Anything Goes : With digital cinema technology becoming more affordable, is the indie film industry going to end up being over saturated like the indie music scene? by Terrell Lamont

First off, this is an awesome question. Honestly, I think that this technology will fall into the hands of two different types of people. The first is the hobbyist, the weekend warriors who can now afford to dream big. As a result, I think that outlets like Vimeo and YouTube will start becoming even more saturated with higher quality content. But it seems unlikely to me that this demographic will begin to over-saturate the indie film industry. The second group that's going to benefit from these new technologies are the actual independent filmmakers, the folks who've been through film school or who have been on film sets and have an intimate understanding of how much work goes into making a film. Maybe these folks have great ideas that they can now afford to translate to the screen, maybe not. Either way, I think that we'll start seeing an abundance of high quality shorts and features that will permeate into the world of film festivals. But as for the actual industry of independent filmmaking, I highly doubt that more films are going to get distribution just because more films are being made. If anything, only the best of the best independent films will actually reach mass audiences through the traditional means of distribution. Which brings me to my last point. I think that we're about to enter into the golden age of digital distribution. Beyond sites like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Instant, there are going to be tremendous opportunities for independent filmmakers to get their films onto the internet and make profits from them, as long as they can market these films properly and deliver them to the audiences who will appreciate them the most. What these new independent online outlets will be, who knows? But it should be an exciting time to be an independent filmmaker, that's for sure. -Robert