Digital Dreams
I'm not a big movie buff, and the whole 'Star Wars' cultural frenzy doesn't concern me much, but I am a fan of new and emerging technologies, so I found this Reuters story of interest: "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" has been leaked onto a major file-sharing network just hours after opening in theaters, at a time when Hollywood is increasingly concerned about online piracy . . . One popular tracker Web site showed more than 16,000 people currently downloading the film via BitTorrent."
I think piracy is pretty lousy -- I mean, here are these conglomerates sinking literally hundreds of millions of dollars into producing jazzy, snappy, cutting-edge entertainment pieces with the intent of wowing as big an audience as they can muster, and this is the thanks they get? But I also think the studios are way too slow on the uptake on this one. It's the digital age, they're producing digital entertainment, we have digital delivery media (the Internet and satellite television) that reach worldwide, and yet we're still expected to line up at a theater and pay ticket prices that include marketing, film print, shipping and middle-man theater chain costs?
*harumph*
I understand that theater chains have a vested interest in restricting initial screenings to their network of movie palaces across the country and worldwide, but now that perfectly acceptable digital copies of breaking films can be made available for download only hours after a film's release (if not before the film's release), the whole "Let's feed it to the theaters, then release it to Pay-per-View and Pay Cable channels, and then release it on DVD" model is overdue for the dung-heap. Theater chains are already balking at the high costs of converting to digital projection methods, and really, why should they as more and more people simply download films and screen them at home on clear, crisp, sharp, large and brilliant high-definition screens that keep getting cheaper with the passing of each nano-second. So the incentive is obviously lacking and we're saddled with, as a result, a very retro/analog delivery system that's not as good as it could be, and costs far more than it should.
This is not my beautiful future.
Here's my two-cents: ditch the "most favored nation" theater-chain model and release new films to the internet, worldwide, on the same day they're available in theaters. This would cut any self-righteous justifications for piracy off at the knees, and because there's no packaging, film print, shipping or middle-man costs involved in digital distribution, the price of a direct download could be as low as $3.99 (or lower, whatever the market can bear) in order to encourage as much legal downloading as possible. Make it available on Pay-per-View as well. There will still be digital pirates, but the demand for pirated material would plummet as the real deal would be readily available, and the tens of thousands of people who are currently bit-torrenting their illegal copies of 'Star Wars' (and on only the first day of its release) could have just ordered it on Pay-per-View or downloaded it off some studio pay-site, instead.
I mean, that's where everything is headed anyway, so what's up with all the gnashing of teeth, the dragging of heels and the flurry of lawsuits instead of just getting with the program? I have no wish to see the large studios fail -- they're the only ones who can afford to put together these epic, special-FX extravaganzas, and a good diversionary extravaganza can be a wonder to behold . I just can't figure out what it is that they think they're avoiding.
And on the subject of movies, I watched this last night, and if you have any interest in surreal, hyper-violent Japanese cinema (and why would you not, I ask?), this thing will blow your mind. I laughed so hard, and yet it was also completely horrifying. I couldn't tell whether it was a horror movie, an action-thriller or a comedy, and I think that's a good thing . . . ?
I rented it off of Netflix -- you know, where you can also rent "Michael Moore Hates America" (gotta plug the sponsor -- now, back to our regular programming).
OFF-TOPIC:
You know, while this may have started off as just another one of his "You're not paying enough attention to me!" media ploys, I have to say that I've really warmed up to Donald Trump's idea of rebuilding the Twin Towers, just making them slightly taller and a lot stronger.
Comments
As the receipient of a nearly-worthless filmmaking degree, I'd like to add a little to Homocon's theory on the future of digital movie distribution:
-DVDs (in the industrialized nations like the USA, UK, and Japan) and the cheaper VCDs (popular in 3rd-World countries like China, India, and Canada) are becoming increasingly popular. More people purchased DVD movies last year than VHS movies for the first time ever and that's startling because DVD has only been around a few years and (since their inception back in the mid-1970s) there are probably over 1 billion VCRs in the world.
