Prediction: Improved video compression, cheap storage, expensive local production, and faster internet speeds will contribute to an exodus of creative professionals out of Los Angeles.
Travel to the future with me...
The shoot is to take place in Utah's Zion National park. The producer in New York hires a director from Taos, New Mexico, who hires a director of photography from Bozeman, Montana, and a Tech Supervisor from Boise, Idaho. An audio mixer flies in from Orlando, Florida.
A day's worth of footage is shot on reusable memory cards on location. At the end of the day, the footage is copied to two small hard drives. One of the hard drives is sent to an Assistant Editor in San Diego, who imports the footage into his editing system, and organizes the entire project for an editor. A copy of the imported footage and project are sent to the editor in Chicago, who cuts the finished product in a project he shares with the San Diegan Assistant Editor over Dropbox.
The Assistant exports rough cuts to Quicktimes and posts them online, to be watched by the Producer in New York, the Director in Taos, and the studio executives in Los Angeles. Once the cut is locked, the Assistant prepares an online sequence, audio mix-downs, and high-resolution media, which is sent to an Online Editor in Santa Barbara. An OMF and picture reference is sent over the internet to an audio mixer in Nashville. The audio mixer sends his mixed audio to the Online Editor, who lays everything back to tape. The tape is delivered to the network.
And no one had to live in Los Angeles.