Beginning with the home video revolution in the 1980s, Hollywood and mainstream media companies have undergone a radical transformation.
This proliferation spurred Francis Ford Coppola's famous comment, “The great hope is that...some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film.”[4] The popularity of YouTube and user-generated video further fueled “do-it-yourself” video production, and the micro-budget film was born.
Producers and directors began making full-length feature films on budgets as low as several thousand dollars, usually borrowed from friends and family.
Stacey Parks, author of The Insider's Guide to Independent Film Distribution, talks about using a wide variety of tools to help micro-filmmakers finance their projects.
Given the contraction of advertising revenues in television, the severe decline in DVD sales of major motion pictures (which generally results in approximately 50% of a film's revenues),[7] the reduced markets for Hollywood products internationally[8] and the skyrocketing production costs of some mainstream films, translates into a reduction in movies made.