DVD industry in crisis as sales slump

"the last one I bought was Scrooged 3 years ago at a Rite-Aid for $9.99. Just don't feel the need to own many."

99.95% chance the company I work for sold Rite Aid that DVD.

As far as reviews go, we're movie nerds. Of course we look at reviews. Joe Schmo looking at what's on TMC this month is going to pick a movie either from marketing (which is the Raison D'etre of Theatrical Release. It basically pays for the marketing campaign, then real money is made on the backend), recognizable names (made recognizable by the marketing paid for by this some priors movies theatrical run), OR something in that 2 or 3 sentences made them impulse buy.

Nuts and bolts movie BUSINESS discussion. I love it.
 
We're just the middle men.

Warner Brothers, or Universal, or Fox, doesn't want to have to carry the credit risk for a 1000 Rite Aid stores (or thousands of blockbusters, or you local indy back in the day), and the retailer can't afford to pay up front for thousands of DVDs, SO, in comes the distributor who is allowed to make a certain margin (3% or 4%, sometimes quite a bit more on each DVD) in exchange for carrying the credit risk, dealing with the collections, etc...

We did have an arm called Monarch that used to release a couple of titles a year.
 
2001 Productions said:
Sure, but first somebody has to know about it. You can post a trailer on YT and link to it from IndieTalk and SpaceBook and all that, but like Sonnyboo says you're just gonna get a couple hundred hits, maybe 1% of whom might buy a copy or rent a screening. They may then recommend it to a few people, but your odds of recouping production costs and paying investors a return on a medium to large-budget indie movie are slim. There needs to be an established distribution model and publicity in order to get any kind of widespread attention.

I was pleased to see Sonnyboo's movie Horrors of War available to rent in my local video store. This is a small town, so the fact that an indie flick like that made it clear out here was encouraging. People who've never heard of it can browse the shelves and run across it. If they read the box and are intrigued by the premise they might rent it. When there is no longer a physical DVD to distribute, how the heck will anyone have that opportunity? The idea that someone might inadvertently run across your movie via the Internet is a pipe dream. By and large, people look there for specific things that they've already heard about.
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I've never looked at a DVD box and though oh I might like that film. I always watch trailers, reviews etc of films on the internet and then buy the film. I assume that's what most people do. :/
 
"I always watch trailers, reviews etc of films on the internet and then buy the film. I assume that's what most people do"

Nope. The great unwashed masses buy (or rent or watch on cable) based mostly on the tens of millions of dollars spent by the studios to drive audiences to the theatre on opening weekend. We haven't all heard of el Mariachi because it's a good film (which it is), we've heard of it because a player with money picked it up and spent millions of dollars marketing it. The web undermmiines this to a degree, and opens other options, but that's still the tried and true way.

As far as the box, the deliberate buyer/renter is the minority as well. Most people rent/buy based on who is in the movie, have they heard of it, was what they heard good, and then finally whether the package is enticing.
 
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Package is important. But since they shut down all of my local video rental stores, I have to rely on Redbox artwork. I would walk through the new releases and scan artwork and titles for anything interesting. If it didn't jump out at me, I wouldn't even pick it up to read the back. Thus, title and artwork (or a big named actor) are tantamount to grabbing interest. Second is the logline. So for indie movies with unknown actors, best to have a really eye catching cover and thought provoking title.

I live on IMDB these days. That's the first place I go when looking at movies online.

And speaking of online, it's not just the torrents you need to worry about. You'd be shocked at what's sitting out there on Usenet. You can often find a complete ISO for a blu-ray disc before it's even on the shelves. That's what is killing video sales. Those aren't some low quality shaky-cam-in-the-theater videos. Those are high-definition Blu-ray rips (subtitles, multiple audio tracks, etc.). High-bandwidth internet connections and Usenet are doing damage, too.

It's just too easy to copy digital content. Failsafes for Blu-ray obviously aren't working.
 
I think most movies I would rent before I would buy them. So On Demand could be good for your DVD sales. I think getting your trailer to your film in other films DVDs will help drive sales. So if you can get people interested by getting your trailer seen.

Of course some day DVDs will be history but I think we are several years away from that. In the future the movie industry will fall much like the music industry has. Illegal pirates will destroy the market if some thing can't be done to prevent it. I know people are pirating films all ready but if the internet gets even faster and more people become pirates the industry is in for major trouble.

My theory is that there will be DVRs that house all the movies people buy or steal in the future much like the ipods for music. It all ready is sorta happening but I think it will actually house every movie you own in the future. You probably will just download every movie from the internet in the future. There may not be a need for movies at places like Walmart in the future. People will rent and buy movies via the TV.

Currently with On Demand you can't get the same quality of sound that you can get out of a DVD or Blueray. You lose the Dolby Digital surround sound. For that reason alone is enough for me to want to have a DVD or Blueray versus just watch a movie on my DVDR. I think if it is a movie you really like it would be worth the extra money to watch it the way it was meant to be seen and heard. Just my thoughts. I am sure others may be just cheap and happy with the lesser quality.

Also, the upside to DVDs and Bluerays is the bonus material and extras. I love watching the behind the scene stuff.

