From SF360: Let's Talk About the Future of Cinema

Wrote a short piece this week for the blog SF360, published by the San Francisco Film Society (which has been a huge supporter of The Conversation).

Here's the opening:

Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope did it. So did talkies, Technicolor, and television. In the 1970s and 1980s, home video did it again.
When new technologies arrive, they usher in creative and business opportunities that never existed before (though some people choose to ignore them.)

When the very first Kinetoscope parlor opened in Manhattan in 1894, showing short films for 25 cents admission, or when the Warner brothers finally made synchronized sound work in 1927, it created phenomenal new possibilities for artists and entrepreneurs. When television and home video arrived later in the 20th century, some people saw them as a threat to the cinema—while others seized the chance to tell different stories, work on different budgets and deadlines, and, not insignificantly, make money in new ways.

Technological shifts like these also open a door for new people with new ideas who might not have previously found their way into the industry.

We’re at one of those transitional moments right now.