On Friday night, I went to go see The Avengers because it was surprisingly released here in Germany a few days earlier than in the U.S. I had only had the choice of watching it in 3D in English or 3D dubbed in German. Obviously, I didn't choose to watch it dubbed.
I don't really care for 3D movies. I've seen only 3 that I can think of: Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Avatar, and The Avengers. Here in Germany, 3D movies are more expensive to see like everywhere else. And like everywhere else, you also have to pay for the glasses. My boyfriend and I used a Groupon deal, and we still had to pay 9€. Moreover, here in Germany if a movie is over 2 hours long, it's considered "Überlänge," or excessive length (basically, a long movie). And that means you'll add on another Euro to the movie price. So for a 3D movie, you're already paying 2-4€ extra because it's in 3D, plus another 2€ for the glasses, and then if it's over 2 hours long, add on another 1€. Basically, to see a movie in 3D, you're paying an extra 7€, which is around the price of a 2D ticket on discounted days.
Here in Germany, movies that are two hours long are broken up in the middle of the movie and there's a break. I'm not kidding. It's like an intermission right at the climax that isn't meant to be there. Thankfully with the transition to digital projections, the projectionist hopefully tries to pick a less climactic scene to insert the break (around the 90 minute mark), whereas with analog, the break came at the end of the first film roll. It's slightly better, but not by much. I ask myself, why the heck am I paying an extra 1€ for the theater to give me a break? I'll pay them the extra 1€ to keep the movie going and not have a break because it ruins the movie's pacing.
When I saw The Hunger Games a few weeks ago, the break seemed to make sense and was taken right before Katniss goes into the arena. OK, great, it made sense. But the projectionist somehow messed up the projection's settings in the second half and the colors were completely desaturated. I don't think they noticed because they didn't change it. It annoyed me completely because everything was just too cold, there was way too much blue in the picture. You might argue, "But in the arena, maybe that'd be better because it's not supposed to be a warm, fuzzy place, right?" NO. I want to see the movie the way it was intended. Yes, I could've gotten up and said to the manager that the colors were wrong, but then I would've missed out on whatever happened. So either I miss what happens completely, or I deal with crappy colors. It made me annoyed that I paid for a movie and the projectionist is so incompetent.
That brings me to last night at The Avengers. After the break, the projectionist couldn't figure out how to turn the picture on. So there we were, listening to everything that was happening, but not seeing it. It took the projectionist a good 5 to 10 minutes to realize it. Then they took an extra 10 minutes to figure it out while we sat there looking at a white light on the screen. All seemed to work well afterward, and then the picture cut out again. The projectionist wound up figuring it out and rewound it to the point where it had cut out, but seriously, way to ruin the pacing of the movie and the element of surprise. I don't understand why I'm paying so much money for a movie when the theater can't do its job and show it right, including the break. People can choose if they want to go to the toilet or not, or buy more snacks or not. Why the heck should everyone else have to take a break? I don't want to have to pay so much money to ruin a good movie.
On a side note, I miss seeing movies with Americans. Americans react to movies. For example, when I went to see Bridesmaids, a lady next to me said outloud, "Oh no, she di'nt!" during a particularly gruesome scene. During X-Men First Class, the guy behind me commented, "Daaaaaaay-mmmnnn," during a climactic and visually impressive scene. And when I went to see one of the Harry Potter movies at midnight, people cheered and clapped and hooted. None of this ever happens while watching a movie in Germany. People barely laugh aloud during comedies. They might smirk or quietly giggle to themselves at most.
"Daaaaaaay-mmmnnn!"
Some may think it's annoying when people react to the movie. I personally have no problem with it as long as it a reaction to what's happening and not some idiot making comments about which characters from the book are on screen (that happened during The Hunger Games. The guy was like, "Oh! That's Foxface!" Thanks, I knew that, shut up). It's part of the experience seeing a movie in the theater with other people, even if you don't know them. When I saw a Harry Potter movie here on opening day, I cheered ("YAAAY!") when the Warner Bros. logo and the title appeared, and someone actually shushed me. There wasn't even anything happening on screen. And can I stress it again: it was opening day of a Harry Potter movie. Talk about lame.
So yes, whenever I am home in the United States, I go to the movies so that I can get the lovely reactions from the fellow moviegoers. Not to mention eating buttered popcorn. I miss that too.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Watching American TV in Germany
A few weeks ago, The Oatmeal posted a comic about streaming Game of Thrones (due to copyright, I can't actually post it on my blog, so go look at it before you read the rest of this). The essence of the comic is that there is a dilemma to watching shows legally: watch it on Netflix or download it on iTunes, purchase it through Amazon, stream it on Hulu or the HBO site, or just download it illegally. The dilemma is when the show is unavailable on legal sources like Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and Hulu, and HBO wants you to have a whole subscription in order to watch it. At that point, you can either wait until Hulu/Netflix/other services has it, or you can download it.
Living outside the United States poses a similar problem. I myself prefer to choose legal means to consume media and pay for everything because I think that the people involved with the media production deserve to get the money (though yes, I do realize that they only get pennies and it's the executives and other people not actually involved in production that get the biggest portion). However, it's problematic when shows are a season behind here in Germany because the shows need to be dubbed.
And that's my biggest problem. I would love to have a service like Netflix here, but the majority of services don't offer the choice between watching something in the original version and the dubbed version. It's so stupid because it is so easy to have different files with different audio tracks -- look at DVDs! I also can't buy/rent/stream things through the American Amazon or iTunes because my IP address is obviously from Germany. I could pay for an American proxy server, sure, but I'm pretty sure there could be some legal hangups there just as much as downloading. So even if I want to watch something legally, I might have to watch it dubbed if I watch it online. Otherwise, I have to wait until the DVD comes out and that takes even longer than in the U.S. DVDs can come out possibly two seasons after it airs in the U.S. Can you imagine trying to not hear about how Lost ended while waiting for the DVDs? It was a near impossible task.
Here in Germany, it's not even just limited to watching TV shows. I can't even watch videos on YouTube that have music in them, including official music videos from the artists. (Trying to find Lady Gaga's video "Marry the Night" in its entirety was annoying.) Thanks to GEMA, official music videos can't be streamed over YouTube because it would be too expensive to have to pay for every time the video is watched. Even for big acts like Lady Gaga. It just frustrates me that OFFICIAL VIDEOS are even blocked! It's not like it's some schmuck that uploaded a poor copy of the video.
How is it that in this day and age of interconnectivity we are still unable to figure out connections like this? I guess part of it is the SOPA/PIPA/ACTA type bills that try to prosecute servers which have uploaded files. Watching the debates of the SOPA/PIPA bills was simultaneously amusing and sad because none of the sponsors seem to really have an idea how the internet works. But listening to them also just made me think that copyright laws are completely out of date. They don't take into account that the world is more connected and that technology is changing the way we consume media. Copyright laws had problems even back in the day of video tapes and cassettes and yet those are still the same laws with minimal change that are policy. I think copyright law should be scrapped and rewritten anew and take into consideration that interconnectivity is inevitable. Not only that, but companies are losing even more money because of these restrictions. I would like to believe that people other than myself would pay for available services to watch shows in broadcast quality.
Surprisingly, two shows I watch regularly allow people abroad to watch them on their websites: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I don't know what exactly their deal is and why they are accessible, but I watch both shows on the sites directly and even sit through the advertisements. Sometimes the ads are geared towards someone living in Germany, meaning, they're in German, but sometimes they're clearly ads for an American audience for products that don't exist here. But that's ok. Because they are available here NOT DUBBED or shortened or anything, I feel that my loyalty to the shows is even more so than with others who refuse access. So kudos to Comedy Central and Viacom for allowing fans outside North America to watch these shows. Everyone else should follow their example.
Living outside the United States poses a similar problem. I myself prefer to choose legal means to consume media and pay for everything because I think that the people involved with the media production deserve to get the money (though yes, I do realize that they only get pennies and it's the executives and other people not actually involved in production that get the biggest portion). However, it's problematic when shows are a season behind here in Germany because the shows need to be dubbed.
And that's my biggest problem. I would love to have a service like Netflix here, but the majority of services don't offer the choice between watching something in the original version and the dubbed version. It's so stupid because it is so easy to have different files with different audio tracks -- look at DVDs! I also can't buy/rent/stream things through the American Amazon or iTunes because my IP address is obviously from Germany. I could pay for an American proxy server, sure, but I'm pretty sure there could be some legal hangups there just as much as downloading. So even if I want to watch something legally, I might have to watch it dubbed if I watch it online. Otherwise, I have to wait until the DVD comes out and that takes even longer than in the U.S. DVDs can come out possibly two seasons after it airs in the U.S. Can you imagine trying to not hear about how Lost ended while waiting for the DVDs? It was a near impossible task.
Here in Germany, it's not even just limited to watching TV shows. I can't even watch videos on YouTube that have music in them, including official music videos from the artists. (Trying to find Lady Gaga's video "Marry the Night" in its entirety was annoying.) Thanks to GEMA, official music videos can't be streamed over YouTube because it would be too expensive to have to pay for every time the video is watched. Even for big acts like Lady Gaga. It just frustrates me that OFFICIAL VIDEOS are even blocked! It's not like it's some schmuck that uploaded a poor copy of the video.
How is it that in this day and age of interconnectivity we are still unable to figure out connections like this? I guess part of it is the SOPA/PIPA/ACTA type bills that try to prosecute servers which have uploaded files. Watching the debates of the SOPA/PIPA bills was simultaneously amusing and sad because none of the sponsors seem to really have an idea how the internet works. But listening to them also just made me think that copyright laws are completely out of date. They don't take into account that the world is more connected and that technology is changing the way we consume media. Copyright laws had problems even back in the day of video tapes and cassettes and yet those are still the same laws with minimal change that are policy. I think copyright law should be scrapped and rewritten anew and take into consideration that interconnectivity is inevitable. Not only that, but companies are losing even more money because of these restrictions. I would like to believe that people other than myself would pay for available services to watch shows in broadcast quality.
Surprisingly, two shows I watch regularly allow people abroad to watch them on their websites: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I don't know what exactly their deal is and why they are accessible, but I watch both shows on the sites directly and even sit through the advertisements. Sometimes the ads are geared towards someone living in Germany, meaning, they're in German, but sometimes they're clearly ads for an American audience for products that don't exist here. But that's ok. Because they are available here NOT DUBBED or shortened or anything, I feel that my loyalty to the shows is even more so than with others who refuse access. So kudos to Comedy Central and Viacom for allowing fans outside North America to watch these shows. Everyone else should follow their example.
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