-More people have widescreen cinema-style TVs in their homes. This adds to the "home theater" experience and keeps many moviegoers from having to deal with the rudeness encounted at most movieplexes (NOTE TO MOVIEPLEX FANS: Turn off your frickin' mobile phones and S.T.F.U. during the movie).
-Homocon is absolutely right about the costs of digital distribution via the Internet. Digital distribution of multimedia content would LOWER the overall costs to produce said content. No more of this paying $10 to see a movie once crap... Buy it for $5 and watch it at home as many times as you want.
-In 20-30 years, movies on a "silver screen" will become events, much like a concert is now. You'll pay $40 to get in, $20 for a meal in the theater, and you'll experience holographic projections and ultra-realistic sound that you can't get with your standard 42" plasma screen TV and 8.1 Dolby Digital audio.
Posted by: Scott | May 21, 2005 5:30 PM
Wait wait wait -- let me get this straight. Somebody gave *you* a degree in filmmaking?
That's just wrong -- sick and wrong.
Meanwhile, where's my holographic projection widescreen HD television? And my flying car? I want my flying car!
Posted by: homocon | May 22, 2005 2:50 AM
Regarding piracy - yes it is wrong - but if these original digital versions didn't exist in the first place, then the downloader couldn't get them. It is the pure greed of the movie industry to have a film ready to be rushed to market on DVD that has created this opportunity for the downloaders. Remember when it was a full year or so before a movie was released on VHS/DVD after the initial screening? I'm not saying it's a justification for downloading - it's not - just that corporate greed has created this loophole for illegal activity.
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Homocon sez:
Nearly everything is edited digitally anymore, special effects are applied digitally, and once the digital version of the film is finished and digitally mastered, it's then transferred back onto film. So it's not that digital versions of films are readily available because the studios are afflicted with "pure greed," but rather, the digital versions for everything already exist through the editing, mastering and finalizing processes, which is why the file of the latest Star Wars film that was leaked to the Internet had time-codes stamped all over it.
What's this with the "pure greed of the movie industry" anyway, as if it's a bad thing . . . ? I'm all for movies making hundreds of millions of dollars, especially when they cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. The more money a studio thinks it can make on a film, the more bucks they'll put into making the film and the more spectacular said film will undoubtedly look. When "Titanic" was in the final days of production, there were numberous horror stories of how over-budget it was and that the studios never thought they'd make their money back and what a disaster it was going to be, but it turned out to be a blockbuster, and now studio heads barely flinch when offered proposals for high-budget spectaculars.
I *love* epic, special-effects extravaganzas, and without the "pure greed of the movie industry," we wouldn't have them.
Posted by: Jeff Lynch | May 23, 2005 4:03 PM
First of all the quality of a film can no way be measured by how much money is pumped into it, some of the best films I have seen were below a $1,000,000 investment.
And secondly it's infuriating the way you make out that we 'owe' these conglomerates for trying to make a tidy profit out of us. The clever thing to do would be to ignore the advertising etc and try and find a film you actually like, not one you like because you've seen the best 30secs repeatedly and can't escape seeing the film name everywhere.
Finally, this is basically the same argument as MP3s and as you have probably guessed I side with the downloaders. If you watch a film and its great then you will probably goto the cinema and watch it, im sure not very many peoples computer/home cinema system match upto the performance of a cinema. Alternatively people will buy the DVD for additional features not contained on their download. The directors will probably mostly agree that they made the film primarily to be enjoyed and secondarily to make money, this whole argument is about protecting the greed of large movie companies. In my opinion the dinosaurs of the corporate world.
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Homocon sez:
"this whole argument is about protecting the greed of large movie companies."
You appear to hold the belief that it's somehow morally wrong to make a lot of money selling a product that people enjoy. I don't find fault with the movie companies for making a lot of money -- if you don't like their product, then don't support it, but don't run around denigrating the film industry for their supposed "greed" while you're enjoying their products by downloading them without paying for them. Same with the music industry. Support what you enjoy or agree with, but don't just steal a product that's been produced from a huge corporation and then turn around and blame *them* for being greedy.
Posted by: Carl | June 11, 2005 12:17 PM