Posted by nobody special on 10/08/05 21:25

I'm saying, Steve, that back in the 80's, when puppies were the oldest
animal, there were technological and financial barriers to entry, so
lots of bad ideas for projects never got past the inquiry stage. These
days, all manner of cr@p productions are getting made, for the same
reason a dog licks it's own... well, you get the rest of that. I swear,
the next time a client asks me to do a streaming video of them reading
an instruction manual out loud, and calling it "training", I will hit
them upside the head with a gobo arm....

At the same time, clients with no background order up projects with
ambitious goals and a paltry budget, because "the cameras are so cheap
now". Any smart video pro wouldn't want to touch it, but now there's
always somebody out there with a camcorder and MovieShaker saying he
can do it for beans, "hey, Bill in Accounting has a firewire card on
his PC, HE can do it!" - and they go for it, because they don't
really know...

A real pro, an experienced writer-producer-editor, could use these
low-cost tools effectively, and generate something better than a
full-boat online A/B linear suite from the 80's could hope to do,
without a lot of the time and expense of 1980's workflow. He'd be
working solo, where back then it would have been a 2-3 man job. He
COULD deliver that 1k project, say, a 30-second spot, or a simple
five-minute product demo, for far, far less. Hopefully, he's converting
the difference to more profit somewhere.

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