NEWS: Chris Gore's Footage Fetishes: YouTube Killed Underground Film

+100,000

But... but... these people haven't gone to film school! IT'S AN ABOMINATION, I TELL YOU!

nope, not true.

Uht.

um, excuse me *runs*

Sure it is. You may not like the movie they make, but the tools needed to make and distribute a movie on a rather large scale are readily available. Just put it on Youtube and show some people on messageboards like these. If they like it, it can become popular, and you're getting your name out there. If not, you've created less debt and headaches for yourself, trying to get anyone at all to even evaluate your movie.

A follow up:

This logic doesn't follow. Yeah, online films are about 99.99% crap. They don't know how to make movies, they make every mistake in the book, their material usually falls flat, blah blah blah. But what about this makes it hard for people who rise above that and create good shorts that people would actually want to see? They can pass them around, same as everyone else, and sometimes people start noticing something funny or interesting, and a video becomes an online hit. Most of the idiots who shoot shorts with their giggling idiot friends don't have that happen.

And even the wheat weren't to some extent separated from the chaff naturally I don't see how the old way is superior, where someone shot a short film for all the money they can get credit card companies to loan them and then have to travel all over going to film festivals and the like just to get someone, anyone, to see the bloody thing. How many potentially great filmmakers fell by the wayside because of that system? And how many untalented people have gone through to even the big studios simply because they knew the right people and so forth?

Making movies is not easy. I'm not going to imply that it is. But if people can do it themselves without necessarily destroying their lives in the process, you have a wider net for talent and creativity, and that's going to be beneficial.

You said it. I have a film degree. I just happen to like, not want to have to risk giving handjobs in bus station bathrooms for the rest of my life in order to make a film, especially under the high probability that any number of arbitrary external factors that exist within the business in it's traditional mode that have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of work would put me in that position.

The ability to cheaply self-produce and distribute is what I have been biding my time waiting for since I got out of school almost a decade ago.

Edited to add: I can't believe it was suggested that The Blair Witch Project was the template for cheap production/big return filmmaking.

underground film is not dead, it's just changing. It may be dead for people who are afraid to change themselves, and are holding onto the past by their fingernails, but for those willing to change - not dead, just different.

I also miss those days when the hunt for a film like "Superstar" (which I saw on a shitty VHS bootleg roughly thirteen years ago) was like the hunt for the holy grail. And it still is, because many films are still not available. The difference is now you can find them online with greater ease. Before you had to go obscure video stores and other collectors and by mail order. It was a lot more fun because it took more time and when you found something great it seemed like more a diamond in the rough.

Now it's all right there in your face. Everybody is making movies and putting them online, so it feels like the little club that was so exclusive and subversive before has broken open and everyone is spilling in.

But a lot of those obscure flicks are still not released for legal reasons, or whatever. Amazing films like Todd Phillips' "Frat House" and Frederick Wiseman's "Titticut Follies" are still tied up for legal reasons which may never be sorted out.

And then other stuff like Wayne Wang's "Life is Cheap but Toilet Paper is Expensive" may never be released because it's experimental and has many of the trappings of a mondo film (animal slaughter footage, people defecating onscreen) wrapped up in a detective story. It basically can't be categorized. It isn't horror. It has comedy, but is not strictly a comedic film.

Stuff like this still exists and a lot of people don't know about it. The only people who say "underground film is dead" are people who are not in touch with underground film at all.

additionally, having more exposure to the net has it's ups and downs. The downside is the expected deluge of crap one has to wade through to get to the good stuff.

The upside is this: if a film is good, word will spread. And with youtube and the internet word spreads fast.

E. Elias Merhige spent years trying to get "Begotten" shown somewhere - anywhere. Had the internet been around when he made it the film would have gained exposure that much faster.

Wow. That was amazing. I have never heard of that and need to see the whole thing.

You realize that that was the point of the article, right? I mean, did people just read the headline and post?

I think its great that there can be talent who can make a quick DV and then post in on YouTube ...

Sure is a lot cheaper then dropping $160,000 to go to USC film school ...

uh, go away?

Hey PointBlank, thanks for understanding the premise behind my piece.

I will say that more filmmakers making more movies is not necessarily a good thing -- it just means there will be more bad films. The accessibility of cheap hardware and affordable software has certainly spawned a whole new group of filmmakers, but most fall into the amateur category at best.

I've always believed in the "90%-of-everything-is-shit" theory.
90% of music is shit.
90% of tv is shit.
90% of of art is shit.
And 90% of movies are shit.
So, the cream rising to the top is the best analogy I can think of.

Sorry to be such a downer, just callin' 'em as I see 'em.

very very true, on all fronts