The Economics of Extras

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Peacock
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The Economics of Extras

#1 Post by Peacock » Thu Nov 16, 2023 2:39 am

Matt wrote:
Thu Nov 16, 2023 12:51 am
Peacock wrote:But it must be financially extremely hard keeping such a large catalogue (mostly) permanently in-print.
I think about this often, actually: How expensive must it be to keep something like 1000 releases in print, stocked up and warehoused, in constant distribution to retailers? In a market where I can’t imagine anyone is still buying new copies of DVDs first released 20+ years ago!

But what compels me to purchase this? Having recently watched the films on the Criterion Channel (and not likely to want to watch them again soon) and not being a Rohmer completist, why should I race to buy this? Or worse, their edition of the Heroic Trio films. There’s almost nothing on the discs except the films. 10 minutes of Anthony Wong?
That’s a good point Matt; if Criterion are offering many of their titles for streaming (and many of these films won’t receive UHD discs) then what is the draw of a physical release for the portion of the market who don’t have the need/FOMO to own everything physically if there’s just a handful of basic extras that are exclusive to the physical release?

I’m more like Ryan and swo in needing to have it in my possession for a rainy day, but I suspect a significant chunk of the market share your (probably more sensible!) point of view.

So is the cost of gathering some more extra features higher than losing potential physical disc customers who have streamed the films but don’t see enough added value in owning them in a physical format? I guess Criterion must have run the numbers many times over and decided that yes, it is higher, or that the additional man hours those special features require are too expensive.

But yeah, certainly a unique boutique label in maintaining such a large catalogue of in-print titles, many of which are old and obscure enough that they must surely sell very few copies.

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tenia
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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#2 Post by tenia » Thu Nov 16, 2023 2:49 am

The only ones I know of that are keeping such a big physical catalogue in-print are Gaumont, and they own the movies to begin with and technically have a studio structure to help with the costs, the resources, etc.

This being written, Criterion for a long time seemed to have had a studio-like way of working, whether it was how much they were able/willing to pay for licencing a movie or how much they were asking others to pay for their masters and extras, both things being quite unique within the market (especially when combined), and I wonder how this might have had to do with their financial issues and if being less spendy and more open to sublicencing would have helped.
I also wonder in what extent the spendings they did were because they could and not because they should, and if this has shaped somehow some rightholders' expectations over time, whether it's about what they can pay but also what licensors overall should pay.

It certainly did give them within the industry a snobbish reputation, a big spender that doesn't share with the other labels, there, the cheap ones.

And while I understand yolo's points, I think the response is legitimate : if Criterion's "film school in a box" approach is gone, that's not a small change for consumers. And if even Criterion, who were always said to have pockets deeper than any other indie label, aren't able to keep that, then yeah, there's the question of how they arrived to this point (thus : are they having the right business model), and how others are doing since pretty much every label likely is smaller than Criterion.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#3 Post by MichaelB » Thu Nov 16, 2023 3:49 am

I can certainly confirm first-hand that they pay their contributors a lot more than is the norm for most labels - and I've worked with multiple labels on both sides of the Atlantic, so know that current rates elsewhere are much of a muchness.

Of course, one could argue that Criterion's rates are fairer for the amount of work typically involved - I don't know what they pay for commentaries, but I suspect it's a rather more realistic fee than is the norm pretty much across the board now, which is well below minimum wage on an hourly basis if you do a ton of research and prep before getting in front of the microphone. And in fact I know of a couple of audio commentators who won't do them any more (including one of my favourites) because fees have dropped below what they consider to be an acceptable minimum for the amount of preparatory work needed to do a good one.

