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There is no Democratization in Filmmaking. It’s Pay-to-Play.

Why “Just make your film” is terrible advice.

Sharonda Harris-Marshall
6 min readJul 23, 2019
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

I’m communicating with a potential client. That music video I shot and edited a few years ago was impressive. It won me and the music artist a regional filmmaking and music video award. The client wants to know, “What did you use to shoot it?”

“Oh, that was just my Canon 60D. We shot it on a limited budget as a last-minute video when we didn’t get the funding for our original video the artist wanted.”

“Oh okay, wow.”

Despite proving that I can work with budget constraints, quick story-building techniques, and with limited equipment, I’ll never hear from this client again. Why? Because I shot the video alone with limited resources. I shot it with a mid-range Canon crop-sensor camera that was okay for the time but definitely shows its age now. Even if it was a favorite among quality budget filmmakers like D4Darious.

Just like D4Darious, my Canon 60D has been good to me. I still shoot with it and I’ll never…

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Sharonda Harris-Marshall
Sharonda Harris-Marshall

Written by Sharonda Harris-Marshall

is a filmmaker, photographer, and digital media artist living a stereotypical artist life. She could have been a doctor or a scientist, but here we are.

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