Movie Exec Says Studios Should Stop Sending Out DVD Screeners For The Oscars

from the this-has-been-tried dept

One of Jack Valenti's last great "battles" as the head of the MPAA was his fight against DVD screeners sent out for the various movie awards events. Valenti felt that sending screeners of all the nominated movies was a key factor contributing to unauthorized copies getting out into the world and on the internet. So he instituted a ban on sending out such screeners. This pissed off just about everyone. A bunch of really famous movie directors demanded that he drop the ban and the LA Film Critics Association actually canceled their own awards event in protest. Then, a bunch of independent film producers sued the MPAA. Basically, everyone pointed out that without the screeners, many of the voters simply wouldn't be able to see the movies being voted on, and that would hamper any awards effort -- especially for more independent films. Eventually, a judge sided with the producers, and explained to Valenti that he could not ban DVD screeners.

The following year, he came up with another plan, which involved special screener DVDs that only played on a special DVD player, which each voter would have to get and set up themselves. In other words, it was a "solution" that was a huge pain in the ass for everyone -- especially those who already had a perfectly good home theater setup. After a few years of everyone bitching and complaining about this, the MPAA finally relented in 2007, and went back to just sending out normal DVDs as screeners.

Apparently, some folks in the industry don't know their history. At the "Content Protection Summit" that we recently discussed, a VP from Summit Entertainment, the indie studio who has had some success lately thanks to the Twilight films and The Hurt Locker, apparently told the audience that the industry should get rid of DVD screeners, and who cares if it inconveniences people. She specifically said "we're going to have to agree to be inconvenienced." Apparently, she's totally unaware of how badly that worked out last time around -- especially for independent studios like her own.

Of course, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Summit Entertainment thinks this way. The company has built up quite a reputation for being an intellectual property bully. In the past 15 months or so, we've had multiple different stories of Summit's overly aggressive attempts at IP enforcement, often threatening or suing people doing completely reasonable things, such as creating a fanzine or filming a documentary about the town where Twilight is supposed to take place. And that's not even getting into questions about The Hurt Locker and its lawsuit campaign against thousands of file sharers -- because that was really done by the movie's producers, Voltage, rather than Summit. Of course, all these actions are doing is reminding me to avoid any pictures associated with Summit.

Filed Under: dvds, movies, screeners
Companies: mpaa, summit entertainment

Just As Record Labels Resented Apple For Dragging Them Into The Internet Age, Movie Studios Resenting Netflix

from the amazing dept

It's been about five years since we posted a story about how the record labels were pissed off at Steve Jobs and Apple for building such a successful online music store in iTunes. The whole thing sounded counterintuitive. Prior to iTunes, the record labels had tried a series of dreadfully awful online music stores with horrible selection, crippling limitations, and ridiculous prices. While iTunes still isn't the savior that some in the industry think, it did drag the industry forward. And... for that, the labels resented Apple. It was basically because Apple had become the gatekeeper -- the position they were used to holding.

These days, it sounds like the movie studios are going through the same sort of experience with Netflix. A recent story highlighted how the heads of major studios are getting upset about how successful Netflix has been with its online streaming offering. They literally are complaining that Netflix has been too good at getting customers to use online streaming:

"The problem is that Netflix is not the company we thought it was when we started doing these deals a few years ago. It has changed," said a studio executive who requested anonymity because the studio's discussions were confidential.

Of course, as was the case with the labels and Apple, what's really going on is that the studios want a bigger cut. It's a case of overvaluing the content, and undervaluing the service. What the studio bosses refuse to admit is that it's the service that is working. There have been many attempts at offering streaming or download movies, and none of them did well, because they all sucked. They had the same content (or, in some cases better content), but since the services were so bad, no one used them. That seems like pretty clear evidence that it's the service that made this a success -- but they can't bring themselves to admit that. So, instead, they rag on Netflix and talk about how "unfair" it is that Netflix isn't paying them enough. And these are the same execs who complain about customers having an "entitlement mentality"?

Filed Under: internet, movies, resentment, streaming
Companies: netflix

How Warner Bros. Should Have Responded To Harry Potter Leak

from the seriously? dept

Not this again. With the news that the the first 36 minutes of the new Harry Potter movie have leaked online, Warner Bros. has gone the traditionally braindead, clueless path of demanding the heads of the leakers:

"Last night a portion of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was stolen and illegally posted on the internet," Warner Bros. said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. "This constitutes a serious breach of copyright violation and theft of Warner Bros. property. We are working actively to restrict and/or remove copies that may be available. Also, we are vigorously investigating this matter and will prosecute those involved to the full extent of the law."

