What Happens to DVD Extras in the Digital Age?

One interesting phenomenon of the DVD era is how much bonus material is often packed onto the disc: from "making of" documentaries to Q&As at film festivals to director's commentary to fan-generated content. Blu-ray DVDs come with even more goodies.

But one question I've been thinking about lately is: what happens to all this stuff in an era when most people consume movies as digital downloads, sent directly to a PC, mobile phone, or TV?

You'll notice that when you download or rent a movie today from iTunes, Amazon, or Movielink, you're getting the feature only. There's no way to buy, for instance, Robert Rodriguez's fun "Ten Minute Film School" and "Ten Minute Cooking School" videos that have shown up on his DVDs. You can get commentary from Francis Ford Coppola on the Blu-ray release of the "Godfather" trilogy, but not when you download "The Godfather" from Amazon's video-on-demand department.

Here are two scenarios. I'm curious what you think (and perhaps you envision other scenarios):

Scenario #1:

All of these goodies that are today DVD extras eventually become available on the Internet for free. They're used to help market the original theatrical release of the film and get people into theaters, or later to get persuade to purchase or rent the digital version. (Remember, this is a world where DVDs are fading into the sunset.)

Scenario #2:

Some of the goodies become available on the Internet to market the movie in advance of its release. But some expensive-to-produce, in-depth pieces of content (like a great "making of" documentary, or an interview with an ordinarily reclusive director) carry a price tag. For an extra buck on your digital rental (or an extra two bucks on top of the download-to-own price), you might get this bonus material. Or, you might buy it a la carte for a couple bucks after you've seen and enjoyed the movie.

Here are a couple of interesting examples of content that's circulating on the Internet to promote movies, which just a few years ago would've only existed on DVD.

- Maurice Sendak talks with director Spike Jonze about how the book "Where the Wild Things Are" was originally received. Intended to promote Jonze's "Wild Things" feature film, which is coming out this October.



- William H. Macy and Kate Micucci sing "It's Time to Get Laid" (and play ukelele!) to promote the DVD release of the indie comedy "Bart Got a Room."



What do you think? I certainly would like to see filmmakers find a way to earn extra revenue from the extra stuff they produce -- but perhaps it'll be just as valuable as an engine that helps drive ticket or download sales.

Disney Joins Hulu: What Does It Mean?

I don't think the news this week that Disney will contribute content to Hulu is any sort of death knell for iTunes.

Today, Hulu is there for viewing content when you've got a reliable Net connection (at home or in the dorm, for instance). But iTunes is there when you want to download content and watch it later on your laptop or iPod or iPhone -- usually when you're in motion.

One thing that Apple has succeeded at -- wildly -- is getting you to create an account, and hand over your credit card info. That enables you to make impulse buys of movies, apps, music, and TV shows. Even if Hulu had a long term plan to start selling downloads one day, in addition to streaming content with ads, getting viewers to cough up payment info is no small feat.

But Disney's link-up with Hulu signifies that clearly, media companies don't want to hand over control of their customers entirely to Apple.

Here's more analysis of the news, from the Wall Street Journal.

SpeedCine: Search Engine for Legal Movies Online

I really like the idea behind SpeedCine, which aims to catalogue all of the movies available legally online in streaming, downloadable, or rentable form. (Anne Thompson blogged about it yesterday.)

But when I started punching in the names of some movies that were listed on sites like Hulu or iTunes, and got a "no matches found" message, I e-mailed founder Reid Rosefelt to see what was up. Were they adding movie titles by hand, or finding all the movies automatically on various movie sites, the way Google finds Web pages for its search engine?

Rosefelt replied in an e-mail:

It’s a demo and yes, the data was put in by hand.

...[But] the real data input will be done one company at a time and will be automated. They’ll give us their data and it will flow in. The technology for transferring lots of data is easy; the only issue is getting the websites to agree. And I’ll be having meetings over the coming months to accomplish exactly that. When I’m convinced that enough data is in it, then the word DEMO goes down and BETA will go up.

I'm not sure you actually need permission from Hulu, say, to have your software go to this page and create links to all of the features the site currently offers. That's the sort of "spidering" that Google and many other search engines do every day.

But media sites can be strangely cranky about people creating more links and access to their content.

it'll be interesting to see how Rosefelt's plan plays out. A truly comprehensive index of all the movies available on various sites would be a great thing.

Good News: YouTube Testing Paid Downloads

I think this is very good news: YouTube is now testing paid downloads. If you want to pull down a high-res, MP4 copy of a video from the site (which will play on an iPod), you can pay to do so. No word on what percentage of the revenue goes to the creator. But the one way to pay for videos is Google Checkout, Google's own PayPal-like payment system.

