Here’s an open question to all film makers every place: Can’t somebody came up with a new term for Film Maker? Simply because very few people use film.
And that’s not to make a judgement or start of another tedious conversation about pixels and silver halide. It’s just a fact you probably won’t be using film. The tradeoffs are what they are.
For instance, let’s say you’re either creating original video content or you are about to.
So what do you tell your grandmother? You make movies? Like at the movie theater? No. Like on tv? No. Unfortunately, a personal computer bit her friend’s sister’s niece’s hand off about twenty years ago and she doesn’t go near those things. (It was a Tandy, those things are temperamental.)
The dictionary says, a film maker is someone who makes motion pictures. Thanks.
Video Producer? Terrific. All the people who already assume you’re probably really filming porn will be thrilled with that on Facebook. And then there’s the film word again. As we all know, the last person to shoot pornography on actual film was Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights.
Transmedia sounds like people in a warehouse, dancing around with glow sticks to electronic music.
Of course, you could always use the actual job titles involved. Like producer and director and driver and painter and so forth. One of those tradeoffs made possible by digital film making is that you can move fast and wear a lot of hats. There are definite benefits, but no film. Listing seven credits feels strange.
Example: A sentence ago, would it have worked better to write about the benefits and tradeoffs of “digital making?” Nope.
Film is great. But it’s not in the camera and it’s not on the screen. Big movies may shoot on film as a capture medium, but the negative is immediately scanned, then locked in a vault. Even theaters are projecting digitally.
This is an awesome problem to have. Because the world is changing in exciting ways.
But, for now, the only alternative is to keep swinging around phrases like, “Original Digital Video Content Creator,” until someone yells stop.
Will that be you? Please let us know.
Mark Ryan and Jake Welshans shoot Naked Man Episode #1 on a digital camera. (www.yndotStreet.com)
Film. Because when people speak of “films” they are talking about pictures in motion, not the physical medium.
i tend to agree but I have had a hard time defining this specific medium we are working in. ‘Film’ seems a bit too grandiose, ‘new media’ and ‘transmedia’ are are good descriptions of the time and place of the medium currently but in 50 years ‘new media’ is going to be pretty old and ‘transmedia’ is simply going to be ‘media.’
Yep. I think people are going to call them films as long as they are presented as such. Whether they are captured on celluloid or digits, they are going to see a film, flick, movie, etc. I doubt we’ll be hearing, “Hey, wanna catch some transmedia tonight?”