Video/DVD
Sell-Through: Avenues for Reaching Wider Audiences?
Presented at the IAMCR conference,
The American University in Cairo, 23-28 July 2006
The
advent of the internet (primarily as a means of marketing
and selling) and DVD (as a means of delivery/distribution)
has revitalised interest in selling 'alternative' moving image
work direct to the public. The potential these avenues offer
for reaching wider audiences are proving particularly attractive
in the light of the recent UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity,
as evidenced in the UK by a recent Independent Film Parliament
day conference, Local Film Culture, Global Exchange (30 November
2005). In this context the early promotion and distribution
of Robert Greenwald's 'alternative' view of Rupert Murdoch's
Fox News, Outfoxed (2004), via house parties has been
cited as a innovative DIY approach to marketing that was facilitated
by the medium of DVD. However, similar initiatives were undertaken
when VHS took off in the 1980s as a mass delivery medium.
Notable early examples in the UK were the distribution of
the Miners' Campaign Tapes in support of the miners' strike
under the Thatcher government and George Barber's volumes
of Scratch video, followed in the 1990s by London Electronic
Arts launching Video Burn and their subsequent involvement
with editions à voir, together with the launching
of specialist video labels such as the lesbian and gay labels Dangerous to Know and Out on a Limb. This paper
will examine some of these attempts to embrace the retail
video sell-through market in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s
as a way of getting artists' and independent moving image
work to a wider public.
Some of
these attempts enjoyed moderate success, but for the most
part they were not particularly successful, and proved difficult
to sustain for the distibuting organisations. The reasons
for this will be discussed in relation to the market, economic
models of distribution and the role of theatrical distribution.
The paper will conclude by suggesting that while many claims
are being made for the power of digital technologies to access
audiences, the distribution models utilised are not new. While
the DVD format and the internet may have made it easier in
some ways to reach audiences, there are nevertheless important
lessons to be learned from their video precursor, if their
potential to develop wider audiences for a more diverse range
of moving image work is to be maximised.
This research
has been conducted as part of a three-year Arts and Humanities
Research Council funded research project examining independent
film and video distribution in the UK from the 1970s to the
present.
Julia Knight
Reader and Lead Researcher on the AHRC funded project 'Databasing
Key Documents and Narrative Chronologies of Artists' Film
and Video Distributors in the UK', University of Sunderland
julia.knight@sunderland.ac.uk
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