New Wave Films (UK)

[MichaelB]

This forum is full of enthusiasm for Criterion, BFI, MoC, Second Run, etc -- but you don't visit the forum because you find it "grumpy" and "dispiriting". There's a reason for that.

We love your films and your taste, but it's not fun waiting a year or two for you to go through the motions, and then deliver only a DVD (which you lose money on).

Anyone back me up?

Yes, absolutely. There's very little question that the labels that make the most effort to engage with their customers get a much warmer reception here - not just the BFI, MoC and Second Run but also Milestone, Cinema Guild and a handful of others. It's certainly not as though their releases are all perfect, but the mere fact that they genuinely engage with people here, explain why certain decisions had to be taken, and occasionally offer exclusive info, makes for superb PR and generates a vast amount of goodwill.

A case in point: just look at how the BFI handled the potentially contentious The Devils - they knew upfront that there were two big issues outside their control that some might consider deal-breakers (the lack of a Blu-ray, the fact that they could only license the UK cinema cut and not the 2004 semi-restoration), and asked me to act as a go-between even before the official announcement. There were obviously some complaints, but they were individually dealt with politely and patiently, and the many positive aspects of the release were reinforced regularly, helped by several people here picking up the baton.

By contrast, occasional posts complaining about people being "grumpy" and "dispiriting" are usually completely counter-productive. Look at what happened in the Olive thread (starting round about here) - pretty much the only time it got seriously negative was when someone, universally assumed to be a company employee (given that his entire posting history here and especially in the Home Theater Forum amounts to nearly 100 posts exclusively bigging up Olive) laid on the aggressive defensiveness from his very first post. It's almost an object lesson in how not to interact with actual and potential customers.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

We love your films and your taste, but it's not fun waiting a year or two for you to go through the motions, and then deliver only a DVD (which you lose money on).
Anyone back me up?

In support of this I just checked your website to look at the last 34 releases. Of these titles I have 21 which probably makes me one of your core target audience.
However out of the 21 I chose 14 from other sources because of Blu availability/additional supplements/format issues/ too long to wait for release.
As Nick notes ,for people outside the metropolis blu home viewing is/will be the norm as will multi-region access. That's why I have more Cinema Guild titles than New Wave for example.
Incidentally I saw Hors Satan in the cinema and it is crying out for a blu release. The audience was in double figures but I was in a small French provincial town. But then again there is no french blu so if you did it there's one sale you've got immediately.

[MichaelB]

Incidentally I saw Hors Satan in the cinema and it is crying out for a blu release. The audience was in double figures but I was in a small French provincial town. But then again there is no french blu so if you did it there's one sale you've got immediately.

There may well be a very good reason for the lack of a French Blu, one not entirely unrelated to the face that you saw it with an audience in double figures...

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Incidentally I saw Hors Satan in the cinema and it is crying out for a blu release. The audience was in double figures but I was in a small French provincial town. But then again there is no french blu so if you did it there's one sale you've got immediately.

There may well be a very good reason for the lack of a French Blu, one not entirely unrelated to the face that you saw it with an audience in double figures...

That fact being that France is lagging behind in blu sales across the board, a fact lamented frequently by Jerome Soulet of Gaumont and which endangers the volume of blu Gaumont Classiques to be issued in the future. Hence aggressive marketing tactics like the 3 for 2 offers currently via Amazon

Also considering that Hors was shown twice during one week in a town of 2000 people with a cinema capacity of 100 it was quite a good per capita turn out no?

[Finch]

@newwavefilms, I was actually impressed at the speed with which you released Tabu (only 6 months or so after the Berlin world premiere). This needs to happen more often. And as the other said, a stacked BD release for every title of yours would make your potential customers lean towards your package than a bare-bones effort might. Even a bare-bones BD would still be very much welcome compared to a DVD only. But the waiting times do need to go down. Nostalgia for the Light has been out in the US for some time now which is why I pre-ordered the US Blu-Ray as soon as it was announced.

I will buy a TABU Blu-Ray from NWF if you decide to release one 5 or 6 months from now. I'd get a DVD if that was the only offer but I'd really really really want a Blu-Ray.

