Quote:
Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist
And what makes you think then that if some titles sell only 1000-2000 copies at the price that this company is asking for that there is no bigger market out there? I fail to see the correlation.
Pro-B
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Some have touched upon this, but I want to add my 2 cents.
The majority of Twilight Time titles do not sell out. Yes, the price may be a deterrent, but how much is it really? Will the general public pick up "Rapture" for $5? Who even knows about that movie? I don't. We've all heard their model, they only start making $ when half of their allotment has been sold because they've already paid up front costs.
If they did not get titles like Fright Night, they might be making huge losses and then you will get no more releases because the company wouldn't exist. The catalogue market is deathly quiet. How many do you see lately compared to the amount of unreleased product from all the studios? And if all of these did come, how many would really be sold? They don't appear at B&M stores which is where the majority of discs are still sold.
The conversion rate for movies debuting on home video can be as low as 4% of the amount of people who have watched it in the cinema. What chance does a release from 1984 have? Or 1974? Or 1964? The majority of people are not cinema buffs. How many of us have already forgotten or brushed off movies we saw last year? Then you have to take into account that even Titanic, a record setter at the time, had only a third of the American population seeing it. That's 33% for the biggest movie of all time (up until Avatar, which had less admissions anyway with a bigger American population). What about the rest of the films?
Granted, I'm young and born overseas and have no access to what movies may be shown on TV, but still the majority of films that these indie labels release, I have no idea they existed and I am on this site and like to watch movies. Reality is, there are hundreds of movies released every year, thousands if we count the whole world. Of those, even assuming only half are good, that's still 500+ movies that people have the potential to see and like. This happens every year. With the state of the modern person and society, how many films from yesteryear even get into the public consciousness?
Pretty much most big films that the general public know about have been released. Do others get airtime on TV? They are competing in a massive marketplace filled with tens of thousands of other films. Every film has its fans, but take a movie like Blended from last year. A movie like it has probably been made every decade, if not more often, but its fans are limited and even one year on, no one cares about this movie. What if it were 40 years?
I have had this "catch up" mentality for ages. I felt the need to watch as many movies I could get my hands on to feel as though my opinion held some weight- and in countries like mine, that is limited. But, I've realized it's a losing, indeed, unwinnable battle. There is no way I have the time to watch all acclaimed movies and I am more of a movie watcher than the thousands of people I've met in my lifetime. I'm probably in the top 5%. So, now, I simply don't care. The older we get, the more films are released, people born right this second have decades worth of good films. Unless you're a real avid film buff, they are not going to bother looking back to find 99% of these films. That's the truth. We, or more appropriately, you, are a very, very small minority in the world. There's no shame in that, but just like movies released in 1940 are now 75 years old this year, it means that anyone who watched movies from then in the cinema would be 75. A lot of people are dead at that age already.
The only way most of these non-anchor titles will sell any differently, or have a resurgence in popularity are 1) they are actually good 2) the studio finds a way to market the movie to a new audience. It costs money to promote an old title and they could easily use it for something else. Who really needs to find out about another movie from 1951?
The reality is, "classic" films will have to rely on word-of-mouth to stay relevant. Everything will pass. Nothing is forever, and for a movie to remain in public consciousness, people will have to talk about it. I assume the majority of the people who use this website and are eagerly waiting catalogue releases grew up in the age these were more easily accessible or promoted, on TV, by re-releases etc. I think the world has switched to an instant diet of everything, from movies to information. But, how many of these films that Twilight have announced are even known by moviegoers today?
It is simply a reflection of the age we live in.
Personally, even I, am waiting to see some movies released- but as I really only started watching movies in 2005, these are movies like Wallace & Gromit and if they cannot release a movie that was released in 2006...well. I have no doubt they will release most of these movies, after all, I doubt 1,000 people will even buy a release from Kino or Olive and yet they are being released by the dozens. I think most of these ports are cheap anyway, but their prices are as such because the demand is little and if they charged the price that today's movies are going for, they will make no money and these will not come.
We have to understand the limitations of reality in anything we say.
Take Guardians of the Galaxy released last year. It sold less than 41m tickets which is less than 13% of the American populace. 41m is a lot but that means 276m people did not see it and this was one of the highest grossing movies last year. If we say that most people went as a family or with a significant other, that would be 20m potential sales if 100% of the people who saw it liked it enough to buy it. It received great reviews and responses and it has, to date, sold 6.4m copies, which is 32% and 15% of the total- this for a movie out last year and was loved. What about movies already released, are decades old and were not universally loved and had less than 13% of the population see the movie?
Birdman was seen by 1.2% of Americans. Boyhood, not even 1%. In fact, Boyhood has sold a combined 129k copies, which is 4.1% of the total who saw it. So, do people really think that some of these movies, hell most of these, will be able to sell more than 3k copies at a cheaper price?
Finding Nemo, best DVD seller of all time, managed to sell 1m after 4 months. Jaws sold 88k over slightly more than a month...and you expect them to make the minimum amount of 50k copies for other titles?
Yes, this was very long, but I thought people should realize the inherent nature of the industry and the world rather than continuously making idealistic comments about sales and general interest.
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