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Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2019 9:14 am
by MichaelB
Exactly. And Indicator doesn't produce standard editions until after they've gone OOP - in fact, the only time I can recall them announcing one before the LE had sold out was Night of the Demon, but that was the fastest seller in the label's history so they felt that people needed that reassurance.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2019 1:34 pm
by rapta
MichaelB wrote:
Tue Jun 11, 2019 8:56 am
...but they've said that Bunny Lake Is Missing, Eyes of Laura Mars, The Last Movie, Torture Garden, Vampires and the three Sinbad films will get standard editions this year (the Sinbad films being released separately). And that will account for all OOP titles to date.
I'm glad that Indicator are being so sensible about this reissuing business. Other boutique labels - I won't name names, but we know who they are - could take note of their way of doing things, especially when it comes to making sure the initial run includes a booklet and therefore people know what they're buying.

But reissuing titles separately is also helpful; they could've easily just released those as a slimmer 3-disc set (sans-book), but that wouldn't be particularly fair to those who bought the original box set. It obviously also means people can pick up whichever Sinbad film they wanted, and aren't locked into buying all three. I feel like the aforementioned labels could have done something like this for recent trilogy/collection reissues and avoided winding up their consumer base (myself included).

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 6:46 am
by MichaelB
I concede that the second-hand market might blur the distinction (and there's sadly little that Indicator can do about this), but it should notionally always be absolutely clear which is a limited edition with a booklet and which is a standard edition without one.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 7:22 am
by tenia
But in the current case of Arrow, this isn't a question of a LE with booklet and a standard with a booklet, but 2 pressings of the same standard edition.
Especially since Arrow increased the LE frequency, and that they stopped printing the inclusion of booklets on their STD backcover, shouldn't these booklets, quite reduced in content anyway, be considered as mere extra free fluff just like a slipcover on a studio title ?

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 4:03 pm
by Calvin
Yes, the issue with Arrow is that unless you buy it on release date then it's a pot luck scenario - there's no indication of how many copies are in the 'first run' and no way of telling what is or isn't a first run copy until you open it up. There's nothing wrong in principle with a booklet being limited, but at least give people some indication as to whether or not they're going to get one with their purchase.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 4:16 pm
by swo17
tenia wrote:
Wed Jun 12, 2019 7:22 am
But in the current case of Arrow, this isn't a question of a LE with booklet and a standard with a booklet, but 2 pressings of the same standard edition.
Especially since Arrow increased the LE frequency, and that they stopped printing the inclusion of booklets on their STD backcover, shouldn't these booklets, quite reduced in content anyway, be considered as mere extra free fluff just like a slipcover on a studio title ?
Well if you value the booklet as more than extra fluff (which many do), the standard editions including the booklets are effectively limited editions, even if they aren't called that

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 4:00 am
by tenia
And the same came be said about the slipcovers.
Which is precisely my point, because I'm unsure the people selling these, being labels or studios, are planning them like they do with an explicitely marketed LE.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 4:42 am
by reaky
Arrow’s recent Iguana with the Tongue of Fire came with an extensively-researched and illustrated 44-page booklet. One of the BFI Film Classics series costs £13 for under 100 pages. The booklets are far more than fluff.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 6:22 am
by tenia
I'm not at home so can't check the exact figures, but the majority of the recent non-LE Arrow booklets contain only 1 new writing (usually 6 to 8 pages long IIRC) and tons of pictures, ending up being 30% (sometimes even less) text. Glad to learn Iguana has a more thorough one (IIRC, another recent release has a good booklet too), but this currently sadly is the exception rather than the norm, and most are far below what Indicator is doing.

And those BFI Classics books are nice but indeed vastly overpriced. I never bought one that much, but rather £5 apiece (second hand).

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 6:50 am
by MichaelB
It depends on who's overseeing the projects. On my own for Arrow, I tended to significantly favour text over stills, and a typical word count even for an Amaray-cased release (where you're not supposed to go above 40 pages and I was strongly advised never to exceed 44) was 10-13,000 - which is about half what you'd get in a BFI monograph (I seem to recall that these are capped at 26,000). Off the top of my head, I went to 44 pages on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Three Brothers and Hard to Be a God, but quite a few others tipped the scales at 36-40.

But my attitude has always been that the booklet is a very significant part of the overall package. Not least because sometimes it's the only way of including interviews with now-dead participants, because they may not have recorded anything on camera or tape. (For instance, Norman Beaton on Black Joy - as the lead actor, we clearly had to feature his voice somewhere, especially given that so many other bases were covered, but he died 25 years ago and the only on-topic interviews seemed to be print ones.)

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 7:39 am
by tenia
As a whole, these text-loaded booklets are sadly not always the norm. I'm seeing this in France a lot, where 200 pages book might actually only contain 40 pages of writings (including sometimes filmographies !). Eureka and Arrow booklets have been often like this for some years now, with writings only adding up to roughly 25% of the whole content, so a Criterion poster-type leaflet actually contains the same amount of writings than a 32 pages Arrow booklet.

This is what's fuelling my main point about how these don't seem to be given tye same amount of care than in the past, and I susupect they actually don't get much resources at all to be able to find ans licence / create enough materials to have a better text-to-pics ratio.

