That said, I understand the market forces at play. As a New Yorker, the UltraViolet system seems custom-tailored for me. My days are often far too busy to make it out for a specific screening time, so most of my film viewing is done at home. The prohibitive cost of seeing a film, combined with both the unpleasant experience of going to a movie theater ($9 popcorn! Dim images! Crappy sound!) and the bland blockbusters clogging the screens, makes me more inclined to stream a new Netflix title or peruse video-on-demand. And given my new reliance on streaming, and the fact that I have not purchased a new DVD in more than two years, the idea of purchasing a multi-device digital copy is intriguing.
Still, as we gain all the abilities to experience movies anywhere at any time, there are dire warnings everywhere about our waning interest. The New York Times crunched the numbers and found that summer movie attendance, which has been in decline for four straight years, fell to its lowest figure since 1997. Considering the soaring cost of tickets, this decline in customers will likely continue.
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At the same time, home entertainment sales of any kind have stalled. Not just sales of DVDs, but also sales of digital films through such vendors as iTunes and Amazon. Researching the home entertainment industry, I came upon an eye-opening report penned by Arash Amel, the research director of digital media for IHS Research: “Growth in electronic sell-through has virtually stopped,” Amel writes in an Aug. 22 analysis. “The new-release on-demand business is all about Internet video on demand. In the current economic climate, consumers are more interested in accessing movies than in owning them.”
It’s a statement that should send chills down the spine of any devoted moviegoer. People no longer seem to care about owning movies, are increasingly less interested in going to the movie theater, and studios seem to be betting on the fact that it’s the format, not the actual movie, that will be the selling point. They’re not wrong. I count myself among those with shifting tastes, connecting to Netflix via my Blu-ray player, and simply scanning through the choices. My decisions are guided less by the titles I want to see than what options are available via my preferred platform. I’ll stream Arrested Development just as quickly as any film. The moviegoing mystique has been trumped by convenience.
There’s no denying that UltraViolet is promising for what it could do on behalf of independent films in search of distribution strategies. I can envision a future world where a worthy indie film like Take Shelter coordinates a nationwide UltraViolet release. Rather than shipping film prints, spending money on local advertising and expending a ton of effort to screen in half-full art house theaters, filmmakers could now reach an audience 100 times larger on whatever device is most convenient—a cheaper, easier and more effective digital roll-out. There’s real potential here to level the playing field in ways never thought possible.
But if my experience with Horrible Bosses is indicative of the typical UltraViolet viewer, those future releases will be seen in chunks, in less-than-ideal conditions, by a distracted viewer.
With UltraViolet, Hollywood is making its first big push into the cloud. But it’s worth considering what’s being lost amid this latest advancement: Is it possible that while we are now capable of viewing more moving images than ever before, we are thinking about them less?