Technology and the Film Industry

As the industry progresses, it is getting easier and easier for people to produce media, including films, and therefore the playing field is becoming a lot more level in terms of the technology available for producers to create high quality material that could potentially make lots of money if it were to be seen by a mass audience. One of the key ways that media is currently shared is through the use of internet: In 2008, Plunkett said that “A new generation of UK media power players are ditching the traditional gatekeepers and going straight to their audience via the web” which tells us that using the internet to reach the target audience for your products is the most successful way of it reaching as many people in that intended audience as possible.

Away from the internet, other technologies are becoming a higher quality whilst also becoming less expensive to buy and easier to use, for example, the quality of a Canon 6D camera, one which we have and use in college, equals the quality of the cameras used in the production of films, and also has been used to record films on, yet it only costs £1400 to buy, and it’s so easy to use that students from GCSE level can use it effectively. This shows that the playing field is becoming more and more level due to the fact that smaller British film companies can make films that are the same quality as the films produced by large US companies, whilst spending a lot less money on large, expensive cameras – The Blair Witch Project again being a prime example of this. 

In addition to this, they way in which films are edited in post-production is also becoming easier and less expensive, whilst still allowing you to create films of a high quality. If you have an Apple Mac computer (which costs around £1000), you can buy a range of different software, used by industry professionals, for only around £800-1000. As mentioned before, an example of editing software that allows you to create special effects is AfterEffects, which costs only £800, and this can be used to make in-depth, realistic special effects for a small amount of money. This shows that innovative software would  be affordable by smaller British film companies in order to compete with the larger, more expensive software used by larger American companies, therefore independent films such as ours can potentially be made at as high a quality as Hollywood blockbusters, whilst simultaneous costing millions less.