This is, of course, reminiscent to the leak of Wolverine last year -- except even more ridiculous on the part of Warner Bros. As we noted when Wolverine leaked, there were plenty of ways that the studio could have responded to this that didn't involve acting like overprotective children, but instead got fans excited. I came up with a "suggested" response at the time, and I'll do the same for Warner Bros here (no charge!):

Hey Harry Potter fans! We know how excited you all are for the next installment of the Harry Potter movie series this weekend. We're pretty excited too. Obviously someone here was so excited that they went and leaked the first 36 minutes of the film online. We didn't authorize this, and really wished it didn't happen, but it's out there. We're sure many of you will probably want to check it out, but we think that the full movie experience in the theater is really something quite special. If you really must watch the leaked clip, be forewarned: you're going to have to wait until the end of the week to find out what actually happens, and you're going to be dying in suspense, so we'd suggest you hang on and see the whole thing in the theater this Friday...

Or something like that. Once again, can you imagine how much better fans would respond to that sort of thing than to the chest-thumping silly threats? Besides, this is only 36 minutes of the movie. A bunch of movie studios have already released the beginnings of various movies to try to get people interested. If I remember correctly, all the way back in 2000 or so, the movie Chicken Run released the first 30 minutes or so to get people to go to the theater and other films have done that as well. So I'm having a really hard time figuring out exactly how this could possibly be bad for Warner Bros.

Well, unless the first 36 minutes absolutely sucks... But if that's the case, it shouldn't be about running to the authorities, but to the folks who made the bad movie.

Filed Under: harry potter, leak, movies
Companies: warner bros.

Hollywood's Strategy For The Future: Pretending The Government Can Save Them

from the yah,-ok dept

We were reasonably troubled, earlier this year, when the ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] division of Homeland Security started acting as Hollywood's private police force -- not just seizing the domains of a bunch of sites it accused of being "pirate sites," but announcing this at Disney's headquarters. It's difficult to understand why the US government -- and Homeland Security specifically -- is helping protect a single industry's obsolete business model. It's even more troubling when it's doing so in such close association with that industry, and proudly noting that it's now a priority of Homeland Security to protect Hollywood's obsolete business model. Imagine if the FTC announced antitrust actions against Google from, say, AT&T's headquarters. People would call that into question, as there's a clear conflict of interest. Yet, somehow, Homeland Security and ICE get a free pass on this.

A few weeks back, I went to Hollywood to appear on a panel for the Filmmaker Forum event, all about "piracy." You can see a short clip of the panel here. One of the panelists was Kevin Suh, who has the title "VP of Content Protection" at the MPAA. Of course, just the fact that the MPAA has a position that involves "content protection" suggests that there's a pretty big problem with how the MPAA views where the market is heading (hint: protectionism is not going to get you very far). Kevin was extremely nice -- and we had quite a pleasant conversation prior to the panel. But, at one point, he made some assertions (not in the video) that seemed odd to me. First, he went on and on about how much money these new "digital locker" sites make, and then in the very next sentence said that Hollywood couldn't offer a competing service because it would make no money.

At one point, I challenged him on the idea that taking down these sites was effective, and he insisted that the sites that were taken down had stayed down, and no others had stepped up to take their place. While I don't follow these sites all that closely, I'd already seen that this wasn't true, as lots of our users like to send in tips about new sites popping up (or where those "downed" sites reappeared). And, in fact, the press is noting that at least one of the sites taken down went right back up days later.

But what's really troubling about the article that has that info, is that it focuses in on how the US government has pledged to continue to be Hollywood's copyright cops, based on questionable legal authority (this, by the way, is one reason why the government is so keen to pass COICA, which would give the feds some authority that they're lacking here). But the simple fact is that this is a huge waste of taxpayer money, trying to stop the unstoppable and protect the unprotectable. There are all sorts of great opportunities for better, smarter business models for the industry, and yet rather than explore those, we have VPs of protectionism, running to the government and getting them to run crazy, legally dubious domain name seizures that do little, if anything to help.

About the only good thing that I can think of is that more and more filmmakers are realizing this. Following the panel, I was (quite pleasantly) surprised by just how many filmmakers spoke to me about how ridiculous the MPAA's position on all of this is, and saying that it's time for the industry to actually compete. Unfortunately, the industry hasn't had to compete in so long, thanks in part to lobbying efforts by the MPAA, that the legacy players don't seem to know how to do so. That's why it's going to be the up and coming filmmakers that figure it out.