[newwavefilms]

One post got everybody going at least..to answer in bits:
To Finch - Tabu video release date is Jan 13th. We'll do a Blu-ray as well.
Waiting time on Nostalgia for the Light was because we didn't actually see it in Cannes, only a very long time afterwards, hence the US video release was before it even opened in the cinema here.

[Finch]

Excellent news, looking forward to January!

[RossyG]

@ New Wave

I've got a few New Wave DVDs and I'm glad to have them, and will certainly be buying more (Tabu and Nostalgia on BD), but if I were you I'd think about going for the collectors market. Don't think of every new release as an individual release, build up a collection. Number the volumes. Make the spines match (like you used to). Visit places like this more often to drum up trade and explain decisions.

The latter can be important. Don't be the sod that won't release things on BD; be the decent guy trying to promote obscure films who can't afford to go HD. That's what Second Run did and it built up goodwill. And members here convey that message to like-minded people on other sites.

I and many others often buy DVDs and BDs on spec purely because they're by MoC, BFI, Second Run etc... Try and join that gang. It won't be that hard and I'm sure it'd pay off.

[colinr0380]

Agreed with RossyG. I will definitely be picking up Nostalgia For The Light (it'll make a good companion to The Pinochet Case) but it is a shame that the spiffy Blu-ray release of a film like that could not combined with a look into the back catalogue of Patricio Guzmán. However as a lay person I have no idea about the availability of any of the films, or in what kind of condition, or price and so on. But the idea of capitalising on the interest and publicity raised by that film to see if there was anything that could be promoted at the same time, especially if it resulted in a release of a rarity (even if that might just be as a DVD release supporting the Blu of the more prominent current film), would really generate a lot of interest and I'm sure the label would generate a lot of support for the perception of having gone the extra mile for intelligently grouping a variety of releases together.

[knives]

I'm not sure about region coding, but the US Blu contains six short films he made in conjunction with the feature.

[zedz]

Good points, Michael, Nabob and others, and thanks to New Wave for coming to the party and hearing what we have to say.

I'm sure the potential sales represented by international online cinephile communities like ours are tiny, but they're probably much more substantial, percentage-wise, for the kind of titles New Wave Films releases than for most films, and most of us are buying on an international market, and weighing up what we know about rival editions.

Personally, I generally make purchases based on the following criteria:
1) Do I want the film? (I do a lot of blind-buying as well, because renting interesting cinema is not an option where I live, so advance publicity, reviews and buzz from people I respect on this forum are all important influences. Labels with a good forum presence at least ensure that I'm aware of what's coming up from them, and encourage people who have seen the upcoming films to comment on them and possibly twist my arm.)
2) Is it available on BluRay?
3) Is it a good transfer? (Very important: can sometimes overrule number 2, and may cause me to avoid a release altogether if it's a major cock-up)
4) Does it have high-quality extras? (e.g. expert commentary, short films - yes please!; EPK puff pieces - no thanks!)
5) Is it on a label with a great track record, like SecondRun (I buy everything they release, even if I know nothing about a given title, simply because they've established such an excellent curatorial track record), BFI, MoC or Criterion (I'll favour releases by those labels over equivalent releases in other regions because of their quality control, good design etc.)

New Wave Films seems to have an excellent curatorial eye, and I'm the proud owner of several of their releases, but as Nabob notes, if a release from another region is in a better format, has a better transfer or extras, or (most frustrating for all concerned) simply comes out before we know about any future, potentially superior alternatives, then I'll go with that one. However, if I know that a given title is likely to come out from Criterion, MoC, BFI or Second Run (play your cards right, and Your DVD Label could be here), I'll hold off purchasing until I can compare releases.

[swo17]

I do a lot of blind-buying as well, because renting interesting cinema is not an option where I live

So you recently moved to America?

[zedz]

No, America moved everywhere else.

[knives]

I do a lot of blind-buying as well, because renting interesting cinema is not an option where I live

So you recently moved to America?

I really do feel lucky having a good library within walking distance plus two great rental stores in the same vicinity.