Ans as you can guess, it's not a question of total pages count, but rather words count.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 8:19 am
by MichaelB
Where Indicator differs from every other label that I've ever worked for is that they have a totally separate team working on the booklets. We obviously liaise closely, but in general I don't get to see what they've done until the proofreading stage. And I think that works really well - the problem with having to produce the disc and booklet is that it's very easy to neglect the latter, especially if there are unexpected production challenges.

And of course invariably using the same team (Jeff Billington and Bethan Roberts on editorial content, Robert Riley and Nick Wrigley on design) means that Indicator booklets are very very consistent in quality. Even before I joined the production team I was struck by how good they were, and said as much in a Sight & Sound review of Bunny Lake Is Missing:
The reliably excellent booklet (Indicator are becoming market leaders here) contains a selection of contemporary reviews, a composite interview with Preminger, some on-set photos disconcertingly shot in colour, and an essay by Chris Fujiwara which flags up that a key theme for Preminger was that “if you do not live in our society in a conformist manner, the law does not protect you”.
(In retrospect, that looks like a hilarious bit of sucking-up given that I joined the team myself only a few weeks after that review appeared, but it genuinely wasn't - I had absolutely no idea that they were hiring until an out-of-the-blue phone call.)

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 5:16 am
by MichaelB
And the latest OOP update:

Extremely low stock:
The Passenger
Blue Collar

Very low stock:
The Stone Killer
Experiment in Terror

Low stock:
The Legacy
Mickey One
The Wonderful Worlds of Ray Harryhausen Volume Two: 1961-1964
(i.e. Mysterious Island, Jason and the Argonauts, First Men in the Moon)
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Happy Birthday To Me


As ever, these should be replaced with standard editions once they've sold out (identical BD, but no DVD, booklet or reversible sleeve, and in an Amaray rather than a Scanavo case), with the exception of Jason and the Argonauts, which was a box-set exclusive.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 2:57 am
by colinr0380
It is nice to see that The Legacy has apparently been flying off the shelves! (Though I was more shocked to find on receiving it that the disc for what is a relatively low key film has been given an 18 certificate!)

OOP Indicator

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 3:39 am
by MichaelB
The US version has a 15 certificate, the UK version an 18: when the latter was added, the age restriction had to be upped.

I have absolutely no idea why either, aside from the fact that this involved different BBFC examiners at different times.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 11:02 am
by colinr0380
I suppose that Sam Elliott's bare bottom even today has the power to cause an automatic adults only rating!

(I could see the film still getting a 15 for the impromptu tracheotomy scene, but it generally feels around the high 12/low 15 border. Unless there is something really raunchy that was cut out of the version broadcast on the BBC back in the day, which is what I'm going by at the moment until I get a chance to sit down with the new disc!)

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 11:22 am
by swo17
He does get cut up pretty badly while nude

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 11:38 am
by MichaelB
I suspect it's always going to get a 15, if only for the scene where
SpoilerShow
Charles Gray is burned to a crisp and his internal organs fed to a pack of ravening dogs
, but the 18 was awarded after the great BBFC liberalisation of 2000.

But I can certainly confirm that there's nothing in the longer version that would cause the same BBFC examiner to give the film a different classification when watching both versions back to back. It's clear that every single cut was for pacing/timing reasons - the film was presumably trimmed between its original UK release and its oddly belated US one a year later.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 7:00 pm
by KJones77
https://twitter.com/indicatorseries/sta ... 3051646977
Last chance to pick up our Limited Edition of Antonioni’s THE PASSENGER. There are only 39 copies left!
https://twitter.com/indicatorseries/sta ... 1491317760
Last chance to pick up our Limited Edition of Paul Schrader’s BLUE COLLAR. There are only 52 copies left!

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 11:25 am
by colinr0380
According to the Indicatior twitter feed Blue Collar and The Passenger are now out of print. It seems that Experiment In Terror is listed as the same on the store page. (The Stone Killer appears to still be available :wink: )

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2019 2:36 pm
by Finch
Indicator confirmed on FB that Experiment in Terror is the latest title to go OOP.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2019 12:06 pm
by Adam X
STOCK ALERT: Other than the three Limited Editions that have gone OOP during the sale (EXPERIMENT IN TERROR, THE STONE KILLER, and HARRYHAUSEN VOL 2) the next titles with the lowest stock are: GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, MICKEY ONE, and THE LEGACY.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2019 9:49 am
by Dr Amicus
According to the latest newsletter, the above are still available but have been joined by THE COLLECTOR and HAMMER VOLUME 1 in the low stock pile.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 11:06 am
by KJones77
The Collector and Mickey One are now both OOP.

Re: OOP Indicator

Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2020 5:27 am
by MichaelB
...and standard editions will be coming out in April, along with the just-gone-OOP Happy Birthday to Me.

The latest low stock alert (this morning) includes some new entries.

VERY LOW STOCK
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Hammer Volume One: Fear Warning!


LOW STOCK
The Big Heat
The Chase
The Deadly Affair
Five Tall Tales: Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott at Columbia 1957-1960
Hammer Volume 2: Criminal Intent
The Lady From Shanghai
The Legacy
See No Evil