But if Criterion-level fees were the norm, the sad fact is that most boutiques wouldn't record commentaries any more.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#4 Post by tenia » Thu Nov 16, 2023 5:34 am

MichaelB wrote:
Thu Nov 16, 2023 3:49 am
I can certainly confirm first-hand that they pay their contributors a lot more than is the norm for most labels - and I've worked with multiple labels on both sides of the Atlantic, so know that current rates elsewhere are much of a muchness.
But if Criterion-level fees were the norm, the sad fact is that most boutiques wouldn't record commentaries any more.
That's what I'm questioning, and it's an open question because indeed, particularly with contributors (which I wouldn't bundle with, say, US Studios rightholders), the idea isn't to have people paid below what would be fair.
But in France, our main domestic airline company, Air France, often is in difficulties and have strikes and layoffs, and I remember one time where several of their employees and union workers and directors saying "there was a period where we hired people just because we financially could", and I can't help thinking that's not a good idea if these people are going to be brutally laid off only a few years later.

Here, I can't help wondering if Criterion paid what they paid because they could, instead of being a bit lower but more sustainable over time.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#5 Post by brundlefly » Thu Nov 16, 2023 9:20 am

I do not mind paying more for better special features, and would rather Criterion worked inflation adjustments into a new price point than strip away the things that made their best releases special. Not going to stomp my feet about it, but there's less incentive to buy borderline titles or look at new editions of ones I already own (for these, I have the Potemkine; even the new Metrograph/Kino Rohmer blus have commentaries, two by Adrian Martin); for choices that aren't obviously canon (and I'm not talking about these, necessarily), special features don't only justify a purchase, they work to justify a place in the collection. Though it's a fine enough month of announcements, the only release I got excited about was Nothing But a Man as it's been on my radar and out of regular circulation -- and hopefully the three features there add up.

(On another note, it's strange that fewer individual titles within boxes are getting their own spine numbers. Even when there are fewer literal spines. Seems weird the individual Moral Tales got numbers and these did not.)
Last edited by brundlefly on Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#6 Post by jsteffe » Thu Nov 16, 2023 11:18 am

MichaelB wrote:
Thu Nov 16, 2023 3:49 am
I can certainly confirm first-hand that they pay their contributors a lot more than is the norm for most labels - and I've worked with multiple labels on both sides of the Atlantic, so know that current rates elsewhere are much of a muchness.

Of course, one could argue that Criterion's rates are fairer for the amount of work typically involved - I don't know what they pay for commentaries, but I suspect it's a rather more realistic fee than is the norm pretty much across the board now, which is well below minimum wage on an hourly basis if you do a ton of research and prep before getting in front of the microphone. And in fact I know of a couple of audio commentators who won't do them any more (including one of my favourites) because fees have dropped below what they consider to be an acceptable minimum for the amount of preparatory work needed to do a good one.

But if Criterion-level fees were the norm, the sad fact is that most boutiques wouldn't record commentaries any more.
When I contributed special features to a Criterion edition I felt that they did indeed pay fairly for the time involved. Not a "lavish" amount of money, but very fair. I have heard anecdotally that the fees for other labels can be far lower, as in not economically sustainable for contributors.

Honestly, I think part of the issue is simply that the economics of the boutique video label business are really tough. It is probably inevitable that a loaded 4K UHD special edition with a booklet and ample special features for a $49.95 list price means that along the way some people are not going to get paid very much for their work - especially with inflation in recent years. Consumer expectations and reviewer standards perpetuate this unsustainable model. I think we should either be willing to pay a lot more for loaded special editions or be happy with more spare editions for current pricing. I'm not crazy about any business model that pays some people less than minimum wage for their hours worked.

For that matter, the problem of people producing culturally valuable work as underpaid freelancers is a good example of why we need a Universal Basic Income. That is my opinion, at least.

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tenia
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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#7 Post by tenia » Thu Nov 16, 2023 2:01 pm


jsteffe wrote: For that matter, the problem of people producing culturally valuable work as underpaid freelancers is a good example of why we need a Universal Basic Income. That is my opinion, at least.
I'll go off topic a bit but : yes, this.
It's clear that heritage preservation and curation isn't valued enough to sustain business model allowing for fair wages. Be it in magazines, newspapers, websites, cinematheques or most likely video labels (and probably restoration labs, festival programmation etc), that's also why some end up basically requiring some of the staff working as volunteers. Which isn't helping on a long term since it's devaluating the activity, financially speaking.

