Camera Obscura - You Are The Movie

Today, no one needs to wait to be "discovered" by a movie company in order to become a worldwide movie star. All you need is a digital camera capable of taking 30 seconds of video, or even just a cell phone that can capture a few seconds of action. Forget about getting a movie into a festival somewhere in hopes of finding a distributor too - you can have worldwide distribution in seconds flat.

Digital tech and web cams and free video-sharing web sites make it easy. One of many such sites, which I have linked to and used myself, YouTube.com, has the stats to show how the world has come to them. According to a recent report:

"YouTube.com, a leading site, had more than three million visitors in December, nearly tripling its visitation in November, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. YouTube says its users have been sharing 20,000 new videos a day and watching some 10 million daily.

One clip on YouTube is of a 12-year-old scoring a touchdown, another is of a woman burping in front of a mirror. One young man captured himself skateboarding on a treadmill.

Others are more carefully produced and edited, even set to music"
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"And then there's Revver, which relies on ads but shares revenues with users who submit video.

''It is a new frontier,'' said Steven Starr, Revver's chief executive. ``The migration of video onto the network is upon us, and the rules of that migration are being worked out as we speak.''

Many sites have for years offered a place for short films, animated or live-action, and around the world fans are re-creating new episodes of favorite shows one chapter at a time. Some people take anime shows and edit them to fit with pop music hits, some just lip sync "My Humps," some people confess to any type of weirdness or crime, and some "movies" just stink.

One witty wanna-be filmmaker crafted a "feel-good romantic comedy" trailer for "The Shining" which led to a three picture deal for the maker.

The world is ready for it's close-up.