Filed Under: coica, hollywood, movies, protectionism

Blaming Popcorn For Hollywood's Troubles

from the makes-about-as-much-sense-as-piracy dept

An anonymous reader sends over a blog post from The Telegraph suggesting that the real issue for the movie industry isn't "piracy," but popcorn. The basic idea is that the theater owners drive the success of the movie industry and the theater owners make their money off of popcorn, so they only want movies that fill seats with young people who buy lots of high margin popcorn. And that leads to bad movies. Or something. Honestly, the line of thought from popcorn to movies sucking isn't entirely clear. The article does mention that box office sales are actually up (though fewer tickets are being sold), but leaves out what that really means. Of course fewer tickets are being sold: there's more competition and theaters, for the most part, have been slow to create a better experience. Rather than demanding crappy movies that they think will attract lots of young popcorn buyers, they could have (and should have) focused on making the overall movie-going experience better (which, by the way, might even include not pricing the popcorn quite so high). There are lots of reasons why some of the big movie studios are struggling, but popcorn is a pretty small part of it... as is "piracy." The failure of the movie industry and the theater industry to recognize that they're in the business of selling an overall experience is a much bigger problem, and one that the industry hasn't shown much indication of figuring out yet.

Filed Under: business models, movies, popcorn

Warner Bros. So Thrilled With Netflix 28-Day Delays, It Wants To Have Longer Delays

from the driving-fans-to-piracy dept

Hollywood continues to seek new and ever-more creative ways to shoot itself in the foot and drive movie fans to unauthorized copies of movies. Earlier this year, Warner Bros. studios was successful in pressuring Netflix and Redbox to delay rental releases by 28-days, with the hope that people who couldn't rent the movie would buy it. Warner Bros. has been claiming this strategy succeeded and that they've sold more DVDs because of it. I would doubt that it's the delay that's increasing sales, and it seems like a pretty short-sighted strategy to look to increase sales of a format like DVD right now. Either way, Warner Bros. is now claiming it may try to increase the window over 28-days. It's as if they want to drive more people to get the movie from unauthorized providers. Making it more difficult to let people watch movies the way they want to isn't a solution that will work long-term.

Filed Under: delays, movies, rentals, windows
Companies: netflix, redbox, warner bros.

Dedicated Fans Bring Movie Back To Life, Contributing $346k In Just A Few Weeks

from the connecting-with-fans... dept

A bunch of folks have sent over this story of how the author of the popular book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller, had been working for years on turning the book into a movie, but in the middle of September, he posted to his website that it just wasn't going to happen, because the traditional funders of movies weren't interested in the movie. The book apparently is a sort of coming of age, semi-autobiographical story, involving aspects of the author's spiritual/religious journey. As Miller explained, while the book is a "Christian" book, it has elements in it that those who traditionally fund "Christian movies" didn't want to support (for example, something involving putting a giant condom on a church steeple...). And he suggested that, while the book has found an audience among students going through similar situations, those are not the people who generally fund movies.

Or, perhaps they are. Miller had been able to bring together some funding, but came up $125,000 short of what was needed for the indie film production (including some well-known actors). After saying that the project was dead, some fans apparently stepped up and suggested he try to raise the missing $125,000 on Kickstarter. In the course of about a month, not only did they hit the $125,000 mark in just one week, but fans of the book continued contributing to the cause, leading them to bring in $346,000 by the time the project closed.

That's a rather stunning amount. Prior to this, I believe the largest Kickstarter project had been the famous Diaspora distributed social networking project that got tons of press for breaking $100,000. Of course, no one is suggesting that this is the way to fund all films or that this will work in every case (we've certainly seen Kickstarter projects fail at times). However, it's yet another example of how really committed and engaged fans can make things happen where the old gatekeepers stood in the way.

Filed Under: blue like jazz, donald miller, fan funding, funding, movies
Companies: kickstarter

Get Lamp Filmmaker Scolds DVD Rippers... For Doing A Bad Job With The Rip

from the get-it-right dept

I've been meaning to check out the movie Get Lamp (a documentary about text adventure games) for a while now, as I've heard good things about it (and, it should be confessed, I was an avid, potentially obsessive, consumer of text adventure computer games in the 80s). Also, I've always been a fan of the filmmaker, Jason Scott's other project Textfiles.com. While I hadn't had the chance yet, TorrentFreak has the nice story of how Scott reacted to the DVD of his film being ripped and put online. First off, it should be noted that those who ripped it posted a nice ode to Scott with the rip, and urged folks to buy the DVD, even noting that they purposely left off some of the extras to give people incentive.

