The last time I went to the cinema, there was a table just past the ticket desks where, should a guard have been on duty, they checked bags for nefarious things such as video cameras. In fact, I had my DSLR in my bag at the time and was looking forward to having a conversation with the guard about the fact that, no, it can’t shoot movies. It can shoot three frames per second, but that wouldn’t be much use to anyone (actually, thinking about it, it might have improved Transformers enormously).
But I didn’t have to worry because there was no guard on duty at the relatively early showing I went to. By the time I came out of the cinema, mid-afternoon, there were many more people going in, and a guard now dutifully checking those bags. Obviously pirates don’t go to early screenings.
Once inside the cinema we were treated to a specially made Ratatouille trailer/anti-piracy film explaining the terrible shortcomings of illegal DVDs or downloads, and telling me that it was much better watching the film in the cinema.
Obviously, as someone who paid to get into the cinema, I’m obviously just the sort of person who buys their films on dodgy DVDs from someone at a car boot sale or outside a pub somewhere.
Before the main feature started a pair of slides from FACT come up on the screen reminding me that it’s a crime to record any part of this film, and that I should alert someone should I see anyone else doing it.
I get similar short, unskippable “adverts” a the start of several DVDs that I’ve bought.
Piracy is obviously a problem, which Hollywood and others have to combat. Which is why it’s odd that they actually do so much to aide and abet piracy.
I’m talking about screener DVDs. A brief look at any torrenting website at the moment will show you that The Simpsons Movie is readily available to download – and it’s a rip of a DVD. All the more ironic as Bart’s blackboard at the start of the film reads “I will not illegally download this movie.”
Why does Fox even produce a screener DVD? You just know that as soon as a DVD is out in the wild, it’s somehow going to end up on the net. So don’t make them in the first place. By the time the film is released on DVD somewhere in the world, there are obviously going to be rips, but until then, just don’t manufacture any at all. Of course people will smuggle video cameras into screens, and poor quality DVDs will show up at car boot sales across the country, but most people realise they’re rubbish. If pirates get hold of rips of DVDs, then that’s a whole different thing.