YouTube is currently only testing this with select partners. Wired News notes that the files aren't DRM protected, which will mean that big media companies will likely be leery of the system.

Here's an example of a video that can be downloaded as an MP4 for 99 cents.

You may recall that for a while, Google Video allowed content creators to charge for video downloads -- a service they abandoned in 2007. I ran into someone last week who said that that had been a good source of revenue for them, selling docs and educational films... so perhaps they'll give YouTube's new offering a try.

Pioneering Download Site CinemaNow: Worth Just $3 Million

(Of course I didn't abandon my beloved CinemaTech... just took a long Thanksgiving vacation.)

Feels important to note that earlier this month, the pioneering digital download site CinemaNow was sold for a piddling $3 million to Sonic Solutions, a company that makes DVD-burning software. Founded in 1999 (before Movielink, and way before iTunes), CinemaNow had raised more than $30 million. Lionsgate Entertainment had been the main investor in the company, which offered rentals, downloads, and also the ability to burn some movies to a DVD.

Earlier this year, Curt Marvis, the long-time head of CinemaNow, shifted over to a digital media gig at Lionsgate.

Here's the official press release.

Movies You Can't Buy Online

Ever try looking for some of your favorite movies on iTunes, Amazon Unbox, Movielink, or any of the other legal download destinations?

Odds are good that you won't find them.

I wanted to write about the issue, so I put together a list of fifty great movies (celebrated by the AFI, Roger Ebert, and Time Magazine) and all-time box office champs that you can't buy or rent online.

Here's the Variety article on the topic. One reason that you can't find movies like the James Bond series, 'The Godfather,' and 'The Lion King' is likely that they haven't yet been released on Blu-ray disc yet, and the studios are sure they'll make more money on selling high-def discs than they can with $9.99 iTunes downloads.

My favorite quote in the piece is from Jim Flynn, who runs the download sites EZTakes and iArthouse: "The pirates in general have a download exclusive," he says. "These movies are available as downloads -- just not legal ones."

Here's my list of fifty great movies you can't buy or rent legally on any of the major download sites (iTunes, Unbox, Movelink, and CinemaNow). Have you discovered others? Add them in the comments.

Fifty Movies You Won't Find Online (Legally)

Almost Famous
Amadeus
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
Brazil
Brokeback Mountain
Bubble
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Citizen Kane
City of God
Double Indemnity
Drunken Master (1 or 2)
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
Fantasia
Farewell My Concubine
Fargo
Forrest Gump
The Godfather I-III
Gone With the Wind
The Graduate
It’s a Wonderful Life
A Hard Day’s Night
Hotel Rwanda
Jaws
King Kong, 1933 original and Peter Jackson’s 2005 re-make (the 1976 Jessica Lange version is available)
La Dolce Vita
Miller’s Crossing
Munich
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Fair Lady
Nashville
Notorious
Pulp Fiction
Purple Rose of Cairo
Raging Bull
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rear Window
Roger and Me
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler’s List
Sex, Lies & Videotape
Shrek 1, 2, and 3
Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs
The Sound Of Music
Star Wars Episodes I-VI
Titanic
The Wizard of Oz
12 Angry Men
2001: A Space Odyssey (but 2010: The Year We Make Contact is available)
28 Up

Data Point: iTunes Selling or Renting 50,000 Movies a Day

Apple's iTunes Store could sell and rent more than 18 million movies this year, according to this piece from Variety.

From the piece:

"In the first week, they had 20 times the volume of the next biggest customer, and it didn't go down after that," said an exec overseeing digital at a rival major.

Who's number two? That's hard to say, since no one else releases data. Whoever it is, it's clearly a distant number two -- but I'd guess Amazon.com Unbox, or perhaps CinemaNow.

Sony's Stringer Says High-Def Downloads Won't Gain Steam

The NY Times tech blog, Bits, has some excerpts from an interview with Sony CEO Howard Stringer that are worth a look.

One provocative snippet:

Mr. Stringer was asked whether movie downloads would soon make Blu-ray discs obsolete. “I don’t think in this country it’s going to be competitive,” he said, noting that most broadband services are so slow in the United States that it can take 10 or 14 hours to download a high-definition movie. “Blu-ray is really gathering momentum.”

Stringer also muses about delivering digital versions of Sony movies to Sony televisions -- even before their DVD release. David Gallagher notes, "...[H]e indicated that the company was considering new ways to combine its hardware with its content to bolster its profit margins in markets that are becoming commoditized."

