Maybe, somebody on here could contact a major film company and suggest a documentary about fluorescent lighting. It would have many people from this website telling their vast knowledge of fluorescent lighting to the camera. It could be "Rated PG for Power Groove." Of course it would be heavily biased towards vintage technology in an attempt to reclaim our magnetic ballasts and T12's and such. I think it would be worth it to produce a documentary. What do y'all think? After all they did make a documentary about the Theremin!

Any film company is interested in one thing only: The profit. Making a film is rather an expensive matter so you need either a) a good sponsor and/or b) a huge audience.

a) If GE were willing pay for making the film, they would just want their own products there. No Philips, no Sylvania...

b) Who is interested in fluorescents? You are, I am, a part of LG members are. But 99.999% of people think of them as of that dull office/shop/... light. Okay, why not make a film about shovels or tyres or bookshelves?
The theremin is a unique musical instrument (one of the most difficult to play on) and it's some show to see when one is playing on it. It's exotic. But even so I'm not sure if there was enough people to pay for a cinema ticket to return the film production costs.

The film's goal would be to get people out of the "dull office building light" mindset and get them into the "historical very interesting etc" mindset. The whole idea would be to show the public the history of fluorescent lighting so that they can apply what they learn to lighting they see every day. Maybe when I get rich one day, I call GE, Sylvania, etc, and see if they would be interested in sponsoring a documentary on the history of fluorescent lighting.

I have a Theremin by the way.

I think that I understand your idea well.
Discovery Channel (or a similar programme) staff could be more interested in making this document. At least, there is an audience interested in technical/science documents. They might be searching for new topics so you could try to contact them.
On the other hand - fluorescents are neither new nor old enough to be attractive for those who aren't primarily focused on lighting.
Imagine a common PC keyboard. Are you interested in it? If you are modern person, you are rather interested in smart-phone touch apps. If you want to see something historical, you would search for typewriter history in the eighteenth century. But why something so ordinary as a PC keyboard? And yet - there have been so many interesting technologies inside (such as Hall effect sensors or clicking micro-switches), a layout research in effort to increase typing productivity etc. But you are still uninterested because it's that dull thing for $5 on your table.

The other way to make that film could be hiring a professional with a quality camera and upload it on youtube where it's available for everyone interested. You can make a scenario on your own but be sure to learn something about it first because even a very interesting topic could be killed by long boring passages, too much technical data etc.

Once I wanted to order a theremin from Moog for fun but then I realized that I would play on it for two or three weeks and then... I know myself. But it's cool that you have it.

I would agree, the subject is simply too mundane to make a documentary of - very few outside the actual lighting community would ever care to watch it. The first thing I thought of was TLC's My Strange Addiction, but what we do is neither gross or otherwise shocking, so that would be out of the question. I see it most likely as being a part of a documentary about collecting uncommon things, likes stamps, toilets, etc. Or, as self degrading as it sounds, a documentary about ASD...

But even in all those cases, it wouldn't be appropriate to go into the technical and historical aspects. Just the collecting aspect. If one wished to make a video regarding the technical and historical details of fluorescent lighting, I would imagine it would only be most appropriate as a short thing on YouTube or wherever; something many of us here already do.

Edit: Something else I just thought of - if in school you're ever required to make, for example, a PowerPoint presentation about the history of *something*, fluorescent lighting would be an excellent topic. All the topics of the history, phosphor types, ballasting techniques, etc. would wrap nicely into a 10 or 15 minute presentation. I'd certainly do that if I ever get the chance.

Well, my once grand idea of making a documentary on fluorescent lighting has now been degraded down to a high school Powerpoint presentation. But what did I expect?

Sorry...

Given the video production equipment that is available nowadays, it would be possible for a group of collectors to produce and distribute something without the need for any middlemen like a production house or television network.

This is true.  I would love to see something made, I would even help make it if I had the time and money.  I have active access to 2 Sony Handycams of pretty good quality that don't cost $2k a piece and I have my laptop with editing software as well as lighting of course.  I could make something of pretty good quality if I really set out to do it.  Of course nothing too fancy (no lenses for neat distortion or rapid focus switching and fast zoom)  but a documentary could be done easily.

Personally I wouldn't think the quipment would be of any limitation, the stuff widely spread among people is far enough.
What I would see as a bottleneck is someone able to compose the complete structure, so it won't be a mess of mixed nonsense. And for that you will need someone with documetary film experience, at least as an advisor/guide...
I think it could be great "school project" for some film art students - they have the advisors among their professors, they are educated in the way how to make a good film,...

Why did you use a sectional symbol in "wouldn't‽"

Why did you use a sectional symbol in "wouldn't‽"

A typo. I have dual language keybord (Czech and English), which are very smilar, but still differ ("Y" and "Z" are swapped, those symbols are rearranged) and these symbols are on the same key, depend on the language setting. And sometimes I forgot to switch it correctly and overlook the error...

If we're gonna start using fancy punctuation, I'd like to exercise the interrobang. (‽) 

Itis supposed to be corrected now...(?)