Who: New Technologies Market Impact

Before I get deep into the Deleuzian nature of this project, allow me a bit of rope to hang myself by suggesting I know something about the future (and full disclosure: I don't).

"So I have this feature I shot . . ."

 

I'm putting together the trailer and marketing package for a feature I completed with $4,500 and the above "camera package".  Right now it is being looked at by a major studio in town.  Why?  Not because they think it will make millions or be an Oscar contender.  I don't even know if they are interested in buying it (others are interested, so we'll see when it comes time to put cash on the table who shows up).

I do know that what they see is a feature shot with a phone at the cost of a used car that, at mobile device size, looks as good as their $4.5 M product.  That concerns them.  They see that in the 36 months since I shot my first frames there have been massive leaps in hardware and software for both Hero and Apple.  And those will continue along with more and more software automation of the post process.  We have hit a major fulcrum point in the history of filmmaking.

"You youngsters don't know how good you got it . . ."

Before this point, filmmaking was a VERY expensive process, thus very few people knew how to do it, and even fewer had significant experience in the process -- they were studio employees for the most part.  A very exclusive club.

I picked up my first Bolex in college in 1980 and quickly learned to shoot in a miserly fashion, then wait two weeks for lab processing.  Video came into its own in the 80's so I began to use it for all my work except an occasional short.  But it wasn't until the late 90's when 1080HD really came on that video began getting good enough to project large in a movie theater.  When I was at Digital Domain in 2001 we were compositing 1080HD files into A-list VFX sequences.

"Well hell, I'll just shoot a movie with my frickin' phone . . ." 

By 2010 1080HD was the format phones were using.  At this moment, today, my iphone 6S shoots 4k.  I don't even own the hardware to edit and view 4k, but some day soon I will because it will be standard.  The studios know this.  Their massive investment in production infrastructure is going to look very expensive on their budget sheets.  They've seen what happened before.

Most of them are attached somewhere up or down the corporate chain to a music company.  In the 90's they watched those companies go under, one after another, as audio software and hardware improved to the point where anyone could have their own recording studio that to most people sounded no different than the best studio up at Capitol Records.

"I'm sittin' on the fault line, waitin' for the twenty year flood . . ." 

The studio sees in Holiday, the future problem of generating revenue when the market is flooded with product.  With billions of people owning a cell phone and their children growing up with that technology and its constant improvements, being trained on how to make videos since grade school, when this next generation becomes adults there will be an endless supply of product out there.

Now most of that product will be of modest quality and for the moment, there is an explosion of work possibilities for established directors as Amazon, Netflix and others begin creating their own content.
It looks like to me, however, that in twenty years it will be very difficult to distinguish yourself as a filmmaker from any other filmmaker.

So although almost all projects will generate some revenue, there will be too much product flooding the market to make a living.  And there will be a generation of people who will be quite comfortable in roles from producer and director, to editor and on down to PA.  With that huge increase in the number of people with moving picture experience the rates for these jobs are going to fall.

"Back in the day, lad, we was kings . . ." 

Real life example: my dayrate as an unknown, 20 something Dallas photographer in the late 80's when I quit, was about the dayrate most photogs here in LA get -- today.  The editorial rate I got paid then for US News, Essence, Vogue, et al, is only $100 more today than it was then.  Every billboard advertising a customer's use of the product -- Apple "shot on iphone" that would be you -- diminishes the potential of a professional to house and feed a family.  I could also use real life examples from friends in the music recording business, but get the idea.

Maybe it's sad, I don't know, but it is a difference.  Instagrammers (what we used to call photographers) can reach a massive audience, but the ability to make a living as a photographer is rapidly disappearing.  And for the few that do somehow find a way to make it professionally, the pressure to stay employed increases with the long string of others waiting to take their place at a lower rate.  Pop music?  There is less diversity of artists in the top ten this year than there was ten years ago and a significant difference from 20 years ago.  Fewer and fewer make all of the revenue while thousands of bands vie for just a little traction.

The same will happen with filmmaking.  Soon.

In the meantime, I hope to make a little money.