Scott saw it, thanked them for the "heartwarming" NFO file, and then scolded them for screwing up the rip:

I've just downloaded the torrent, and while the image quality and sound quality is excellent, you've made a mistake.

The DVD, as I've mentioned before, is interactive with a non-interactive version as well. To accomplish this and save space on the DVD (since it's packed with stuff), I have a set of discrete tracks that are either summoned (via the interactive choice) or played as a playlist (via the non-interactive choice). Unintentionally (and I do really mean it, it was unintentional), this has made the movie a tad harder to rip, because the movie is in pieces scattered throughout the DVD, and not in any obvious sequential order.

Playing the AVI that FLAiR has released shows that you have ripped only some of the tracks, and ripped one extra one that shouldn't be in there.

In the end, he notes: "While, again, I am pleased you wrote such kind things about me, this mixed-up version makes it look like I made a flawed DVD with doubled scenes, and takes away the entire puzzle sequence, which I am rather proud of." The rippers quickly fixed it and posted a fixed version. Now, the movie is released under a Creative Commons Share-alike license, so Scott (not surprisingly) is perfectly willing to have the movie spread, but it's still a nice story of a filmmaker responding positively to people ripping his film and sharing it online.

Filed Under: documentary, get lamp, jason scott, movies, ripping

Why Haven't Any Movie Studios Become The 'Fan Friendly' Studio?

from the makes-you-wonder dept

Copycense points us to a recent, if short, David Pogue blog post, in response to a reader question, complaining about the ubiquitous unskippable FBI warnings at the beginnings of DVDs. The questioner asks why the industry bothers with them, when all they serve to do is annoy legitimate customers (infringing copies cut that stuff out). Pogue makes an interesting point in response, questioning why some studios don't stand up to become the "friendly" studio, in the same way that newer discount airlines, like JetBlue have tried to become a more customer-friendly airline:

I don't understand why some movie studio doesn't decide to become the Good Guys of the industry. Get rid of all those annoyances, all the lawyer-driven absurdities, and market the heck out of it. Be like the breath-of-fresh air new airline (as JetBlue was in its day) or cellphone company (like T-Mobile, the only company that drops your monthly rate after you've repaid the subsidy on your phone). Dare to be different -- and win a lot of customer loyalty as a result.

There are some smallish indie studios that are sorta trying, but that's not quite the same thing. Part of the problem, I imagine, is the overall ecosystem. Studios can't become "fan friendly" without pissing off the theaters (even if the theaters are probably overreacting). Still, it does seem like this is the direction that movie studios should be moving in. While there will always be some who will automatically distrust the big studios, I would imagine that if a big studio actually stopped treating people like criminals and embraced a much more fan-friendly attitude, it would pretty quickly find that fans were more than willing to reciprocate.

Filed Under: fan friendly, fbi warning, movie studios, movies, warnings

Warner Bros. Claims That Annoying Customers With 28-Day Rental Delay Is Working

from the correlation? dept

Warner Bros. studio was among the more adamant about getting Netflix, Redbox and others to delay rentals of movies until 28-days after the DVD release, in the hopes that it would drive more people to buy. We suggested that was pissing off customers, just at a time when they're discovering they have (perhaps not very legal) alternatives, and it probably isn't a great business strategy. However, Khyle points us to the news that Warner Bros. CFO is claiming success with the program, claiming that DVD sales are up 15% following this strategy.

Of course, that leaves out all sorts of important details. Beyond the simple correlation ≠ causation issue, there are so many other variables here, I'd be hesitant to believe that the higher sales were due mostly to this delay. Perhaps there was just a popular movie that people really wanted to own when it came out. Or perhaps there were other promotions. Or, maybe, it's just a dead cat bounce. Either way, let's wait and see before declaring that pissing off your customers so much is a good idea.

The best part, though, might be the confident quote from the guy:

"You make money in the film business by putting your content in appropriate windows that matches up with the way consumers like to use it."

Thing is, he's got it wrong. It's not the "windows," but the different convenience and values that people consider. You can offer "the way consumers like to use it," all at the same time, if you want. The studios aren't doing this because they're so in love with the "windowing" system as a way to price differentiate, that they keep wanting to introduce more and more windows. At some point they'll realize that this is really dangerous short-term thinking. Pissing off people eventually comes back to bite you.

Filed Under: delays, movies, windows
Companies: netflix, redbox, warner bros.