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Video or Film?
What is the difference and why is film making so much more expensive?
In today's technology rich production environment there is literally no difference between making YouTube videos and Films.
In the early days of video, just like the early days of film, only black and white was an option, editing was rare and as far as computers, you still used a dumb terminal that connected to a phone modem to use a centralized mainframe that had about as much processing power as a small calculator.
Where as Film was just that, film that ran through a camera in front of a lenses that would take 24 pictures per second that would later be developed and manually cut up with razor blades and taped together to edit.
Video quality was extremely low and film offered not only color, but the ability to cut and splice which was not possible with magnetic video tape.
Of course, video was a huge revolution for TV because prior to that all TV was done live. Film had to be shot, edited and that required a huge production staff, expensive cameras and such.
Eventually consumer cameras were available that produced nothing even close to commercial production cameras and shortly there after, well a few decades after came the video revaluation and everyone had a home video camera.
Video was not in the hands of every family to record their memories while the more costly and time consuming movie and film cameras faded away.
From the early 1980's to around 2010 low resolution video was video and was well defined and far departed from Film Making. But in the mid 1990's digital video started making it's was into films.
Where video was analog and was a simple step up from audio tapes, digital was binary, lossless and not subject to the pitfalls of old video tape that stretched on the edges being played and had very low data storage capabilities.
Once digital recording was achieved and the technology in computing caught up, the door was opened to begin making Films digitally.
In the next 15 years the consumer cameras and professional cameras kept getting better with the consumer cameras slowing getting to be almost as powerful as the expensive professional cameras.
In fact, most cell phones today are better than professional cameras from 10 years earlier.
Video and Films have merged into one industry, almost all productions are now done with digital cameras and edited on computers that could be found in any home.
YouTubers and Film Makers use the same cameras, same editing software with the only significant factor between Film Making and Video Production being the budgets.
There is also the abundance of poorly shot, produced and edited videos on YouTube contributing to the status associated with the term "Film" as opposed to "Video".
But the fact is there is literally no difference between making Films and making Video. Film is merely a term used by the elites that want to separate themselves from all the amateur videographers on YouTube.
What was once a elitist group associated with the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, has fallen to technology just like all industries do over time.
O course Film Makers don't want to be associated with the likes of Mr Dog Poop Unleashed on YouTube, but like it or not, we are all doing the same things and as a result anyone can make a "Film" and have it air on Netflix, Amazon and alike.
That means that the prices that professionals charged in the past are no longer attainable. There is a struggle for video/film work with too many people that can do the same thing.
Feature movies being shot on iPhones on micro budgets with now real crew. Commercials being created by solos for pennies, cheap drones flown by kids getting 8K cinema quality video for less than the cost of the morning coffee order.
It is all changing and playing in favor of the people that need video production and editing. The days of paying $100,000 for a 30 second TV commercial are over. That same quality and production value can be achieved for a few thousand dollars.
The elites will tell you different as they hang on to their glory, claiming they know more, can do more and have better equipment.
I see it daily, I have camera x, y and z so I am a professional compared to the other companies.
But who acres if you spent $25,000 on a camera if a $2500 camera does the exact same thing.
At the end of the day if you need to get from point A to point B, does it matter if you where picked up by an Uber driving a Rolls Royce or a Honda if the end result is the same?
The industry has changed over decades and now is on a crash course for restructuring.
Giant movie companies try to hold on to their power as newbies pop up making videos that rival their work and it is only a matter of time before the deep pockets of Hollywood dry up and start looking for more affordable more streamlined and cost conscious Video Makers over Film Makers.
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