The internet will always be different things for different people and once someone learns to sift through the chaff, it is quite rewarding. Especially when it comes to community building and offline networking. Not to mention finding news and information, honing your skills, promoting your film, finding distribution, discovering talent and a lot more, very useful things. This is of some significance in the indie world, for no-budget and low-budget filmmaking in particular, as networking enables us to become a ‘collective force’ much like what Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures postulates.

I found this article through my own site, where I have embedded an RSS reader for all things ‘independent filmmaking’ (my only keywords). As for credibility, it is something that grows on you - heaven help those who take things on face value on the internet! Jane Green’s comment here is very succinct on this point. All the comments here are further proof of this point in some ways.

So, ‘Movies are over’ is presumptuous at the least.

I couldn’t agree more.

“I suddenly realized there was an advantage to doing it online: we could embed a film clip! I am starting to realize that there are good ways we can do this.”

This quote reinforces the impression that there’s an ivory tower where the windows open on the real world every so often. Yes, the internet has less editorial oversight but that doesn’t mean that percentage-wise the criticism out there is any more or less crap than the newspaper critics were. Published critics just got paid more.

What strikes me most from the panel members’comments is their apparent concern, and possible confusion, with technology’s impact on film criticism. Just as cheaper cameras and the Web are widening the world of filmmaking, so it is widening the world of criticism. Filmmaking is no longer in the hands of a few companies, and neither is criticism.

While some could argue that the increase in available films is a bad thing, because it crowds the market to the point that it becomes harder for films to be seen, I would offer that the models for film distribution have begun, and will continue to evolve to accommodate the increasing number of available films.

The same argument can be made for the increased availability of film critiques by bloggers. While that increase does not bode well for the traditional model of film criticism, one that limited “credible” film criticism to the hands of only a few critics on the payroll of major print publications and other traditional media, the new model for film criticism widens the scope of participation and offers movie-goers more choices. Instead of choosing from 10 or 100 critics, film fans can choose from 1000, or 10,000 or more critics. Is that a bad thing? From the perspective of the consumer, no, it’s a good thing.

Technology is also impacting the definition of “credibility”. The internet has added many more voices to the conversation that used to include only a few recognized “experts”. Increasingly, internet users are interested in the opinions of peers, rather than limiting themselves to just the opinions of experts. Movie-goers on the Web are seeking out blogger critics with whom they can personally identify, those that share similar tastes, interests, and demographic characteristics. Those commonalities makes the blogger-critic “credible” in the eyes of the reader. Spoutblog is a text-book example of this phenomenon. I would wager that if Spoutblog readers were polled, the results would show that Spoutblog is reaching movie-goers that identify with this blog much more so than they would with critics that fall within the traditional criticism model.

Each internet user is determining, for themselves, what is a credible site and who is a credible blog film critic, based on their own personal criteria. If Barker doesn’t know which sites to read, then perhaps some web surfing time is in order. After all, isn’t that one of the orginal pleasures of the Web? Conducting a search, clicking on links, surfing sites, discovering new things, is what it’s all about.

Change is painful…old folks continue to bemoan the death of their favorite formats…and film bloggers (aka critics aka writers) will have the same challenges that face all bloggers: how do you make a living from it?

I am excited, like Barker, for all the new formats of creative expression and product distribution. This, along with apparent corrections in the marketplace due to a glut of film products at all levels, does not spell utter doom. Just…CHANGE.

One thing everyone on the panel seems to be missing is the empowerment that the internet engenders. I have news for Anne Thompson: A great indie film “portal” already exists. Mine’s called Google Reader, but any good RSS reader will do. I don’t have to wait for somebody else to tell me that another site has great “credibility.” I enable whatever site I want to have credibility by subscribing to its feed.

Also, why do these kinds of folks always have so much trouble “finding” websites? I run a small website that hardly anybody’s heard of and even fewer bother linking to, but underground filmmakers sniff me out all the time and target me for their marketing campaign. Why can’t indie distributors do that?

I’m getting a little sick of this reactionary anti-blog nonsense. While we’re at it, let’s bemoan the explosion of independent film because not every filmmaker has been vetted by Irving Thalberg. Barker equates blogging with a lack of expertise, which seems silly given that I can name maybe 30 film bloggers with more expertise than 95% of ‘professional’ film critics. The only problem this creates is a supply/demand issue that will continue to degrade criticism as a career (ie, few paid jobs for film critics). I shed few tears for this; film criticism, like poetry or avant-garde filmmaking, will become more and more an avocation rather than a career.