One Step Forward Might Look Like Three Steps Back

One set of relatives lives upstate, and another very lowcountry (as we say in SC).  So yesterday I had a nice 4 hour drive to sit and think, and the following train of thought left the station.

Filmmaking technology is becoming less expensive (and sometimes only looks less expensive), and distribution on the internet ranges from incredibly easy to Hollywood-Labrynthesque.  Don’t worry, this isn’t a Paul Revere post crying out that the studios are crumbling (they aren’t), because only that system can afford to do some of the things it does.  I don’t want to see Hollywood go under, because, frankly, I can never hire the sheer amount of people that a big production requires.  Tons of jobs are out there for very skilled people, and it’d be a shame, in my mind, for both the work and the skills to disappear.

That said, I think that the lowering costs and easier avenues of distribution might lead to a culture that is more localized.  Don’t get me wrong, we’d all love to see our art in front of the world, but more and more I’m seeing people talk about targeting a niche audience.  Of course, I’m not sure its very healthy for art to target anyone at the outset.  It should be an outworking of whatever you’re working out.  Art should start personally, and I think for most people it does.

Anyways.  I think as filmmakers do more with less — crafting movies with shoplights and elbow grease — and we begin making for ourselves and our communities more, we’re going to see a kind of cultural shift to an older, community focused kind of mentality, as opposed to the mass commercialization that tends to dominate film production right now.   We’ll see more media crafted out of and toward where we’ve come from, who we love, how we’re made, and the values and sensibilities of our communities.  There are elements of this alive and well in much larger productions, don’t get me wrong, but I think we’ll see this attitude become more deeply rooted into the work that’s produced over the next decade or so.

I’m still working this out, but I think there’s some merit to it.  What do you think?