British Film Institute (BFI) Discussion Thread

[Professor Echo]

Originally Posted by johnpaul2

There is a step between being disappointed and finding it a clear-cut deal-breaker, and I'm quite certain most customers will be ponderating many other things before looking at whether or not the trailer is included.

I’ve stated my position more than once on the topic and am no longer into endless forum debates, so you’ll have to find or deduce my answers from my previous posts. Or not.

However, I do find fault with the old message board cliche you used by stating you are certain “most customers” agree with your perspective. People have a habit of employing this kind of language in concrete terms in order to bolster their argument. But it’s more or less hyperbole as such things cannot be proven and are not a fact, no matter how certain you are or how emphatically you present it.

Anyway, we agree to disagree and that’s where I am leaving it. If you look back on my posts dealing with this subject you can plainly see I ended one with YMMV.

[Modman]

Originally Posted by RICKBONDOO7

Where is Oliver Twist (1948) ? I see it's being released in Germany. ??? No UK release ? WHY ?????

I doubt this is with BFI, probably with ITV or possibly Studio Canal.

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

However, I do find fault with the old message board cliche you used by stating you are certain “most customers” agree with your perspective. People have a habit of employing this kind of language in concrete terms in order to bolster their argument. But it’s more or less hyperbole as such things cannot be proven and are not a fact, no matter how certain you are or how emphatically you present it.

I understand you might think I'm under-evaluating the sales potential of including a trailer or not, and I also understand your rationale about trailers being important extras in their own rights, but words have a meaning (1), and I wasn't so much resorting to a cliché than making an educated guess (1).

I wrote that "most customers will be ponderating many other things before looking at whether or not the trailer is included." Saying it's actually not the case means that most (ie >50%) of the customers are choosing whether to buy or not a release solely because it includes or not the trailer.

Such a pattern means trailers alone drive >50% of the sales (again, that's what "most" means) of a given title, making trailers mathematically THE most important sales factor of a BD release, more than every other editorial and technical efforts combined. For instance, it means Beat The Devil is only going to sell half of its sales potential solely for this omission of the trailer (and that including the trailer would have doubled the sales compared to what it's going to do).

I'm "quite certain" not a single label has ever seen the market behaving this way. I can ask around, but I know already the answer. And of course, some of the BFI best sellers indeed don't include trailers.
Moreover, if >50% of the sales were dependant on including the trailer, you'd expect that'd be THE very first thing labels would be looking to include, possibly even before making sure they're using the latest best restoration or commissioning/licensing any extra. "Whatever we do, don't forget to include the trailer or we'll lose most of our customers !"

So I'm not "quite certain" by way of unproven hyperbole, but rather because of how the market looks like in terms of what is driving the sales.

[Professor Echo]

Have a nice day, John Paul.

[floor pie]

Originally Posted by aewb

Also whilst we are on the subject of Japanese cinema, a Yuzo Kawashima season has just started on Mubi.

A late thank you for mentioning this! I probably would've missed these otherwise since I usually don't use Mubi. Criminally underseen considering the quality of these films. I loved Our Town especially, just watched it last night.

Lord knows these could use a proper physical release though, especially as Mubi always does its best to ruin the viewing experience for me.

[mmarczi]

Originally Posted by floor pie

A late thank you for mentioning this! I probably would've missed these otherwise since I usually don't use Mubi. Criminally underseen considering the quality of these films. I loved Our Town especially, just watched it last night.

Lord knows these could use a proper physical release though, especially as Mubi always does its best to ruin the viewing experience for me.

I'm not sure I'd even heard of him prior to this, but I signed up for a trial just to watch what I can. I'm annoyed that I've already missed a few that they've aired and am scrambling to figure out how I can still see them. So far I've watched The Balloon and Burden of Love and very much enjoyed them both.

[Hawkmonger]

I'm wondering if the upcoming BFI release of Funeral Parade of Roses will have the same collection of Miyamoto shorts the Cinelicious Shorts has.

Being BFI, i'd actually be surprised if they weren't, but confirmation would be nice. To be able to see Atman on my home theater with surround sound....

[Ben_C]

Kitano set now down to 26.99 on Amazon. Probably paid around that amount per film when I imported the Japanese blus a few years ago, so 9 quid per film seems like a pretty good deal!

[JoePo]

Price matching Zavvi. I cancelled my Amazon order and reordered through Zavvi last week when it stopped there.

[Zodiac]

Price matching Base.com, too. They're the cheapest option for international customers with their low shipping costs.

[thuata]

Originally Posted by Ben_C

Kitano set now down to 26.99 on Amazon. Probably paid around that amount per film when I imported the Japanese blus a few years ago, so 9 quid per film seems like a pretty good deal!

Has the BFI confirmed any of the extras that will be present in the set somewhere ? There's still no information on the product page, and it's the main thing I'm interested in since I feel the old DVDs serve the movies well enough.

[thenexus6]

Nice pre-ordered on Amazon when it was £31, nice its dropped a bit down to £27. Absolute steal for that set.

[Rutger Lundgren]

Originally Posted by thenexus6

Nice pre-ordered on Amazon when it was £31, nice its dropped a bit down to £27. Absolute steal for that set.

I cancelled my pre-order a week ago, Zavvi had 10% off of BFI pre-orders for Red Carpet members, it also came out to £26.99. This afternoon I finally sat down to switch all of my BFI pre-orders to Zavvi and - the deal had ended earlier today.

Fake edit: actually, now I see that I kept my Amazon pre-order of Kitano as well, but I'm going to cancel one of them.

[Areopagita]

I'm really curious about the extras included in the new Ozu releases. They could follow the tradition of the earlier BFI Ozu Collection instalments by including some less known feature film, such as Tokyo Chorus or Passing Fancy, but somehow I feel this is too much to hope for.

[fatboyslim142]

Originally Posted by jayembee

A well-made trailer is like a one- to three-minute short film. And, sometimes, a trailer might even have shots in it that aren't in the finished film.

This is how you do a trailer:

https://youtu.be/TMkZWWLHGXU

[justwannaboogie]

Managed to pre-order the Kitano set on Amazon using a discount code that brought it down to £16.99. Absolute steal.

[rapta]

Originally Posted by justwannaboogie

Managed to pre-order the Kitano set on Amazon using a discount code that brought it down to £16.99. Absolute steal.

Nice, was that a personal discount code or is there one floating around?

[justwannaboogie]

Originally Posted by rapta

Nice, was that a personal discount code or is there one floating around?

Annoyingly I don't know. I use a plugin called Honey that automatically applies the best discount code available but Amazon doesn't show the code you've used once it's been applied. Just shows -£12.99 as the discount.

[rapta]

Originally Posted by justwannaboogie

Annoyingly I don't know. I use a plugin called Honey that automatically applies the best discount code available but Amazon doesn't show the code you've used once it's been applied. Just shows -£12.99 as the discount.

Oh nice! I just tried it and it didn't get me £10 off so I guess it's your lucky day!

[blujazz]

When did the BFI start using the Criterion scanavo cases? Or was I just going blind?