lacubs

if you like to reveiw dvds, getting a free dvd is not a bad deal!

jmanlakerfan

I used to work at DVD Shrine also. I had about 15 reviews up within a month and I was suddenly locked out of the site. I never received a straight answer on why I was 'fired.'

The guy that ran it was a dick.

big whoppa

I don't mean to be too negative but that's the very least you should get if you do a review. I'm sure the screeners are given free to the sites. The sites make all the money.

FusionX

But if you can become a volume reviewer, you can turn free product into a decent amount of cash, or at the least, a nice chunk saved of your own cash on titles you don't have to purchase.

Adam Tyner

Personally, I think selling something a studio gave you for free to promote their product makes for bad karma. I know there was bad blood between one small studio and a review site when their webmaster was 'caught' selling screeners on eBay.

Yakuza Bengoshi

There's a segment on episode #358 of "This American Life" (air date 6/30/08) in which a NYC homeless man writes DVD porn reviews so that he can sell the DVDs to a local rental shop for $2 each. He must really crank through those reviews.

Kurt D

Esp. the copies that are 'cut outs' - UPC codes made unreadable by scanners so that they aren't able to be sold. When I worked at a record label we were always incensed to find promo copies in the bins before street date, we'd even try to figure out which reviewers had received copies since we were a local label with NO MONEY.

I always got the impression that selling 'cut out' copies was illegal ...

Then again, what about all those 'How She Move' DVDs?

Josh Z

I got a warning email from a major studio when they saw a forum post I made about trading (not selling, but trading) a couple of my screeners I didn't plan to watch again.

Some studios will deface the screener packaging by cutting out or hole-punching the UPC to prevent resale.

Then of course there's Fox, who frequently send DVD screeners with the "PROPERTY OF FOX. NOT FOR RESALE. THAT MEANS YOU, SCUMBAG MOVIE REVIEWER PIRATE!!" watermark scrolling across the bottom of the screen during the entire movie.

Yakuza Bengoshi

Or the studios that only send screener discs without a case, cover art, insert, or sometimes even extras such as Facets and Arts Alliance America. Personally, I think these studios are doing themselves more harm than good trying to avoid a lone resale here or there since many of these screners generally just sink to the bottom of screener pools and often never get reviewed.

dvdmovie1

I've been writing reviews for 11 years now and while there are times when I need a little break from it, I still enjoy it. Of course, there are also times when I stop and realize that, geez...I've been doing this for a little over a decade of my life.

big whoppa

As a reviewer, you're doing a service for the studios and the review websites. Your time to review their movie is worth something. It's crazy that they would even care what you do with the screeners after that. Seems like very small potatoes to me. And if that's the way Fox deals with the situation, I'd be less inclined to review one of their movies.

Randy Miller III

Before I started here almost five years ago, I'd never written a DVD or film review. Ever.

But I enjoyed creative writing (and DVDs!) and thought I'd make a good reviewer...so once I heard of DVD Talk's open call, I whipped up a sample review for Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life", which had just been released that week. Few (if any) websites got screener copies of that title, so I thought DVD Talk getting something of an "exclusive" might give me a slight edge. Luckily, Geoff loved my review and I started permanently the next week.

500+ reviews later, I'm still enjoying it immensely and trying to improve my work as I keep going. So from a true "DVD Talk Original", you can be an entry-level writer and still sneak in the back door.

Houstondon

What a well written episode.
(and no, I keep all my screeners, even porn, except for the ones I send to fellow reviewers on occasion)

Try again at DVD Talk and Xcritic (submit some sample reviews). What you said in your introductory email could have had an impact too (exclaiming how you only want premium titles, will only review Blu-Ray, want first dibs on stuff, or prattle on about having the world's best equipment are all quick ways to tell the editor you'll be a prima donna unable to review at least a title a week without bitching).

If your motivation is to make money, there are many more lucrative hobbies to pick up. DVD Talk has a number of professional writers and reviewing here has given some of them a lot of additional exposure. Besides, reviewing helps support the website so many of us care about (and occasionally yields advanced copies of movies or gives us the opportunity to check out titles we may not otherwise find at local rental outlets).

FrancisRizzo3

I can understand Fox' perspective in that they send us these discs a month ahead of time, which gives us almost 30 days to dupe it and steal sales from them, so they wouldn't want the disc to go from us to someone possibly even less scrupulous either.

That said, sending us watermarked visuals, incomplete discs or even just parts of a multidisc set does nothing to help us help our readers. It can really be quite frustrating, and there's got to be a better way.

JJay

I never knew there were so many of us around here! (That qualifies as a "me too," for the record.)

GHackmann

A recent federal decision explicitly made reselling promotional copies legal (details here).

Kurt D

That is nice news! Obviously it's still a labor of love, but if (after street date) it's possible to make the hard work of reviewing DVDs turn into sub-minimum-wage labor, why not?

But for titles like the Kinky Cannibal Double Feature - I'm never letting that one go!

Josh Z

It may be legal, but if a studio doesn't want you to do it, they are still within their rights to remove you from their screener mailing list or withhold future product.

Living Dead

Selling advance copies is something I'd never even thought of. If my only real form of "payment" was the DVD that I'm reviewing, I would hope it would at least be complete without screener tags at the bottom of the movie or defaced cover art. That sucks since, as another member said, you are doing them a service. And how can you give an accurate review if they send you shit?

Just out of curioisty, what's the approx ratio of these types of discs? 1 in 10? 1 in 20? Every disc Fox sends out?

Living Dead

What kind of warning? Don't do it at all or wait until street date?

Yakuza Bengoshi

You can't.

I received two screeners of What Would Jesus Buy?, both with audio/video sync problems. Without being able to see the final product, I had no idea whether the problem was carried over to the final product.


It's perhaps 10%-15% of the discs we get here, but of the studios that send something less than the final product, their behavior remains fairly consistent over time.* Thus, the fact that Facets, for example, provides only incomplete screeners while Criterion Collection provides only final product may explain why there are only 88 Facets reviews yet 458 Criterion reviews available here, despite the fact that both labels have turned out roughly equal numbers of titles.

*I'm not certain about Fox though. They generally don't release the kind of films I'm interested in reviewing.

NoirFan

I'm not sure their official releases are much better.

pro-bassoonist

I feel the same - I don't think that there is much Fox release that I would be enticed to review. There are a few exceptions, mostly older catalog/foreign titles, but in general I tend to stay away from them.

As to reselling I tend to keep what I review in my collection. What I don't like I typically give/have given away.

I must say though, there are some absolutely terrible distribs out there.

Pro-B

Shannon Nutt

Not only that, but if studios found out reviewers were selling free screeners, they'd most likely cut off the site from future titles. One of the agreements for getting review copies is that you won't re-sell, trade or otherwise distribute them to others. In fact, technically, the copies remain the property of the studio that sends them to you.

In short though, if you're a decent enough writer, and can find the right niche there's plenty of online opportunity for you outside the world of DVD Talk...it's just a matter of getting out there and finding it. A lot of it depends on whether it's more important for you to get paid, or get read. Some of us (including some of the reviewers here on DVD Talk) make a living doing both (as do I, although ironically I was "fired" from my freelancing here). The best plan is probably going the "free" route first, to establish yourself online, then - once your "name is out there" - start looking for paid opportunities.

JJay

I've been doing what I do for a good long while now and have never come across an agreement like that. I don't get rid of everything I get for review, just the things I know I'll never watch again.

That's the area I'm at now. You just have to keep pounding the pavement and prove you can be an independent thinker. Don't go along with the majority opinion because it's popular.