Camera Wars II - Elimination Of The Barriers To Entry

When considering creativity, at least in my own journey, my biggest barrier to entry was always my equipment. Design, and the quality of it, are aspects of my work that I value dearly and producing content which appears to me to be of lower quality is unacceptable.

However, as a 13 year old, diving into the world of video editing, acquiring Adobe Creative Cloud, Final Cut Pro, a MacBook to run any of it on, or even a camera to take decent footage, was an impossible dream.

But now, in 2020, any iPhone that is currently sold, including the $399 iPhone SE, comes with at least one 4K camera with extended dynamic range and a chip that can properly handle video editing software like iMovie. With the most recent Filmed on iPhone Ads and the fact that American Idol is being filmed on iPhone this season, during the quarantine, the results are promising. I use the iPhone-iMovie example just because that is the ecosystem I am familiar with and think is the best, but most other smartphones on the market have similar capabilities.

What all that tech talk means is that the barriers to entry for people to create are dissolving and I am excited by the potential that comes with that. We live in a time when most preteens have the power in their pocket to produce high-quality content and distribute it through social media to the world. Now I am aware and wary of the dangers that creates, but at the same time awed by collaborative and interconnected stage this sets.

I was watching an interview with Grammy-nominated music producer Oak Felder, and he said something that I think perfectly echos the point I'm trying to convey. He said, "I want the 18-year-old kid to hear a production that I did and say, 'I can beat that.' You know why, because they're eventually gonna make something better. And when they do, it's going to galvanize me to say, 'I can beat that.'"

For the first time in history, the only thing limiting that 18-year-old is her/her imagination, drive, and creativity, not their lack of access to equipment that can keep up with them.

As digital media and technology have advanced, the layer of inaccessibility between creators and getting their content out has shrunk, and continues to shrink to this day. Apple's new iPads feature what is known as a LiDAR scanner, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging. Think of it like echolocation but for you phone and using laser instead of sound. By basically assessing how long it takes light to hit an object and reflect back, the device can get a fairly accurate reading of a 3D environment. Features that are out right now include the ability to render much more realistic augmented reality and produce more accurate measurements of physical objects. Tech bloggers have stipulated that the tech could be used for overlaying map directions onto a camera view to help users find locations inside malls.

But in this time of rapid app development, the possible feature that excites me the most is the ability to record that 3D data for a video and use it for animation. One of the hardest aspects of animation is tracking your 3D object to the motion of the environment you filmed to make it look like the object was part of that environment. But if my phone, which I do most of my filming on, already had the 3D data from my shoot, I can inlay objects based on the data I already have. As someone who has tremendous respect for visual effects but has never actually dived in and tried to learn, this news promises that the learning curve will be a lot shallower than I had originally anticipated.

These are just some examples of how technology is enabling my journey of learning to tell stories in the most complete way, and the possibilities than anyone with tech purchased in the last few years has to create. But other examples are endless, and I encourage you to find your passion or niche and whatever hardware or software that enables you to pursue that, and just start creating.

Until Next Time...