Third Window Films Discussion Thread

[Yami]

Originally Posted by logboy

i'd like more 80's japanese films, it's quite undervalued and underrepresented.

Amen to this. I think Third Window have done more to increase exposure of this period of Japanese period than any other label and hopefully they continue to do so.

Any more Obayashi or Somai would be great and it would be nice to see any Kohei Oguri, Jun Ichikawa, or Kaneto Shindo films from the period. Or Oshii's The Red Spectacles, Play it Boogie-Woogie, Ryuji, Kaito Ruby, Afternoon Breezes, March Comes in Like a Lion, Hayashi's Circus Boys, Dogra Magra...the list is long

[Sifox211]

Let's face it, we are now moving (back) into something similar to the LD era, where the product was expensive and sold in smallish numbers. The boom days of DVD are well behind us and we can no longer realistically expect to pick up films from our favourite boutiques at the low prices we once enjoyed. And if they need to add limited edition stuff to survive then so be it - I'm not obsessed with slips or steelbooks, but if they appeal to me I don't mind paying a few quid extra.

And do we really need to keep iterating that the film is the thing? It's like criticising someone for paying extra for metallic paint on a car. Of course it's superfluous, but does it matter?

[Broomey]

Originally Posted by Yami

Amen to this. I think Third Window have done more to increase exposure of this period of Japanese period than any other label and hopefully they continue to do so.

Any more Obayashi or Somai would be great and it would be nice to see any Kohei Oguri, Jun Ichikawa, or Kaneto Shindo films from the period. Or Oshii's The Red Spectacles, Play it Boogie-Woogie, Ryuji, Kaito Ruby, Afternoon Breezes, March Comes in Like a Lion, Hayashi's Circus Boys, Dogra Magra...the list is long

Surely Dragonball, One Piece and that Battle Royale movie were the only media produced in Japan since Seven Samurai.

[logboy]

Originally Posted by Sifox211

And do we really need to keep iterating that the film is the thing? It's like criticising someone for paying extra for metallic paint on a car. Of course it's superfluous, but does it matter?

if you were paying triple the price for a car with metallic paint, you’d deserve a talking to.

[Sifox211]

Originally Posted by logboy

if you were paying triple the price for a car with metallic paint, you’d deserve a talking to.

I certainly would! But I doubt many here do that for slips or steels unless they’re really only collectors. Don’t confuse talk or interest in slips and steels with obsession!

[logboy]

Originally Posted by Sifox211

I certainly would! But I doubt many here do that for slips or steels unless they’re really only collectors. Don’t confuse talk or interest in slips and steels with obsession!

it’s not weird behaviour as much as it’s weird behaviour that’s normalised.

[thenexus6]

The good thing about TWF is every film is normally available to rent for dirt cheap. So if they put out an unknown or niche film it only cost you peanuts to at least check it out.

[roguejp]

Originally Posted by thenexus6

The good thing about TWF is every film is normally available to rent for dirt cheap. So if they put out an unknown or niche film it only cost you peanuts to at least check it out.

That is correct, if you're living in the UK .

Interesting discussion about the price, limited editions etc btw.

[logboy]

Originally Posted by thenexus6

The good thing about TWF is every film is normally available to rent for dirt cheap. So if they put out an unknown or niche film it only cost you peanuts to at least check it out.

fine in principle. but at those dirt cheap prices for rent, even for purchase as downloads ... how much of the cost of that presentation is subsidised by physical releases?

i don't know how the numbers work out, of course, but i wonder if physical limited expensive editions are essentially not commercially viable but also necessary to cover the little made on digital releases?

i have similar thoughts about those mondo macabro red case limited BDs, that seem to be the way the cost of doing the film at all on disc is covered, and if it makes it to a standard edition, it's all gravy by that point?

[Cinematt]

Adam has implied before that the digital deals are what makes the physical versions possible sometimes, so without them the prices you don't like would need to be even higher.

[fatboyslim142]

Has anyone seen the French remake of the excellent One Cut of the Dead?

[giome]

Originally Posted by fatboyslim142

Has anyone seen the French remake of the excellent One Cut of the Dead?

I have. I personally didn't like it as much because the comedy is much more overt, but acquaintances of mine who saw it before OCotD say they like it better. It's definitely easier to get less-adventurous viewers to sit through its first third, but the original is still king IMHO!

[TheHistorian]

I don't think limited editions are particularly increasing sales, just time shifting them. The people who care about slipcovers and such will purchase sooner rather than later. This does help the boutiques with cash flow, I'm sure. But the possibility to create FOMO for some collectors and burnout for others is a risk. When I've seen something like this before in other industries, it has ended up causing enormous damage; I don't know if this industry is robust enough to survive such damage.

