i notice around the net there is some that do not like this concept. but i wonder why wouldn't someone want to give people a chance to organize and focus a combined effort to do things that would never have a chance to be done without co-operation and a united effort. why would they want to disrupt people coming together? why is it never about people coming together to help each other? instead they prefer a single person in control and capitalizing on the mass. are we as a whole lazy and want instant gradification? these are some of the things i ask myself as i struggle to make the impossible posssible. i'm not looking for people to agree with me i want to hear the other side of the argument because i want to understand these peoples thinking so we can all get along. our last 5 projects were non preorder but i honestly don't think some of the projects we have planned can be done without a head count of who wants the film. there are various methods people use to organize suck as email lists or organized consortiums . i notice on sites like yesasia utillize pre-orders and no one every bats an eye. we do some people in the fandom rip each other. it doesn't make sense to me when i see them doing it. my thinking is there is more paths than one to get to a goal. why not explore them all?
I'm part of the Houndslowteam so my comment doesn't really count but as for myself I think a "head count" should be necessary for projects that involve big $$$ or a very rare title, or a combination of both. Since the fan-team doing such a projects is putting a lot a stake and doesn't want to end up with financial losses. Otherwise, for other projects that require only team effort (work) I don't think such a method is needed.
you make good points its very true that not all projects are created equal. doing a telecine is totally different than just ripping a vhs. i think that's the reason why many groups will not attempt high level projects such as telecine. i think there has been a tradition starting back in the 80's where people just simply dubbed a vhs and sold copies. in rare cases someone snuck in a cam job but the end result was the same just dub a copy of the source and sell it. that type of thinking still survives. it wasn't until the advent of new technology a few brave souls took german prints and dubbed then in english and then crash cinema took a huge leap and started to get telecines done themselves. we started to see some evolution of the scene in my opinion that evolution is necessary and is not yet done. when we started to get legit companies releasing classics on dvd the car boots kind of died out. we got spoiled by nice releases for a few years but now that seems to be drying out as well. so when these companies realize there is no profit and lose interest where will the fandom get new versions from? i think we are going to have to face the fact if you don't want to infinitely upgrade your 4 bruce lee films we are going to as a whole figure out where we are get rare films from. an evolution on the crash model is going to be the highest quality versions possible. otherwise we going to be watching car boots dubbed from 3rd gen vhs on our 60 inch LCD TV getting headaches from the low picture quality... i'm getting way off topic here but in short like you said when so much costs are involved you better plan really well for success or that type of output is unsustainable
I think pre-orders are fine for rare titles. You need to know how many people are gonna be interested in a title that has cost you lots of $$$ to produce.
