Yes, in many ways, the film industry may become more like the publishing
industry.  People will be able to make finished films on their own, much
like writing a book manuscript, and will submit it to distributors, much
like writers do to book publishers.

The effects of such a 'paradigm shift'  may be similar to what occurred
during the Renaissance with the invention of the Gutenberg printing press;
book printing & publishing became more of a demotic industry and less the
pursuit of a handful of Church scribes.  Given, the shift was not immediate
and took years of progress to reach the point where a writer toiling in
their home could have a chance of getting their book out to a large
audience; but, considering the massively faster rate of proliferation of
progress, and of today's technologies, it seems like the industry may reach
a book publishing parallel - if it does indeed reach such a parallel - in a
comparatively much-shorter time.

The interesting appeal of such an industrial shift, if it does occur, would
be found not only for the independent artist, but also for the scholar; and
while some film scholars do make experimental, avante garde, as well as
classic-narrative films, the production quality of narrative films suffers
in comparison to those industrially produced.  It seems probable that a
shift in the industry towards the independent artist will also favor a shift
in the production value of technologies available to the independent artist.
  It's only a matter of time before the independent artist will be able to
create a film which can compete, from purely a production quality
perspective, with those of the studio's.

Regards,
R. Inglis

>Most of it will be
>inferior and forgettable, and it'll become even more difficult for shiny
>new
>talent to stand out from the crowd. The challenge will be the smaller
>studios that can help secure distribution, but they'll be spending most of
>their time screening thousands of hours of digitally-shot film, searching
>for those few gems. They already do that when reading scripts. But at least
>now they have a finished project to help make their judgments. Perhaps
>they'll even expect a finished project instead of a script?
>

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