[Animats]

The trend is in the opposite direction.

About two decades back, I knew a B-list Hollywood director who wanted that. He'd found out that Reboot, the first all CG cartoon show, took a staff of about 30 people to produce an episode each week. . He wanted to be able to make a movie with about $10 million and maybe 50 people. Because then he could direct. Making a $100 million movie with a thousand people on staff is project management. He was spending far more time in meetings than on-set.

That didn't happen, though. Productivity did not go up for Hollywood. Movies became all big scenes, all the time. Production costs went through the roof. TV shows had to upgrade to production values previously seen only in film. Movies are now made twice, once as "pre-visualization" to get approval to spend the money for the full version. Look at the end credits scroll by on a effects movie. There's no longer a cast of thousands, there's a staff of thousands. Since nobody can afford a failure, everything is a predictable sequel.

[Ajedi32]

Yet, at the same time, there are people on YouTube making broadcast-TV-quality content with nothing more than a camera and a laptop.

Modern movies are expensive to make because they can afford to be expensive to make, not because they need to be. As technology improves, the gap between what independent creators can do and what high budget studios can do will continue to narrow until, for certain types of content, there'll be no discernible difference.