[bdlover]

Like others here I'm part of your target audience, as are many of my friends and family, and I can only back up everything peerpee has said. Whilst DCP is seen as a cash cow by mainstream distributors, and the majority of mainstream cinemagoers seem not to notice the difference, for many cinephiles like myself the magic of the 35mm screening has been lost. Living outside London, I usually just wait for a blu-ray now, which I can watch in comparable quality to DCP, as many times as I like, in the comfort of my home and for less than the price of two 'cinema' tickets. In the case of New Wave acquisitions, often times we wait and wait and then you release a DVD only, which creates grumpy feelings towards the label - especially when we know that (as in the case of the two Dumont films) MoC made an offer and would've released those films in HD if you hadn't got involved (and then lost money! who wins here?!...) Yes, theatrical distribution is often a contractual obligation, but for the more challenging titles it would be better to get it over with quickly on a single screen in London than to wait around for a regional slot that will never come. Consider also that my friends and I follow the reviews from major festivals - the best free publicity you can get - but that our interest in a title may wane as time goes by.

Title by title then:

Le quattro volte - First to blu-ray means that I own this.

Uncle Boonmee - First to blu-ray = I own this too (six months later and you would've lost me to Strand).

Hors Satan - I have the French DVD. Would pre-order a blu-ray in an instant, but no interest in either a DCP cinema release or a DVD.

Hadewijch - I got bored of waiting and tracked this down by other means. No interest in the DVD, yet would pre-order a blu-ray instantly. Hard to believe it took you three years to book the Institut Francais.

Aurora - Festival screening. Probably wouldn't purchase in any format, but if you'd released on blu-ray a year ago I would've bit.

Nostalgia for the Light - too late, I have the US blu-ray.

Elena - too late, I have the Russian blu-ray.

Tabu - As things stand, I'm going to buy this from you.

In the Fog - If this comes to a local cinema or blu-ray soon then you will get my money. If both UK and foreign blu-rays are announced, you will still get my money even if I have to wait an extra month or two. But... if an English-friendly blu-ray is announced in another territory and you still haven't made any moves then you've lost me.

The key point here, echoed by others in the thread it seems, is that you no longer have the captive audience available to Artificial Eye in its heyday and the speed and manner in which you release your acquisitions is going to have a huge impact on the amount of profit you can make. Going on a glut at Cannes and then sticking the titles the regional cinema chain doesn't like in a drawer perhaps not the best approach.

[peerpee]

The DIGITAL CRAP PACKAGE is having the indirect effect of killing off the magic of cinema for many. Like bdlover, I'd much rather watch a (nearly 2K) Blu-ray in the comfort of my own home (or someone else's) on a large Bravia. For a number of reasons, but mainly because it usually has much better contrast than the times I've seen a DIGITAL CRAP PACKAGE projected. I can get my home much darker than the cinema, which also helps with image quality.

DVD sales have a glass ceiling now that is lowering fast every month, mostly due to torrents, a saturated market, the allure of Blu-ray, and easy DVD-R copying.

Blu-rays are far more rewarding, immersive, technologically sexy, and desirable. They also have far more longevity in the marketplace for a label. A catalogue of Blu-rays 4-5 years from now is going to generate more revenue than a catalogue of DVDs. Blu-rays are also going to be pretty bloody hard to copy for a good few years yet because no-one wants 50GB per film sat on their HDD. Scrunching them down to a 5GB Matroska file doesn't count.

So the glass ceiling for Blu-rays is rising, things are getting better there... but getting much worse for DVD.

Things are moving very fast.

[MichaelB]

The problem, though, is that the cost of producing Blu-rays is still too high, and customer expectations concerning what constitutes a reasonable price are currently pitched far too low. That gap has to be addressed at some point down the line.

But I completely agree with you about DCPs - I made a special trip into London to see The Turin Horse on the big screen, and honestly wonder why I bothered: I'd previously discovered Tarr via 35mm screenings of Damnation and Werckmeister Harmonies in the same cinema, but this time round the image was so glaringly digital that... well, the Artificial Eye BD is reputedly superb, and I suspect I'll find it more satisfying.

Obviously, this is the way cinema is going, and it's impossible to fight it (and I appreciate that there are major cost advantages to independent distributors), but you're absolutely right that the upshot is that people who previously insisted on seeing films theatrically are now actively preferring the Blu-ray.

