We in the television media saw them coming --- kids of a new generation armed to teeth with mini-dvs, laptops that are foldable editing suites, celphones that take video, cameras that shoot like film, all of them coming at us in quick time, riding the trojan horse that is reality tv.
This is great, we said as we hugged our huge betacam SPs. This is Power of the People. Now everyone can be a Spielberg, a Kubrick or a Scorsese.
Alas, it won't be easy.
The technology boom made startlingly new things possible like The Blairwitch Project, Jon Red movies (ASTIG, BOSO), music videos directed by Boom, Lyle Sacris, Robert Quebral, and Louie Ignacio, documentaries by Aureus, Ditsi Carolino, and student films by Chuck Gutierrez and the grads of Mowelfund...
But our high over all things hi-tech comes to a crash as we surf the endless channels of cable. What aired on TV used to be generally air worthy. Now, 90% of the video out there SUCKS.
90% of the time, this is what happens when great videocameras end up in the wrong hands: bad camera work with no creative use of the lens, shakey handheld shots for the sake of getting the effect of shakey handheld shots, no composition, no lighting design, no regard at all for the high craft of storytelling.
Just point and shoot. Just what the label in the box said.
But as the real directors and real cinematographers lament this systematic lowering of standards, I offer this dubious upside: FROM THIS SHIT, WILL GROW THE FLOWERS. AT LEAST THE RARE ROSE WILL SMELL TWICE AS SWEET.
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