Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 2, Summer 2000 | Page 86

82 Popular Culture Review the 21'"* century relies on excess and spectacle above all other considerations, and what is left is relegated to the realm of television sitcoms, or equally formulaic mainstream films. Smaller “art films” will continue to proliferate in the major cities - New York, Paris, London - but their hold on the provinces has evaporated. Even with the ease and low cost of the digital age of production, distribution is still the most important, if not the deciding factor, in who will see precisely what films, and where, and how. As Carl Rosendahl of Pacific Digital Imaging comments, “for independent filmmakers, that fact remains that if you want your film in broad distribution, you still have to partner with a studio. You can make a great film but you can't get it into 3,000 theaters without being able to back the film with millions of dollars of advertising. Most filmmakers can't do that, so they need the studios” (Willis 16). As an example of this, Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler's The Last Broadcast, a digital feature film produced for only $900 for both production and post-production, despite glowing reviews and a satellite-downloaded electronic presentation at Cannes in 1999, failed to find mainstream distribution, and thus had minimal impact. However, the similarly-themed Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, was picked up by Artisan Releasing and went on to gross more than $ 100,000,000 in domestic rentals alone, simply because the filmmakers had better access to distribution channels, and perhaps greater negotiating ability. Many who have seen both films feel that The Last Broadcast is in every way superior to The Blair Witch Project, but outside of festival screenings (Rotterdam, Cannes) most people will never get the chance to make the comparison. In short, access to a major distributor is still the deciding factor in the success or failure of a film, no matter what its production values, and/or reviews. Yet one can also argue that the moving image, while still controlled as a commercial medium by a few conglomerate organizations, has become with the use of inexpensive Camcorders and the like a truly democratic medium. The Rodney King tape, footage of the events at Tiananmen Square, and other documentary videotapes have altered the public perception of the formerly illimitable dominion of authoritarian regimes. It is impossible to hold back the flood of images created by these new technologies, and in the coming century, these images will both infonn and enlighten our social discourse. The surveillance cameras now used in New York night clubs to provide low cost entertainment for web browsers can only proliferate; there is no surcease from the domain of images which shape and transform our lives. While the big screen spectacle will continue to flourish, a plethora of new image constructs now compete for our attention, often with a significant measure of success. The monopoly of the television networks is a thing of the past; who is to say that theatrical distribution as we know it will not also collapse, to be replaced