Research

Introduction

For my FMP, my main subject will be related to DVD's, and talking about how DVD's have managed to survive for a long time just like VHS, but also how I believe DVD will continue to be the top home media format for many years to come. 

For my essay, the main title will be in a form of a question, a rough example of what title I would want would be something along the lines of "Will DVD's Ever Die Off?" and will be centered around the history of DVD and how it dethroned both VHS and even Blu-ray despite being weaker in quality, with the final section taking everything into account and providing reasons why and why not.

For the actual FMP, it will be in the form of a short video which the main character as a DVD who has been sat on a shelf for almost as long as he was on the market. It time skips between when he first arrived, when VHS was thrown out, when Blu-ray and HD-DVD came along  and failed to take DVD, until we cut to the present day where we see DVD hanging outside a wall talking to a HD-DVD about his life, where in the video he was narrating this all to HD-DVD. The two then discuss about DVD's feelings about finally being thrown out alongside what's next for formats like them.

In the video, there will be references to my essay in the video, though it will be more subtle and requires knowledge to understand the link. An example would be the main character represented by a DVD of The Matrix, and the HD DVD that the DVD was talking to will be a Universal release. The reason why The Matrix will be chosen is because that movie is often credited as one of the reasons DVD blew up in popularity and for solidifying it as the definitive format compared to VHS, and the reason why the HD-DVD will be a Universal release as during the formation of HD-DVD and Blu-ray, almost all the major studios supported Blu-ray (Warner Bros. and Paramount supported both formats), while Universal solely supported HD-DVD, which turned out to be a stupid decision as HD-DVD was discontinued less than two years after it's release, while Blu-ray is still going strong to this day.

The Beginning of Home Media

The concept of Home Media dates back to the release of the Betamax back in 1976, where a man named Andre Blay, founder of a video production company named Magnetic Video, wrote a letter to every major Hollywood studio for permission to release their films onto Betamax. However, only one of them granted them permission, which was 20th Century Fox, who agreed to license 50 of the titles to Magnetic Video in return of a $300,000 advance plus a $7.50 royalty for each title sold.

At the time, this was considered a bold move, as in that same year, Universal sued Sony over the release of the Betamax, citing that the format encouraged copyright infringement and could put a huge dent to the studio's profits. The lawsuit went on for 8 years before being settled in 1984, with Sony winning the case over Universal. Despite this however, the team-up with Fox proved to be a successful endeavour, so much that three years later, Fox bought out Magnetic Video and re-named it to 20th Century Fox Home Video.

Around that same time, Blay opened up a mailing club called The Video Club of America, which sold the 50 titles Fox licensed to him for a price of around $50, this proved to be a success as Blay took out several pages of magazines to advertise the club, with a TV Guide ad for it reaching 24 million readers. It also helped that around the time, VCRs dropped in price, allowing them to be more accessible to the consumer and therefore bringing more recognition to the club, which managed to sell around 40,000 tapes in 1978.

While the partnership was ongoing, a man named George Atkinson saw Blay's success and came up with an alternative, rather than buying the movies and keeping them, why not rent them and then return them after an allocated time? Similar to Blay, George set up his own club, where customers can pay $50 a month or $100 a lifetime, and can pay $10 to rent a film, a fifth of what Blay was charging. While customers were more wanting to buy the movies instead of renting them, this nevertheless proved to be a success and paved the way for the concept of 'video rental' that chains like Hollywood Video, Family Video and Blockbuster would use.

The Release of DVD

As the 70s rolled by and the 80s rolled in, VHS became the preferred format among consumers, mostly due to how VHS was cheaper than Betamax yet had longer recording times compared to the other format, despite being inferior in picture quality. Meanwhile, a new format entered the scene in the form of LaserDisc. The format was the first format to utilise optical disc rather than videocassettes, and some of the features present on the format would later be used for DVD, such as utilising Dolby Digital and DTS for audio, chapter skipping, and special features such as director's commentary.

Despite these technical advancements, LaserDisc was not a hit with consumers due to not having the ability to record media, and how for some movies, you had to flip the disc in order to watch the second half. Despite this, LaserDisc proved popular with both film enthusiasts and filmmakers, and is other considered what helped form DVD as we know it.

Going back to the 80s came a new format from both Sony and Phillips called the Compact-Disc released in 1982 and was an immediate success, eventually dethroning both cassette and phonographic record. It wouldn't be until 10 years later until the two companies formed once again to develop a new format to succeed CD, which was called High-Density Compact Disc (HDCD), born out of an agreement between the two companies alongside Time Warner and Toshiba, with their respective discs carrying 3.7 GB for the Sony/Phillips discs while Time Warner/Toshiba discs carried 4.2 GB due to using both layers.

