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Popular Culture Review
the 21'"* century relies on excess and spectacle above all other considerations, and
what is left is relegated to the realm of television sitcoms, or equally formulaic
mainstream films. Smaller “art films” will continue to proliferate in the major
cities - New York, Paris, London - but their hold on the provinces has evaporated.
Even with the ease and low cost of the digital age of production, distribution is still
the most important, if not the deciding factor, in who will see precisely what films,
and where, and how. As Carl Rosendahl of Pacific Digital Imaging comments,
“for independent filmmakers, that fact remains that if you want your film in broad
distribution, you still have to partner with a studio. You can make a great film but
you can't get it into 3,000 theaters without being able to back the film with millions
of dollars of advertising. Most filmmakers can't do that, so they need the studios”
(Willis 16).
As an example of this, Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler's The Last
Broadcast, a digital feature film produced for only $900 for both production and
post-production, despite glowing reviews and a satellite-downloaded electronic
presentation at Cannes in 1999, failed to find mainstream distribution, and thus
had minimal impact. However, the similarly-themed Blair Witch Project, directed
by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, was picked up by Artisan Releasing and
went on to gross more than $ 100,000,000 in domestic rentals alone, simply because
the filmmakers had better access to distribution channels, and perhaps greater
negotiating ability. Many who have seen both films feel that The Last Broadcast is
in every way superior to The Blair Witch Project, but outside of festival screenings
(Rotterdam, Cannes) most people will never get the chance to make the comparison.
In short, access to a major distributor is still the deciding factor in the success or
failure of a film, no matter what its production values, and/or reviews.
Yet one can also argue that the moving image, while still controlled as a
commercial medium by a few conglomerate organizations, has become with the
use of inexpensive Camcorders and the like a truly democratic medium. The Rodney
King tape, footage of the events at Tiananmen Square, and other documentary
videotapes have altered the public perception of the formerly illimitable dominion
of authoritarian regimes. It is impossible to hold back the flood of images created
by these new technologies, and in the coming century, these images will both infonn
and enlighten our social discourse. The surveillance cameras now used in New
York night clubs to provide low cost entertainment for web browsers can only
proliferate; there is no surcease from the domain of images which shape and
transform our lives. While the big screen spectacle will continue to flourish, a
plethora of new image constructs now compete for our attention, often with a
significant measure of success.
The monopoly of the television networks is a thing of the past; who is to
say that theatrical distribution as we know it will not also collapse, to be replaced