Rise Of The Consumer-Producer

If you are a professional video producer/editor, there’s an 800lb. gorilla outside your door, and his name is “consumer-producer.” The launch of Apple’s Iphone 3 is just days away, and one rumor that has been more or less confirmed is the addition of video recording and editing. The editing app is rumored to be a stripped down version of IMovie. Just 10 years ago, video editing was the hallowed ground of TV professionals, filmmakers, universities, and the over zealous amateur. If you needed access to video equipment, you begged for a session in an edit bay and you groveled to the editors to run the equipment for you. Those days are gone. The hallowed ground of the edit bay was desecrated long ago by affordable desktop editing, and whatever is left is about to be buried like a land fill by the proliferation of free editing applications.

Here’s what this means: In the near future, video editing will be common knowledge. Within a couple of years, every cell phone will have basic video recording and editing capabilities. There will also be a proliferation of web based editing apps. Youtube and the like already have basic editing interfaces. Rest assured that those will improve to rival the basic functionality of Final Cut Pro, Vegas Video, and the rest. This will create a future generation of media savvy consumer/producers who know how to shoot and edit as well as they know how to Skype and Tweet. When editing video is no longer a specialty skill derived through formal training, the value of editors and their support staff will plummet and the fiscal dynamics of post-production will flip like a melting iceberg. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the photography industry. It is virtually impossible to start a career as a photographer today because affordable technology and the wide spread dissemination of photography skills have turned the production of commercial quality photographs into common knowledge. Are any of these new photographers Annie Leibovitz? No, not so much. But they’re close enough to drop the bottom out of photography budgets and severely reduce the perceived value of a good photograph. A substantial amount of the photographs we see in print and on the web were taken for free by young photographers who just wanted the credit. Now shooting for credits has become the default currency in that industry.

What does this mean for career producer/editors? It means there will be no more middle class in the employment ranks, and the real money in post-production will be made by exploiting the growing underclass of consumer-producers and their willingness to produce video content for a fraction of the current market value. All of this isn’t going to happen overnight, but I think you’ve got less than 10 years to reshape your post-production career into something sustainable.