The Last Straw

The Canon 7D is going to be the last straw for all the trades in the movie industry.

Why? The movie industry is going through a similar shift to effective zero cost like the music industry did in the last ten to fifteen years.

As five hundred dollar personal computers became professional level recording studios (with only the analog components such as microphones remaining expensive for true high end quality) the last hold record companies had on controlling the means of production disappeared. Once the means of production was democratized, the means of distribution was next, with the spread of MP3s. The people who are producing music now, I don't think they expect to get rich, but if they do, it is probably because of MP3 spreading their reputations not in spite of it.

Now, with the Canon 7D, super low light, shallow depth of field moviemaking will be available for less than 2000. The 1000 dollar iMac is your editing studio.

Costs are approaching zero, and a lot of people are being hurt. I certainly have felt the backlasj, but it doesn't matter, you can't stop it.

When I advertise on CL for someone to help me make zero-budget movies, and say I can't pay, the posts are immediately flagged and removed by bitter, out-of-work movie people. I have to guess they're out-of-work; because at 7 pm if they're not shooting or relieved they are getting out of work at a reasonable time, they are sitting around being pissed off.

This is understandable, they think I'm someone with money holding out on them, they mention "deserving" money. This just shows a lack of understanding of economics: no one is going to pay you to do something they can easily and and enjoyably do themselves. It's just like working on an assembly line for a car-maker in Detroit-- unions help you get a share of the profits-when there are profits-- I am not against unions at all. But when the company is corrupt--which I have to assume Detroit carmakers were since Toyotas last 3oo,000 miles and American cars were lasting say 80,000-- and I think the American engineers were as smart as the Toyota engineers and some kind of planned-obsolescence thieves must have been at the top in accounting or something, keeping the engineers from doing things right--- when a company is corrupt, there aren't going to be profits to share.

You can see a parallel process today in the lowest-common denominator movies that are made in Hollywood. Everything is about the return on this piece of junk, this time in many movies. Big explosions, dumb crap talking down to the audience. Like a flashy, lousy American car.

The system is corrupt, you can't depend on it to feed you. Time to build your own.


It's not just the camera that gets cheaper-- that already happened with the HDV -- it's the exponential reduction in all the ancillary people needed around the production that used to make everything so expensive.

Let's take a shoot I directed on a commuter ferry a while ago.

There was a lead actress and an actor. We had a medium size 1/3 inch HDV camera, and were shooting on the deck with available light. The crew was a little leery, but no one stopped us. No permits, no sound man, no craft crews for the sound man or lighting people who aren't there, as the crew sizes shrink all the ancillary services shrink.

As the equipment sizes shrink, who's going to know who's filming a movie? Everyone has a freaking camera. They can't make you get permits any more. You just look like a bunch of people walking around with SLRs.

As for lighting, get PAs to wear white jackets and make them into walking reflectors standing near the actors. I can get shots literally right on the steps of City Hall without a permit in the nastiest cities in America.


Now, with the 7D