Twilight Time thread - Page 4

Twilight Time are given finished HD masters. They do not do the film restoration or transfers.

SAE is the exclusive outlet for TT titles. TT is not a part of SAE.

More info here: Interview at HTF

1. Twilight Time does no work on the transfers - they are handed to them by the studios who license. They do attend to the Blu-ray authoring, which is done by one of the top authoring houses.

2. Screen Archives is an online retailer who has exclusive distribution of the Twilight Time titles - they are in no way, shape, or form involved in the company.

3. You'd think this fact would be the easiest to understand, and yet...

So... your point is that since "countless" Blu-ray titles retailing for "$10 and under" haven't sold... that it makes sense for Twilight Time to sell those same caliber of movies for $30 instead?

If your point was to indicate that retail sales of catalog is a failed venture... then surely charging 3x the cost and narrowing the potential market to a small percentage of possible customers is even more likely to fail.... right?

There really is no point in responding anymore, but here goes. The potential market for these titles is tiny and that is EXACTLY who Twilight Time are going after. They are charging what they need to charge to stay in business and keep going. The movies they're doing are appealing to people who ARE willing to spend the extra dough. They are not outrageously priced - they are priced as a limited edition title should be priced. You don't have to buy - you have the ultimate power. But for you and others to keep beating this dead horse and actually refusing to see the clear logic, it just defies credulity. Will Twilight Time fail - who knows? Only time will tell. Right now and let me say this loudly - they are providing a service for film lovers by doing titles that would otherwise not see the light of day. I don't see any downside in that. If they fail they fail and if they succeed they succeed and we get more great titles along the way.

Again I ask the most pertinent question: Once a position has been stated and discourse from all sides has happened, why do the same people insist on posting the same thing over and over and over again, when every single point of view and question has been answered. You don't have to like the answer, but it's there if you want it. This obsession on this borders on wacky

For those who can see the light, we are fortunate to have Twilight Time.

Any word on pricing for 'As Good As It Gets?'

This does not follow.

Pricing theory is based on determining the elasticity in the demand of a product based on the price that is set. This works for products that are based on an underlying essentially fixed cost (which must be amortized across units sold) and a per-unit cost of goods. For many products, there is a fairly broad range in possible prices, allowing the demand elasticity to determine the price.

It appears that there is not much elasticity in the demand for many of these catalog titles. A few people will pay a lot for them, but reducing the price doesn't increase the number of buyers appreciably.

For example, I gladly paid for Picnic, which is one of my favorite movies. I already own it on LD and DVD. There is, however, no reason to think that a great many more people would have bought it for $20, $15, or even $10, and I still would have bought it of course.

Selecting the price point is only half of the marketing process. One must also select the marketing channel. By selecting TT, the studio can assure itself of a certain ROI, and eliminate a lot of risk. In turn, TT uses a marketing technique that it well understands of selling directly to consumers through the Internet.

Some people have claimed that this restricts the availability, but I doubt that this has much effect. For one thing, serious collectors have found TT. For another, it is well understood that the Internet is an increasingly important place to buy movie titles. TT even has an Amazon store that it uses. Go to Amazon and search for "Picnic Blu-ray" and see what you find. (It is hard for me to believe that anyone is out there searching in vain for a title who hasn't tried Amazon!)

It certainly annoys me that Picnic still hasn't sold more than 3000 copies. But my annoyance is not with Sony (which did a terrific job with the master) nor with TT. I tell myself that everyone already has the DVD, but I suspect that a lot of people just aren't interested.

This is a very important business model for the studios and for lovers of classic film. I welcome and embrace it, and encourage all of you to do the same.

To be honest... what kicked off this last round was people who were angry that anyone dared criticize the picture quality of the recently released Demetrius.

There are those who think everything Twilight Time does should be honored because we are "lucky" that they are releasing these movies. Some have argued that we should be happy to pay $30 for poor quality because the only other choice is to not have it at all.

There seems to be a camp of Twilight Time fans that take every criticism of Twilight Time personally. I don't seem the Twilight Time folks taking the criticism as personally as some forum posters on various internet forums.

But the discussion has devolved into what it's devolved into. It's okay to criticize the quality of the Demetrius transfer, but everything that's needed to be said about THAT has been said by both the yay and nay crowds, yes? Some find it acceptable and some don't - I will say that from what I've read most of the don'ts are coming from people who don't actually have the disc. But that's another story. The "lucky" comes into play when people who want a particular title get it. Again, Twilight Time must now assess each Fox transfer and some that might be okay to the majority of movie fans are now not going to get released and I cannot blame them, even though, as stated, the release might be just fine for 80% of the people buying.

