Digital technologies have shown great potential to democratize creation and consumption of media content. I become increasingly convinced that this potential is creating trends that may counter the conglomerates' desire to control all intellectual property and it's distribution. If this continues it will produce a unique golden age of peoples' art, based on a very democratic universal availability of production and distribution, and a cacophony of all the voices with an interest competing in an open market of ideas.

Change Happens:

Most of the interviews with those concerned with content production mention the great barrier that high production and promotion costs have become to real creativity and story driven plots. The best statement of this I read amongst these interviews was Richard Natale’s. In the following three quotes he clearly laid out the problem most of the interviewees concerned with generation of content with substance had, “there are just so many people that have to say yes to something, and so many people that you have to please, that it becomes almost impossible to do anything that comes from your gut. You have to justify everything in terms of every penny of expenditure.” (Natale, par.9)

“That's pretty much destroyed any sort of real impetus to create anything that even remotely resembles art.” (Natale, par.16)

“Everybody has to be basically in agreement on how it has to work, so everybody has input. So the video game guy goes, "We need a little bit more of this, because it'll make for a more exciting video game." So then the script gets changed from the start to make that happen…” (Natale, par.19)

While such blockbuster, action oriented genre films are in a sense more democratic, because they cross language barriers better, they do not fulfill much of the human need for story sharing.

I strongly maintain that digital technologies have, and will, put a constant pressure on the current state of affairs, in many ways, until, soon, the big blockbuster style movie can be made and distributed with out interfering with the production and distribution of a far more diverse set of movie styles, for an ever expanding and increasingly diverse market.

Allison Anders said of digital production, “It was a very different experience. ... I think you're more in control. You could learn Final Cut Pro yourself and be editing half the time. So I just think it puts more in the filmmaker's hands” (Anders 44).

Not only will digital production continue to get more accessible, with ever increasing functionality and usability, but also distribution will become increasingly powerful, cheap, and diversified. While it is next to impossible to predict all, or even many, of the forms that these technologies may take, from the multiple possibilities already present (and the many more that may soon be presenting themselves), it is not imaginable to me that the conglomeration and vertical integration of content production and management will not be halted, at some point in the near future, by the possibilities inherent in an increasingly powerful communications technology that is ever more productive, and valuable, the more horizontally it is organized and shared. Certainly, the big media concerns will continue to struggle to achieve more vertical integration, diverse tie in markets, and channel control, but it is hard for me to imagine that the ever climbing power, usability, and diversity of new technologies will not enable people to entertain each other with an increasing level of autonomy.

While I do not feel that we have much hope of government checking the conglomerates thru anti-trust actions, and I also expect the FCC to continue the recent acceleration of trends forcing technology into restrictive requirements that support the conglomerates growth and control, still, it is hard for me to imagine that the increasingly empowered human imagination will not find a way to secure it's own release.

Increasing facility of voice interaction and translation is making all content universally available across the language barriers. This will ensure an ever-expanding marketplace by opening the way for anyone to create or consume content in the languages of their choice. As Howard Stringer said of good talent overseas, “As we find that talent and develop it, I think you'll see other kinds of movies reaching out to broader audiences in the way that "Crouching Tiger" did. Maybe Japanese movies or Italian movies, and even Indian movies. The Indian movie industry is a huge industry that's never crossed international boundaries very successfully” (Stringer, par 11).

More available, cheap, automated, translation allows movies to be appreciated by audiences that had not been imagined when they were created. Surely Bollywood has many fans of Indian extraction worldwide that would jump at a chance for good cheap access to their content. They may even find themselves producing for the American mainstream market, the way that Hollywood now aims blockbusters at the overseas market.

While current translation algorithms are sporadic in their translation accuracy, and while it will be a long time before complex wordplay will translate well automatically (to the degree that it ever will), there is no doubt that these issues will soon be having an impact as yet another democratizing force in communication and creation of content in a more distributable manner.

The key thing that militates against the continued growth of conglomerate dominance is the synergy of possible possibilities. As the directions available for new technology to take grow, the new possibilities created by combining new elements may well soon out pace the combined efforts of the Federal Government, and the conglomerates themselves, to further create fascist control, vertical integration, and the dominance of bigger budgets, over the content we create and distribute.

Allison Anders only refers to it jokingly, but she speaks the truth when she refers to the fascist nature of the dilemma, “And it's made it really difficult for indies to survive, because now the local anchorwoman's going, "Oh, I haven't seen any of those on the top five. I better get out there and see those five movies." That's what she's going to see. And then some guy in Idaho's going "Well, God, what was the winner this weekend? Well, I better go see the winner." Which is, like, what is that? ... I consider it a little scary, a bit fascist, really, how it's kind of dictating.”

She is right, Thomas Jefferson is turning in his grave to see the damage such centralizing control has caused the discourse of our nation and the world. There is no room in such a restrictive marketplace of ideas to reclaim democracy and keep it healthy.

Ultimately, many people are already well positioned to consider the digital movie as little more than an extended effort phone call or letter, many have the resources right now to create and share a film with the same facility that their ancestors had to write a letter, send a telegraph, or make a phone call. As production and editing software become more powerful and available, the average person will have resources for production that are good enough to allow them to compete with larger budgets in the creation of the arts. There is a great possibility here for a system to develop where raw talent rises to the top. Collaboration is also increasingly more enabled by new technologies, as well research, and other such ancillary functions.

The new Hollywood is a very different place of many new possibilities at this time when Bollywood "Digi-nickelodeons" in Szechwan village gathering places seem to me inevitable.

Bibliography:

Anders, Allison. Interview. “The Monster That Ate Hollywood”. Frontline.PBS.May 2001. 02
Oct.2005. .

Natale, Richard. Interview. “The Monster That Ate Hollywood”. Frontline.PBS.May 2001. 02
Oct.2005. .

Stringer, Howard. Interview. “The Monster That Ate Hollywood”. Frontline.PBS.May 2001. 02
Oct.2005. .

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