monetize this as much as you want. The artists can’t be paid enough, the producers can’t profit enough. There is no respect left for your noble profession. A screaming idiot with a video camera is more popular than a well thought, well funded movie with a dream cast.
There is a solution which I humbly suggest. Take the exemple from academic scientists. They are an absolute disaster as concerns the communication talent, but, reluctantly, you may grant them some intellectual capacities, even if used in the most weird way and to their least profit.
They invented Gold Open Access and I believe that it is a great idea for your business.
You have to recognize the problem, which is that you can no longer ensure a good profit from selling your movies. The audience will follow the cheapest path and will not pay you. That’s the sad truth.
But, what about the movie makers? They have money.
People from the audience is always seeking for the best movies. Give them the best movies for free!
You are the gatekeepers. Dissemination of movies is trivial. Make the movie makers pay!
You are the ones which can select the best movies. From the thousands of movies made each year, only a hundred of them are among the best, for a global audience.
Therefore, artists, if you want to work in the best, then you have to be in the cast of the best 100 movies of the year. Then you’re good and with some chance (there are lots and lots of artists, you know) you’ll have the chance to be in the cast of next year’s best movies.
Producers, why don’t you use your connection with politicians and convince them to take money from taxes and give them to you, in a competition alike to the various research grant competions in the academic world.
Producers can always split the money with the dissemination channels. They will be both part of the juries which decide which movie takes more funding and part of the juries which decide which movie is transmitted by Netflix, which one will deserve to be called a Hollywood production or, in the case of Europeans, in the list of movies from the next Cannes competition.
In this way the producers make profit before the movie is stolen by the content pirates.
In this way the dissemination channels (Netflix, etc) have the best movies to show, vetted by respected professionals, and already paid by the various competition budgets.
In this way politicians can always massage as they want their message to the populace. And finance future campains.
So the great idea, borrowed from the intelligent academic research community, is to make the creators compete and pay for the honor to be in the first 100 best creators, with the money from taxes, taxes taken from the audience who sees the movie for free.