Globalization Process

Globalization process has become a fist-paced phenomenon, which his opened new perspectives for international filmmakers. Nowadays, it’s far easier for filmmakers to find and enter markets and distribute their films. This is because the number of data being transmitted through borders his rose significantly, and that made a huge impact on nations, individuals and companies to connect more deeply. The market growth rises every year because fast internet access is available in most of the countries. According to World Bank (2006), the number of highly educated professionals, who left their slowly developing countries to developed ones, his doubled in the decade from 1990-2000.

These professionals gained new skills and still, maintained links with their native countries, kept transferring their knowledge and ideas. As an IBM report envisaged: "Between now and 2010, the increasing affordability, saturation, transmission speed and massive data storage capacity of emerging digital technologies will enable new formats and functionalities, multiplying and deepening the connectivity of users around the globe" (IBM, 2004).

Furthermore, the internet usage has grown at the speed of light: from just 3 percent of the world’s population in 1995 to more than 15 percent of the global population in 2005 – almost one billion people. The greatest number of internet users – nearly 330 million, was registered in Asia in 2004, followed by 243 million users in Europe and 185 million in the US. In 2000, just 25 percent of internet users in the world was reported by developing countries. Though, this figure rose up to 40 percent by 2005. By 2004, the mobile networks were accessed by 77 percent of the world’s population (UNCTAD, 2005). Such changes in technology have created an increase in transnational movement in media products.

The major media corporations, such as Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Columbia Pictures, Paramount, which operate multiple networks and influence media content, have benefited from this process. According to Lewis (2012), these studios had dominance not only over the mainstream commercial marketplace, but also over independent film sphere. Though, independent filmmakers can directly take part in globalization by forming their own transnational connections. Digital platforms, for example, Google Play, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, iTunes and other VOD companies allow filmmakers to find the audience and distribute their films. These days digitalization offer a way to upload films through Youtube or Vimeo, which can be safely storaged for many years. So, a freelancer filmmaker have all the opportunities to start a successful Youtube career.

According to Goss, uploads of video content on Youtube have gone from just over 5 hours per minute worldwide in early 2007 (2010) to 60 hours per minute – or one hour of video per second in 2012. Moreover, in terms of viewing there are 4 billion views per day (Warman, 2012). According to Ravid, self-distribution is mostly successful in the documentary area. Ravid quotes Rob Millis of Dynamo as saying, "there are hundreds of love stories but only one or a couple docs or at most a few about any given specific topic". She then states that successful "Do It Yourself" distribution strategy for a documentary can expect to earn $20,000.

Now, if your documentary cost $10,000 to make and you spent another $5,000 - $10,000 going to festivals and marketing your film, this leaves little to no room for paying off a mortgage with your earnings from filmmaking. On the other hand, she also points outh the success of the comic performer Louis C.K. when he uploaded his performance "Live at the Beacon Theater" on his own site for a PayPal price of $5 for direct download and made over $1MM in approximately one week (Ravid, 2012).