Digital world

Digital is changing everything, including, apparently, how movies are made:

Why? Because film costs a lot and must be used sparingly, while digital tape is practically free. The difference between the scarcity economics of film and the abundance economics of digital is, as Bill put it, "the difference between pointing a loaded gun at someone and a toy gun. You point a loaded gun at them and they're going to act different. A film camera is a loaded gun. Digital is not."

The change to digital photography is one of the most amazing things I've experienced. I have a memory stick that's about half the size of a stick of gum. I can get more photos on that than I could with hundreds of dollars worth of film -- then transfer them to my computer and fill it up again. It cost me, I think, $85. I heard Pat White on the radio today talking about how lousy home-printing solutions were if you wanted photos that will last. Well, so what? Just keep printing them, over and over again.

And if digital photos are amazing, digital video is awesome. Even if I just want to make a two- or three-minute movie, I can shoot hours of stuff and keep editing and re-editing the footage until I get just what I want.

Newspaper people, I'm afraid, just don't get this. With YouVideo YouTube getting more viewers than all the cable networks combined, and millions of people becoming fairly sophisticated video editors, most print journalists are excited by the next step they think will revolutionize their Web presentations -- the slide show. They can't quite move beyond thinking in static terms.