Anyone who has spent anytime in the last year on the web has seen a dramatic rise in Internet video. So much so that it is now a central element of many websites across the net. Web video is no doubt here to stay. ‘Television, as we know it, will be unrecognizable in five years’, that according to the opinion of Bill Gates. Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited by many with inventing the world wide web, claims that the future of television is ‘absolutely on the Internet’. Every major entertainment company from NBC, to Viacom, and ESPN and many more have made a major move to distribute their content via the web. These companies will continue to leverage the vast reach of the Internet, but the question is what about the independent producer and independent filmmaker? The low cost of producing high quality digital video, combined with higher speeds of broadband connected to video friendly computers, and the international open distribution network that is the Internet has created a time of opportunity for the independent producer.
The advent of low cost digital video cameras was the quantum leap for the independent filmmaker. With broadcast quality...