Many plays, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, are made into movies and they end up on DVD in this manner. But why don't they just film Tom Stoppard's Arcadia (recommended, by the way; it's playing at the Folger and it's one of the classic plays of our time). A look at Amazon doesn't yield much. Nor does a search on "Edward Albee."
I can think of a few possible factors:
1. It wouldn't be very good. (This doesn't stop most of what is put out on DVD. Furthermore the highly complex genre of opera on DVD works just fine and has become the industry standard.)
2. There wouldn't be much of an audience. Yet you could sell memento copies to people who saw the plays, a few plays on DVD might hit it big, and in any case they wouldn't cost much to produce. There are plenty of niche products on Netflix.
3. It would squash the demand for live performance. Really? Most people don't go to the theater anyway. Those who do, in this age of 3-D cinema and TiVo, presumably enjoy live performance in a manner which is robust. It is more likely that DVD viewing would stimulate demand for the live product. Besides, they put these plays out in book form and no one thinks that is a big problem.
None of these answers seem to work. So, to repeat the question, why don't they put more theatrical plays out on DVD?
Addendum: Could it be they are holding out for the sale of movie rights and that profit is maximized by restricting alternative viewing options?
Maybe it would squash the demand of repeat patrons. How important are these consumers and would they skip a second or third attendance if they could watch a DVD of the first time they saw it?
Sonic Charmer has it.
Plays just aren’t very good, especially by film standards.
The players don’t have film rights, and negotiating for them is more trouble than it’s worth unless you’re going the whole way and actually making a film.
And the public domain is either already available as film, or hopelessly obscure.
Londenio has it. Unless you film from multiple angles and zooms, and then cut them together, a film of a play looks awful. And if you do that, the acting looks completely off.
In Finland they used to (pre-1990s, I think) make lots of simple TV broadcasts of plays, with pretty much just a single camera and no editing. The production costs were next to nothing, but airtime has an opportunity cost, so they stopped. Recently they made the first tv-version of play in a long time, but this time with a seperate film-director, multiple cameras (including ones towards the audience, which add a nice touch to some scenes), lots of editing, etc. That was quite popular, but probably wasn’t terribly cheap to make. It’s still not good by movie standards, because of the overacting and makeup and such, but decent substitute for the theater experience.
So either you can make a crappy version no one really likes, which only serves as bad advertisement of the play for the few who do buy it by accident. Or you make a proper film-version, which costs a non-negligable amount. It might sell enough to make up for the costs, but it would probably reduce demand for the actual play. After all, it is a substitute, even if not a perfect one. It might even be bad advertisement, since it is probably inferior to the play, so the marginal viewers who would have liked the play, might not like the filmed version of it. Additonally, as you mentioend, it might reduce the expected profts from movie rights.
So it’s not a no-brainer win-win situation, but in some circumstances a DVD (or TV) version might be a good idea. Especially at the end of the theater-run in cases where the play in question has already been made into a movie.
Another vote for Londenio.
I remember seeing a BBC production by Brian Blessed of King Lear, which was still directed as if it was a stage production. That encapsulated in an extreme form the problems I’d always had with many stage actors/directors who had taken to screen.
You can hide a ham from the 6th row, but a ham in front of the camera is just a great big unsubtle ham.
Whereas opera can use overacting for artistic reasons rather than just the isolation of the audience. It can survive the scrutiny of the lens.
Not sure about this, but I suspect there are far more on the institutionally priced video market, aimed at university libraries. Often these do not show up on Amazon.
Part of it is that the standard contracts with Actor’s Equity (the union that covers all professional actors in the US) do not permit filming “except for archival purposes” (which means that they use the film for a few promotions and for the portfolios of the director and designers). Since most theatres (even professional ones) are relatively small operations, it isn’t worth going through the process of negotiating a separate contract with the union. (They do negotiate “regional” contracts that cover different geographic areas with different levels of theatres).
Why the union doesn’t wish to permit filming is another question.
So, Tyler, to actually answer your question: Assuming many/most playgoers–the presumably natural consumers of plays on DVD–feel as I do, there simply isn’t enough demand to create a viable product.
And why would film aficionados, who appreciate the tremendous flexibility and other proper artistic qualities and capabilities of movies, be interested in static transcriptions of stage productions? It would be like watching Tiger Woods play golf with a pool cue: perhaps interesting as an intellectual exercise, but in the end pretty boring and pointless.
This is an i.p. rights issue, with barriers arising from costs of issuing the DVD will all the rights necessary to produce and distribute the DVD exacerbated by the low-trust among players in the entertainment distribution business.
I run an entertainment i.p. rights market, hence my insights.
The expectations for DVD sales of this product are likely low, whether or not that expectation is accurate.
It is costly to assemble all of the rights for the DVD project, from both a time and dollars perspective. The actors’ talent agents, providers of music, and lawyers on all sides will be demanding their cut and fees. Royalty collection agencies and unions are also involved and add to costs.
This is why creating a product in entertainment can be so expensive.