Around the mid 90s however, the companies took their initial format designs and helped to collaborate with other major tech companies like Panasonic to create a format that would be known as 'Digital Versatile Disc'. DVD brought to the table a lot than what VHS offered, alongside taking some inspiration from LaserDisc, not only in higher quality and audio than VHS, and in encompassing chapter skipping and special features from LaserDisc, but a defining feature on DVD was the menu, which allowed the users to select specific scenes in the form of chapters, set up audio like Dolby Digital 5.1, and playing the movie.

DVD was then released first in 1996 in Japan and released with 4 titles, which were Blade Runner, The Fugitive, Eraser, and Assassins, all from Warner Home Video. DVD would eventually release in March 1997 and had 32 launch titles, some of them included the ones already released in Japan, but also additional titles from New Line Cinema and MGM such as The Wizard of Oz, The Birdcage, Se7en, Interview with the Vampire, Goodfellas, and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.

DVD's became an instant hit with consumers and film enthusiasts, mostly relating to he superior quality to previous formats, small capacity pacakaging compared to the bulky videocassettes, alongside the easy navigation menu, but it wasn't until the start of the millennium when DVD's truly became the definitive format, and that was due to the release of the Matrix DVD alongside the release of Sony's PlayStation 2 for the sixth generation of consoles.

The Matrix came out on March 31st, 1999 in America and became an instant hit, becoming the fourth highest grossing film of 1999 and becoming widely acclaimed for its groundbreaking visual effects and choreography. Much of the success was attributed to the marketing campaign often known as "What is the Matrix?" which deliberately obscured the premise from general audiences and only showcased the fight sequences, creating a sense of mystery that urged people to see the movie in order to discover the importance of the Matrix.

Warner Bros, the company who distributed The Matrix, was a huge supporter of the DVD format, and used The Matrix in order to push the limits of the then-nascent format and show people what DVD was truly made of. During parts of the movie, when the white rabbit was depicted on screen, if you pressed the requisite button, you would be taken to a special feature that showed off behind-the-scenes footage of the film. Warner also added DVD-ROM features, which were features accessible by putting the disc inside a computer, which allowed you to access things like the screenplay, storyboard, a quiz titled "Are Your The One?" and so much more. Those features helped make it stand out from the VHS release and show people the DVD technology and what it could achieve with the right resources.

The PlayStation 2 also proved to be a raging success, not only in how it was a successor to the equally successful PlayStation 1 which utilised CD's as its format, but also it's DVD Drive appealing not only to gamers who were anticipating for the increase in graphics, but also for consumers as when the PS2 came out, it was priced at $299 when a DVD player usually costed around $670 on average in the same year, making it the most cheapest DVD player at the time. These two factors helped make DVD the format juggernaut of the early 2000s and caused VHS to decline in popularity in the early 2000s.

High Definition Format War

Immediately following the rising success of DVD, Sony and Phillips collaborated yet again to develop a new format that would succeed DVD, initially called DVR Blue, the name would eventually become Blu-ray in February 2002. The name of the format comes from the utilisation of a blue laser to read the disc, which allowed the disc to store up to 25 GB for each side of the disc, which was a huge step-up from DVD which used a red laser to read the disc.

Later that same year, Sony and Phillips, alongside other big tech companies like Pioneer, Thomson, LG, and Samsung formed an organisation called the Blu-ray Disc Association, which would be responsible for developing and licensing Blu-ray products. While this was going on however, Toshiba was also creating a new format with the help of The DVD Forum, who were responsible for the creation of DVD's, which would eventually become HD-DVD.

HD DVD was another high definition format similar to Blu-ray, and earned the backing of companies like NEC, Sanyo and Microsoft. While the format did have some disadvantages compared to Blu-ray, such as having 15 GB storage for each one side of the disc, HD-DVD was also cheaper to produce and to sell, due to it being built on pre-existing equipment as HD-DVD were more or less improved DVD's.

Studios who were in favour of Blu-ray were Disney, Fox, Sony, MGM and Lionsgate, while the studios in favour of HD DVD were Warner Bros, Paramount and Universal, though Warner Bros supported both formats and Paramount eventually switched solely to HD-DVD in 2007. HD-DVD was released in April 2006, while Blu-ray came out 3 months later, which led to a format war between the two that ultimately ended with Blu-ray winning and HD-DVD being discontinued after two years on the market.

