There was a term that became popular in the business start-up scene six months ago… “ramen profitable.”

I like this term. I know first hand what it means.

Basically a business enterprise might find itself in a situation where it does make a profit, but only large enough to supply its founders with rent and basic food money.

I’ve lived on ramen noodles… I’ve turned white rice into a frienemy, after one failed entrepreneurial episode in my life I didn’t eat rice for a year.

This term “ramen profitable” has more connected with it than profit, the concept being that after a business gets this stage, it gives the creators time to quit their day jobs and try to grow the project.

What it really means is that the business model is working, but just not well enough for others to swoon over.

This goes hand-in-hand with this other concept growing on the start-up scene, that it now takes NO money to start a business.

A computer, housing & bandwidth are all things the average person has anyway. You might need web hosting and the short-term services of a web programmer from someplace like rentacoder.com, but this will come out of your personal entertainment budget…

I promise you, after starting some kind of entrepreneurial endeavor, you start to think about it like entertainment, and your budget for Star Wars figurines will drop to zero.

You will be pulled out of the chorus of Stars Wars figurine-buying suckers for the rest of your life.

Welcome to adulthood.

Overall what this new concept about being able to start a business with $0, is that it is cheaper, faster, better, more successful, this, that, and the other thing, to just try a business and see if it works than to bring in business “professionals” to create business plans, find funding, and this, that, and the other thing.

Okay, why am I writing about this?

I predict that the artistic mediums move towards this model.

In Ecuador, I saw a local kid traveling with a beat up Macbook, and he had created this really impressive, intricately edited video about his travels using the free iMovie software that came with Mac.

I was really impressed. I knew that iMovie could do this I just didn’t know anyone who spent that much time with iMovie before just moving up to Final Cut Pro.

At the same time I saw a video “professional,” who with a package of equipment that a few years ago probably cost $20,000 create a simply shot, simply edited video that should never have been made.

The local kid with iMovie was more talented.

But the ability to edit video in the simple style of Oscar winning films is now just a give-me.

Cameras are coming down in price, there exists point & shoot still cameras with the ability to capture video in HD, even if it’s not “True HD,” one day it will be.

Maybe one-day camera phones with capture in HD, and then what will be everyone’s excuse for not making films?

Soon the world will be a place where people who want to make films, will just make films.

No grant writing for documentaries, no more screenplay readers reading for films.

Soon it will be cheaper just to shoot a film, than pay a screenwriting guru to review your script.

I can only compare this to inroads that music has already made towards the future.

At one time there were songwriters, who wrote for big stars, these songwriters had crude home studios to “demo” a song, if the songwriter wrote a good song, the star sang it in a studio and made everyone a million bucks.

Now, the songwriter writes the song, records it in his home studio, and it’s finished. No, demoing, no big star, the equipment in his house is as good as a studio.

The songwriter sings it and everyone knows it. The end.

If we don’t like it because the singer isn’t pretty enough, well it’s left up to us to deal with our own prejudices… but with this added burden we can also get more authentic music.

Go Jonas Brothers Go!

But even filmmaking, one of the most complex, expensive of the composite arts is becoming almost free to make.

And that means that soon there will be artists in this medium that can reach the orbit of “ramen” profitability.

One local guy, filling one local theater, for one showing, of one local film, in which no one asks for their money back, could float said guy on a diet of ramen noodles for one year or the time until the completion of his next film.

Even if you are not starving, having had rich parents, and went to film school, the cost of filmmaking coming down is a good thing.

It means that the artistic lifestyle is more sustainable, and the chance of having a second film after your first is more plausible.

Sorry for my blogging hiatus, I was writing for real.

-      J Roland Kelly