Digging into the archives for a look at future thinking.

A few years ago my publishers at Oni Press invited me to contribute a column to their website.

While archiving old documents the other day I stumbled upon a piece from May, 2004. In it, I used David Mamet’s Spartan (recently released at the time) to advance the argument that “direct to DVD” films could potentially lose their stigma and become the best way for independent, small-market films to find an audience.

An excerpt:

Spartan carries with it a lot of credibility. It’s got top-level actors and a living legend on the script and behind the lens. But as is often the case with such movies, it was never destined to find a wide audience or make a lot of money. Spartan is, in other words, a poster-film for the DVD market. People with a casual interest can rent it and watch it on their own time for half what it costs to go to the theater and they’ll get all the extras. Fans will relish the chance to watch it again at their leisure and will eagerly lap up whatever special features are ultimately included. For films like Spartan, it’s a simple equation: the DVD is a better value.

Going to the theatre to see a movie has become a somewhat daunting task. The prices have approached sporting-event levels, and almost every theatre (excepting the art houses, if you’re lucky enough to have one in your town) now features some combination of crying babies, cell phones, and idiots. It’s not such a big deal if we’re talking Freddy vs. Jason, but it’s getting harder and harder to enjoy anything that actually demands your attention. The theatre is still the best and most pure way to see a film, but we are well into the cycle of diminishing returns.

And the closer:

Hollywood has never been notorious for a glut of quality, and the last thing we need is for smaller studios and producers to also give up on riskier projects. DVD’s could be the silver lining. There’s no reason that savvy studios couldn’t use their marketing muscle to change the perception of the “straight-to-video” market and turn it into something desirable, even special. Indeed, we may have to hope that they do just that. Those who predicted problems back in the eighties are looking more and more ahead of their time. But with a little luck, who knows? That may not be so bad.

You can read the whole pice, in pdf form, here. There are things I’d do differently now with the actual writing, but I think it holds up.

This was written before internet video had taken hold — YouTube wasn’t even an idea in 2004. I missed on that aspect of it, for sure. But where I think I hit was on the idea of smaller distribution channels giving life to high-quality content by reducing the costs associated with the old system. That idea has now not only become realistic, it has in many ways become reality.

But it’s still very new. We’re only starting to figure it out, and the opportunities for making it work grow by the day. Everybody will understand this in four or five more years. Investing the time and energy to understand it now would be a very good idea.