McCrutchy wrote:Secondly, posts like this make me sad for film. €41 (shipped) is an expensive price, but hardly an exorbitant one, and considering the level of time and money spent on this release, it's certainly worth buying at that price, if only to ensure that you get more silent classics restored and on Blu-ray. Notice that the market for silents, which is already small, is even smaller for silents on Blu-ray, and smaller still for silents on Blu-ray outside the USA. Outside of Metropolis, a couple MoC releases in the UK, and some Borzage titles from Carlotta in France--which I believe had poor sales--the market for silents on non-US Blu-ray is almost non-existent. If it takes €41 to get a silent film release in a high-quality version that I can comprehend, along with some awfully exciting extras, then I have no problem with it. I don't have a lot of money and I find myself buying less and less because of that, but this is an important Blu-ray release and I want to ensure that these kinds of releases remain financially viable enough to continue.
Obviously I can't tell someone else that they're wrong for thinking something is worth a certain amount of money but this is awfully expensive. When there is an HD rip floating around on the net and many of the people interested in this release will be involved in the rare film sharing communities online anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people find themselves being priced out or just don't see the point in "upgrading" to the DVD/Blu. Needless to say, shortly after release, this release will be pirated also and soon be available online, giving people another "option" in how to acquire it.
I can't believe anyone can justify this price. It's another leap over Edition Filmmuseum titles and compare it to the Blu-rays of other labels and it is poor value. Hopefully the price will come down drammatically otherwise I'll be passing. I'd rather have four or five DVD titles on my wishlist that I don't currently have.
Of course if you go to all the effort of restoring a silent yourself and then only distributing it through your unknown website, instead of acquiring proper distribution, thus making it available through all the usual stores, and also acquiring the rights to overseas areas, for which your product is already language-friendly, and then distributing it abroad too, then of course you will find yourself having to sell at silly prices to even try and break even.
It's for this reason that I'm pretty sure that this title will be on the likes of Amazon and jpc soon also. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to put all this effort into a release and then not make your market as big as possible. Their other titles were widely distributed in Germany too.