In his article highlighting the best films of 2014, Richard Brody of The New Yorker stated, "The great surge in American filmmaking in the past ten years is due to independent financing at all levels.
This is a moment of extraordinary cinematic invention—of filmmakers, working at a wide range of budget levels, coming up with original and personal ideas about movies and how to make them.
On the other hand, this independent surge has also created a new class of culturally respectable directors and films, an ostensible art cinema that flows into the mainstream.
Its commercial obstacles are an increasing problem even for established professionals, who now take their place alongside street-level independents.
If films are becoming like books, where the artistically ambitious ones are only rarely big hits, then directors working outside Hollywood will become more and more like novelists, who often need to supplement their income with teaching or other outside jobs.