I know that the day France implements some kind of universal income, providing it's not 1€ per day, I'll quit my job and go work for labels and cinematheques and stuff because they'll be able to pay me what they can instead of what I need, and it'll be completed by the universal income.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#8 Post by MichaelB » Thu Nov 16, 2023 2:19 pm

jsteffe wrote:
Thu Nov 16, 2023 11:18 am
When I contributed special features to a Criterion edition I felt that they did indeed pay fairly for the time involved. Not a "lavish" amount of money, but very fair. I have heard anecdotally that the fees for other labels can be far lower, as in not economically sustainable for contributors.
I do commentaries because I enjoy doing them, absolutely not for the money! In fact, I've actually lost money over the last couple of months because I've been juggling a lot of commentary commissions (the sudden flood of Polish releases has dramatically increased the number that I've been getting), and consequently have had less time to do things like subtitling, where I charge (and labels pay) the full industry rate.
Honestly, I think part of the issue is simply that the economics of the boutique video label business are really tough. It is probably inevitable that a loaded 4K UHD special edition with a booklet and ample special features for a $49.95 list price means that along the way some people are not going to get paid very much for their work - especially with inflation in recent years. Consumer expectations and reviewer standards perpetuate this unsustainable model. I think we should either be willing to pay a lot more for loaded special editions or be happy with more spare editions for current pricing. I'm not crazy about any business model that pays some people less than minimum wage for their hours worked.
The major problem is that the fee is the same regardless of whether someone's reminiscing about their time on the film (in which case they have a ton of core knowledge already there and can get away with minimal or even no preparation) or delivering a thoroughly worked-out critical commentary based on extensive research, and even if you're a bona fide expert it's very unlikely that you've already done sufficient research to fill a commentary track unless you're planning upfront to generalise (although of course some commentators do indeed do that). I could no more improvise a shot-specific commentary on, say, Kieślowski's Blind Chance or Skolimowski's Barrier than I could swim the Pacific and survive the crossing. Not least because in both cases I see my role as adding as much context as possible, closely tied to what's happening onscreen, which needs lots of careful planning and timing rehearsal - because if I overshoot, I potentially miss a cue.

Just to give an example, there's a shot in Barrier in which we can see that someone's graffitied a kotwica in the background, an explanation of which is precisely the sort of thing that a commentary should be providing - but because it's a visual symbol I have to wait until it actually appears onscreen before I can start talking about it, and ideally I need to finish my explanation before it disappears, so in this case we're talking within about thirteen seconds. Handily, this was pretty straightforward; I've had bigger timing challenges elsewhere (for instance, the rapid-fire, thematically dense opening of Blind Chance).
For that matter, the problem of people producing culturally valuable work as underpaid freelancers is a good example of why we need a Universal Basic Income. That is my opinion, at least.
In my case, we've paid off the mortgage and I have a wife whose professional hourly rate is way ahead of anything I've charged (or would ever conceivably charge) in my life! I'd never do a commentary for nothing (and never have done), but if I had enough commissions to fill full-time hours it wouldn't be economically sustainable, either in terms of supporting myself or in terms of contributing an agreed minimum income to household funds. But I do completely acknowledge the economics that labels are wrestling with.