Jaman Tries Ad-Supported Streaming

Jaman, the Silicon Valley movie marketplace geared to indie content, is introducing ad-supported streaming this week. That adds a second revenue stream to Jaman's business model, which was originally built atop selling downloads and rentals of films.

I don't think this is a surrender, indicating that downloads and rentals aren't working for Jaman, but it has undoubtedly been a challenge for the site to get visitors to hand over their credit card information... and ad-supported streaming makes it easier to simply start watching a movie that looks half-way interesting. Jaman will offer 100 ad-supported titles to start with.

Here's the TechCrunch coverage ... and the official press release.

HBO Shows Will Appear on iTunes, Some at a New Price

Apple has been famously inflexible about pricing on iTunes: TV shows are $1.99, songs 99 cents. (NBC flew the coop last year over Apple's unwillingness to alter that policy.)

So now Apple is changing the rules, to be able to add HBO shows to its library (only when they are released on DVD.)

From the Wall Street Journal's coverage:

...It's the first time HBO has agreed to sell downloads of individual episodes of its shows. And Apple, in a departure, has agreed to charge more than its uniform price of $1.99 per television episode. Some of HBO's shows will cost $1.99 per episode while others, including "The Sopranos," "Deadwood" and "Rome," will cost $2.99 per episode.

Variety also has a story. Diane Garrett writes:

Deal reps HBO's first electronic sell-through pact. The feevee channel has been reluctant to cannibalize its subscription fees and DVD sales. HBO did, however, experiment with free iTunes podcasts of "In Treatment" as a way of boosting the aud of the five-day-a-week skein.

It’s no coincidence that “Sex and the City” was one of the first HBO skeins to go on sale at iTunes Tuesday; a feature film followup is due in theaters later this month. Eventually, most of the channel's library is expected to go on sale through the iTunes Store.

Jobs has apparently decided that access to content that will drive hardware sales of iPods, iPhones and Apple TV devices is more important than maintaining rigid pricing. He previously resisted variable pricing on music and TV skeins for the sake of simplicity, although some of the global iTunes Stores do offer variable pricing.

For Thursday: Set-Top Box Reviews, Upconverting DVDs, and Player-Developed Games

- NY Times columnist David Pogue evaluates four leading Internet-connected set-top boxes, and gives the $300 Vudu the highest overall grade. (Others included in his survey include Xbox 360, Apple TV, and TiVo.) Pogue also makes some good points about the limitations imposed on all of the boxes by studios:

...[N]o matter which movie-download service you choose, you’ll find yourself facing the same confusing, ridiculous time limits for viewing. You have to start watching the movie you’ve rented within 30 days, and once you start, you have to finish it within 24 hours.

...What would the studios lose by offering a 27-hour rental period? Or three days, or even a week? Nothing. In fact, they’d attract millions more customers. (At the very least, instead of just deleting itself, the movie should say: “Would you like another 24-hour period for an additional $1?”)

Then there’s the fact that to protect their cash cows, most studios don’t release their movies on the Internet until a month after they’ve been available on DVD.

- NY Times reporter Saul Hansell talks to an electronics retailer who says that until the cost of Blu-ray players drops below $200 or $150, most consumers will still be happy buying standard-def DVD players that upconvert, producing a very nice looking picture from a garden-variety DVD.

- This feels important, somehow: Microsoft allowing players to develop their own videogames and share them with others via Xbox. A vidgame twist on YouTube?

What's Up Today: More Hybrid Devices, Distributed Video, Apple News

- Comcast is partnering with Panasonic to make a portable DVR and a TV that has a built-in set-top box (negating the term "set-top"), according to the Wall Street Journal. From Dionne Searcey's piece:

...[C]onsumers won't need to lease a separate box or a separate remote control from cable operators. By the time it's on the market later this year, it will be compatible with major cable companies' technology in most markets. Panasonic did not release pricing or other details about the TV.

The portable DVR allows consumers to take their TV recordings with them when they travel, for playback on a plane, in a car or on a TV set away from home. Including 60 hours of recording capacity, it can also play CDs and DVDs, and will be available in early 2009. While Comcast is offering the device to its customers, Panasonic says it can be used on the systems of other cable operators.

- Viacom's MTV Networks subsidiary is following a strategy of making its video available on a wide range of sites, according to Reuters. Sites include Dailymotion, GoFish, and Veoh.

- BusinessWeek looks at the negotiations between Apple and the movie studios over adding more movies, and movie rentals, to iTunes. From Ronald Grover's story:

Getting the studios to give Apple their movies for online rentals has been tricky. [Steve] Jobs wants new movies available for download "day and date" with DVD releases so that iPod users can rent them the same day the DVDs become available at Blockbuster, Wal-Mart, and other rental venues. Studios generally won't make their latest releases available for rent electronically—mostly through video-on-demand services on cable systems—until about 30 days after the DVDs hit store shelves.

