Working on a friend’s food truck over the 4th of July weekend, it came to mind the way in which food trucks have taken over and become a kind of new, trendy restaurant. Convenient, sometimes at your door service, comparable to or lower prices than dine-in restaurants, and hip, made-to-order cuisine. Similar to this shift in dining approaches, video production is charging forward as the new method for creating movies, documentaries, corporate media, and commercials. With more readily available services and costs challenging large film companies, video production has changed the face of entertainment media.
Crowdfunding
Innovative creators can now have access to studio quality equipment and programs without breaking the bank. Even crowd-funding for production projects has turned to video in the forms of Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and Indiegogo. Samples of filmmakers’ works can now be streamed easily and passed from one person on the production team to the next. Companies can have commercials and informational videos made at a fraction of the cost, without sacrificing quality.
In the same way that food trucks use small staff with changeable menu items, video production houses use small, specialized, and freelance staff in order to offer a broader menu of services. Video production’s rise also mirrors that of the food truck industry in that the communities within which these companies work (be they art or cuisine) have given their financial support to help them thrive. A new job market has even been opened due to the entrepreneurial spirit of these two trades. Both industries providing a service to the community have helped businesses treat their staff during special events and provide information to attract clients, feed filming crews and provide equipment for projects, or feed guests and create a production of a couple’s special day.
Documentarians have especially taken hold of the more easily accessible resources video production companies supply. Important historical information and politically relevant news have been delivered to the public through documentaries that would have otherwise required far more financial assistance to be produced, or may not have been produced at all. In December of 2015, a small production company named Synthesis Films helped make the documentary series, Making a Murderer. What started out as a simple production, became a Netflix sensation out of nowhere. Not spending millions on this docu-series demonstrates that entertainment hits can be made using less-familiar but equally reputable production companies, such as Click Play Films.
Just as the future of cuisine, catering, and dining-out is being changed by food trucks, entertainment and commercial media is being changed by the a la carte services provided by smaller video production companies.