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Matt
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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#9 Post by Matt » Thu Nov 16, 2023 2:45 pm

dwk wrote:In the case of The Heroic Trio/Executioners, the physical release offers the films in 4K, which the Criterion Channel currently does not.
In fact, you make a good point here. Not only did Criterion pioneer supplements and special features in addition to the film, but they also pioneered simply providing a superb transfer (often in CAV) with the best sound and minimal to no extras for a premium fee. I remember the Lola Montès CAV laserdisc having no extras at all and costing $70 because it had to be spread across 2 discs.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#10 Post by yoloswegmaster » Fri Nov 17, 2023 12:39 pm

tenia wrote: This being written, Criterion for a long time seemed to have had a studio-like way of working, whether it was how much they were able/willing to pay for licencing a movie or how much they were asking others to pay for their masters and extras, both things being quite unique within the market (especially when combined), and I wonder how this might have had to do with their financial issues and if being less spendy and more open to sublicencing would have helped.
I also wonder in what extent the spendings they did were because they could and not because they should, and if this has shaped somehow some rightholders' expectations over time, whether it's about what they can pay but also what licensors overall should pay.

It certainly did give them within the industry a snobbish reputation, a big spender that doesn't share with the other labels, there, the cheap ones.

And while I understand yolo's points, I think the response is legitimate : if Criterion's "film school in a box" approach is gone, that's not a small change for consumers. And if even Criterion, who were always said to have pockets deeper than any other indie label, aren't able to keep that, then yeah, there's the question of how they arrived to this point (thus : are they having the right business model), and how others are doing since pretty much every label likely is smaller than Criterion.
You have to realize that companies in the same industry can, and will, be charged differently simply because of their name and status (whether its paying for rights or for production). For example, I know for a fact that Apple gets charged more when it comes to production and manufacturing simply because of prestigious their name is. Most successful companies aren't going to exist by simply throwing money around, especially when a company has existed as long as Criterion have. While there is no doubt that Criterion themselves have contributed to the current situation that they are in, I'm just not convinced that it is entirely or even mostly of their own doing. I'm confused by what you're trying to say about them not sharing with other labels, as you don't specifically mention what exactly it is that they are supposed to be sharing.

I don't think saying that "they are coasting off their name" or pointlessly comparing releases between the US and UK companies and acting like they are on the same footing is a legitimate response at all, and quite frankly, it's an opinion generated from surface-level thinking that conveniently ignores the reality and complexities of the situation (which is what my first post was originally about).

On a sidenote, while it's great to see a few people get excited when a release has a lot of extras, I wish there was more discussion surrounding the quality of the extras itself. You can stack a release with a high quantity of extras but it's only worth it if they are complimentary to one another and the information being provided is stimulating. Arrow pretty much does the opposite of this, at least for me, as I've sat thru multiple releases from them where you can tell they are just adding extras for the sake of adding them with not much thought going into curation.
jsteffe wrote: For that matter, the problem of people producing culturally valuable work as underpaid freelancers is a good example of why we need a Universal Basic Income. That is my opinion, at least.
I agree with your sentiment and I would extend it to people who work at national film boards or film festivals. If you read the job reviews posted from people who have worked at places like TIFF and the National Film Board of Canada, the number one complaint is that newer and younger employees are being paid very low wages while still having to work excess hours. There is frankly no reason for a institution like TIFF to be underpaying their employees, especially when their own financial records show that their revenue exceeds expenditures by over $5 million.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#11 Post by jsteffe » Fri Nov 17, 2023 2:13 pm

yoloswegmaster wrote:
Fri Nov 17, 2023 12:39 pm
jsteffe wrote: For that matter, the problem of people producing culturally valuable work as underpaid freelancers is a good example of why we need a Universal Basic Income. That is my opinion, at least.
I agree with your sentiment and I would extend it to people who work at national film boards or film festivals. If you read the job reviews posted from people who have worked at places like TIFF and the National Film Board of Canada, the number one complaint is that newer and younger employees are being paid very low wages while still having to work excess hours. There is frankly no reason for a institution like TIFF to be underpaying their employees, especially when their own financial records show that their revenue exceeds expenditures by over $5 million.
Absolutely! And people who work as actors. Many are even members of SAG-AFTRA but don't earn enough to live on and qualify for health benefits.

