While I do believe that distribution becomes more fluid with the continued evolution of a multi-platform digital media supply chain, I do not believe that digital technology will democratize film making.
Multinational corporations have the scope and capital to market, and thereby distinguish their product from the glut of global competitors.
Certainly the trend towards segmentation or "narrow-casting" will continue with the expansion of world-wide cable and the Internet, and that expansion will create the space for creative IP produced, say, less expensively with digital technology.
Digital technology, however, will not disturb media firms' control over the organs of distribution. The question ALWAYS remains: Who reaps the benefits of copyright? Is it the content creator or the media firm that owns the intellectual property that the content creator sold to the distributor for a profit?
Indeed, media firms may be held captive at choking points along the distribution supply chain - a consequence of handing their brands over to stars or whomever - but media firms are more apt to forge strategic partnerships or acquire newer digital internet portals.
In an economic environment starved for content, the power does shift to the content creator or more specifically, whoever owns the copyright, but corporations are the ones most likely to benefit from this paradigm; because they can exploit their natural economies of scale.
Remember, even with decreased production costs, media and entertainments are still R&D (high cost, high risk) business models.
The myth of democratizing film-making is techno-utopianism.
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