So, then, exactly what are they charging $30 for if they aren't doing any of the work?

Why wouldn't Sony just release it themselves for $20 instead of passing it off to someone else who also needs to make a profit?

At the very least, as a mainstream release, they'd likely sell a couple hundred to blockbuster and Netflix.

The linked interview in post #91 above has background on all this.

-Bill

A major studio like Sony has vastly more overhead than a small distributor like Twilight Time. For Sony to sell the disc at $20, it has manufacture many thousands of copies and distribute them to countless retailers, and then will have to eat the cost of returns when the majority of those discs don't sell.

A title like Demetrius and the Gladiators is highly unlikely to sell more than 3,000 copies no matter how many retailers it's distributed to. (Very likely, it will sell far fewer than that.) Sony could not make a profit selling less than 3,000 copies, not at $30 and certainly not at $20. Twilight Time, however, has only one distribution channel and less overhead. $30 is the price point they have determined is most likely to make them a profit at the volumes a title like this will actually sell.

Sorry, but that doesn't jive.

If, in fact, the studio is doing the restoration and the master for the BD, how are they not already assuming the overhead? How could a small outfit with less ability to get a bulk discount with the stamping plants take the very last step in the chain and do it more cheaply?

It seems to me, at the end of the line, Sony would be better equipped to get a better price when stamping a whole bunch of discs. They already have a contract with these factories and can use prior and future business to encourage a discount and lower demand titles likely using smaller capacity discs (especially with no special features).

Not only that, they can ship the titles out in bulk to retailers, not to individual customers, where each requires a much more expensive shipping cost per disc compared to a big carton of them together.

Further, they would have more high demand titles to use as leverage with retailers to require a certain number of copies of "x" catalog title in return for access to "y" hot new release.

Finally, Sony has the ability to put trailers on other more popular titles for these catalog titles, meaning people might actually know they exist.



Except you're picking two titles that few really do care about or have ever even heard of. It it were all titles like those, I think few would see a problem with the business model. It's understandable.

What about "Fright Night", "As Good As It Gets" or "Bell, Book and Candle"? Don't you think those have a better chance of selling quite a few more than 3000? Fright Night sold out. Maybe it would have sold 10,000 copies in the regular retail stream.

Even with some of the other titles, there's no proof at all they wouldn't sell more than 3000 in the retail sector. People here seem to simply assume they won't because they don't under TT's business model.

I wonder if the disc-on-demand thing is working out for WB? Seems like a good way to avoid all the manufacturing overhead and also cut out the middleman.

I don't know. I see a lot of customer pushback on it.

However, I've gotten a few good deals on those disc and it gets me movies I'd never be able to watch anywhere else - like "The Window". I just rip a copy of the disc to a backup drive just in case the recordable disc fails and I need another copy. The couple I've purchased looked good and I caught them at a price that was better than a standard disc.

In the case of BD, I'm not so sure that it isn't cheaper to have a disc stamped as opposed to using BD-R discs, which are exponentially more expensive than recordable DVDs.

I didn't quote NetworkTV's other post because it makes too much sense and it deserves to stand alone... but in conjunction with that plus these two follow-ups...

I was thinking the same thing. I worked for a company years ago and I used to know what it cost to get CDs, DVDs, etc. pressed... and you would be surprised how low quantities you could get pressed very cheaply. Yeah, you get price-breaks at higher quantities but they aren't 50% breaks... they are more like order 1000 for $XX or order 5000 for $XX - a few percent... so it adds up with the larger quantity to be a substantial savings BUT if you know you don't need a large quantity, you have no incentive to just press 10x the amount you need to save.

Also... companies like Sony and FOX have their own Web sites already where they sell direct to the public... so they not only have the best position to press larger runs and sell/ship to retailers BUT they already have the presence on the Web to sell to individuals too!

In other words... they wouldn't have to create a new Web site to sell Fright Night or As Good as it Gets... and it would cost them nominally more to add those titles to their online catalogue.

Heck, Sony/FOX/etc could go for the "limited" model themselves and just sell direct from their Web sites if they wanted and it wouldn't cost them more money than they already have spent to make the transfer and maintain that already-existing Web site! The only new cost would be the cost of pressing discs... and as I've mentioned before, they could take pre-orders for a few months in advance and know how many were sold before they press a single copy.

Honestly, there's not a lot of reason why they shouldn't release these themselves.

IF Twilight Time were spending the money to make the transfers, then you have a different argument! But... since Sony/FOX are doing the transfers anyway for HD syndication and premium channels and Netflix and so forth... the biggest expense is already factored into their business model whether they sell a Blu-ray or not.

In other words... they did the Fright Night HD transfer for syndication and streaming before Twilight time even asked them to sell the Blu-ray rights for a limited release. That means it was already worth it to do all that before they knew Twilight Time would release.

Add in the already existing business channel connections and Sony/FOX/etc having their own direct-to-consumer retail department already... and it really is a no-brainer for them to do what WB is already doing... though I agree that WB should be charging less for their one-off products.

Honestly they too would be better off doing small runs of pressed DVDs instead of the make-to-order ones... using their existing channels and the promise of more other business to get better deals on the small runs.

It would seem from your line of reasoning that the only logical conclusion to come to relative to Sony, Fox, etc. is that these corporations are dumb and stupid - which I would tend to doubt. But maybe you are right and should approach them with your rationale. Because I don't think that these corporations are dumb, there have to be other factors that they have thrown into the equation but which you are unaware. What those might be, I have no idea and wouldn't waste my time thinking about them.

Dumb and stupid? I wouldn't go that far... capable of making bad decisions, or not making any decisions when they need to? Definitely (Sony's history provides plentiful examples). Large corporations are often mired in groupthink, inefficiency, visionless management, etc.

"bad decisions" is a nice way of not saying "dumb and stupid." You should note that I gave them the benefit of the doubt and don't think that they are "dumb and stupid."

If you were arguing over why Sony isn't doing an online direct-sale method (the same as Twilight Time is doing) on a Sony website, I'd agree with some of these points. The restoration / master creation is done by them no matter what, and they can get as good, or most likely better, deals on authoring and disc pressing. I feel this is something they could potentially consider in the future, and if I had to guess I'd say they haven't already only because they'd rather take a sure-bet on the Twilight Time licensing fees than risk it themselves until they see how this limited edition online-only model works out.

But your next paragraphs offer a different scenario, and illustrate what I don't think you're understanding about this situation:


This is where you lose me. Retail is not attractive for discs that sell low volume (3000, or even double or triple that).

The physical cost to ship the discs isn't the issue (especially since the customer pays shipping at SAE... Twilight Time is not eating that cost).

Even if stores are willing to stock these titles, that doesn't change the scale issues at play. If you expect to sell 3000 copies of a disc at retail, you don't produce 3000 copies - you produce some healthy multiple of that. Customers are not evenly distributed, and there are thousands of retail stores across the country - each needs at least a handful of discs so that the few customers you do have for these titles won't be turned away. And you do still need to produce inventory for the various online retailers (many for Amazon, smaller amounts for smaller online retailers, etc.). Not all of these will sell obviously, but there is no way around it. Eventually stores will return their unsold copies, which not only will represent a loss of income, but then incur extra cost by needing to be either stored or destroyed.

And even the discs you DO sell will have lower profit margins. Sony had to author and press the discs, just like Twilight Time does, except Sony has to press more than they ever expect to sell. And then they also have to pay someone to ship all these discs (again, more discs than they expect to sell) to all the distributors they have deals with (TT just has the one distributor, SAE). And if the disc is going to sell for $20 or less on store shelves, as people seem to think, then the studio is being paid some fraction of that as the store expects profit as well.

General retail is harsh for low volume discs.

He's been told this -- over and over again -- but simply doesn't get it. It's why I think the studios making these decisions probably have a better grasp of the situation that he does.

As I've said previously - knowledgable posters have explained away every single point - over and over and over again - and yet there are three or four people whose craniums will simply not assimilate what is very simple information. Therefore, there are only two conclusions to be drawn from that - they enjoy posting the same thing because they love the Internet and don't have anything else to post in any other thread, they are too hard-headed to move off a position no matter how many people post information that should get them off that position, or they are trolling and enjoying the view of people refuting them time and again, even though their posts and the refutations are the same each time. Well, that's three conclusions.

It would be one thing if these three or four people ever once presented a new position, point of view, or new information, but that has not been the case. The discussion reminds me of that classic (!) Bacharach and David song:

The world is a circle without a beginning
And nobody knows where it really ends
Whoa-oh

They aren't dumb and stupid. They simply penny pinch every little aspect of business to the point they don't see future value by being blinded by short term savings.

Sony is alone. It's widespread in corporations today.

It's about the quick buck to raise the quarterly stock price that ignores long term value down the road.

Quite frankly, it's not that they are stupid: it's that they don't care. They aren't paying what the customer is paying and it isn't on themonce they hand it over to TT.

They aren't stupid. They just want easy.


And this is where you lose everyone.

Where is your proof - and I mean documented proof with hard numbers - to show that they wouldn't sell more than that?

You're drinking the kool-aid that has been presented that these titles won't sell more than 3000. TT (who has a vested interest in this model) says it so it must be true?

Plenty of catalog titles sell far more than that. What makes these so special?

By "everyone," you mean, umm, you and HDMe2?



Yup, it's "kool aid" -- and a big, huge conspiracy to screw over the consumer. Must be why all the big studios are handing over catalog titles to Image, Olive, Twilight Time, then? I guess only you and HDMe2 can see through this vast conspiracy? Good luck to you both, I hope your phones aren't being tapped.

And you have made this insulting observation more than once. I am not saying your points in favor of Twilight Time do not have validity. But without documented accounting figures in test markets I fail to see how those who disagree with you should be dismissed out of hand.

TCM, Universal, WB, and other studios are possibly making hay off direct-market sales, but they also regularly run specials that make their offerings more attractive. TT's product have not been around long enough to compel them to try that strategy (that I am aware of), and with only one distributor they may never reach that point. The studios I mentioned previously offer several channels to buy their product, and they can at least reach more of the online community than a single specialty shop like SAE does.

Whether any of this matters to the public at large I cannot say -- insufficient data. But I can confirm *for my part* that a MYSTERIOUS ISLAND or JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH priced at $20 would find me a willing customer whether off the shelf or online. And I know friends who are big fans of both those films, yet they know *nothing* about SAE or TT.

Now tell me that you have heard all this before (though not from me), and that my opinion is worth less than yours even though I am only talking about myself and people I know and you don't.

No, everyone who understands there are more costs to outsourcing than labor and packaging.

Quite a few companies in the manufacturing industry are starting to realize that oversight, shipping costs and quality control (as well as ownership of your own product) also play a role.




No, it's not a conspiracy. It's vested interest on TT's part to continue to make money.

TT has an incentive to say only they can make money doing this so they can get more business.

Further, let's look at the Image website:

http://www.image-entertainment.com/

While I see a few titles up toward $30 and some box sets well above that, most of their titles (including some double packs) seem to be under $20.

Let's check Olive:

http://www.olivefilms.com/

Just randomly clicking around shows prices between $18 and $23.

None of those indicate "limited quantities" or some other form of restriction on the number they will sell.

These other guys seem to be doing OK at low price thresholds and without artificially limiting quantities.

Ever think maybe this is merely TT's problem?

Or perhaps it's Sony's problem not knowing how to promote their product.

In college, I worked in fast food. Each day, one of my co-workers and I would each select a product we would try to move (usually an "accessory" for something else). If the customer ordered something the product went with, we'd do what is known as a suggestive sell: in other words, you do the "we also have this item you might be interested in".

That's actually one of the tenets of the fast food industry: the customer orders a sandwich and a drink, you suggest fries. If you have a new sandwich, you ask if they want to try it before they even get a chance to order. Want a large? it's only $.25 more...

Retail works when you know how to sell to people.

Sure, TT is saying this. But Sony and Fox are also saying this, by virtue of them participating in this program. Warner is saying this in every DVD panel they participate in - catalog sales are not there, support the releases they do put out if you want to see more, etc. etc. Every studio that is transitioning to direct-order MOD for deep catalogue (isn't that nearly all of them at this point?) is saying this. Where is YOUR proof?

And besides all of that - YOU ARE STILL MISSING THE POINT! I never said it wasn't possible that these titles could or would sell more than 3000 copies. I said it was not PROFITABLE for a mass retail release if they're going to sell 3000, 6000, or some other low volume. When you sell at different price points, through different distribution chains, the break-even point in terms of number of copies varies wildly. A studio's concern is not how many people buy the disc - it is the profit per disc times the number of people who buy the disc.

Please understand this. Even if you don't agree with me, at least understand this is the point I am attempting to make.

I consider this a reasonable opposition to TT. In terms of direct online sales, I agree that perhaps the studio doing it themselves would be more economical and could result in lower prices. Handing them to TT is essentially adding a middle man.

There is a world of difference between your suggestion here, and what most others are whining for - mass retail release and way-below-MSRP sale prices.