About United Hollywood 2.0

The goal of United Hollywood 2.0 is write about the Internet and new media from the point of view of the people who make entertainment.  We want to become a community of creative voices - artists and entrepreneurs - dedicated not only to understanding how the Internet changes the rules of the Hollywood game, but to helping to invent that change.  To use Marc Andreessen's phrase, we want to help rebuild Hollywood in Silicon Valley's image.

Though United Hollywood was founded by a group of WGA members during the writers strike, our contributors have come from every part of the Hollywood creative community: writers, actors, and directors, teamsters and IATSE members, fans (and critics) of the characters and worlds we create.

The site is divided into four major sections.

The UH 2.0 Blog covers digital media, entrepreneurship, the Internet.  Over the next months, we hope to build a list of regular contributors with experience in both the creative and business aspects of the media industry.

The UH Video Blog is a running log of original Internet video.  Our goal is to post videos that are not just entertaining but are instructive in some way.  We might post a video simply because it was a hit, or because it suggests a creative point-of-view that is new or unfamiliar to traditional film or television production, or because it was made by someone with an important creative voice.   

The Union Blog is a continuation of the United Hollywood site that existed during the strike.  Our goal is to recruit contributors either from within the labor community - influential voices in all the Hollywood unions - or otherwise deeply informed about it.  We are pro-union but not against disagreement - a place, we hope, for informed debate.

The Union Forum is more open, a place where the members of every entertainment-industry union are welcome to create an account, participate in discussion forums, start groups and post videos.   Fans, lawyers, agents and executives are equally welcome.  The only rules are to keep discussion civil and focused on labor-related issues.   

Finally, the Content Lab is where we hope to learn by doing.  Our goal is to incubate and showcase 2-4 content projects a year.  We want to help creators try out content and business ideas in exchange for sharing some of what they learn from their work.  We want the Content Lab to yield concrete facts and practical advice and useful tools for people who want to create, market, and distribute original content on the Internet.

We recognize this sounds ambitious.  We know it will be hard.  We have jobs to do and mouths to feed.  But we don't ask for your patience.  We want your participation.  Join the forum.  Join the Facebook group.  If there's something going that we should know about - a great piece of content, your experiences making or selling a piece of content, a production company or investment fund looking for projects - then let us know by emailing a tip or a proposed blog post to unitedhollywood [at] gmail [dot] com.