Yes, there is value to unlock, and that’s what we do in our business — by fixing a broken process — but the process is tedious and, unfortunately, there is a prevailing low-trust in the entertainment distribution business, hence the amount of lawyering-up and related costs.
I’m curious how this would relate to music. Is there a demand for DVDs of music concerts? If so that would argue against the “You have to be there” point.
Also what about the demand for classical concerts on DVD? Here you would have the same problem with multiple parties that would need to negotiate. A quick amazon search for “classical DVD” returns over 4,000 hits.
Is live theater significantly different from live music?
sounds like everyones attributing it to the notion that movies cannot capture certain elements of the live play experience. i think all of the reasons are sound– film afficonados and play afficionados not overlapping well, transfer quality of media, demand culture.
personally im not buying the idea that so many parties are involved that it is impossible to come to negotiable agreement.
years ago musicians perceived mp3s to be a threat to their survival. now business models have played out to where these same musicians today release their music online at a significant discount, or sometimes even free.
maybe i have too much faith in the market in coming to some equilibrium.
Jonathan, despite your list of things that makes it hard, it very clearly is being done sometimes, as witness my recent DVD watching above.
Mark, I guess I can’t say anything about how popular music concert DVDs are, but most bigger stores that carry DVDs will have a couple of shelving units worth of concerts. I know we’ve got about twenty of the things around the house, and they get watched about as often as any DVD.
And in general — of course the DVD isn’t as good as seeing the live event. But in the vast majority of these cases, seeing the live event is no longer an option! No amount of money is going to enable me to see Freddie Mercury front Queen in concert live, or Leonard Bernstein conduct Brahms. I doubt Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury are planning on staging Sweeney Todd anytime soon, and even if they did, I can’t imagine it will be the same as it was when they were 25 years younger and doing the show every night. Etc.
Putting plays on DVD detracts from the experience of live theater while presenting an experience inferior to a film production. Thus the result is the worst of both worlds. I love theater and go all the time but I would not not even bother looking at a recorded show.
BTW, back in the salad days of the A&E network, when it still had the eponymous arts on the schedule, they showed a number of recorded plays. They soon stopped, for the above reasons I imagine.
The nature of the medium is definitely pertinent. Early movies (think Metropolis) were in fact little more than recorded plays. Watching them now, they lack the vivacity of contemporary film. Careful camerawork and cinematography are how directors maintain the audience’s attention where the natural thrall of live performance can’t.
There are a number of theaters around the country that will broadcast live operas in undesirable (to moviegoers) slots, like Saturday and Sunday morning. Perhaps we will see more of this, but with live plays and musicals, in the future. In this case, the event-ness is part of the experience.
With respect to musicals, I think there is an X factor about being a member of an audience that helps you suspend belief. I enjoy musicals at the theater, but whenever I see a musical number during a show like the Tonys or the Oscars, I find them unbelievably cheesy. Maybe this is a lingering effect from the days of cheesy variety shows.
I was going to add a comment about how early films were just filmed plays, and how it wasn’t until the late 1930s that movies were anything good at all. But a number of people have already pointed this out.
Then Meisner-trained argued that this isn’t true at all, and then goes ahead to prove exactly that with the comment about needing special training to be able to enjoy the filmed plays. Clearly 95% of the population doesn’t have this special education, and so filmed plays don’t work for them.
Easy, plays are not written for the screen, they are written for the stage.
I think granting all of the comments made so far about differences in medium, those don’t have much explanatory power. Video is already taken for archival/library purposes and often as keepsakes for the actors themselves; even if that video isn’t perceived to be very high quality as a video, stamping them out and selling them at the door with the t-shirts costs basically nothing, and you could even mail them only after the end of the theatrical run (unlike on-Broadway, most plays are of extremely fixed run) so as not to create competition. Also, since production is a sunk cost and reproduction of DVDs is nearly free, it’s pure profit to the acting company, which since venues and ticketing agencies and such eat up a good deal of gate revenues should be fairly attractive.
In my discussions about this with various small-time theatre directors, it’s all about the licensing. Perhaps the actors unions, but even more so the copyright holders, who think film and think big production budget, and hence proportionally larger copyright budget. Of course, these productions would only work on a small budget, with very little upside, so even though they really wouldn’t compete with true film versions in the main, it probably isn’t worth it to copyright holders to conceive a new genre and police its borders.
Very sad for me, since I really like edgy theatre (Stoppard the tip of the iceberg, but things like Elevator Repair Service), and would happily pay the price of the ticket over again for a keepsake DVD (even if there aren’t many like me, that’s enough to stamp a lot of DVDs), but cannot do so. And with university groups and experimental theatre, it definitely isn’t about clearance from the actors.
Several other commentators have highlighted it, but there are rights and royalties issues (as well as union contracts) that prevent plays from being filmed. Jonathan Falk however makes the excellent point that the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Rose Theater Division has filmed copies of (almost)every Broadway production. They are available for viewing once the shows first run has ended.
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