Third Window Films Discussion Thread

[Rutger Lundgren]

While Dangan Runner not selling well could certainly mean that people are not interested in Sabu films, it could also just mean that, you know, people are not that interested in Dangan Runner. I also haven't gotten it yet, but I do want it, it's just not that high on my priority list. If it was something else instead, perhaps I would've gotten it already (Bunny Drop, for instance, although to be fair, that's just because I really liked the anime).

[whedon]

For me any Sabu is an instant buy. I've held off on ordering Miss Zombie for awhile hoping to see a release over here but it seems unlikely. I do think that just because one title didn't sell as well as it could have doesn't mean that there is no interest in that film makers work. The fact that there's been a few comments here from fans of the film who were not aware of it's release could be a case to that perhaps it got lost in the shuffle or could have been marketed better. Not having a go or telling you how to do your job but it can be the case that people just aren't aware. I asked a friend whose a huge Sabu fan did he have the Blu of Dangan Runner, his text back was "holy ****, I didn't even know it was released." He's put in an order for it this evening alongside Meloncholic and a couple other TWF releases he has missed.

Could it be a case that for a filmmaker like Sabu that a box set may work better? The Toshiaki Toyoda box set only recently sold out after being on release for almost 5 years and limited to 2k copies.

Could something like a yearly membership for TWF work, like VS do in the US or even crowd fund releases. I'd happily pay in advance for a certain number of titles each year. Even if it was only 6 titles a year I'd have no issue paying upfront and from reading this thread there's others who feel the same. Even putting certain titles as VOD could be an option.

[giome]

Originally Posted by whedon

Could something like a yearly membership for TWF work, like VS do in the US or even crowd fund releases. I'd happily pay in advance for a certain number of titles each year. Even if it was only 6 titles a year I'd have no issue paying upfront and from reading this thread there's others who feel the same. Even putting certain titles as VOD could be an option.

I would absolutely get a yearly TWF subscription if I could. Caveat being that I'm not in the UK, so their license deals might not allow them to sell to me directly.

[Ste7en]

I'd love it if TWF could acquire Azumi and, I guess, Azumi 2

I could finally retire my Japanese DVDs.

[whedon]

Originally Posted by Ste7en

I'd love it if TWF could acquire Azumi and, I guess, Azumi 2

I could finally retire my Japanese DVDs.

Azumi feels more like something that Arrow would pick up. I've not watched either film in years, took down the DVDS a couple of months back to watch but decided to hold off in the hopes of a Blu-Ray release.

[thirdwindowfilms]

Originally Posted by whedon

For me any Sabu is an instant buy. I've held off on ordering Miss Zombie for awhile hoping to see a release over here but it seems unlikely. I do think that just because one title didn't sell as well as it could have doesn't mean that there is no interest in that film makers work. The fact that there's been a few comments here from fans of the film who were not aware of it's release could be a case to that perhaps it got lost in the shuffle or could have been marketed better. Not having a go or telling you how to do your job but it can be the case that people just aren't aware. I asked a friend whose a huge Sabu fan did he have the Blu of Dangan Runner, his text back was "holy ****, I didn't even know it was released." He's put in an order for it this evening alongside Meloncholic and a couple other TWF releases he has missed.

Could it be a case that for a filmmaker like Sabu that a box set may work better? The Toshiaki Toyoda box set only recently sold out after being on release for almost 5 years and limited to 2k copies.

Could something like a yearly membership for TWF work, like VS do in the US or even crowd fund releases. I'd happily pay in advance for a certain number of titles each year. Even if it was only 6 titles a year I'd have no issue paying upfront and from reading this thread there's others who feel the same. Even putting certain titles as VOD could be an option.

Yes, some titles may be more popular than Dangan Runner, but there are many other factors involved too, like materials, rights holder, etc. Dangan Runner was a relatively 'easy' release in the fact they had HD materials and the rights weren't expensive, but that's not only the case and actually there are some of his films like Miss Zombie and Mr Long out, and I'm sure if sales were better then Happiness and Jam would also come out (as Rapid Eye handle them), but they don't see much sales potential.
A box set would just be even more expensive and in the case of Toshiaki Toyoda, while he may not be the most well known director out there, taking more than 5 years to sell just 2000 units is not such a great thing considering making those sort of box sets cost more than £15k to do.