[roguejp]

Originally Posted by TheHistorian

I don't think limited editions are particularly increasing sales, just time shifting them. The people who care about slipcovers and such will purchase sooner rather than later. This does help the boutiques with cash flow, I'm sure. But the possibility to create FOMO for some collectors and burnout for others is a risk. When I've seen something like this before in other industries, it has ended up causing enormous damage; I don't know if this industry is robust enough to survive such damage.

Which damage do you mean? That some people are drawn away from physical media altogether because of this?

[logboy]

Originally Posted by TheHistorian

I don't think limited editions are particularly increasing sales, just time shifting them. The people who care about slipcovers and such will purchase sooner rather than later. This does help the boutiques with cash flow, I'm sure. But the possibility to create FOMO for some collectors and burnout for others is a risk. When I've seen something like this before in other industries, it has ended up causing enormous damage; I don't know if this industry is robust enough to survive such damage.

this is something i sense has slowly been going on for some years, but don't have first hand experience of, and struggle to describe fully even.

it feels exploitative and abusive, doesn't connect to how wider or relatively casual audiences behave, it's increasingly niche. it doesn't secure as much as it shrinks a marketplace and makes it vulnerable because all the eggs are increasingly only in one basket; the knowledge of (and desire to communicate the availability of) cheaper digital availability of the same films as appear on physical media, is patchy and unforthcoming, also.

it is possible to see a discussion in these forums which shows people considering / on the edge of dropping out altogether on their interest because of the squeeze. this isn't just outside pressures, but the choices of labels trying to accommodate those pressure too; putting prices up where and when they can because they need too and because they can guess it's going to be somewhat accepted.

[CelestialAgent]

Originally Posted by fatboyslim142

Has anyone seen the French remake of the excellent One Cut of the Dead?

Not sure if it was influenced by it, but the Kannada film Hostel Hudugaru Bekagiddare reminded me a lot of One Cut, just because it’s a found footage film about a group of young filmmakers who don’t stop filming even as chaos unfolds.

[Cinematt]

Originally Posted by logboy

it feels exploitative and abusive

This feels utterly ridiculous to me. Do you think these companies are making a fortune off collectors? On a £20 release they're giving £4 up on VAT straight away, amazon fees for 'referral' (what they call it when they sell your product for you), storage and fulfilment will be about a fiver (assuming they don't damage it, because then you'll also be charged another couple of quid for returns and disposal of damaged stock) and that can be higher if they've held stock for a long time or they've sold across borders with higher postage cost. So you're getting around a tenner back per sale. From that tenner you've got to factor in buying the licence, disc mastering, BBFC fees, artwork production, booklet production and contributor fees, extras production, disc replication, subtitling costs, distributor fees (for example Arrow distributes TWF and takes a cut from sales), and time, all these things take time to arrange and you're not seeing a penny back for it until the sale comes through. And you think at the end of all that people are making enough money to be called exploitative and abusive?

Arrow's finances have now gone into the mess of The Hut Group but you can look up their profits from before they were acquired. In 2019 they had over £10M in turnover but their profit on that was less than £500K. So at their scale, with all their limited editions and re-releases and store exclusive variants trying to generate extra sales out of the same licences for all levels of buyer their margin was still under 5%. 2020 was a better year for them as we all got trapped inside and spent our free cash on movies and they upped their turnover by a couple of million, making better margins in the process, but it's hard to make a living out of this business. I don't know of another label that even has a big enough turnover to have to file public accounts.

People do this because they love movies and they want to find a way to make their living out of it, but they're not getting filthy rich out of it. And they'll all be looking at the year on year declines in physical media sales and wondering how many more years this is a viable business. If you just want to see movies there's plenty of ways to do it cheaper, Arrow's own streaming channel basically costs the same as a mid-range box set for a whole year's viewing and you'll see plenty of TWF titles there. But if you want to own it, to keep it long after the licence has expired, to enjoy it again and again at your leisure, or sell it off for a decent return one day, that comes with costs that have to be covered. And I think it's both naive and outright rude to say in a thread there the guy that runs the company has taken the time to reply to you directly about the rising costs and how you can see things cheaper if you want to, that their business practices are abusive and exploitative.

