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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

Why not both? The only reason any movie exists, excluding amateur films, is to make money.

The only reason any product exists is to make money.

Something being made with money in mind doesn’t exclude its other properties. Apple makes iPhones to make money, but they make phone calls. Disney makes movies to make money, but they provide entertainment.

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An amateur film student making an artistic film to tell a story is a lot different than Disney making $1.5 billion dollars on a single Avengers movie. Everything in the latter case is calculated. The parks will get new areas and rides, new merch will get created, video game partnerships, action figures and comic books, etc. That shifts the narrative from entertainment for the sake of entertainment towards revenue for the sake of revenue. I am not saying this is good or bad, but it is important to be able to see the distinction. Intention is important.

So you think the “artistic film student” isn’t trying to get into the industry “with the intention” of getting noticed by the industry to make money?

I don't. I think there are people who get pleasure out of expressing themselves through motion picture. I get it out of writing code. Conveniently, making movies and writing code are both things that society will pay you to do.

Look at who the major contributors are to Linux.

They aren’t doing it to make the world a better a place. They are doing it for the same reason that most people go to work - to exchange labor for money to suooort their addiction to food and shelter.

> An amateur film student making an artistic film to tell a story

And consequently these movies are mostly irrelevant because they only appeal to a tiny fraction of people.

They are about as irrelevant as someone writing a unix tool in Rust, pushing it to github, and linking to it in an email to a hiring manager.

Right, do people actually do that? Like to get a job? I’ve never looked at side project portfolios when hiring. Like unless that hypothetical rust tool was completely salient to the role and it was seeing critical adoption it’s basically not signal.

I doubt people make indie films specifically targeted at getting a job either.

I don't really understand your point then, I think both are equally irrelevant. If you thought that was going to be a gotcha because I place programming on a pedestal or something you misjudged critically.

> I think both are equally irrelevant

That is my point. They are analagous and equally relevant: no more. No less.

You'd be correct if you hadn't put the word 'only' in your explanation. Money is a motivation, but it's not the only one.

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