To bring it back to issue of Blu-ray extras, including for this release: I think we need more honest conversations about the underlying economics of the home video industry. Not to criticize labels for being low-paying or cutting back on special features, but to acknowledge that there is a larger consumer capitalist economic system driving both those dynamics. I respect Criterion's decisions about pricing and depth of special features for their releases since they have been in business for decades and know the market as well as anyone.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#12 Post by MichaelB » Fri Nov 17, 2023 2:20 pm

yoloswegmaster wrote:
Fri Nov 17, 2023 12:39 pm
I agree with your sentiment and I would extend it to people who work at national film boards or film festivals. If you read the job reviews posted from people who have worked at places like TIFF and the National Film Board of Canada, the number one complaint is that newer and younger employees are being paid very low wages while still having to work excess hours. There is frankly no reason for a institution like TIFF to be underpaying their employees, especially when their own financial records show that their revenue exceeds expenditures by over $5 million.
In fairness, I had no real complaints about my BFI salary when I was there - it was frozen at the top of the relevant pay grade for much of that time, but that wasn't their fault, and I had the option of going up to a higher level, but it would have involved taking on management responsibilities that I absolutely did not want to take on. But it was enough for me to be the main breadwinner for the better part of a decade, supporting a family of two kids with my wife only working part time.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#13 Post by tenia » Fri Nov 17, 2023 3:49 pm

yoloswegmaster wrote:
Fri Nov 17, 2023 12:39 pm
I'm confused by what you're trying to say about them not sharing with other labels, as you don't specifically mention what exactly it is that they are supposed to be sharing.
They're asking for extremely high licences fees, being for their own-produced extras or restorations, so high that these remain pretty much their exclusives. Nobody knows however if that's actually the point (keeping them exclusives anyway).
yoloswegmaster wrote:
Fri Nov 17, 2023 12:39 pm
I don't think saying that "they are coasting off their name" or pointlessly comparing releases between the US and UK companies and acting like they are on the same footing is a legitimate response at all.
I don't think so either, but that's not what I'm doing, just like it's not what others have been doing here before : the matter isn't so much a US company vs a UK one, but Criterion's own evolution when it comes to their extra features package, something that, IIRC, isn't even a new topic of discussion here (ie not post-Covid or post-recent layoffs).
yoloswegmaster wrote:
Fri Nov 17, 2023 12:39 pm
On a sidenote, while it's great to see a few people get excited when a release has a lot of extras, I wish there was more discussion surrounding the quality of the extras itself. You can stack a release with a high quantity of extras but it's only worth it if they are complimentary to one another and the information being provided is stimulating. Arrow pretty much does the opposite of this, at least for me, as I've sat thru multiple releases from them where you can tell they are just adding extras for the sake of adding them with not much thought going into curation.
This is another matter, but one I agree with you. I think a label I can think of spontaneously about this can be Second Sight. I reviewed releases from them where it felt, just like Arrow (or sometimes Indicator), that they wanted to add as much minutes of extras they could but the main talents were gone or unavailable so they had to stick with the DP's assistant's assistant.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#14 Post by MichaelB » Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:24 pm

tenia wrote:
Fri Nov 17, 2023 3:49 pm
I reviewed releases from them where it felt, just like Arrow (or sometimes Indicator), that they wanted to add as much minutes of extras they could but the main talents were gone or unavailable so they had to stick with the DP's assistant's assistant.
Sorry, but I can't let that go unchallenged - the interviews with crew members are often some of the best extras, because they often haven't been interviewed before and the stories they tell haven't been told a gazillion times already.

You might knee-jerkily think that, say, the assistant production designer on The Long Good Friday was a waste of space, but in fact it's one of the most enthralling interviews in that entire package - because the main production designer is now dead, she's the one with the most in-depth knowledge of, say, how they built a fake pub that was designed to be blown up. And those crew interviews tend to be pretty tightly edited.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#15 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:46 pm

That makes sense. I'm much more interested in an interview from a crew member who can be both informative and excited to tell a story, than I am from a top dog who might have less energy from being desensitized as a key focal point of attention so often over time, or be inhibited by a hyper-sensitivity from having tighter connections to higher powers in the industry/related to the film. My experience is that humbler/humbled people are typically more interesting, at least for a certain kind of interview focus.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#16 Post by Peacock » Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:08 pm

I for one love crew interviews, no matter how small a part they played. In fact, I prefer them to a lot of the film scholar pieces (unless it’s the likes of Tag, MichaelB, Bordwell etc!). I hunt down way over-priced out of print releases just for crew interviews in fact!

