Studios are a bit like VCs. They even share similar language, “green lighting” works for both movies and start-ups. They both invest in something risky with the hopes of a big pay day sometime soon. They both construct hand-picked teams to finish or ship. They both exert subtle and not-so-subtle control on the creative direction.

The various tech conferences/showcases like Demo or Techcrunch act like film festivals. There are winners and losers, panel discussions, buzz generation, etc.

Both industries are equally clueless when it comes to predicting success.

Granted, I’ve done nothing but list a few superficial similarities but this idea seems pretty obvious, others surely have written more. This is a tough thing to Google tho—no matter what terms I use I keep getting Marc Andreesen’s Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley’s image. Not quite the theme.

There is, however, a book called Hollywood Economics: How extreme uncertainty shapes the film industry by Arthur De Vany.

Just how risky is the Movie industry? Is screenwriter William Goldman’s claim that “nobody knows anything” really true? Can a star and a big opening change a movie’s risks and return? Do studio executives really earn their huge paychecks? These and many other questions are answered in Hollywood Economics. The book uses powerful analytical models to uncover the wild uncertainty that shapes the industry. The centerpiece of the analysis is the unpredictable and often chaotic dynamic behavior of motion picture audiences.

It sounds like a fun project to mis-use De Vany’s math by shoehorning start-up industry numbers into his models.

Just to show you can’t extend this analogy too far, here are some places where it breaks:

Scale: everyone is equipped to see a movie. Most start-ups never get bigger than your college graduating class.

Impact: a great movie makes an emotional connection to the viewer. Short of the Pets.com sock puppet I haven’t made an emotional connection with a start-up since.

Success: a movie’s success is measured by the amount of money that trickles in over its lifetime, a start-up’s success is that it goes public, a big chunk all at once.

Googling around, you’ll find many articles & books
discussing (usually) the film’s architecture and set design. You can read about “Tativille“, the modern metropolis built outside Paris for the filming and famous for being a grand masterpiece of architecture so expensive as to have bankrupted Tati and the production company. But there’s so much more to it than that….

Everytime I watch Playtime I get something else out of it. This last viewing left me impressed with all the poor product & environmental design Tati manufactured.

Screen grabs of some of the better examples:

This scene has an office security guy using the building’s intercom to announce a visitor. It’s a great example of obscure buttons, meaningless feedback, and needless complexity.

This scene shows a demonstration of a broom with headlights. It’s a fun scene: the demonstrator loads the batteries at the top, screws on the end piece with this ridiculously long little springy contact thing and then switches it on with a flourish. Great sound design too.

Here’s what happens when you design something without any consideration for the actual audience. The kitchen pass-through doesn’t actually fit the various serving platters.

More design in a vacuum. Notice the hanging adornments behind the bar, right at head level. The bartender can’t see his customers without ducking.

I don’t know why I like this one so much. The maitre d’ is always banging into the column, perfectly placed to be in the way. Also the entry isn’t wide enough for both the maitre d’ and guests to walk through so it’s always an awkward interaction.

If you look closely you can see the imprint of the chairs on the backs of the men’s suits. Nowadays maybe a Nintendo or Nike could get away with that, call it a guerilla marketing campaign, walk around with a logo on your back—it’s edgy!

The green neon cross beams it’s unappetizing glow over the food display. Who can decide what to eat? It all looks inedible and gross.

Thumbs up from me!

Then you’ll need to embrace a few bowls of fried gravy on the way:

Steve shows some pics of his recent experience with a KFC advertising truck. (Pepsi, which owns KFC, seems to be experimenting with Bluetooth and advertising these days.)