Posts
223
Joined
5/28/2010
Location
USA
Edited Date/Time
1/27/2012 6:54am
Once upon a time there was a man named Wes Williams who set out to produce the greatest motocross movie anyone had ever seen. He traveled the country to do it, shot the best riders with the best equipment (including rented helicopters) and used music from major recording artists, legally ($$$).
Wes despises the use of pirated anything -- music, software and movies in particular. So it bummed me out to read on his new blog post that 80,000 people have downloaded his masterpiece illegally and that he didn't even break even on the DVD.
80,000 x $30 = $2,400,000
If you like motocross movies then people like Wes are the wrong people to steal from. There's no huge conglomerate backing his projects or paying him a salary and without funds there will be no more movies. It's the same reason video game companies shifted away from PCs and toward consoles.
Always remember that there's an overworked and underpaid professional motocross fan out there behind everything you consume online, for free, and then complain about. Whether it's a website, photo gallery, editorial or video, a real human being made it happen.
Read Wes's blog post and go buy some DVDs.
http://www.vurbmoto.com/blogs/1874/am-i-wrong-my-own-great-debate/
Wes despises the use of pirated anything -- music, software and movies in particular. So it bummed me out to read on his new blog post that 80,000 people have downloaded his masterpiece illegally and that he didn't even break even on the DVD.
80,000 x $30 = $2,400,000
If you like motocross movies then people like Wes are the wrong people to steal from. There's no huge conglomerate backing his projects or paying him a salary and without funds there will be no more movies. It's the same reason video game companies shifted away from PCs and toward consoles.
Always remember that there's an overworked and underpaid professional motocross fan out there behind everything you consume online, for free, and then complain about. Whether it's a website, photo gallery, editorial or video, a real human being made it happen.
Read Wes's blog post and go buy some DVDs.
http://www.vurbmoto.com/blogs/1874/am-i-wrong-my-own-great-debate/
Along those lines, Moto 2 kicks ass. motoxcinema.com
That's what a lot of bands do when they put out a new album. After you spend time downloading a couple fakes, it's easier to just go buy it.
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I'm just trying to make people aware of the "other side of the fence". Granted I'm friends with Taylor, who produced Moto 2, I'm in no other way whatsoever affiliated with motoxcinema.com
I am entitled to my opinion, which it looks like a marketing ploy.......and I could be wrong!
The intent of this section is for people who might have missed a race or moto-related feature on TV. It's not for people to rip off (or put in a request for) the latest movie releases.
If you want a new DVD? Go buy it. Support the people who put in hard work to create the content you enjoy.
My personal belief is that music, digitally speaking, should be seen simply as a marketing cost to promote the bands merch and concerts. There is no hope of ever ending piracy. And people will always take something for free rather than paying for it. I think this has to be the business plan in the music industry.
Films though, I really am conflicted because you don't have as much merchandising opportunities (with some exceptions for toys related to kids flicks) or appearances (not in the same sense as concerts) to make money from. Same game though, increase the value of the physical product or figure out another way to make money (advertising through product placement?) because no matter how many they prosecute, piracy is the new norm.
I could buy pings DVD real easy, have to say
Anyway, I would really like to see more stuff on iTunes internationally....because DVDs are outdated and hard to freaking get in europe
It's really fucking good, folks. Buy a copy! The Eli Tomac segment alone is worth $30
Pit Row
Wes is fighting a losing battle though. No one gives a shit and will continue to bootleg. God knows how the TGO videos can continue unless they keep working with Fuel TV.. Does anyone know if they are making a season 2 this year?
Warp Films (a UK film distro) have some pretty cool options, cheap downloads for lower quality, more expensive for higher quality, then obviously the full DVD.
http://www.warpfilmstore.com/pages/Trash-Humpers_1.aspx?pageid=102
Bootlegging sucks but its not going anywhere. Think cheap downloads is possibly the only way to claw back a piece of that lost revenue.
As for pricing, motocross is a niche market. A good DVD may sell 10-15K units to a distributor at a fraction of the price, so at best you're MAYBE going to make 150K if you happen to be lucky enough to unload that many, which isn't likely. Then take into account how much you spent. Your net profit would isn't even worth mentioning.
So some moto videographer has to risk spending 100K on a movie, sell it for 10$ online and hope atleast 10K people buy it online. I know the numbers for some really big actions sports stuff, and no one is pushing that. Is it part of a potential model? Sure, but again it's quite risky. On top of that, you still have every 15 year old kid in the world downloading it, and probably plenty of others too, just like the guy on the forum earlier who "earns enough money to go have a fancy house and go on holiday whenever".
Plus, there's an entire other issue of music rights. Digital licenses are totally different than ones you get for DVD's, and different than the one for TV. If you want to be able to put a song across all platforms, you're looking at 20-30K per song for a major label, and likely 5-10K$ for an independent. So you resort to local band music, and then every single person that buys it complains.
This whole debate probably is pointless. I was just starting the view from my side of the fence. There aren't too, too many people in my shoes, but it needed to be said.
Like the non-moto section, I rarely venture into the Hall of Torrents, and missed those links and requests.
I emailed back and forth with both Wes and Taylor Congdon today. I can appreciate the time, effort and expense that it takes to make a full-length feature film, and I'm sorry our site was misused in that way.
If you have trouble figuring out that other than the scale of the crime that it's really no different than going out and stealing someone's bike (and I think we'd all agree that bike thieves are scum), then you're completely missing the point.
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