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1/ About 4 years ago I interviewed to be the Head of Film at a big production company. The COO who interviewed me wanted to talk in depth about DVD and how to focus the business on it, as they’d had previous success here.
2/ I told him that DVD would be an almost obsolete tech in about 5 years, with only a small market still wanting physical media. He was astounded and wouldn’t have it.
3/ His main reasoning was simply this: he was an avid DVD collector, was proud of his collection and still bought them religiously almost every weekend.
4/ I told him that that might be true for him and there are certainly people like him but that wasn’t the trend for the average person and that it wasn’t a great strategy to build their future business on.
5/ Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. Why am I bringing it up now? Because to me it’s not dissimilar to the argument raging over theatrical vs. Streaming.
6/ People are following their own ideology, backed up by the echo chamber of like-minded peers instead of looking outward and truly judging the landscape.
7/ I believe cinema and streaming can co-exist (and I want them to) but it will be a far different set up to the one we have enjoyed and it would be foolish to build our future business on something that consumers are turning away from.
8/ And make no mistake, even if you find the business and money side of film to be vulgar, it’s 100% necessary for it to be strong if you want to have a career as a filmmaker. Fight for the art but don’t forget we all need to be paid. It’s not a hobby.
