but indie films have always existed. there have always been amateurs using film as a medium, since there was film (in high school, we wrote, storyboarded, directed, acted in, and edited our own short films for our final film class projects using camcorders and watched them at a viewing night at a local theater!).

you're saying "you must have a giant budget and tons of time to compete with the studios and AI can level the playing field" but i don't know why an artist would want to compete with a major film studio which is pushing out generic content in the first place?

you don't need a multimillion dollar production budget and $300k props to make art, in the same way a sculptor doesn't need to make statues out of gold or diamonds.