Flicker Alley

[DeprongMori]

For those interested in the Chaplin Mutuals title/intertitles issue, I received a further explanation on Amazon from David Shepard which clears things up.

The intertitles in the new Flicker Alley set are exact reproductions of the original 1916-1917 titles. After Mutual folded in 1919, the intertitles bearing its trade mark were replaced in all of the films, and they were replaced once again in the mid-1920s. That third set of intertitles is the one people tend to think of as originals, and is the one we copied at Blackhawk in 1974, but we were incorrect. What you see now is, in fact, correct as of the first release of the films.

We never found even one example of an original 1916-1917 main title for a Chaplin Mutual. The ones in period style that you saw on the Criterion DVDs were designed by me in 1974 and are purely conjectural, although they are nice. Archival restoration practices have come a long way in the past forty years and it is now more or less set in stone that if you cannot authenticate, you do not fake. As this set is produced with the cooperation of many official archives, we are following current standards (and have no choice in the matter).

David Shepard

[manicsounds]

Is there a reason why the 2 upcoming Cinerama titles are $10 more expensive than the previous ones?

[L.A.]

The Mack Sennett Collection, Vol. One in The New York Times.

[rockysds]

Flicker Alley is crowdfunding a new MOD-line of films from the Blackhawk library via Indiegogo. link.

[SpiderBaby]

Vertov's 'Man with a Movie Camera' for MOD? I was hoping we were closer towards a company releasing this on blu-ray, not taking steps back.

[EddieLarkin]

Er, what? We're approaching 2015 Flicker Alley, no one wants more MOD lines. Especially when your line up includes stuff like Humphrey Jennings, whose entire filmography is available on region free Blu-rays elsewhere, and bona fide classics like The Lost World and Man with a Movie Camera, which have been available on several DVDs for years, and are overdue Blu-rays. In fact, hasn't Man with a Movie Camera undergone a brand new remaster/restoration?

[domino harvey]

This is the stupidest use of crowd funding I've ever seen from a DVD label. I look forward to watching this fail miserably

[Minkin]

This is the stupidest use of crowd funding I've ever seen from a DVD label. I look forward to watching this fail miserably

Hey, come on, don't you want the glamor of adding your name to the illustrious list of donors who have also donated $10. That or you can get a rental of a stream (of a public-domain movie thats available everywhere online for free) for the low price of $25.

Is Flicker Alley representing any official rights with these titles or are these like many of their other titles (PD bandit-ed)? I'd hate to see any of these films dumped into this hell-hole. Anyone wanting Berlin, Symphony of a City shouldn't waste time in picking up the wonderful Edition Filmmuseum version.

[Jonathan S]

Is Flicker Alley representing any official rights with these titles or are these like many of their other titles (PD bandit-ed)? I'd hate to see any of these films dumped into this hell-hole.

It looks like this is basically an attempt to make re-available many of the silents that David Shepard (as Blackhawk/Film Preservation Associates) published on DVD through Image Entertainment. These have since gone OOP (though I believe for a brief period some titles were reissued by Image themselves as DVD-Rs). In some cases they are still the best editions though obviously in others like Berlin they've been superseded.

I could understand it more if they were planning to release silents not previously available on DVD, of which I'm sure there are plenty in the Blackhawk collection. Perhaps that is the longer-term plan? A few months ago on Nitrateville:

Unfortunately, the DVD business is so diminished from what it was even two or three years ago that Flicker Alley is forced by current realities to decline publishing masterpieces I very much would like to release.

As for myself, to commit major effort and money to films I love and see them flop and fail to cover their cost in the market is bad enough, although I do it. To invest those resources in films for which I have little enthusiasm is more than I can bring myself to undertake.

In time, maybe streaming will improve the situation. If marginal films would support honest workers, I'm sure I could find film lovers who wanted to bring them back to life. We're not there yet.

In his opening statement, I think he means physical media generally, not DVD specifically, as many here will assume, but "marginal films" suggests he's referring to the market for very niche silent titles - masterpieces maybe, but probably not the well-known silents generally favoured with blu-ray reissues. (Personally this is the type of film I'd much prefer to buy, instead of upgrading silents I already own in good DVD editions.)

Incidentally, his edition of The Lost World (also issued in the UK by Eureka in pre-MoC days) - while photographically more complete and better quality than other editions - has politically corrected intertitles, as highlighted in this review.

[What A Disgrace]

Lame.

