"It used to be that everybody wanted to be in a rock band. Now, everyone wants to be a filmmaker," said Brian Burke, director of business development at AtomFilms, a new digital video venture company in Seattle.

At a seminar entitled, "Microcinema: Films on the Web," Burke and three other panelists from the new media and film industries gathered at the Time and Life Building in New York to explore the possibilities of digital film on the Web. The trend of digital filmmaking, also known as "microcinema," is just starting to make waves in the ever-changing Web world, making itself known through word-of-mouth and seminars like this one, co-sponsored by the Center for Communication, a non-profit media and communications educational forum. Panelists acknowledged in front of the 100 or so mostly young techie attendees that digital filmmaking has been catching on slowly. Many people are still unaware of the possibilities that digital video can offer by way of producing five- to six-minute film shorts - the majority of what is being done to get exposure for work and a certain amount of fame in what could become an Internet entertainment mecca.

"It's going to build Internet stars, and it will broaden the types of content you will get," says Larry Meistrich, chief executive of the Shooting Gallery, a television and film production company in New York. According to S.D. Katz of pitchtv.com, a Web site that presents films and follows freedom of expression in the media issues, the success of digital film will depend on how much of an audience a site or filmmaker will be able to attract. It will attract niche audiences for certain types of film, but success may really still depend on the ability to attract a mass audience, he says. This idea of niche marketing will eventually fracture the audience too much. "You have 50 times as many sites as the industry can support," says Katz. "There's going to be a bloodbath in about 18 months." Meistrich says there are still a lot of questions about the details of putting out a film on the Web. For example, many filmmakers worry about manipulation of their work and copyright issues. "These are issues that can be dealt with," he says. "It's mostly just lack of knowledge."

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"I'm not a believer that everyone who makes a film should have their film seen. I'm not an encourager of 'everyone should pick up a camera and make a film.'"
-- Larry Meistrich, The Shooting Gallery
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Companies tackling the concept of digital film are approaching the topic in different ways. Ifilm and AtomFilms just launched about one year ago, according to Meistrich. "I didn't want to be an arbiter of what's good and what's not," says Rodger Raderman, CEO of iFilm. "There's a question of how do you make money showing entertainment on the Web? The dirty little secret is, you don't."