While you were busy last week debating Walt’s moral break on Breaking Bad, or preparing for the return of The Walking Dead, Hollywood was ushering in the beginning of a brave new era.
The headlines pointed to an industry turning the page:
- On Wednesday, Universal Pictures backed down from a plan to release the upcoming Ben Stiller-Eddie Murphy comedy Tower Heist via video on demand a mere three weeks after its theatrical debut. The initiative outraged theater chains, who are worried about the ways in which VOD will cannibalize attendance.
- That same day, film critic Roger Ebert called attention to an article about camera manufacturers Panavison and Aaton ceasing production of cameras that use film, shifting all their attention to digital models. Cue the requiem for analog.
- One day earlier saw the DVD release of Horrible Bosses – the first film on the new “UltraViolet” platform—quickly followed by Friday’s release of Green Lantern. Together, the two Warner Bros. films represent a noteworthy shift in the business strategies of major movie studios – and a broader acknowledgment among industry leaders that the ways in which Americans watch movies are shifting profoundly.
It was the UltraViolet debut that left me thinking about the current state of cinema. The concept is kind of cool: By purchasing a DVD or Blu-ray copy of a film, you are also purchasing the rights to a copy that will reside in a digital locker in the cloud, accessible for streaming or download on all your mobile devices. One purchase, comprehensive access – it’s the industry’s latest attempt to boost home video sales, all by banking on the value of digital convenience. (Some critics point to the lack of involvement by iTunes—the market leader in digital film purchases—and suggest that UltraViolet will falter as Apple finalizes its own form of iCloud Movies)
I decided to give UltraViolet a spin last week and popped in the Horrible Bosses Blu-ray late one night. The next day, I continued the movie on my iPad during my morning commute, snuck in a little viewing time during lunch on my work computer and shifted to my iPhone while in a cab on the way home. What impressed me most was the ease of streaming and installation, and also the quality of the viewing experience on the iPad 2. If the goal of UltraViolet is portability and facilitating viewing-on-demand, then mission accomplished (pity, though, that the format didn’t debut with a better title).
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It was only later, after my wife started asking me about the movie and the acting, that I began to shift from satisfied customer to alarmed cineaste.
Not to sound pretentious, but I have long been a believer in the value of the communal viewing experience—the act of going to a movie theater, shutting off the phone and engaging not only with the screen but the reactions of others in the dark. But the more my wife asked me about Horrible Bosses, the more difficult it became to recall specific details. Puzzled over my lack of focus I gradually realized that, conceptually, UltraViolet is the antithesis of what I (perhaps naively) think moviegoing should be. Not only does it remove viewers from the theatrical experience, and encourage isolated and solitary viewing, but it also fosters fragmented viewing. I digested 98 minutes in 20-minute increments over 24 hours. Turning on my iPhone to see the film’s final scenes, I had difficulty remembering where I had left off on my computer six hours earlier.
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?