[EddieLarkin]

I hope the Flicker Alley rep will pop in to discuss this with us because although most here are going to be completely against MOD for these films, I don't think anyone is against crowdfunding in principle. I'm sure many (certainly myself) would donate and support the heck out of Blu-ray releases (and/or crowdfunding for Blackhawk Films to do new HD masters if that's what is necessary). We want to help Flicker Alley, but this isn't the way!

[domino harvey]

I do not support MOD for anything ever no matter what it is. Crowdfund pressed DVDs, crowdfund Blu-rays, crowdfund restorations for theatrical presentation. But piss right off if you expect consumers to support you in your endeavor to jump in the weakened, worthless burned physical media market.

[swo17]

I do not support MOD for anything ever no matter what it is.

Not even that summer jamz mix CD I sent you last year?

[domino harvey]

Too much Hall, not enough Oates

[tenia]

That's a twist I wasn't expecting, since FA used to release top notch BD that were only released on inferior releases in France by Lobster, and now it will be the other way around since Man with a Movie Camera (and other titles) will have regular BDs in France in November.

[McCrutchy]

I have to agree with the comments here. This is a poor idea from Flicker Alley. They should be concentrating their resources on new Blu-ray titles, not asking for assistance to make MOD DVD-R discs. This is not an initiative I will support, and if that means that several silent films stay out-of-print on DVD, then so be it. MOD is not an answer to anything.

[EddieLarkin]

This is not an initiative I will support, and if that means that several silent films stay out-of-print on DVD, then so be it.

Don't bet on it. Flicker Alley finally got around to actually promoting this today and it has resulted in a surge of pledging. They're at 38% and they could easily do it in the 7 weeks that remain. At least one person has pledged $500 to this thing (for a single streamed movie, 5 DVD-Rs, a few current FA DVDs and some posters)! Someone should have told them that for $1,500 they could get a deal worth at least 5 times their investment from Arrow!

[domino harvey]

I assumed all of the existing backers were employees of Flicker Alley trying to save face

[Gregory]

After seeing the way Warner Archive DVD-Rs took off, I'm not surprised to see silent film fans supporting this. I worry that DVD-R is still not a time-tested format. Proponents of it (such as statements from Warner representatives about WAC) seem to insist that the failure rate varies with the quality of the media and that they only use dependable, high-quality DVD-Rs etc., but I've already received one WAC DVD-R that wouldn't play new out of the package (which they replaced) as well as another that showed an inner ring of a different shade of blue that indicated that it hadn't burned correctly and that sure enough wouldn't play through. So I remain wary of quality control issues and would rather see companies like Flicker Alley cater to their niche market with a more state-of-the-art presentation.

[McCrutchy]

This is not an initiative I will support, and if that means that several silent films stay out-of-print on DVD, then so be it.

Don't bet on it. Flicker Alley finally got around to actually promoting this today and it has resulted in a surge of pledging. They're at 38% and they could easily do it in the 7 weeks that remain. At least one person has pledged $500 to this thing (for a single streamed movie, 5 DVD-Rs, a few current FA DVDs and some posters)! Someone should have told them that for $1,500 they could get a deal worth at least 5 times their investment from Arrow!

I have little doubt it will be funded, however, it doesn't change the fact that I will never pay Flicker Alley for a DVD-R.

[EddieLarkin]

Goal reached with 7 weeks to go. One person pledged $1,000 for nothing in return. So it looks like it'll be a rousing success, solidifying FA's decision to go MOD. Hopefully more of these will see proper releases from other distributors over the next few years.

[Ashirg]

Maybe introducing the MOD releases will drop the prices on pressed discs on Amazon marketplace and ebay.

[solaris72]

Maybe introducing the MOD releases will drop the prices on pressed discs on Amazon marketplace and ebay.

I've noticed that happening with WB releases, so maybe.

[Perkins Cobb]

This paranoia about burned media is so 2009. If you're really worried that they'll self-destruct, buy a hard drive and copy the ISO files onto it. It's a much more solvable (or future-proofable) problem than brown Blu-rays of OOP Criterions. Better to have a movie on MOD than not at all, right? That's how I made my grudging peace with Warner Archive.

That said, it's always crushing to see a label backslide from Blu-ray to SD, and I'm as unenthusiastic about this initiative as the rest of you on those grounds.

[jheez]

I really don't have much of an opposition to DVD-R, but at this point I'd probably rather see high bit rate and quality digital downloads. With blu-ray I can justify the space they take up due to the increased quality and storage size. But I'm just getting tired of acquiring DVDs/DVD-Rs since a hard drive can now store like 750+ movies at the same quality.