The problem with Red Box is that if you rent a DVD from them you don't know if it is scratched tell you all ready paid. I don't like that. I have rented and had to take the movie back because of a scratch. At least with Bluckbuster I can take it back and get a refund. Also, with stores like Bluckbuster I don't have to wait for the mail like a Netflicks. I like Blockbusters membership plans they have for renting tons of movies for a cheap price per month.
 
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I hope nobody dismisses the attack on "net-neutrality" as mere speculation and irrelevant for indie filmmakers. The idea that bandwidth and speed are CONTENT NEUTRAL is being eroded and might fall soon. Why is this important? Because the big providers of bandwidth, like Comcast, will cut big deals with content-providers (or use their own content), and will decide that THEIR products, when you download them, will be blazing fast. But you and I? If we have a product to sell on the internet? Ours will download like a fucking snail at the South Pole. So call your Congressman or Congresswoman, and tell them to support NET NEUTRALITY. It really is the only thing that has made the internet a place where the little guy can compete with the big guy. And the big guys are winning the battle legislatively.

-C
 
I'm almost exclusively watching movies on Netflix (and in theaters a couple times a month). On Netflix I watch a ton of indie stuff, some good some downright awful. But I know I'm not the typical viewer but for $8 a month, its so much cheaper than buying one DVD of something current.

I think your going to find that if it's not in theaters, it wont happen on anything less than an indie budget as there will little to recoup hundred of thousands of dollars in costs, nay say millions.
 
Just this afternoon, a random thought popped into my head -- where the heck is Graeme? What's up, dude!

Charles, I think you're right about Net Neutrality.

As for directorik's question about renting, based on a DVD cover. Me? It's probably been a decade or two. I rely on word of mouth (from a select few people), Rottentomatoes, and trailers. But that's me, and I'm a bit of a movie nerd. I have friends who tell me about movies they've seen, and I ask why they decided to watch it, and I think quite a few people are still renting blindly, using only the DVD box as their point of reference. I think word of mouth and advertising are the strongest influences, but a box still has some value.
 
We're filmmakers and it's pretty rare for even us to take
a chance on the kinds of movies we make - no stars, no
filmmaker we've ever heard of. I always imagine what the
average Netflix viewer does when a movie like ours pops up.

That makes the possibility of us making money on any of our
films difficult. It's so much easier to get our movies "out there"
than it was 15 years ago. It seems considerably harder to get
anyone to watch one and nearly impossible to get someone to
pay to watch the kinds of movies we make.
 
More than likely other film makers will be the first to check out indie films. If the film is good they show their friends. If it is really good friends tell friends and their friends tell their friends. I think entering your film in to film festivals is a good way to get attention. Other than that YouTube could be your friend for getting the word out with a teaser or even showing the whole film. If they see it on youtube and like it you never know they still may want a DVD.

I think the internet is a good tool to spread the word about your film. Figuring out how to make money from it is another story.
 
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Piracy, Blockbuster's impending doom, no more local video stores, streaming, it has all come together to lead to the demise of the low budget production. It's already happening. What we will be left with are 99.9999% studio crap and very low or no budget items shot on video.

We had best hope Blockbuster finds a way to survive and the studios find a way to get revenue out of Netflix streaming because that is the only way independent filmmakers can keep going. I'm not rich, but it bothers me that if I stream from netflix, the people who made the film get nothing. not even a penny.

It also bothers me that everybody I know just uses bit torrents.

Piracy killed the once thriving Hong Kong film industry. It's killing music and now it is starting to kill film.
 
When the studios stop putting unskippable anti-piracy adverts at the start of DVDs I might start to believe that they understand why they're in the shit.

As much as I love having physical DVDs, if there's a film I might watch once with no interesting extras on the disk, of course I'd pay a couple of quid to rent it from iTunes rather than spend two, three, four times that on a DVD.

Piracy isn't killing film any more than cassette tapes did music: it's been shown that the people who pirate the most are the ones who spend the most. The only thing that's happening is the studios are throwing their toys out of the pram because the market's changed and they don't want to.
 
msp1518 said:
Piracy killed the once thriving Hong Kong film industry. It's killing music and now it is starting to kill film.
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Piracy might kill the big industry but it will not prevent people from making music, films or computer games.
I don't consider a possible fall of the major studios/labels a bad thing at all, on the contrary, I believe that will allow smaller studios and independent filmmakers/musicians to get more attention and more opportunities to get their work out there, since those are the people who are creative because film/music is their passion, and they care little about financial success.
That's what I see when I look at the state of the present music industry, and I expect similar things to happen with the movie industry.
 
"Piracy might kill the big industry but it will not prevent people from making music, films or computer games."

It wll greatly decrease the number of high quality ones however. It's VERY rare for someone to make an excellent film with no budget. You might stumble across good actors, a good cinematographer, a good makeup artist, etc... etc... willing to work for next to nothing, but not very often. Even if you do find them they are only working for nothing or slave wages as a resume builder for paying gigs later. What if those paying gigs dry up? As they will if there is no hope of profit.
 
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