Film, for over a century, has held a vital role in society, providing entertainment and solace around the globe. Whether it was people in 1896 getting spooked by “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station” or people in 1968 watching somebody walk upside down in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the public has always held a fascination with the screen. Even in 1939, people flocked to the theater for “Gone with the Wind” in such numbers that, after inflation, it remains the highest-grossing film of all time.
We’re drawn to the screen and its stories like no other art form. I once heard someone describe film as “our best attempt at capturing the essence of life,” and they’re right. Like magic, film preserves moments in time. We need to preserve film, specifically physical media, because there are dangerous effects on the future of films as a whole.
In the late 70s, a new technology emerged that changed the accessibility of the screen forever: VHS tapes. No longer limited to theatrical runs, movies could be purchased on tape and brought home for viewing. Their distribution brought more money in for studios. It was a financial and cultural boost for the film industry. From there, the technology evolved into DVDs, then Blu-rays and now, 4K discs. These differing forms of physical media hold a great range of image resolution and sound quality, each accessible to whoever has a TV and player capable of supporting their quality.
The same can be said for music, with the evolution of vinyl to cassette to CD. Now, though, these formats across artistic mediums are dying due to the ease of the digital age.
Formerly, television was watched primarily through cable or other large libraries of live channels, but now, like film and music, it’s standard practice in households everywhere to stream it instead. Streaming services, arriving to the scene in the late 2000s, took a while to gain traction with audiences, but now they dominate the scene today. The issues that have risen from them highlight the importance of physical media across the board.
One of the issues regarding streaming services is a lack of streaming royalties to artists. On Spotify, an artist makes about a penny per three streams, and on services like Netflix or Hulu, lesser-known performers and writers have reported they receive next to nothing for their work.
These unsustainable payouts were major supporting factors during both the Writers Guild of America strike of 2023 and the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strike of 2024. Artists took to the streets protesting their pay and other issues, as they could not live their lives on the money provided by streaming services. Actors whose careers are confined to smaller roles could not even qualify for their health insurance due to the lack of pay.
This flawed system of studios and services being unsupportive of the very artists they reap from presents a moral dilemma within the streaming world.
Within the world of film, the financial restrictions caused by streaming only continue with the lack of physical media, causing a drastic drop in revenue.
In an interview with Sean Evans on the show “Hot Ones,” Matt Damon said, “So the movies we used to make, you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theater because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release, and six months later, you’d get a whole other chunk. It would be like reopening the movie almost. And when that went away, that changed the type of movies we could make.” He goes on to explain that the production budget, marketing budget, theater revenue and profit must now all be made during a film’s theatrical run.
However, because of the pandemic and accessibility of streaming, theaters are seeing less traffic. Last summer, with my aunt, I went to a drive-in theater for the first time. Due to the nature of the small town, my aunt was acquainted with one of the owners, and in the concessions building, she struck up a conversation. The owner revealed they had paid quite a bit to update their projection system to keep up with surrounding establishments and were barely scraping by as a family-owned drive-in. Other theaters, outside of large chains, are shutting down across the country. If movies aren’t making their money back through the box office, the industry must rely on physical media, but they don’t have that either.
Alongside the financial repercussions of streaming services, the digital world of media is incredibly detrimental to the historical preservation of these arts. Many films have been restored and digitized, released on some form of streaming service, but tens of thousands of films remain either stuck in physical form or lost in licensing battles. Disney itself has pulled original streaming movies from their services like “Crater.” People cannot access these films. With music, many, many pieces have been lost over the centuries, stuck primarily in the form of physical sheet music. Some are digitally captured, but others are gone forever.
Physical media needs a resurgence in popularity. It would support multiple industries and their artists while preserving their art and promoting their stories. The nostalgic legacy of the physical form is one still sought out by part of today’s generation. It just needs a better hold, one that only the audience can provide.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
The impact of physical media
Film, for over a century, has held a vital role in society, providing entertainment and solace around the globe. Whether it was people in 1896 getting spooked by “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station” or people in 1968 watching somebody walk upside down in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the public has always held a fascination with the screen. Even in 1939, people flocked to the theater for “Gone with the Wind” in such numbers that, after inflation, it remains the highest-grossing film of all time.
We’re drawn to the screen and its stories like no other art form. I once heard someone describe film as “our best attempt at capturing the essence of life,” and they’re right. Like magic, film preserves moments in time. We need to preserve film, specifically physical media, because there are dangerous effects on the future of films as a whole.
In the late 70s, a new technology emerged that changed the accessibility of the screen forever: VHS tapes. No longer limited to theatrical runs, movies could be purchased on tape and brought home for viewing. Their distribution brought more money in for studios. It was a financial and cultural boost for the film industry. From there, the technology evolved into DVDs, then Blu-rays and now, 4K discs. These differing forms of physical media hold a great range of image resolution and sound quality, each accessible to whoever has a TV and player capable of supporting their quality.
The same can be said for music, with the evolution of vinyl to cassette to CD. Now, though, these formats across artistic mediums are dying due to the ease of the digital age.
Formerly, television was watched primarily through cable or other large libraries of live channels, but now, like film and music, it’s standard practice in households everywhere to stream it instead. Streaming services, arriving to the scene in the late 2000s, took a while to gain traction with audiences, but now they dominate the scene today. The issues that have risen from them highlight the importance of physical media across the board.
One of the issues regarding streaming services is a lack of streaming royalties to artists. On Spotify, an artist makes about a penny per three streams, and on services like Netflix or Hulu, lesser-known performers and writers have reported they receive next to nothing for their work.
These unsustainable payouts were major supporting factors during both the Writers Guild of America strike of 2023 and the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strike of 2024. Artists took to the streets protesting their pay and other issues, as they could not live their lives on the money provided by streaming services. Actors whose careers are confined to smaller roles could not even qualify for their health insurance due to the lack of pay.
This flawed system of studios and services being unsupportive of the very artists they reap from presents a moral dilemma within the streaming world.
Within the world of film, the financial restrictions caused by streaming only continue with the lack of physical media, causing a drastic drop in revenue.
In an interview with Sean Evans on the show “Hot Ones,” Matt Damon said, “So the movies we used to make, you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theater because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release, and six months later, you’d get a whole other chunk. It would be like reopening the movie almost. And when that went away, that changed the type of movies we could make.” He goes on to explain that the production budget, marketing budget, theater revenue and profit must now all be made during a film’s theatrical run.
Stop working for the chase
However, because of the pandemic and accessibility of streaming, theaters are seeing less traffic. Last summer, with my aunt, I went to a drive-in theater for the first time. Due to the nature of the small town, my aunt was acquainted with one of the owners, and in the concessions building, she struck up a conversation. The owner revealed they had paid quite a bit to update their projection system to keep up with surrounding establishments and were barely scraping by as a family-owned drive-in. Other theaters, outside of large chains, are shutting down across the country. If movies aren’t making their money back through the box office, the industry must rely on physical media, but they don’t have that either.
Alongside the financial repercussions of streaming services, the digital world of media is incredibly detrimental to the historical preservation of these arts. Many films have been restored and digitized, released on some form of streaming service, but tens of thousands of films remain either stuck in physical form or lost in licensing battles. Disney itself has pulled original streaming movies from their services like “Crater.” People cannot access these films. With music, many, many pieces have been lost over the centuries, stuck primarily in the form of physical sheet music. Some are digitally captured, but others are gone forever.
Physical media needs a resurgence in popularity. It would support multiple industries and their artists while preserving their art and promoting their stories. The nostalgic legacy of the physical form is one still sought out by part of today’s generation. It just needs a better hold, one that only the audience can provide.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash.