Google Video

[ReCycled]

I'm searching around on the net yesterday for something regarding Charles Grodin, who's an actor who's been around since the 70's. In the search results, I see there are some video clips from the movie "The Heartbreak Kid", which I hadn't seen in over 30 years. One clip suggested it's  1 hr - 45 mins long. I'm thinking, well that's the whole friggin movie. That can't be right. I follow the link to Google Video and it's the ENTIRE movie. How can this be? Copyright? Illegality? Anyway I watched the whole thing last night and not one interuption or spam to get me to buy it. Since when has this been happening? Free commercial movies from Google? The quality is OK Youtube quality. In case you want to see the movie, it's a bit dated (1972) but has a very young, beautiful Cybil Sheppard in it. But I can't figure out what their angle is. It will hurt DVD sales...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-791074300632371309

[The Happy Friar]

I just read that google is now featuring full length tv shows/movies in the tube.  Maybe google video too?

[peewee_RotA]

Yeah the whole internet providing TV shows is really taking off. You've got Hulu, netflix, and even IMDB offering feature length content. I hate to watch videos on my computer screen, especially when the average TV has better speakers than the average computer (let alone laptop). The quality is better too.

But for whatever reason it's the way to be now.

I once asked the same questions to a group of video and TV production majors and this was their educated guess:

#1 The movies provided online are all or mostly older movies or movies that did not sell well.
#2 The shows provided online are all serial shows.

So if a movie makes most of it's money in the theaters, then some money on it's first DVD release, then it is safe to assume that that movie does not make much money at all years after it's release. A movie that sells poorly when it is first released to home video, will especially not be selling well a year or even 6 months later.

A great older movie will spark interest if it is packaged with extras or in box sets, like Disney DVD's full of additional content and toys. So they are really only selling the packaging. These things obviously cannot be provided online so I doubt that they are losing any money at all this way. I doubt it's an issue with copyrights at all. I bet the companies that hold the rights atually sell the right to broadcast things and video websites use them as loss leaders for their advertising.

As for shows whether you watch Lost or not, you owe your entire television experience today to that show's popularity. Before Lost only comic books, reality TV, and soap operas were told in serial. Now we have 24, heroes, scrubs, terminator, smallville (continue ad nausium) of serialized TV in which the events of the previous episode have a significant affect on the events of the next. It's one long story that you have to tune into every episode to tell. The good old days of Home Improvement and Full House are gone. Even episodic shows like House make their episodes have significant impact on the following one.

So that being said, most shows today have absolutely no value as a rerun. In order to rerun a single episode of 24, A&E devotes entire days to one season. How else would you rerun that style of show? You'd have to have a dedicated and uninterrupted programming block (Which is a lot less rare than you would think. Keeping the same 3 hour programming block for a year is very rare). So for this reason Fox, ABC, NBC, Sci-Fi Channel, and I think even MTV provide their serial shows for download the same week that it airs. Shows that are episodic like Monk, Psych, and children's shows, do not offer nearly the same services. They may offer the show for download 7-8 days after it airs and they tend to never offer more than 1 show for download from the same season.

Anyway that was just a long way to say that they don't mind running the shows online because they are worthless after the fact.

[ReCycled]

I've been trying really hard to find a catalogue of movies they will show free on-line but it's not indexed anywhere. I guess you have to be interested in one movie for other reasons and fluke on it. Like I did with this one. It's actually a good movie based on a play by Neil Simon. and it shows Cybil in her prime. She was also in The Last Picture Show - another classic (1971).
 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vrUiCaCWLc

[The Happy Friar]

I once asked the same questions to a group of video and TV production majors and this was their educated guess:
#1 The movies provided online are all or mostly older movies or movies that did not sell well.
#2 The shows provided online are all serial shows.

see, you asked people who are trained to make things for a big screen, be it a TV or a movie theater.

The main reason stuff is put on the net is $$.  Like you said, just doing PR & showing in theater's costs a bundle (FYI, it's not because the physical location gets a good %, they don't.  Hence the huge markup on food).  BUT... if you skip 99% of that you save a LOT of $$.  IE if I put my movie I made straight to net I'd have no distribution costs, no duplication costs, no 300 extra people to pay for doing little things like clicking a button to play the film, put up posters, etc.  Yes, a movie/show on the net doesn't bring in as much as a big box office movie, but when your budget is ~1/100,000 th, you can make a lot less to make a good profit.    This applies to all types of movies: indy & not.  IE if I wanted to tell you to watch hellboy, you'd need to go out, physically hold it, make the decision, buy it, get it home & watch it. Maybe ~1 hour for that to happen.  If I sent you a link it could take you ~40 seconds.  A lot less time for you to NOT end up actually buying & watching.

Second reason is it's cool.  Like ipod's or iphones.  If you don't say you've watched the latest show on the 'net you're lammmmmmme.    Heck, even with the tasty cast people say how weird it is to not download a prerecorded show & play back like on an ipod.  They (strangely) think that live = old fashioned.

I agree with you on episodics though.  they are kind of dead.    Was nice to watch a random Next Gen episode & not need to watch a whole season to figure out out.

[peewee_RotA]

I agree with you on episodics though.  they are kind of dead.    Was nice to watch a random Next Gen episode & not need to watch a whole season to figure out out.

Yeah, and don't get me started on Dollhouse. It's very premise is a 100% episodic approach. They made a show in which the main character doesn't even remember the events from the past episode via a memory erasing machine. But they still somehow have managed to make it carry a serialized plot. WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO? 


Quantum Leap is another good example of an episodic show. Sliders as well.