Home Videos: Get in on the Act

In 1927, Warner Bros produced the first talkie, The Jazz Singer, on a rather large budget of $422,000 (about $22 million in 2012 terms) - approximately 1.5 times what most silent films had cost to make until then.

In 1995, the Los Angeles Times reported that the average cost of making and marketing a feature film was approximately $50.4 million. In 2011 it cost around $65 million to produce the film plus another $35 million to market it - that's a cool $100 million. 3D movie production company, False Creek Productions, calculates that 3D movie production will set you back an additional 19% (PDF). Mega-3D-blockbusters, like Avatar, reportedly cost somewhere between $280 million and $500 million to produce (plus marketing costs).

In stark contrast to this, according to NuWire Investor:

The cost of producing indie [independent] films varies widely depending on the project, anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $20 million or more.

Some indie films, while not usually full-length feature films, can be quite compelling. Websites, such as shortoftheweek.com showcase the best indie films, like The Camera, about which filmmaker Ivan Kandler writes:

Then comes a movie like Peter Lewis’s The Camera, a mysterious, intriguing tale that was made with a DSLR, no crew, and about fifty bucks. Perfect in its simplicity, beautiful and haunting in its visuals, The Camera is a reminder that a great film is in everyone’s grasp, as long as he/she has the creative capacity and appropriate willpower to drop pretension, and quite simply, make something.

Today, anyone can literally get in on the act. All you need is a digital camera, a decent PC and some basic free or low-cost editing software (maybe a smidgen of talent and a bucket-load of patience). Because YouTube, Vimeo and other video staging sites are free, it is extremely easy to share your creations with the world. In fact, YouTube says that over 4 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube each month. Where does all the content come from?

48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day.

My friend, the very talented nothingfunnyleft, operates a long-running YouTube vlog (video-log) called Me, My BrotherS, & My Dad (sic) - a series of adorable videos of the things he and his kids get up to. Most of nothingfunnyleft's 420 vlogs (so far) are about a minute in length - that's 420 minutes of priceless cuteness for the cost of a camera and a few minutes of post-processing work.

Long-time readers of this blog will remember my (very) short film Waiting, which I created for the sole purpose of experimenting with a cloning technique I read about.

YouTuber, Freddie Wong, used a Samsung Galaxy SII to record this short film. Freddie is a professional and his special effects are somewhat beyond the abilities of basic video editors. However, Gamer Commute shows that highly accessible, non-specialized equipment can really do the job.

In 2010, the Guggenheim Museum teamed up with YouTube to create an exhibition of home movies. The idea was to showcase the most creative talent "no matter what the technique, the style or the budget". The videos selected ranged from Birds on the Wires, which required a lot of technical expertise to create, to Foods which is simply one woman announcing her food cravings over the course of a month.

If I had known about the exhibition, I may have entered my very first movie, which I shot in 1986 when I was about 12 years old. I filmed Rubbish Collection on a reel-to-reel Super8 - no chance for re-takes and no editing. That was back in the day when film cost money and you had to send it off to Kodak to be developed.

Thanks to my father for digitizing this wonderful piece of nostalgia. After all, unlike most multi-million dollar Hollywood productions, the best movies are those that still make you smile 30 years on.

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