No more movie downloads from Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart pulled the plug on its movie download service on December 21st... and no one noticed for a week, the thing was so incredibly popular. Wal-Mart's service was one of the few to offer movies from all six major studios. Wal-Mart's unsuccessful "beta test" began this past February,

From the NY Times coverage:

In a research note published Friday, Rich Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Capital, said the D.R.M. might have doomed Wal-Mart’s movie service. “We suspect a key reason behind Wal-Mart’s decision to exit the digital video download business was the need for D.R.M., which prevented the content from working with iPods,” he wrote. “Anywhere you look, Apple’s devices are winning, forcing content holders’ hands.”

High prices also hampered the service. Prices to buy a movie, a copy of which resides on the hard drive of the buyer’s computer, ranged from $12.88 to $19.88 on the day of the release; older movies cost $7.50. But it costs just a few dollars to rent a DVD or watch a movie through a cable system’s on-demand services.

Paramount's Direct-to-Net 'Jackass' Release

We can debate whether 'Jackass 2.5,' made up mostly of left-overs from 'Jackass 2,' really counts as a new, stand-alone feature film... but Paramount is claiming that it'll be the first studio feature released first online as an ad-supported streaming program. Later, it'll be available on DVD and as a paid download on iTunes and Amazon Unbox. Essentially, this is experimentation with what would've been a direct-to-DVD release, and the budget for the movie was under $2 million.

It goes up December 19th on Movielink, and on sale as a DVD and on iTunes on December 26th

From the NY Times:

...Viacom executives emphasized that this was a stand-alone venture that would pay for itself.

They described the online premiere as an experiment aimed at gauging the potential revenue streams for studio-produced, longer-form Web material that could take advantage of the consumer appetite for user-generated content.

“If this works, it could open up and really change the game about additional content that studios can create,” said Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment. Then again, Paramount executives acknowledged it might not be the fairest test of long-form films, given that the movie, like the TV show, is made up of many short segments, consumable in morsels.

From the Wall Street Journal story:

The move comes as the studios explore new media in the face of lackluster revenue in traditional outlets. Box-office sales are down about 7% for the holiday season beginning Nov. 2, according to Media by Numbers LLC. DVD sales are down for the year, dropping 1% so far in the fourth quarter, according to Nielsen VideoScan.

If Paramount can show this tactic brings in revenue, it could become a template for movies aimed at young, Internet-savvy viewers. The original "Jackass," released in 2002, took in $64 million at the domestic box office. "Jackass 2," released in 2006, took in $73 million domestically.

Three Great Reads: Andreessen, Hirshland, Goldstein

If you haven't yet read Marc Andreessen's post, 'Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley's Image, I recommend it. (Andreessen is the serial entrepreneur who helped start Netscape, Ning, and Opsware.) Try to filter out some of the Silicon Valley "we know the future best" rhetoric.

The one place where I think Andreessen is wrong, at least about today's world, is in the willingness of venture capitalists to invest in new content ventures. What we've seen so far are investments in sites that are trying to aggregate lots of content, or build communities, like FunnyOrDie.com, JibJab Media, and Heavy.com. Not really in people creating individual series, feature films, or docs. Many VCs are still scared at having to put money behind a creative group and hope for a hit.

Mike Hirshland, a VC with Polaris Venture Partners (an investor in JibJab and Heavy) has two really great posts on that topic, titled Investing in Digital Content: The Problem with the 'Hits' Model and Investing in Digital Content: When it Actually Does Make Sense. Hirshland suggests that things may be changing, in terms of VC funders and digital content:

While I certainly agree that most content plays are a bad fit for VC investment because they require investing alot of capital in the risky proposition of generating a hit, I think our panel’s preoccupation with the “hits” aspect of traditional content led it to miss an important point: the emergence of the digital [platform] is changing the rules and allowing some content business models to fit within the venture model."

Hirshland was referring to a panel at the recent NewTeeVee conference in San Francisco.

(Another worthy read: Patrick Goldstein on the need for screenwriters to be more entrepreneurial.)

Apple Flubs Its First Direct-to-iTunes Release

The Ed Burns movie 'Purple Violets' is the first direct-to-iTunes movie release.

I covered it here on CinemaTech and also in Variety.

But unfortunately, even though Burns was promoting the movie on NPR today, and even though the official release date is November 20th (that's today), the movie still isn't for sale on iTunes at 4 PM Eastern... though you can pre-order it. (Update: I just tried to pre-order it, and got an error message that I couldn't do that, either.)