[RossyG]

And that includes me.

I used to make the 40-mile round trip to Brighton's Duke of York's on a weekly basis, often seeing two films in a day. But that was when it was 35mm and I had a 28" CRT telly and a DVD player. Now they're digital and I've got a 42" HD TV and a BD player, there's absolutely no point.

[peerpee]

Costs three grand to author a Blu-ray. Used to be eight grand. The only other preventative costs are the stupid Sony licence and the fact that you need to do at least 10 a year to make it worthwhile. A bunch of labels should get together and get all their discs done on the same effing licence or something.

[AidanKing]

Isn't the real problem here the fact that everyone's right in what they're saying but it's almost impossible to think up solutions?

I'm quite sure that a BluRay on a large HD TV will be just as good, if not better, than a digital projection in a cinema so, unless the projection is on a huge screen (unlikely in the case of the films New Wave release), people with that sort of home set-up will not attend cinema screenings.

However, in order to get publicity for the films New Wave release in the broadsheet press (which I think does still have an effect on attendances and sales) New Wave has to release the films in cinemas. As they say, they're not back catalogue releases. Maybe broadsheets could over arthouse straight to DVD/BluRay releases in depth rather than review critic-proof films, but that's unlikely to happen.

The main concerns of members here seem to be lack of BluRay releases and delays in release. New Wave could go straight to DVD/BluRay but only at the expense of losing publicity and sales. Most people still don't import discs so that's probably a minor concern for New Wave.

New Wave do respond to e-mails. I asked them about Hadewijch and Aurora a while back and they responded immediately, although Aurora has obviously slipped back again. It's also likely that a lot of the films they pick up wouldn't otherwise be released and they clearly get outbid by Artificial Eye for films that look potentially more popular (e.g. Silence of Lorna and Unrelated were New Wave, while Kid with a Bike and Archipelago were AE). I think the releases of Mysteries of Lisbon and Anatolia were pretty exemplary too as far as I can tell.

I think that we should be trying to offer New Wave as much support as possible because it would ultimately be pretty damaging for UK art film releases if they were to disappear. Clearly the films could be released more quickly but it's better for them to be released later than not at all.

[peerpee]

My tuppence...

I think they're clinging to a model that might have worked 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, but which must surely be getting worse.

I'm very, very sceptical that a broadsheet review does anything really. This idea that you're "creating awareness" might be for a select few in the London bubble, but this means nothing to those outside London. It's only a nostalgia for 60s/70s/80s arthouse screenings that would retain this mindset in 2012. The core audience knows all about the films they pick up from the festival reviews. This core audience is the best method of "creating awareness", because word spreads (for free) online about great discs, and the stuff sells itself.

I'm not saying ditch theatrical. There will definitely be some titles that should be made a fuss of, but not everything needs to be fed through the pipe. I thought it was a suicidal move to release HADEWIJCH theatrically, years after it came out.

New Wave (and a few other labels) seem to be in denial about the theatrical scene, and I think it's crippling everything they do. Resulting in films that come out very late on DVD only (not Blu-ray)... and the sad truth of this reality, is that they *still* lose money. No label can go on losing money.

They've admitted that whatever system they're currently relying on loses them money. Instead of acting like unhappy martyrs – thinking we're all grumpy, dispiriting moaners – I'm suggesting a new way of looking at it all. Adapt to what's happening, release things a few weeks after a brief London DCP, and become a major Blu-ray force beloved by their fans – or lose out repeatedly because we're importing Cinema Guild Blu-rays (for example).

The alternative is to continue struggling, being unhappy, and blaming others.

[RossyG]

I buy pretty much 80% of what Masters of Cinema, BFI and Artificial Eye release.

Of the New Wave DVDs I own, I bought them after seeing ads or reading capsule reviews in either Sight and Sound or Movie Mail's monthly catalogue. If I like the sound of it, I watch the trailer on YouTube and if I like that, I'll order it.

Websites like this can often inspire purchases, too.

I never read broadsheet reviews and I neither know nor care if the likes of Tricks, Two in the Wave or Film Socialisme had any kind of theatrical release in this country.