For the membership thing, as I don't sell direct and go through a company like arrow, things can be really complicated as they can (and do) completely change their setup and could leave me in huge trouble. It's a lot of responsibility and working with Arrow is very complicated, expensive and stressful, so I don't really want the extra stress to be honest!

[whedon]

Originally Posted by thirdwindowfilms

Yes, some titles may be more popular than Dangan Runner, but there are many other factors involved too, like materials, rights holder, etc. Dangan Runner was a relatively 'easy' release in the fact they had HD materials and the rights weren't expensive, but that's not only the case and actually there are some of his films like Miss Zombie and Mr Long out, and I'm sure if sales were better then Happiness and Jam would also come out (as Rapid Eye handle them), but they don't see much sales potential.
A box set would just be even more expensive and in the case of Toshiaki Toyoda, while he may not be the most well known director out there, taking more than 5 years to sell just 2000 units is not such a great thing considering making those sort of box sets cost more than £15k to do.

For the membership thing, as I don't sell direct and go through a company like arrow, things can be really complicated as they can (and do) completely change their setup and could leave me in huge trouble. It's a lot of responsibility and working with Arrow is very complicated, expensive and stressful, so I don't really want the extra stress to be honest!

No worries and thanks for the insight. I didn't think that it taking so long to sell 2k copies of the Toshiaki Toyoda was a good thing as I'd hope to have seen it out of print a long time ago.

I think that the one good thing about the pandemic is the availability of foreign cinema fans to be able to watch films from around the world at the various film festivals online. I saw a good few films at Nippon Connections, have 2 more rented and ordered 8 at the Udine Far East Film Festival. I really wanted to see the Toshiaki Toyoda releases but with Vol 2 of the Blu coming choose to hold off.

At the talk with Sabu, Stephan from REM said that the rights to some Sabu were a bit of a mess and from what I got that has played a part in holding up the release of some of his work. With Stephan producing some of Sabu's work I do hope it may make things a little easier.

Is there any discussion around maybe obtaining streaming rights to some more Asian stuff? If a certain film doesn't have enough of a market for a Blu-Ray is streaming a possibility?

[thirdwindowfilms]

Originally Posted by whedon

No worries and thanks for the insight. I didn't think that it taking so long to sell 2k copies of the Toshiaki Toyoda was a good thing as I'd hope to have seen it out of print a long time ago.

I think that the one good thing about the pandemic is the availability of foreign cinema fans to be able to watch films from around the world at the various film festivals online. I saw a good few films at Nippon Connections, have 2 more rented and ordered 8 at the Udine Far East Film Festival. I really wanted to see the Toshiaki Toyoda releases but with Vol 2 of the Blu coming choose to hold off.

At the talk with Sabu, Stephan from REM said that the rights to some Sabu were a bit of a mess and from what I got that has played a part in holding up the release of some of his work. With Stephan producing some of Sabu's work I do hope it may make things a little easier.

Is there any discussion around maybe obtaining streaming rights to some more Asian stuff? If a certain film doesn't have enough of a market for a Blu-Ray is streaming a possibility?

]

For streaming, it's all about those who own platforms or have their service connected to somewhere like Amazon, so places like Shudder, Arrow, MUBI, etc. You need big catalogues to get those running as only subscription VOD services really work, and it can be expensive to sort out VOD deals with Japanese companies as they're quite old fashioned.
Since we don't own a subscription VOD platform it's a bit pointless, and buying rights for VOD only, then just putting them onto another platform so that platform can get money sort of takes away the point of distribution

[whedon]

Originally Posted by thirdwindowfilms

]

For streaming, it's all about those who own platforms or have their service connected to somewhere like Amazon, so places like Shudder, Arrow, MUBI, etc. You need big catalogues to get those running as only subscription VOD services really work, and it can be expensive to sort out VOD deals with Japanese companies as they're quite old fashioned.
Since we don't own a subscription VOD platform it's a bit pointless, and buying rights for VOD only, then just putting them onto another platform so that platform can get money sort of takes away the point of distribution

I didn't mean streaming like as part of a monthly streaming service but rather paid-for rentals like you do on Terracotta. I may be in the minority but I'd happily pay £4 to rent something like Bunny Drop.

