Friday, October 31st, 2008

I Am Trying to Release a Blu-ray

Dear Plexifans,

Next month, we planned to release a high-definition Blu-ray edition of Sam Jones’ acclaimed 2002 documentary about the band Wilco, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. Earlier this week, Wilco sent a message to their fans telling them not to buy the Blu-ray disc, saying that they didn’t think the film warranted a Blu-ray edition. While we respect Wilco’s opinions, they hadn’t seen the Blu-ray version of the film, nor had they contacted us and asked to see it, or expressed any concerns about it to us whatsoever.

Look, we’re huge Wilco fans too, we co-produced the film and we’ve been distributing it for almost seven years now. But (stay seated fellow fans) this is not Wilco’s film… it’s Sam Jones’ film, that happens to be about Wilco. And at the end of the day, our responsibility is to the filmmakers whose work we distribute, and it’s our duty to release that work in the best possible format we can. We used to release films on VHS, then DVD, now on Blu-ray and iTunes; as the technology progresses, we’ll continue to release our films in these new media. Most importantly, any decision about the format in which to release a film is the filmmaker’s decision, period.

With the Blu-ray release of Helvetica earlier this year, Plexifilm has started a program of releasing films in our catalog that were either a) shot on 16mm or 35mm film, or b) shot in high-definition video, as a Blu-ray disc. Producing a Blu-ray disc is expensive, and we also have to pay a per-disc fee to the Blu-ray Association for the privilege of pressing the discs (don’t get us started on that). But the HD resolution and better sound of Blu-ray are hands-down better than DVD… it’s not even close.

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart was shot (beautifully, we might add) on super-16mm film. We had originally done a high-def transfer of the film print, which was then down-converted to standard definition for the DVD release. So we started with a high-def, pristine representation of the film, then had to dumb down its resolution to conform to old DVD technology.

The advent of Blu-ray meant that we could go back and release the much-better HD transfer, which no one has ever seen. It’s the closest you can get to actually sitting in a theater and watching the original film. Does it make the film look like Spiderman 3? No, but it’s the best possible representation of the movie. As filmmakers, we’ve been dealing with the poor quality of DVD for a decade now, so it’s a relief to finally see our work available in a better-quality HD format. If you have the standard DVD, should you run out and buy a Blu-ray player just to see it? Maybe not. But if you already have a Blu-ray player, you’ll want to see this version.

That said, we don’t feel comfortable releasing a version of the film that Wilco might have reservations about. So here’s what we’re doing: we’re postponing the Blu-ray release, to give us an opportunity to show the band the differences between the HD and standard definition versions. We hope they agree that fans with HD televisions and Blu-ray players deserve to see the best possible edition of the film.

We’ll keep you posted…

-Plexi

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Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests

We’ve just announced the first ever authorized DVD release of Andy Warhol’s films: 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. The DVD includes 13 of Warhol’s classic screen tests, including Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Dennis Hopper, Lou Reed, and more, paired with new soundtracks by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips. Warhol made over 500 of these four-minute screen test films, and they’re some of his most subtly brilliant work.

Plexi’s been collaborating with the folks at the Warhol Museum to produce the DVD, it’s been an amazing project to work on. And this Friday the screen tests will be projected with a live soundtrack by Dean & Britta at the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh. They’ll be touring the live event across the US and Europe early next year.

We’ve has just made the DVDs available for pre-order, in a standard edition and a deluxe limited edition that includes a gelatin-silver print of the screen test star of your choice.

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