relatively small budget, but the sorts of movies embraced by the term have shifted drastically before. Classic film noir's combination of visual beauty and verbal wit, for instance, was hardly common coin in exploitation-era B filmmaking. Further expanding the field, Fox launched a new subsidiary in 2006, Fox Atomic, to concentrate on teen-oriented genre films (horror in particular, at first, then increasingly comedy, as well). The genre focus was similar to that of Sony's Screen Gems division and the Weinsteins' Dimension Films, but the economic model was deliberately low-rent, at least by major studio standards. According to a Variety report, "Fox Atomic is staying at or below the $10 million mark for many of its movies. It's also encouraging filmmakers to shoot digitally—a cheaper process that results in a grittier, teen-friendly look. And forget about stars. Of Atomic's nine announced films, not one has a big-name." In sum, this was an updated version of a Golden Age big studio B unit targeting a market very similar to the one Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson's AIP helped define in the 1950s. Despite its low budgets and consequently low benchmarks for profitability, Fox Atomic's output was seen as unsuccessful by its parent company, which shut it down in 2009. In a development hinted at by the Variety quotation above, technological advances are greatly facilitating the production of truly low-budget motion pictures. Although there have always been economical means with which to shoot movies, including Super 8 and 16 mm film, as well as video cameras recording onto analog videotape, these mediums could hardly rival the image quality of 35 mm film. The development and widespread usage of digital cameras and postproduction methods allow even low-budget filmmakers to produce films with excellent (and not necessarily "grittier") image quality and precise editing effects—though technical excellence is no guarantee of aesthetic value or even cinematographic competence. As Marone observes, "the equipment budget (camera, support) required for shooting digital is approximately 1/10 that for film, significantly lowering the production budget for independent features." Comparing circumstances in 2006 to those just a couple of years earlier, he argues that the "quality of digital filmmaking has improved dramatically." Independent filmmakers, whether working in a genre or arthouse mode, continue to find it difficult to gain access to distribution channels, though so-called digital end-to-end methods of distribution offer new opportunities. The so-called day-and-date strategy, in a which