Adventures with D.W. Griffith by Karl Brown, camera assistant and then operator is one of my favourite reads.

I shoot and edit bonus features for much of my work and often I find the crew interviews the most interesting to shoot as well, with much more insight into the creative process and discussions with the director than actor’s usually giving more predictable answers talking about the location they filmed at, their character’s backstory or how nice the cast were etc.

So MB - please keep finding obscure crew members to preserve their stories on the public record please!

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#17 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:37 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:24 pm
Sorry, but I can't let that go unchallenged - the interviews with crew members are often some of the best extras, because they often haven't been interviewed before and the stories they tell haven't been told a gazillion times already.

You might knee-jerkily think that, say, the assistant production designer on The Long Good Friday was a waste of space, but in fact it's one of the most enthralling interviews in that entire package - because the main production designer is now dead, she's the one with the most in-depth knowledge of, say, how they built a fake pub that was designed to be blown up. And those crew interviews tend to be pretty tightly edited.
Couldn't be more true. Given the nature of the work, it's even likely an assistant or staff will have more info to convey since they're the ones who are carrying out the department head's wishes and the point-person between different departments. This may be an awkward example, but not long ago I was revisiting this Reagan documentary, and when the Iran-Contra scandal came up, they discuss a moment when Reagan confronts his staff, saying "when did I authorize this? I didn't ask for this." It's explained to him that he requested specific goals and essentially told his staff to do whatever it takes to make it happen - THAT he seemed to remember, so even though he may not have acted as a mastermind, he ultimately did shoulder a great deal of responsibility. How everything went down wouldn't have been pieced together if you didn't talk to people further down the ladder.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#18 Post by yoloswegmaster » Fri Nov 17, 2023 8:24 pm

tenia wrote: They're asking for extremely high licences fees, being for their own-produced extras or restorations, so high that these remain pretty much their exclusives. Nobody knows however if that's actually the point (keeping them exclusives anyway).
It could also be possible that they are asking for the same fees for which they had to pay, which would explain why it would be so high for the other labels.
I don't think so either, but that's not what I'm doing, just like it's not what others have been doing here before : the matter isn't so much a US company vs a UK one, but Criterion's own evolution when it comes to their extra features package, something that, IIRC, isn't even a new topic of discussion here (ie not post-Covid or post-recent layoffs).
I didn't say that was what you were doing. I was specifically referring to the first couple posts on this thread that pretty much started this whole brouhaha. IIRC, the only time I've seen anyone talk about the evolution of Criterion's extras package is when they say that they miss when Criterion packed their releases like they did in 2017 and then you find posts from 2017 where people are saying the same thing but this time they are saying that they miss the packed releases from 2012 and so on and so forth. I personally think that people are romanticizing the past a bit too much, as there were plenty of releases from the DVD and early bluray era that had little-to-no extras.

Interestingly, I recall a podcast with someone from Criterion and they admitted that they stopped producing new commentaries because they found out that very few people were actually listening to them. Which sucks but is understandable considering that it's not worth spending a lot of money on something that very few people will appreciate.
jsteffe wrote: To bring it back to issue of Blu-ray extras, including for this release: I think we need more honest conversations about the underlying economics of the home video industry. Not to criticize labels for being low-paying or cutting back on special features, but to acknowledge that there is a larger consumer capitalist economic system driving both those dynamics. I respect Criterion's decisions about pricing and depth of special features for their releases since they have been in business for decades and know the market as well as anyone.
Yep, I'm on the same page with you on that. A lot of people are unsurprisingly unaware of how companies are run, so I personally think that it would be interesting to have a thread where insiders like MichaelB can post about the costs involved with running a home video company (that is if they would even want to do something like that in the first place). Anyways, I'm going to stop here as the thread has been derailed enough.

