England's 18 Doughty Street Website is producing something like 20 or 30 hours of live television a week - for the Internet. There are fan-produced Star Trek and Star Wars homages shot on shoestring budgets (at least in contrast to what Hollywood spends on catering alone) on YouTube with effects that would have made Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas weep only a few decades ago.
As more and more amateur video makers and bloggers roll their own videos for sites such as YouTube and Google video, all of the above books serve two purposes. They're well worth reading to study the craftsmanship that's been built up over decades of experimentation in film, then television, and now digital video. They illustrate how high those craftsmen have raised the bar.
High, but it's not insurmountable; hopefully these books will inspire a whole new group of artists. Their efforts are more likely to show up on the Internet than in movie theaters, but at least they'll be out there. And who knows? Maybe in a decade or two, we'll be studying the pioneering craftsmen at the dawn of the YouTube era.
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