The Internet, Professionals vs. Amateurs in Film and Television Production

"Digital media put the tools of production into the hands of the everyday computer user making it incredibly easy to produce content. These creative skills used to be something that people worked to develop. Now it appears that amateurs can produce content of a fair standard within a relatively short period of time. Where does this leave 'professionals' and highly-skilled artists? Choose one area of creativity and discuss some of the challenges facing practitioners vs amateurs in producing digital content."

Challenges in Filmmaking: Amateurs vs. Professionals

This essay aims to discuss two of the challenges facing professional versus amateur filmmakers today: firstly whether filmmaking is considered to be an art form and secondly the threat of film and television studios releasing digital content on the internet.

Film as 'Art': Professional “Hollywood” Filmmakers vs. Amateur Filmmakers

The perception of professional filmmaking, in this essay referring to films that fall under the category of “Hollywood” is in this day and age largely a negative one. Hollywood is seemingly “commercially driven with the mass-market blockbusters” (Fischer 2006), concerned with making money and maximising revenue rather than creating art. In his book, Cinema in the Digital Age, Nicholas Rombes argues against this stigma attached to Hollywood filmmaking, claiming that “We do not recognise the avant-garde qualities of blockbuster films today because we get caught up in the stories they tell, no matter how worn-out and familiar they may be to us. We are distracted by the plot. By the stars. By the music.” (Rombes 2009) Overexposure to blockbusters and stereotypical Hollywood films impedes our judgement on them as works of art. They have become known as entertainment; we get our fix of laughter or tears and move on, ignorant of the artistic qualities that exist within these films. Rombes here discusses a scene from X-Men 3, a film which falls under the umbrella of Hollywood:

“If you freeze a single frame from that scene, you will find a surreal visual elegance and a screen composition that scrambles realism: the boy standing in the sterile lab, fists clenched, his wings outstretched in beautiful defiance. On the left side of the screen stands his father in a dull grey suit, his back to us. On the right a terrified nurse. The camera shoots from the ground up; even though he is in the background, the boy dominates the frame. The dull realism of the scene is shattered by the flagrantly realism-defying wings, and suddenly and momentarily w are in a film more visually radical than anything from Matthew Barney’s Cremaster cycle of any other of today’s so-called avant-garde filmmakers." (Rombes 2009)

By looking intently at this scene and consequently avoiding being distracted by “plot” or “stars” or “music”, it is clear that there is a definite and rather beautiful artistic element in it that I know I personally failed to see upon viewing the film. We perceive and approach Hollywood films as entertainment, and consequently fail to view them as anything but.

Amateur filmmaking as a whole is perceived as highly artistic and avant-garde simply by nature. Perhaps this perception is derived from the element of mystery which surrounds the production of amateur films: we don’t know the actors in them, the places they are set, the director (a lot of the time anyway).In Hollywood these elements are what entice us to see a film; they are a form of advertising. Additionally, the excessive exegetical material attached to DVDs leaves very little to the imagination: “Paradoxically, the new technologies take us back to the oldest forms of criticism, a criticism that, at its heart is a form of exegesis” (Rombes 2009). We have a craving to know how and why shots are arranged or lighting is chosen, making it near impossible for professional filmmakers to keep an air of mystery around their products, an air which seems to connote a product as ‘art’.

Art is to be interpreted, and I think that we feel that we cannot interpret Hollywood films as we know too much about them, “Hollywood has run out of imagination” (Fischer 2006), or indeed left nothing to it. It poses the challenge to professional filmmakers to prove that what they produce is art, especially as digital media has put the tools of production into the hands of the everyday computer user, meaning that the size and variety of amateur films surfacing is wider than ever before. Amateur films avoid the connotations of being part of a commercialised industry, meaning that they are considered by the public as a valid vehicle for social comment and indeed two of the most effective forms of social comment, “irony and parody [have] become the major means of creating new levels of meaning...” (Hutcheon 1985). These films have a definite and valued place in society, a reputation that is not shared by those under the scope of Hollywood. Famed director of The Godfather, among many other renowned films, Francis Ford Coppola said :

“For me the great hope is now that 8mm video recorders are coming out, people who normally wouldn’t make movies are going to be making them. And that one day a little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father’s camcorder. For once the so called professionalism about movies will be destroyed and it will really become an art form.” (Thorburn 2003)

But why must art be divorced from professionalism? The greatest challenge, for professional filmmakers is to prove that art need not be divorced from or judged for professionalism. Describing the low-budget independent film Swingers, editor Stephen Mirrone said, “There’s no question that our incompetence at the time as filmmakers makes it a little more honest and accessible,” (Gaspard 2006), and perhaps there is a freshness and accessibility to films by relatively new filmmakers, but this should not take away from the skill and artistry involved in big-budget ‘professional’ filmmaking.

Television, Film and the Internet: Amateur filmmakers vs. Professional filmmakers

Perhaps the most frightening prospect, for both amateur and professional filmmakers is the “re-envisioning of how entertainment products and programming will be produced and delivered”. The result of this re-envisioning, for major US television networks NBC and FOX is Hulu, an online video streaming website. “The New York Times describes Hulu as: ‘a move by the creators of content to get more money from distributing their content on the Internet...’” (Cabral 2008) and “To be sure, Hulu was founded because NBC and FOX recognized the need to ‘monetize our copyrights, rather than let somebody else do it’”(Cabral 2008). It distributes both television programs and films to consumers on the internet for free, although Hulu videos are not yet available in Australia.