The movie has gotten some nice placement on the iTunes Store home screen, and on the main Movies page. But why wouldn't iTunes start selling the movie at 12:01 in the morning? Or even noon Pacific time? How many potential purchases are they missing by having national (free) publicity for the release on NPR, but not making the movie available?

This is a promotional blunder that's reminiscent of the way Google Video mishandled the release of their first direct-to-Google feature film last year, 'Waterborne.'

`Why are striking writers so intent on getting a cut of Internet profits?'

That's the question LA Times writer Joseph Menn asks in today's paper. The answer is that digital media revenues are poised for explosive growth ... and the Internet-connected TV in the living room could mean that writers don't earn as much as they once did for TV and cable broadcasts...and consumers may not spend as much on DVD purchases and rentals.

From the story:

"The real winners from the writers holding out are the people in five or seven years," said analyst Laura Martin of Soleil/Media Metrics.

Exactly how entertainment will be delivered in the future is a matter of speculation. "In 10 years, there will be a monitor on the wall in the family room, and it will be connected to a box -- maybe an Xbox, maybe something else -- and I'm going to watch [content] on demand," said Richard Wolpert, an L.A. investor and former chief of strategy at RealNetworks Inc. "That's not going to be delivered over cable, it's going to come over Internet protocol."

Bypassing broadcast and cable delivery could wipe out a big chunk of residuals that writers now collect when their material is rerun. Wolpert said that explains why the writers are so intent on staking a claim to all new modes of transport into the home.

WSLD: What Should Lucasfilm Do?

Over the weekend, I watched 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' with my niece and nephew, who own the whole Indy series on DVD. (My nephew, 5, does a mean imitation of Short Round, from 'Temple of Doom.')

One thing I noticed: Lucasfilm still offers none of its movies, neither 'Indy' nor 'Star Wars,' as a digital download. You can't buy them on Movielink, CinemaNow, Unbox, or iTunes. Interesting strategy from a company that prides itself on being in the technological vanguard...you can either buy the DVDs, or hunt for an illicit digital version on the peer-to-peer networks.

Here are two questions to ponder: why wouldn't Lucasfilm release the 'Indy' trilogy online in advance of next year's new installment, 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' (out May 22nd, 2008)? And if they did, what might they do to promote it?

- What if they offered three or four great clips from each movie, which bloggers and Web site publishers could embed? (The clips might be followed by a post-roll ad promoting the availability of the full movie.)

- What if they offered "sides" from a few famous scenes, which savvy users could edit themselves into: imagine your kid sister running from the giant ball at the beginning of 'Raiders.'

- What if they added 'extras' and 'bonus material' to the download -- something few studios have done with their Internet releases.

- Or what if they experimented with a slightly lower price for the download-to-own version, to see if fans would respond? IE, could you sell a million downloads at $6.99, where you might only sell half a million at $9.99?

- What if Lucasfilm partnered with the guys who made a shot-for-shot remake of 'Raiders,' and released it free on YouTube or another video-sharing site, with an intro from George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, promoting the availability of the originals. (The trailer of the remake is here.

What would you try, if you had the 'Indy' movies in your catalog?

A New DIY Manual for Indie Filmmakers

Hunter Weeks, director of the documentary '10 MPH', has just published a most excellent manual for other do-it-yourself indie filmmakers (it's especially geared to first-timers.) It's available for free on his Web site, or for 99 cents as a PDF/printable download.

From the introduction:

We had no formal training in making films and very little understanding of how the industry worked. This obviously meant we didn't have any connections either. But we could tell things were changing and felt we had the ability to jump in and figure it out. This spirit is one that many filmmakers share. It's a desire to do something more than the ordinary - to create something that will ultimately have an effect on people. After three years, I can honestly say I think we're figuring it out and it's a whole heck of a lot of work. But, the rewards are just enough that it leaves us hungering for more and just certain enough that we're on the path to whatever it is that we're supposed to be doing.

Hunter is also now experimenting with a Radiohead-style, "name your own price" program for the downloadable version of '10 MPH.'

His next doc, '10 Yards,' is about fantasy football. There's already a site up to promote it. Smart.

In Variety: "Studios' Digital Dilemma"

I have a piece in Variety this week that is basically a state-of-the-market report on digital downloading of movies. It argues that Apple is becoming the Wal-Mart of this new medium -- and that that has big implications for studios and independents. From the opening:

Like Wal-Mart, Apple seems to be flexing its muscle to dictate terms to studios and indie producers. iTunes is a digital "big box" store to be reckoned with, and the choices Steve Jobs' company makes and the conflicts it faces will likely shape the way movies are consumed over the next decade.