~25 years ago, in film school, we learned to cut physical film around the same time we learned to cut digitally with an NLE. The debates after class centered around whether digital would ever catch up with film, and what that would mean if/when it did. I interned, then worked for the only local tv station. It took 10 people behind the scenes to run a live newscast. A decade after I graduated, live newscasts in markets 4x the size were being run by 3 people and a ton of automation. Reporters used to have photogs with them; now they often have to set up and record themselves. And it was very strange to watch YouTube turn my career into something the general public kinda does.

That switch, though, did mean that a lot more small-mid companies started hiring videographers to regularly produce and upload videos. These are often solitary jobs, where the videographer is a department of 1 (maybe 2). So we ended up with a job landscape where there are far fewer ensemble and journalist positions, and more isolated, corporate positions. And now that “everyone can make videos with their phone,” the value propositions have changed. I’m not a fan, but I’ve made it work. I don’t know how much of this will be directly applicable to what’s coming with AI, but I figure it might be of some use to someone.

E: Oh, and that tv station I worked for in college no longer exists. The closest big city took over reporting (poorly) about it. This is becoming more common, as the companies that own stations have gotten larger. So that’s one less avenue for new film grads to break into the market.

I hate this cause I just started. I’ve had a few intimate nights in an IDE slightly wishing I could just get some sleep before work. But I didnt get to take it all the way, to see what I could truly do at my height before this thing showed up and ripped all the ladders down.