[logboy]

Originally Posted by Cinematt

This feels utterly ridiculous to me. Do you think these companies are making a fortune off collectors? On a £20 release they're giving £4 up on VAT straight away, amazon fees for 'referral' (what they call it when they sell your product for you), storage and fulfilment will be about a fiver (assuming they don't damage it, because then you'll also be charged another couple of quid for returns and disposal of damaged stock) and that can be higher if they've held stock for a long time or they've sold across borders with higher postage cost. So you're getting around a tenner back per sale. From that tenner you've got to factor in buying the licence, disc mastering, BBFC fees, artwork production, booklet production and contributor fees, extras production, disc replication, subtitling costs, distributor fees (for example Arrow distributes TWF and takes a cut from sales), and time, all these things take time to arrange and you're not seeing a penny back for it until the sale comes through. And you think at the end of all that people are making enough money to be called exploitative and abusive?

amazon seems to be your example here. let's not get into how that company handles it's finances, pays it's dues when it comes to taxes. i've no idea on the exact reality of it. i'm aware TWF probably makes less money on physical releases there than they do via terracotta, who are not that far off in their prices compared to the expected final general price on this new sub-label, which seems to be heading towards £20 as typical.

what i do feel is exploitative and abusive, but which i don't suggest for one moment is blatantly or dramatically so, just subtly and unintentionally, is (in general) labels who've been at much lower price points having seen their general prices go up by a far higher percentage than others in the same general section of buyers. that is, genre film labels ... when you've got a label like 88 who did BD at £8.99 that have quite dramatically shifted to several times that price for a film with (off the top of my head) a poster and a slipcase?! a limited edition label? a cardboard box?

Originally Posted by Cinematt

People do this because they love movies and they want to find a way to make their living out of it, but they're not getting filthy rich out of it. And they'll all be looking at the year on year declines in physical media sales and wondering how many more years this is a viable business. If you just want to see movies there's plenty of ways to do it cheaper, Arrow's own streaming channel basically costs the same as a mid-range box set for a whole year's viewing and you'll see plenty of TWF titles there. But if you want to own it, to keep it long after the licence has expired, to enjoy it again and again at your leisure, or sell it off for a decent return one day, that comes with costs that have to be covered. And I think it's both naive and outright rude to say in a thread there the guy that runs the company has taken the time to reply to you directly about the rising costs and how you can see things cheaper if you want to, that their business practices are abusive and exploitative.

never said or suggested they're getting rich, merely that fewer and fewer people are paying more and more to keep them going. that's partly necessary and partly by choice. that's a general observation, across labels from both america and the UK that do small foreign films and have pushed their style of releases and pushed their prices over a period longer than the cost of living crisis.

i don't do streaming or downloads, as i've mentioned. it's for many reasons, often cost effectiveness (people drop subscriptions because they pay each month but vary their usage) and because of ownership issues (more like licensing, with a withdrawal of license causing loss of access) too.

i sold what i could of what physical media i'd accumulated (not collected) in 2019. half of what i had was worth selling. some was donated, some given away, some kept ... half of what i'd bought over 20 years or so was of no monetary value and i had no ability / desire to keep it. duly scrapped.

the points i've made are general, happen to have taken place here. i've mentioned other labels and merely taken the time to comment here because (again, as i've already mentioned) the leap in price for this new sub-label is a leap i struggle to see the logic of. it's the wrong direction at the wrong time. the more people who buy physically are squeezed, the more drop off. seems logical more than rude to me.

[kmhofmann]

Originally Posted by logboy

it feels exploitative and abusive

No, your statement is utterly ridiculous and hyperbolic.

I should really unsubscribe from this thread because of you, but because I haven't yet and have had to passively follow this whole tragedy, I feel compelled to react.

Get a life!

Read what other reasonable people have tried to tell you on this thread, including just above. ^^

If you complained about some companies releasing $60+ special editions only, I'd give you a tiny little bit of credit.
But endlessly moaning about how Blu-rays now tend to cost £20(!!) on the market now that is borderline what-you-insinuated.

Things have gotten more expensive. It's called inflation. And not just Blu-rays. But even Blu-ray labels have to make a living if you still want to buy physical media in the future.
And if you want quality, you have to pay for quality. Literally no one is helped if labels start half-assing their releases (e.g., ancient transfers, no extras, zero QA, ...) to undercut each other's price points.
Contrary to you, I do not recall a time where most Blu-rays cost a lot less and I've been buying these things since the late '00s. Maybe £17-18-ish a few years ago but hey, that time has passed for many releases. So what?

Just face the reality and stop complaining and moaning around. Especially in a thread of a label that doesn't do any ridiculous things.

[Broomey]

Alot of debate about a label thats probably going to release a film called Kandagawa Pervert Wars.