The reason HD-DVD failed was due to two reasons, first one was the studio's support. As mentioned above, there were only three major studios releasing their back catalog onto the format, compared to five who were releasing their back catalog on Blu-ray. It also didn't help that Blu-ray had more supporters than HD-DVD, as HD-DVD was supported solely by Universal throughout it's run, compared to Blu-ray being supported by the aforementioned studios, so the benefit of studios releasing for both formats didn't help HD-DVD at all.

But the biggest reason why the format failed was due to Sony and their decision to integrate a blu-ray player into the PlayStation 3, which released around the same time as Blu-ray. While the PS3 was not successful as it's predecessor, the sales far exceeded HD-DVD players, as by the time HD-DVD was discontinued, there had already been 10 million PS3's sold in that time-frame, compared to 1 million units of HD-DVD players sold.

One other thing to mention was that as Microsoft was a supporter for HD-DVD, their support for the format was lackluster compared to Sony. Microsoft already had a console out in the market by the time HD-DVD was released, which was the Xbox 360, the second consoles by Microsoft following the original Xbox in 2001. The 360 used DVD's as it's primary format, but in November 2006, Microsoft released an add-on called The Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player, which allowed users to watch HD-DVD movies on the console, however, despite the Xbox 360 outselling the PS3 in sales, this player was a commercial failure and was discontinued immediately following HD-DVD's discontinuation.

How DVD is still alive after the war.

Despite Blu-ray coming out on top as the better format for home viewing, DVD's have still been the top format for home viewing, consistently out-performing Blu-ray and 4K in sales numbers even in the advent of streaming, where DVD's have been reported to decline by 86% from it's peak in 2006. The reason why DVD has still gone strong despite being inferior to the other formats has to come down to convenience, alongside DVD's releasing at a right time.

As I have previously discussed, before DVD, VHS was the top-selling format, it was leagues behind formats like Betamax and especially behind in LaserDisc, but VHS was convenient for home use in both recording media as well as watching movies, which the other format either were weak in or didn't have entirely. VHS was also cheaper to make and sell compared to the other formats, which helped in why VHS survived for so long.

When consumers picked up on DVD following the end of the millennium, they were enticed by not only the improved quality, but also the addition of both the menu and special features, with packaging that didn't take up as much space as a VHS and also didn't require you to rewind the tape after you were finished with it. The success of DVD really came down to regular consumers being accustomed to using tapes and successfully convincing them to upgrade to the new format at a reasonable price and an incentive to buy a DVD while also showing how different it is compared to a tape.

Blu-ray did achieve success in the home market, but never to the level where it really dethroned DVD, because to consumers, DVD was the most convenient way to watch movies, they didn't really care about the quality, they mostly cared about how easier and better it was to watch a movie on a disc rather than a tape, so when Blu-ray came out, most didn't really care that Blu-ray had better picture and audio quality, and considering they probably amassed a large amount of DVD's, it would seem unreasonable to get rid of everything in favour of a format that may not have your favourite titles.

To sum it up, it was easy to convince people to upgrade from a tape to a disc, but trying to get people to upgrade from a disc to a more powerful disc is a harder task, especially if you consider that the high definition formats came out in 2006, a decade after DVD, which came out around 20 years later after VHS was released, it was perfect for film enthusiasts who wanted to view movies in the best way, but to consumers, it felt like Sony was burning both sides of the candle when they were perfectly fine with DVD, and just saw Blu-ray as the same expect with a bunch of differences that justified it's high price.

Primary Research

Survey Answers

As part of my primary research for my FMP, I created a survey on Microsoft Forms that had 6 questions. The questions were linked to asking people if they had used a DVD in their life, if they made a move to streaming or still use DVDs alongside asking for advantages and disadvantages, alongside asking the defining question that is the same question as my essay, and that is whether DVDs will be discontinued or not.

In total, 4 people from the class did the survey, with an average time for each being 3 minutes and 47 seconds.

For the first question "Have you ever used a DVD at some point?", everyone who filled out the survey said Yes.

For the second question "In the present day, do you still use DVD's in some way or have you switched to streaming?" 3 people said that they switched to streaming, with the remaining 1 said that they use a mix of both.

The third and fourth question asked for any advantages and disadvantages for both DVD and streaming. For advantages and disadvantages for DVD, the advantages were that DVDs were cheap, easy to have a collection to watch whenever, and having additional content, and the disadvantages were that DVDs can be damaged and lost easily. For streaming, the advantages were the vast library streaming services have that you can access, and the disadvantages were the lack of special features from the DVD, buffing that can ruin your experience, and how pricey services can sometimes be.