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#19 Post by Finch » Fri Nov 17, 2023 8:40 pm

If you had a problem with my and/or ryannichols's posts, then why not quote directly instead?

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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#20 Post by MichaelB » Sat Nov 18, 2023 5:33 am

yoloswegmaster wrote:Interestingly, I recall a podcast with someone from Criterion and they admitted that they stopped producing new commentaries because they found out that very few people were actually listening to them. Which sucks but is understandable considering that it's not worth spending a lot of money on something that very few people will appreciate.
I get very very little feedback about my commentaries - sometimes not even from the disc producer. In fact, of the seven that I’ve submitted this year, I only had producer feedback about two of them that was more than a “thank you” on delivery, and it’s just as well that one of them was VS’s War of the Worlds: Next Century because otherwise it might as well not exist - there’ve been no reviews that do more than mention its existence, and no social media reactions that I’ve seen.

In fact, getting maybe four or five reactions of any kind at most is a typical best-case scenario, although I treasure an Amazon customer review of Blind Chance:
But also, the film commentary is worth a listen. I don't normally bother with them, but I struggled with the first 30 minutes of Blind Chance during my first viewing over 15 years ago, and now it makes perfect sense... as well as having a far more powerful impact due to understanding Kieslowski's life situation at the time of filming.
Stuff like that’s worth far more to me than a “review” that’s blatantly only sampled the first few minutes (sadly the norm).

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1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#21 Post by pzadvance » Sat Nov 18, 2023 6:12 am

tenia wrote:This is another matter, but one I agree with you. I think a label I can think of spontaneously about this can be Second Sight. I reviewed releases from them where it felt, just like Arrow (or sometimes Indicator), that they wanted to add as much minutes of extras they could
Yeah, I was excited for the 100+ page book included with Second Sight’s Crimes of the Future release, assuming that its length indicated a wealth of varying critical perspectives/interviews/production histories, but have been extremely disappointed to find nearly every essay regurgitating the same tired timeline of Cronenberg’s late career and relationship to “body horror,” etc. It sometimes feels like reading the same essay written by ten different people (and it includes one of the most amateurish essays I’ve ever seen published, a high school book report-level of insight and description that i can’t believe made it past any editor). I would vastly prefer 2-3 thoughtful and complementary essays (and by the same token, extras) than this, which is transparently padded to entice buyers with no consideration given to the actual value of the content included.

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MichaelB
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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#22 Post by MichaelB » Sat Nov 18, 2023 10:27 am

pzadvance wrote:
Sat Nov 18, 2023 6:12 am
(and it includes one of the most amateurish essays I’ve ever seen published, a high school book report-level of insight and description that i can’t believe made it past any editor)
I once had a pitch for a booklet commission from someone whose writing samples were pretty much at that level. So I said "thanks but no thanks", and he then sent me what he assured me was his best stuff - which was indistinguishable from what I'd already read. At which point he said - and I swear I'm not making this up - "Obviously, I'll do a better job if I'm being paid".

But to me it wasn't obvious at all - the fact is that he clearly had no idea of just how bad he was, and if you're not aware of this yourself, how can you possibly improve?

Amusingly, the same guy brought this up years later on social media, having concocted this bizarre theory that I rejected his work because I didn't like him personally. Not at all - I didn't know him from Adam, and I rejected his work because it was objectively shit. And I really do mean "objectively"; we're not just talking a high school book report level of insight but also horrendously clunky writing, without a single well-turned phrase. Why should I pay for something like that when there are so many demonstrably good writers out there who'd be more deserving of the money?

(Talking of which, during the same week I received the latest booklet submission from the sadly now late Mike Sutton, a properly good writer whose covering letters were unfailingly self-flagellating and apologetic. And, as ever, it needed next to no editing at all.)

