By Eolake Stobblehouse

1456: Gutenberg invents the typesetting process, letting big money create and edit mass produced paper documents for the public.

1899: 35 mm film is introduced, allowing big money to capture and edit motion pictures for the public.

1985: Aldus Pagemaker (later bought by Adobe) is introduced on the new Apple Macintosh personal computer, allowing the public to create and edit professional paper documents for each other.

1999: Apple releases the iMac DV, with fast connections and video editing software, allowing the public to create and edit motion pictures for each other.

What is the ultimate communications and creative medium?

For me and a few others, comics come close. It uses both words and pictures in a seamless whole to combine a powerful cocktail of aesthetics and significance. I love comics, I have always read them, and for a long while I thought that my ultimate ambition was to create them (both writing and drawing).

One of the things that held me back is that for some mysterious reason, comics are not all that popular. Just ask a collection of the people you know if they read comics on a regular basis. Very very few comics sell even in the hundreds of thousands. I think there are two reasons for this: 1: Advanced comics demand quite a lot of participation and thought by the reader. 2: Comics are still seen primarily as a kids' medium. When you try to read something you think is for kids, and you don't quite understand it, you don't feel good about yourself, and of course you blame the comic.

The medium that so far comes closest to the ultimate is movies. But it has one huge disadvantage: It takes an astonishing amount of money to make, and the participation of a lot of people. This means that not only are they hard to finance, but an eccentric vision is near impossible to carry through to a finished product.

Or rather, this is how it WAS. (You knew this was coming...)

It is well-published that the huge movie hit "The Blair Witch Project" was created for about $35,000. Which of course is about 1/1000 of today's typical Hollywood film budget. I have not seen that film yet, but I have seen another one, which is also an international hit, and an artistic breakthrough to boot; The Celebration by Danish creator Thomas Winterberg. That one was filmed using a 3000-dollar digital video camera.

Well, to jump directly into the deep end, what we have here is in all probability a new creative renaissance. Nothing speaks as loudly to the general population as movies, and from 1999 onwards, Joe Blow and his brother can create them in full professional quality on their kitchen table. That is given that Joe has a bit of skill and patience, of course, but that is true of whatever medium you chose.

The Apple PowerMac G4, of course, is so far the optimum desktop video editing system. But the new iMac with Firewire and semi-pro level editing software, is not all that far behind, and it is compact, cheap, and simple. It has more power and features than professional systems worth more than a good car had two years ago. I'll bet you anything that a talented and skilled individual with $5000 to invest in computer and camera can single-handed create films that are for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from anything you rent in your local video store.

And they can be in even better quality than that, for you can mass produce them on DVD, and sell and distribute them via the Internet, without the huge expenses involved in the traditional distribution channels, and close to all profits directly into the pockets of the creator (instead of a only couple of percent). This is of course not even mentioning direct downloading over the net, soon a possibility with fast connections becoming more common.

And on top of all that comes the ability to tell in living, moving color anything about the world around us to everybody. Documentaries, educational films, whatever you like. But I am an artist and educator of artists, I believe in the world-building power of Art, and that is what I think about. And I believe that 50 years from now, the "Y2K" problem will be forgotten, and the arrival of film creation into private homes will be seen as a huge step forward for the culture of humankind.

- Stobblehouse