NewYorker class 3/4

What I found to be most interesting in Tuesday's class was when we were talking about do it yourself video projects, and youtube. It's interesting that videos on youtube can become so popular and get so many hits, whether they are original material, or a video based on something already done (like Star Trek, Star Wars, or a popular song getting remade with new lyrics or a unique dance), and it costs those people zero dollars to make it. Yet, we have commercials on TV that are just as long as some of these clips, but usually even shorter, and they spend millions of dollars! It just doesn't make sense to me, yet it shows how valuable air time is for companies/brands, that they will pay almost anything to get their name out there. Even making movies costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and a low budget film is considered in the range of 10-30 million. But they come out looking just as good! And even my brother is a movie maker, and made 3 original movies, feature length, and cost him nearly nothing each, and all came out well filmed, edited, soundtracks, etc. He even puts up original clips that he makes himself online, and they don't cost him a thing to make. So why this huge gap in money when it comes to making movies? Do we have to put a price tag on it in order to consider it valuable? Why can't the media work like youtube, showing its value in number of hits it gets, or how many times it comes up in all the different search engines?
I relooked at this quote: "As more and more amateur works have entered into circulation via the Web, the result has been a turn back toward a more folk-culture understanding of creativity” – 556, and I thought about how now (since a few years ago) at the Oscars they have categories for short films, foreign films, and independent films (which are all considered low budget), and how the acadamy is now shedding light and appreciating those types of movies made - will this change anything of the media or film industry in the future?