Do you think that something like The 800 selling out of 1000 copies is down the pricing rather than anything else? I know that it was on Amazon for 6.99 a couple weeks after release and sold out days after this price drop. I would assume that at 6.99 there is very little profit there for anyone bar amazon.

[thirdwindowfilms]

Originally Posted by whedon

I didn't mean streaming like as part of a monthly streaming service but rather paid-for rentals like you do on Terracotta. I may be in the minority but I'd happily pay £4 to rent something like Bunny Drop.

Do you think that something like The 800 selling out of 1000 copies is down the pricing rather than anything else? I know that it was on Amazon for 6.99 a couple weeks after release and sold out days after this price drop. I would assume that at 6.99 there is very little profit there for anyone bar amazon.

Considering we barely get 50% of a sale (and with places like Amazon even less as Arrow take their share on top of Amazon's cutthroat pricing) and have all the tons of costs on top of it (rights, bbfc, authoring, manufacturing, etc), even the 'higher' pricing can be tough to make much off...

For transactional VOD, it just doesn't work. And you'd need to be on a super secure platform to get any luck with negotiating with Japanese companies, which would take out the profit margin. But all in all, TVOD doesn't work (and the reason why so many companies have gone SVOD)

[Schwieg]

Confessions is listed as in stock on Zavvi for 13.99 pounds, in case anyone was looking to pick it up.

https://www.zavvi.com/blu-ray/confessions/10309497.html

[thirdwindowfilms]

Originally Posted by Schwieg

Confessions is listed as in stock on Zavvi for 13.99 pounds, in case anyone was looking to pick it up.

https://www.zavvi.com/blu-ray/confessions/10309497.html

Not sure whey they got stock from that at. Maybe they found some in their warehouse? Though pretty surprised myself!

[jackranderson]

Originally Posted by thirdwindowfilms

Considering we barely get 50% of a sale (and with places like Amazon even less as Arrow take their share on top of Amazon's cutthroat pricing) and have all the tons of costs on top of it (rights, bbfc, authoring, manufacturing, etc), even the 'higher' pricing can be tough to make much off...

For transactional VOD, it just doesn't work. And you'd need to be on a super secure platform to get any luck with negotiating with Japanese companies, which would take out the profit margin. But all in all, TVOD doesn't work (and the reason why so many companies have gone SVOD)

Does Arrow take a cut everywhere your titles are sold?

[thirdwindowfilms]

Originally Posted by jackranderson

Does Arrow take a cut everywhere your titles are sold?

Everywhere but Terracotta, which is why we're pushing them to be bought there!

[JeanIII]

Hi,
Good to know that! I'll definitely buy all my TWF releases from them now!

[DaLe_Insanity]

Does Terracotta ship international? (I am in Australia).

[giome]

Originally Posted by DaLe_Insanity

Does Terracotta ship international? (I am in Australia).

I'm in Canada and have ordered from them a couple of times with no problem.

[CelestialAgent]

Originally Posted by thirdwindowfilms

Not sure whey they got stock from that at. Maybe they found some in their warehouse? Though pretty surprised myself!

Just ordered Underwater Love and Green Fish from HMV for £5.99 each

Also ordered Memories of Matsuko from Terracotta

[hanz0]

I see Cex have a Pink Films Vol 1 in stock online for delivery if anyone needs to pick that up, gonna run you about £25.

[CelestialAgent]

FORBIDDEN TECHNIQUES doesn’t appear to be on Vimeo so good reason to own Pink Films Vol 5 & 6 physically