The fifth question garnered a 50/50 response, with 2 of my classmates answering Yes, while the other 2 said No.

For the two people that answered No, the final question was linked as to why they answered No. The first response was that they are a part of nostalgia and can provide a simple trip of nostalgia for some people, while the second response was that they believe DVDs has always been a simplistic way of watching movies, and is something that can never be replaced.

Essay

Introduction

The way we watch movies has changed a lot over the years, from studios being against the idea of consumers watching movies whenever they want to for fears of privacy and damages to profits, to studios offering a large selection of their titles through streaming services whether it be their own or licensed to others like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, the actual history on how we got to here is quite a long and arduous one at that.

In between this however, during the 70s and 80s, there was a new way of watching movies with the introduction of two formats, VHS and Betmax. As mentioned before, studios were against the idea of releasing their catalog onto these formats, with Universal even suing Sony for fears of piracy, however, as the video rental market grew, studios saw this as an opportunity to make more money benefitting from consumers wanting to watch their favourite movies.

Over this time period, many formats had come and go, such examples included Video CD, LaserDisc, Digital Video Express (DIVX), and HD-DVD that either lived long as a niche format or dropped dead like a fly when it was clear it couldn't compete with the top formats. But alongside VHS, there has been one format that has managed to be the top format for consumers, and that is DVD.

To me, DVD is a special format, not only because of nostalgia, but how I believe DVD is a format that will never die off because I believe it is a perfect format. While it is inferior to Blu-ray and 4K by a large margin, DVD's offer enough in both video and audio quality, accessibility, and special features to make them stand the test of time, which has shown through physical media sales that show DVD's are consistently more popular with regular consumers than Blu-ray and 4K.

DVD's also hold a special place in my heart as I consider myself a physical media collector, as I collect both DVD's and Blu-ray's, though I collect and have more DVD's mostly due to how cheap they are alongside how bigger stores that sell DVD's have their collection compared to Blu-Ray. Due to tis, I have decided to base my FMP around physical media, but more specifically DVD's.

FMP Project Goals

For what I want to achieve with my FMP, I intend to create a short film centred around a DVD, with the short film focusing on chronicling his long time sat on a store shelf, which is from 2000-2024, which after 2024, we cut to the present day 2025 with him now presumed to be homeless, where we learn he has been narrating to two friends of his, a VHS and a HD-DVD, with all of them feel lost in a world where they are being phased out by streaming.

In terms of aesthetics for the video, I intend for the sequence set on the store shelf to be shot in 4:3 fullscreen rater than 16:9 widescreen, this is because I intend to feature 4 subjects in each shot and shooting in 4:3 allows me to get away with empty spacing, but I could also use this as a perspective reason, as I can make the audience feel like they're seeing this through the perspective of a DVD. There may be a risk involved where one half of the video is in 4:3 and the latter half is standard 16:9, so my best guess to address this is cutting to a black background and time skip before switching the ratios.

For the second half which takes place in the present day, I either intend to use stop motion or hire people to perform off-screen on moving the items around while on a green screen to then integrate a brick wall in the back. One person who I believe fits what I want to achieve is a YouTuber named Kevin Perry, who is a stop motion animator who has made a few videos using stop motion on everyday objects, with the most noteworthy being Objects Come Alive! which is a series of short videos that show a handful of different objects doing random things.

With my intentions there is both a positive and a negative involved, while stop motion seems the likely option, it is also a strenuous task if you want to move your objects as realistic as possible without making them jump all over the place. The green screen part is a close second as it is much easier to accomplish, but may look bad because that would require the performers to obscure their hand from the frame, and it may partially obscure the top and bottom of the item, which may look terrible in the final film.

Primary and Secondary Research

For primary research, I conducted a survey on Microsoft Forms that was centred around people's format-watching habits, asking questions about whether they use DVD or streaming, advantages and disadvantages of either, and the final question of whether DVD's will get discontinued. A lot of people who filled it in said they had moved to streaming, while the final question garnered a 50/50 answer from everyone.

For secondary research, I extensively researched about specific VHS', DVD's, Blu-ray's and 4K's and their release dates for each. As the focal point of the first section is relating to chronicling the DVD's life on the shelf, I believe it is very important to not only think of the specific years that will be featured, but also to hunt down titles from the time period you want to make it almost accurate into real life.

