THE TOOLS REVOLUTION

Although the digitization of media and video-compression techniques are beginning to bypass those gatekeepers who have limited access to the channels of distribution, far more profound changes are taking place in the tools used to create digital media content. To the casual observer, it may appear that the most significant changes are related to the cost of these tools. In the short period of two decades, the cost of the hardware and software required to create high-quality, professional content has plummeted. A broadcast-quality camera, field recorder, studio deck, computerized editing system, video switcher, DVE, character generator, audio mixer, and supporting gear could easily cost $500,000 to $1,000,000 in the early Eighties. Today, with a three-chip DV camcorder, a notebook computer, and some software, it is possible to produce highquality content with effects that were impossible to conceive with older, more traditional tools. An aspiring content producer can get started for an investment of about $10,000. A professional “boutique” project studio business can be fully equipped for about $100,000.
To focus on the cost of the tools, however, is to miss the larger implications of what has happened to the content-creation business. Tools have always been a very small part of the cost to create high-quality entertainment content for the masses. This market depends on star power to attract large audiences, and large audiences produce significant revenues, the lion’s share of which flows to the stars and the producers of the content. It’s not uncommon for the cost of a top-rated episodic television show to exceed $1,000,000; a blockbuster movie can cost more than $100,000,000 to produce. Removing cost barriers to content creation has had a major impact on the creation of new markets for content creators, especially outside of the traditional entertainment and broadcast markets. Corporate, institutional, and educational applications for traditional video and new forms of interactive digital media content continue to grow; event videography (of weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc.) has become a major business; and now, the ability to create digital media content is available to the masses. With a camcorder and a PC anyone can use video to tell his or her story.
Fortunately, for professionals trying to make a living in the content-creation business, there is little reason to fear the cannibalization of their business from below. Success in this business does not flow from the tools or even the ability to master their use; success flows from the ability to tell stories and to express content in appropriate ways across multiple distribution media.
The real revolution in the tools of content creation has strong parallels to that which has already been described for content consumption. The digitization of media assets has placed tremendous control in the hands of content creators. In the world of analog video, the ability to manipulate images was at best fleeting and imprecise; an often frustrating real-time synchronous process. In the new world of digital content creation, the ability to manipulate every element of a digital media composition is precise. Media assets are digital files that can be replicated perfectly and moved across networks, within a facility, or around the world. Real-time processing is not a requirement for most applications; the asynchronous nature of today’s content-creation techniques provides levels of control that were impossible using the traditional tools of video production. Another aspect of the digitization of media assets to have emerged, and one that is having a far more profound effect on the content-creation business, is that digital content-creation tools have become the gateway to a wide range of opportunities