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Peacock
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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#23 Post by Peacock » Sat Nov 18, 2023 12:48 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Sat Nov 18, 2023 5:33 am
Stuff like that’s worth far more to me than a “review” that’s blatantly only sampled the first few minutes (sadly the norm).
I’ve noticed a lot recently Gary’s reviews of extra features just reword a label’s own description of them.

So; L’Argent by BFI contains: Jonathan Hourigan on L’Argent (2007, 26:03, audio only): the film scholar - who assisted in the making of L’Argent - speaks about the production

And further down, the review of that extra by Gary is:
There is an audio-only clip, running to the film, that has Jonathan Hourigan who assisted in the making of L’Argent speaking about the production for almost 1/2 hour.

For Indicator’s Born of Fire details: • Qâf - The Sacred Mountain (1985, 27:13 mins): Jamil Dehlavi’s acclaimed art-documentary, shot during the production of Born of Fire and featuring a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh, chronicles a volcanic eruption in exquisite and hypnotic detail

And further down the page, the description/review of that extra is: Most interesting is "Qâf - The Sacred Mountain", Jamil Dehlavi’s acclaimed 1985 art-documentary that was shot during the filming of Born of Fire. Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh provide the awesome soundtrack for this strange 27-minute film chronicling a volcanic eruption.

It reminds one a bit of the Blackadder 2 joke about whether Queen Liz I wanted to hear a story from Sir Walter Raleigh about him being attacked by a hammerhead shark, and the story is ‘I once was attacked by a shark, and the funny thing is, its head was shaped exactly like a hammer!”

Almost every review on the site reviews the bulk of the special features this way which is why Chris’ in-depth review of the special features of various releases on here is very helpful. But I understand why Gary and others are unable to find the time to watch all these extras, there’s only so many hours in the day and listening to commentaries add a significant amount of time to a review.

Hope it doesn’t dishearten you Michael!

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TechnicolorAcid
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Re: 1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#24 Post by TechnicolorAcid » Sat Nov 18, 2023 5:10 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Sat Nov 18, 2023 5:33 am
yoloswegmaster wrote:Interestingly, I recall a podcast with someone from Criterion and they admitted that they stopped producing new commentaries because they found out that very few people were actually listening to them. Which sucks but is understandable considering that it's not worth spending a lot of money on something that very few people will appreciate.
I get very very little feedback about my commentaries - sometimes not even from the disc producer. In fact, of the seven that I’ve submitted this year, I only had producer feedback about two of them that was more than a “thank you” on delivery, and it’s just as well that one of them was VS’s War of the Worlds: Next Century because otherwise it might as well not exist - there’ve been no reviews that do more than mention its existence, and no social media reactions that I’ve seen.

In fact, getting maybe four or five reactions of any kind at most is a typical best-case scenario, although I treasure an Amazon customer review of Blind Chance:
But also, the film commentary is worth a listen. I don't normally bother with them, but I struggled with the first 30 minutes of Blind Chance during my first viewing over 15 years ago, and now it makes perfect sense... as well as having a far more powerful impact due to understanding Kieslowski's life situation at the time of filming.
Stuff like that’s worth far more to me than a “review” that’s blatantly only sampled the first few minutes (sadly the norm).
It’s funny that you mentioned the War of the Worlds commentary because I feel like that was the best extra on the release outside of the Szulkin interview on the booklet. I will admit that I wasn’t fond of that film on first viewing but you put so much info into that commentary, especially around it’s background that, like the Blind Chance reviewer, my appreciation for the film grew. Also wanna shout out Samm Deighan who’s also on the disc, her commentaries are always informative, never boring and you can tell she’s passionate about all the films she discusses.

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Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

1206 Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons

#25 Post by Matt » Sat Nov 18, 2023 7:36 pm

Even here, a forum where most of us crave and value commentaries and other in-depth extras, there is not a lot of discussion about them.

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