Throughout January and February, I went to a bunch of CeX's around London to find titles that suited the time periods I wanted and bought them in an instant. I was able to easily track down titles I wanted using a feature on their website that allows you to check if a specific title is in stock in a CeX near you, which was a lot better than just wandering in and praying they have that specific title you want. 

The stores I went to included the ones in Edgware, Wembley, Harrow, Borehamwood, Watford, Enfield, and Waltham Cross. A side note is for hunting down VHS' titles, I went to the Keech Hospice Care in Watford, which is the only charity shop I know that sells a bunch of VHS tapes. I managed to acquired 3 tapes in the process, which all will be featured in the video itself.

Conclusion

With all the concepts and planning I have put into making this, I believe this project may be my 'Magnus opus' of some sorts, and one that will make a film addition to my portfolio and maybe one I will look back on with lots of fondness.

I feel like what makes me so excited to do something like this is because not only do I get to show off my skills, but I also get to express a huge side of my hobby by combining my passion for filmmaking with my special interests that I am really passionate about.

Compared to my last FMP, which was entered around autism as the topic was strictly only about identity, the fact that for this FMP, we get to base it off any topic we are passionate about, which I think I'm enjoying more than the last FMP. I wouldn't want to discredit everything I did last year, but I think I definitely felt a bit uncomfortable about making my previous FMP all about autism, which is something I'm usually not a fan of talking about sometimes, especially it's a form of social commentary by me.

To conclude this whole essay, I am extremely excited for everything about the FMP, from the extensive planning and research I have made, to filming the whole thing and using a whole load of techniques to convey a narrative, all the way to finishing it and showing it off at an exhibition, I am prepared for a wild ride for sure.

Research Discipline

Inanimate Objects is a 2010 short film directed by James Hamer-Morton, which follows a woman who wakes up one morning to discover that objects around her like the curtain, plant, toaster and oven are inanimate. Throughout the video, we each get to see the personalities f each object, with the plant being wise, the camera being a bit nervous, and the toaster being a 'tough guy', who tries to prevent the woman from leaving the house, believing she knows too much, which quickly gets resolved as she unplugs the toaster.

In terms of the main content of the video, there is nothing of note about it, as most of the video is about the woman talking to the objects and being surprised that the objects can both talk and also see. However, the aspect I want to focus on is the inanimate objects, as this video can be a useful tool for my FMP where I want to make the DVD's appear inanimate without relying on either visual effects or stop motion.

One distinct instinct I caught while watching the video was that during the scenes of the toaster, you can actually see a finger pull down on the lever that opens the single slot on top of the toaster to make it talk. Another things to note about the toaster is the toaster shots are sometimes close up or featuring it on the right side, particularly when the toaster is shown moving. These types of shots allow James to move the objects without having his hands being shown, which helps sell the illusion of inanimate objects more.

As for the other objects, the plant speaks through slight shaking, the camera moves by moving around the place, the curtains talk by moving their drapes and the oven and door speak through the door opening and closing. Some are easy to identify how James managed to pull off the illusion without using effects, while others are a bit more sneakily hidden and are harder to identify.

The ones that are easier to identify are the plant, which as it shake from the bottom, is clear James got down and shaked it slightly to make it 'talk', the curtain could've been achieved by James doing the same thing, evident by the bottom part of the curtains partially obscured by chairs and a bit of the couch, meaning James used this to his advantage.

As for the more sneakier, the toaster when it moves towards the door require a bit more thinking to figure out, but a detail that may be hard to miss on first viewing is when the door speaks for the first time, as the shot finishes, you can see what looks like a white thin piece of string, which could've been used to pull the toaster along when he tries blocking the door from the woman.

The reason it is important for me to identify these little quirks that go into the video is so that I can use it as inspiration for how to sell the illusion of inanimate objects, and to pull it off, it's important to note down camera shots on where the object is placed or how the shot is framed, because once you dig deep you realise that you can find ways to cheat the camera and sell the illusion quicker without any form of budget.

As the case with my film, in the second section of my FMP where I intend to have 3 objects moving at once, I believe the way I can go is showing them with the bottom slightly cut off, which would be where my thumb would be holding them. With them slightly zoomed in, I can get away with not using stop-motion, but instead doing it real time with real people.

The intention of doing this comes with a huge benefit, it allows the items to be more expressive than if it were to be in stop-motion, which is not something I'm an expert on, and even if I were an expert, the ability to show emotions through inanimate objects would be extremely hard and borderline impossible to pull off, the most I would be able to is move them left to right, but that would be it, and considering the scene is built on emotion in some way, and that would mean stop motion is out of the equation for FMP production.