Digitization and the film industry

Luke's week one reading 'Digital' points up the cornucopia of opportunities for "sophisticated independent cultural production" created by the digital age and the difficulty of actually making a living from this (p.1163). One of the outcomes of this paradox is a constantly shifting definition of what it means to be professional (as opposed to amateur).

Until quite recently it was easy to define, for example, a professional filmmaker. And it wasn't necessarily about money. It was about what are quaintly called standards.

Standards are the benchmarks we set ourselves, and a profession sets for its participants, which define the level of skill, creativity and commitment brought to an enterprise. So it used to be easy for instance to tell if a director had created a professional piece of work - because their film would attract a distributor and through that distributor, reach a paying audience (we're talking mainstream here). Distributors had their own reputations to preserve and audiences were "trained" by experience to expect a certain standard of story, performance etc.

Just doesn't work like that any more - well, it does, but traditional distribution is in its dying throes and the Hollywood film industry is (still!) thrashing around trying to morph into a structure that can accommodate the brave new world we live in. I don't rate their chances (look at the money they are throwing at 3D - interesting to watch the panic now they've discovered audiences still need, surprise surprise, a good story).

Now that distribution is out of the control of the corporations, and gear costs nothing, anyone can make a film and distribute it. Don't need a story. Don't need watchable characters. Doesn't matter how messy it is. Just bang off some footage and upload. There's an audience out there for anything.

Or is there? Is there a difference between reaching a few random eyeballs or reaching an audience, if we take an audience to be, at the least, a group of people with a common desire to watch/read/absorb the same product?

Seems to me the key to all this is, as it always was, does the product/film tell a good story? If it tells a good story, it will find an audience - or the audience will find it. Latest local film success in finding an audience is This Way of Life and coming up is Russian Snark. Both these films, while scoring some traditional promotion (e.g. this year's NZ Film Fest), are pursuing the new mantra of film distribution as articulated by Thomas Mai. In the old days you got the money, made the film, then promoted it - most films still do this. The new model is first promote your film, then raise the money, then make it - a fantastic example of this is El Cosmonauta.

Which brings me back to standards. It's a rough ride going through a revolution - and the IT Revolution is as big an upheaval as the Industrial Revolution. But the democratization of distribution, while its killing those filmmakers who can't adjust, is opening up so many new possibilities that the definition of what constitutes professional as opposed to amateur is shifting permanently, in favour of the amateur.

Just got to figure out how to make a living at it.