With the enormous influx of home-made movies on the web, is the whole concept of filmmaking - and film school, for that matter - still feasible? Does film have a future?

First of all, we have to define our terms. Film essentially does not have a future. {Most of the movies are shot and projected with "digital help". In this type of industry, there are holdouts. Steven Spielberg, for instance, does not want his films to be projected digitally, so he shoots on film. But even the great Spielberg has to give in - this happened with "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." The distribution mogul, Paramount Pictures, released it both on film and digitally. Michael Bay says "I'm old school because I like to shoot on film." He points out that he prefers his movies to be seen in theaters, that "Transformers" wasn't downloadable for an iPod. Bay and Spielberg may be the exceptions when it comes to shooting on film, but they are still part of the school of filmmakers around the world who want to tell stories professionally on the big screen.

But are there still audiences to that kind of cinema? The kind of filmmaking with characters and a plot and set-ups that have to be edited simultaneously? The fact that today's biggest hits are home-movie clips of "The Worst Ice Cream Ever" and "Spider-Tard," prompts us to ask: are people still sold out to feature films?

Cory Doctorow, a writer who believes that "commercially minded" big budget movies "might simply die", mentions in an online write-up called "Media Metamorphosis: How the Internet Will Devour, Transform or Destroy Your Favorite Medium" that the future will be controlled by cheap and crummy YouTube videos which, he says, will be seen by you and the "38 other people who are kinked just like you."

Is Mr. Doctorow right on the spot? Is film-going soon to be a part of our memory? Will the public become more inclined to watching a fuzzy home movie on their smart phones? Will the film business now be ruled by a kid with a flip-cam? Let's go to the facts. This weekend, "Where the Wild Things Are" grossed over $30 million. That's about 3 million people who went to see it in just three days and box office for the weekend is up forty percent from the same time last year. That is bigger than any number of hits on any video on the internet. Even the low-budgeted feature (approximatey $20,000) "Paranormal Activity" has made over 30 million dollars - on the average, that's about $25,000 per theater.

Interestingly enough, ever since the internet has become a primary part of our lives, annual box office has not dropped. The downtick in profits hovers around 1-2% yearly, which is actually better than the downturn in the economy. Indeed, this connotes that people still choose to experience the movies in the movie theater with other people and with fancy food - they still want to lose themselves in something outside of real life.

As Ron Howard tells the current DGA Quarterly: "You try to tell a story that's meaningful, and share it with people." That kind of shared-story is something that audiences still need. So while film may be dead, the prognosis for the filmmaking process and film school is bright and the future of the movie-going experience appears to be strong and vital.