Fansubbing
This Flickr photostream consists of nothing but photos of DVD collections, which seems like a pretty pointless thing to photograph. But it’s all to make the point that users who download subtitling files aren’t necessarily pirates. In many cases, they have legitimate DVDs — but in the wrong language.
Hollywood has gotten much more aggressive about releasing blockbusters in theaters “day-and-date” — a movie like Transformers will appear pretty much everywhere worldwide simultaneously. But for home video, and particularly for less-than-blockbusters and television series, the disparity in release dates is maddening. My movie came out in Australia one full year after the U.S release. Australia, people.
That’s the point behind “Queremos Cultura” (“We Want Culture”). There is a worldwide audience that wants to watch American movies and TV shows, but because of bureaucracy and myopia, there is no legal way for them to do it.
I was sympathetic about this on The Nines, but sympathy accomplishes nothing. There’s not going to be a filmmaker-driven solution. The studios are all now international corporations, and need to take more leadership in letting the global audience see movies and TV shows in a timely fashion.
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March 9th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I’m from New Zealand and I can tell you it’s the most annoying thing on Earth [hyperbole] to hear all about a film but not see it for months and months afterwards.
Wall-E had finished it’s cinematic run the States months before it started showing here.
We know that we’re quite far away and so we’ll give you the length of time it takes to transport a film here (assuming no other alternative) but after that, we just want to see the damn movie.
And TV shows are the worst because sometimes, despite all their success, they are never screened here.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Couldn’t agree more!
I live in Sweden but since everyone uses the Internet, audiences are global and read the same things, watch the same trailers and communicate with each other.
Studios would actually get more out of their online ad campaigns if they launched their movies and TV shows at the same time around the globe. The way things are now, a person in Sweden might see trailers and a bunch of ads online for a movie they think looks cool, but then it won’t open here until months after it is released in the US and online friends from overseas have started discussing every detail of it. Naturally this leads to illegal downloads.
I was glad to see the networks launch Hulu since it gives viewers the content they want distributed like they want it distributed. I’m sure a lot of people choose to use Hulu instead of downloading a torrent but unfortunately Hulu only works in the US.
Studios need to treat the entire globe as a single audience in my opinion. There is a huge global audience that want to watch the movies and shows and wouldn’t mind watching a few ads or paying a small fee but the studios completely ignore this potential source of revenue.
Bittorrent is a great way to distribute content. Instead of trying to stop new technology, use it to your advantage!
March 9th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I live in Switzerland and sometimes, a film will be released in the German speaking part months before we get it in the French speaking part. If it weren’t so annoying, I would laugh. I love the concept of “day and date” releases. I wish every movie were released like that. Interestingly enough, movies come out on Wednesdays here, so sometimes films open here two days before they open in the U.S.
And the movie “Taken” with Liam Neeson, I saw it in Australia back in August. I was pretty confused when I saw that it was only opening in the States in January. But I’m not just thrown by opening dates of movies, it’s also the region coding once the movie is released on dvd. The pricing and availability of dvds differs greatly between the U.S. and everywhere else. Depending on the exchange rate and postage, sometimes I’m better off buying here, or from amazon.uk.
I use my iMac for watching everything. I am still on 10.4 because I hacked my computer’s dvd player so I can switch regions as many times as I need to. I’m scared to death that upgrading to 10.5 will render half my dvd collection inaccessible.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Oh, yes – couldn’t agree more! I understand the reasoning behind a small film’s cinematic release being delayed in certain territories, as the distributors test foreign markets and roll it out slowly. It makes complete sense.
But a big budget or highly successful film or tv show, whether it’s coming out on cinema screens, television screens or DVD, is going to have a level of interest and a following who want to see it as soon as possible. I’m from New Zealand too, and I’m absolutely guilty of purchasing discs from Amazon when I can’t find any concrete date for release here.
What studios and networks (and that’s our own distributors, as well the American owners of the properties,) don’t seem to understand is that foreign markets aren’t isolated any more. We hear the current news, gossip and speculations, and aren’t happy to wait weeks or months, let alone years, before the film or series episode in question finally screens.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
It is annoying but I dont feel bad about downloading movies when there is no legal way for me to purchase them. Not only for movies but TV shows as well.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
I’ve been living with a friend in Japan for several months and was assuming I could keep up with TV shows online, but you can only watch them in the US. That makes it very tempting to download shows since they’re available only a couple days after they air.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
The same problem often exists for getting foreign films in the US. I live in Los Angeles, and I’ve been hearing about Japan’s “Ponyo” and South Korea’s “The Good, the Bad and the Weird” for almost a year now.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
I’m from Australia and I must say that I stopped even thinking about the possibility of a release here for The Nines. When I finally came across it in a store, I stood there staring at it for about 5 minutes before I even realised what it was. However, I was glad to see that Madman are distributing it. It will be much more likely to find an audience and fit in with the rest of their lineup.
Also, I’ll just add that, like Scott, I may have to adopted a policy of if there’s no legal option then anything is fair game. As of this moment, there’s still no release informaton series 5 of The Wire and the end of series 4 is not a good place to stop watching.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:04 am
John,
I recently spent some time in England visiting my girlfriend, and had held off to see Benjamin Button to catch it there. It wasn’t long before I realized I had vastly overrated day-and-date overseas releasing. Benjamin Button didn’t arrive til two months after the US, and Vicki Cristina Barcelona was just getting there in January.
I definitely sympathize with those who must wait, sometimes indefinitely in the case of smaller films, for something they’ve been hearing about for so long; and it really seems like somebody’s missing the savings and potential extra revenue off of doing internet and print advertising for the whole world at once.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:11 am
I live in Europe at the moment. I love movies, I love TV shows, I’m more than willing to pay. A lot.
Now either I can wait for months, sometimes years to finally see a show or a movie that’s hot in the US. That my RSS reader and the studios themselves have given me daily news and updates about for ages. That may have been canceled already before even STARTING here in Europe.
Or I can download it.
The point is: I start not to care about the legal troubles anymore. I value everyone’s work, and my DVD collection has made me a poor guy. But right at this moment, the way the worldwide media business works, I experience all the buzz about the final Battlestar Galactica season – who’re the final five? How will it end? Will somebody die? – And when will it air here? In two, probably three years.
Three years.
I’m a child of the internet generation. I know how to grab a show off the web seconds after it’s finished airing on TV. I know the sites, the freehosters, and I know that it’s a legal problem.
I want an international movie and TV show store. I want to be able to download ‘House’ once it’s aired in the US, and I want to pay for the episode. I want to watch stuff that’s hot and fresh, not something that when I finally get to see it doesn’t even have an official site anymore (‘Dirty Sexy Money’ will start here in a couple of months, woohoo!).
I know that studios, broadcasters and distributors are facing an unfair competition against the “all instant, all free, all illegal, nobody cares” internet. And I really don’t want to be the executive who has to present a strategy for the next couple of years.
But that’s the way it is.