Where the internet was once a tool of exhibition for amateur filmmakers, it is now becoming a content delivery system for film and television studios. The danger here seems that media convergence, “the technological integration of content delivery systems” (Thorburn 2003) will work dominantly in the favour of large corporations like NBC. It is highly possible that these large corporations have the potential to monopolise content delivery systems with their products.

Take for example NBC and its product, the television show The Office which has its own website (affiliated with NBC which provides video streaming of episodes, deleted scenes from episodes, ‘webisodes’ , amongst a wide range of other content) Twitter and Facebook account. Via the internet, whether on mobile phones or computers, fans of The Office, have easy access to both professionally produced content from the show (i.e. episodes, webisodes, deleted scenes) and constant information updates about the show from Twitter or Facebook. Three characters from the show even have their own Twitter accounts. NBC are plunging Office fans as deeply as possible into the narrative of The Office, creating an investment in their show that amateur filmmakers cannot compete with, purely and simply because they do not have the tools, time, and personnel to create such exposure. NBC.com has a similar system operating for most of its shows, which totals over thirty.

This kind of mass distribution of digital content online however, also poses a threat to professionals. While the Writers Guild of America’s strike in 2008 was highly publicised, most of the limelight was shed on the huge losses it was causing the industry, rather than issue at hand. At “the heart of the disagreement was compensation for airing content on new media—namely Internet and digital distribution” (Cabral 2008). The simple fact that this was not at the forefront of the media’s coverage is evidence enough that we as an audience have either forgotten or are simply uninterested in the concept of authorship in the film and television industries, because “Collective authorship may well be the paradigm for studying a society in which Internet use is constantly gaining ground on more traditional forms of recreation such as film and television”(Panek, 2006). These industries are so often fantasised in the media that we forget that film and television sets are a day job, a profession for many people, which involves highly refined and practised skills which grant the co-title of ‘author’. Up until now, these skills have been considered valuable and employable.

But what value will be placed on these skills as content makes its way onto the internet, onto websites like Hulu which is “reportedly not profitable yet”? If “changes in the technology used for delivering media are transforming the industry” (Stelter 2008) and the internet becomes a dominant content delivery system, what will happen to syndication? Why pay for Foxtel or cable television when you can watch your favourite shows for free online? If content does rapidly move onto the internet, the longevity of professional careers in the film and television industries will certainly be questionable. And professionally created content is definitely making that move; simply consider that MTV allowed host Andy Samberg and his comedy trio The Lonely Island to put the digital shorts that they created (and that MTV essentially owned) to promote the Movie Awards, starring A-List Actors on YouTube (Miller, 2009).

"For Your Consideration: Evenings with Miss Elouise"- One of the digital shorts created by The Lonely Island to promote the MTV Movie Awards, Starring Andy Samberg and Anne Hathaway.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Both amateur and professional filmmakers must fight for their place in the world of digital media. Amateurs must ensure that they are not pushed into the margins by the distribution of professionally produced content on the internet, and professionals must ensure that they are correctly and justifiably compensated for the use of their product, no matter the content delivery system. Professional filmmakers, “Hollywood filmmakers” too must fight for their right to be regarded as artists.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Books:

Fischer, Herve 2006, The Decline of the Hollywood Empire, Talonbooks, Vancouver.

Gaspard, John 2006, Fast, Cheap & Under Control: Lessons Learned from the Greatest Low-Budget Movies of All Time, Michael Wiese Productions, California.

Hutcheon, Linda 1985, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms, Methuen, London.

Ott, Brian 2007, The Small Screen: How Television Equips us to Live in the Information Age, Blackwell Publishing, Singapore.

Rombes, Nicholas 2009, Cinema in the Digital Age, Wallflower Press, London.

Thorburn, David (ed)2003, Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition, The MIT Press, Cambridge.

Internet References:

Cabral, Kevin et al. 2008 ‘Freedom from the Tyranny of Television: Hulu and Digital Media Delivery’ accessed on 19/10/2009 at http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/cite/harvard_dis/www_dist.html

Miller, Liz 2009 ‘Andy Samberg Sticks to YouTube to Promote the MTV Movie Awards’ in NewTeeVee, accessed on 19/10/2009 at http://newteevee.com/2009/05/17/andy-samberg-sticks-to-youtube-to-promote-the-mtv-movie-awards/

Panek, E 2006, ‘Creative Communities after Television: The Collective Authorship of Channel 101’, M/C Journal: A Journal of Media and Culture, May, Vol. 9, Iss. 2, accessed on 20/10/2009 at http://www.journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/12-panek.php

Stelter, Brian 2008 ‘Websites Formula for Success: TV Content with Fewer Ads in NYTimes.com accessed on 19/10/2009 at http://cob2.jmu.edu/williamson/mktg470/hot/onlineads/2008/Web%20Site%E2%80%99s%20Formula%20for%20Success%20TV%20Content%20With%20Fewer%20Ads.pdf

Image References:
(In order of appearance)

(All Sourced from Google Images.)

http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/2153191/HollywoodSign-main_Full.jpg

http://www.unificationfrance.com/IMG/jpg/x-men_3_angel_2_.jpg

http://www.electronichouse.com/images/slideshow/simpsons-special-features.jpg
http://www.nbc.com/The_Office
http://z.about.com/d/talkshows/1/0/M/-/-/-/WritersStrikeDavidMcNew.jpg