For most of my adult life I attended cinemas on a weekly basis, but haven't been in almost two years (it should have been longer, but nostalgia dragged me back a few times) and have no plants to return. My front room is now my cinema.

[repeat]

Most people still don't import discs so that's probably a minor concern for New Wave

Just a layman's point of view here... Maybe most UK people don't import discs, but most people outside the UK and US (and maybe Germany and France) have to import everything, which surely should be of crucial interest to anyone in the business.

I believe I'm not the only member of the above-mentioned labels' core audience who lives in a place where "theatrical", regarding this repertoire, equals either "festival" (for new films), or "film institute" (for older ones); I suppose that this would apply to not only many smaller European towns, but also large parts of the USA. I find it thus quite baffling that anyone would put so much stress on local theatrical distribution, when those resources could effectively be channelled to furthering the availability of these films to a growing international audience (like for instance MoC and Second Run have been consistently doing).

In fact, as disc sales are predominantly handled by web retailers, I wonder if any of these labels actually have any reliable data about the geographical distribution of their core audience. If not, it makes New Wave's valuing of local broadsheet reviews and theatrical distribution seem all the more puzzling - the international audience reads film magazines and specialized internet sites, not other countries' newspapers (at least not for information on arthouse cinema!).

What I'm trying to say is, I think that for anyone in a position to acquire and release arthouse cinema (for lack of a better word) on home video, it would seem almost an ethical responsibility to try and do it in a way that furthers the preservation and growth of a worldwide audience and demand, whose continuing existence is in the interest of everyone in the business. For example: there's still no English-friendly release of Hors Satan, New Wave are sitting on it, and I would hazard a guess that a good percentage of the people still waiting for that very release don't give a shit whether it runs or ever ran in a London theatre in DCP or 35mm - whereas a prompt video release when the film was still topical might have sold at least something, plus it might have generated demand/sales for other Dumont films (such as Hadewijch).

So, @newwavefilms - in case you're counting, here's one more vote for putting a little less stress on theatrical and a lot more on the worldwide DVD/BD market!

(edit: Just to be clear, I think New Wave is a truly wonderful label and I'm happy they exist - I just wish they would concentrate on home video for more and quicker releases. And maybe look at going dual format, but I do understand the problems with BD)

[MichaelB]

I can certainly attest from considerable personal experience how important broadsheet reviews were in the first half of the 1990s - there was an pretty indisputably causal relationship between the size of our box office take and and quantity and prominence of broadsheet reviews.

We rarely had much in the way of marketing support - if it was an exclusive, ads in local papers and Time Out, typically - and on one of the few occasions when we did get a lot of marketing, for John Woo's Hard Boiled, the film flopped so badly that I thought the weekend box office figures were some kind of cruel practical joke along the lines of the Guardian briefly making Toby Young its chief film critic (sadly, both were all too horribly true, though at least Young's tenure was mercifully brief). Conversely, though, when our revival of Belle de Jour opened against My Cousin Vinny and some long-forgotten BFI Production Board experiment, picture editors on pretty much every newspaper weighed up the merits of a clothed Joe Pesci versus a semi-nude Catherine Deneuve... and the film broke our house record.

But that was then, and the situation has changed completely now. For starters, it's vanishingly rare for just three films to open theatrically in a single week, which wasn't at all unusual twenty years ago. So the kind of prominent coverage that we used to enjoy is much, much harder to get - but, as Peerpee correctly points out, there are now loads of alternatives, and these forums have themselves formed a crucial part of getting the necessary buzz going with regard to some titles.

[bdlover]

A bunch of labels should get together and get all their discs done on the same effing licence or something.

Now there's a good, positive idea, if workable. You guys could get together for a coffee :-)

It is true that the broadsheets review many of these films at festivals, which might be enough if followed very quickly by a blu-ray or on-demand premiere. Would be interesting to see this explored. Certainly beats waiting around for a theatrical slot to become available, when the odds are a delay will only make the situation worse (remember there's always the Odeon Panton Street!).

On a tangent, I'm so hoping that a 70mm print of The Master does the rounds in the UK.