So, I need to be packed up for college by next week. I’m sure this is an annoying experience for all college kids who move in and out of the dorms, but for those of us whose rooms are jam packed with books, action figures, and other collections, the job is surely more daunting. For me, however, it’s my DVDs. According to my Letterboxd list, I’ve accumulated around 146 DVDS. Though, this doesn’t include doubles, alternative editions, TV season sets, and the dozens of ones I have in storage. I’d assume that number is more around 300 or so (which isn’t a lot when compared to other collections, but imagine 300 DVDs in a small apartment bedroom. I quite literally sleep next to them at this point). Trying to draft which movies can come with me and which ones have to collect dust is a difficult decision that I’m currently procrastinating at the time of writing this.

I even complained about it to my father (a crippling minimalist) and he questioned why I even collect them. To people like my father, DVDs are just an outdated waste of space. With streaming, billions of movies are at your fingertips, all encased in your precious flat screen. Why actively spend more money on something that’s gonna take up more space? My only response to him was "Because I love them.”

OWNING YOUR MEDIA

Oh, here we go. Yes, this is the part where I actually pull from the whole streaming versus physical media argument. I’m sure there’s other articles that do this defense more justice than my tirade, but I’ll try my best. Over time, we as a society (yes, I’m pulling the society card) have become more and more comfortable with companies giving us less; so much so, that we’ve become okay with that $3.99 rental price for movies. For four bucks, you can be the proud owner of whatever crappy remake you want… for a month — 48 hours once you hit play. Okay, no problem. You’ll just buy it then. $19.99 isn’t too bad. I would disagree, but I think the worst part is that you don’t truly own it. Once Amazon loses that sweet license and decides to boot your comfort movie of the month, BOOM! It’s gone from your digital library.

“Availability of Purchased Digital Content. Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the Service, as applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions or for other reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming.”

We don’t own anything anymore if I’m being quite honest. When paying for Spotify, we don’t own the music. Spotify can take it away just like that. We can even see this happening with the Switch 2 discourse that came up after the full features were released. The games you would buy for the console on cartridges would now be on ‘game key cards’, which would only hold half the game. Before, if you bought a cartridge, you would own the game forever. With these new key cards, you’d have to download the other half from Nintendo’s server. This means Nintendo owns your game, not you. You’re essentially just buying the license to use it, similarly to your digital libraries.

The fight for physical media’s return is a fight written for and spoken about across dozens of platforms, and while I could rant about it for hours, I’ll spare you and keep the argument to DVDs in specifics. The bottom line is that you'll own your movies forever — unless you scratch it, which is why I highly recommend taking extra care of them. They can and will last, I promise! I have discs from the 90’s that still work good as new. Actually, the only discs in my collection that are scratched were bought second-hand.

P.S. Not to be that guy, but while writing a draft of this, my WiFi went under maintenance. Not only did I have to write half of the next section on my notes app, but my TV wouldn’t play anything. So, I made the obvious decision to put in a DVD (Insidious if anyone was wondering. Please don’t ask why THAT’s my sleeping movie). Just another great perk: DVDs don’t require any WiFi.

BEYOND THE MOVIE

Does anyone remember the days when DVDs had literal games on them? I know the famous mention for this are the Shrek mini games, and while I haven’t played those, I have my own example. A few weeks ago, on one of my DVD runs, I got an old copy of Final Destination. I was shocked to find out that it actually had not one, but two games on it. Sure they were simple — one “calculated” when you would die based on a small quiz, and the other tested your psychic abilities through a pattern game, but they held so much charm.

While this post isn’t about DVD mini games, I recommend watching this deep dive if you’re interested!

Watching a movie is now a themed experience thanks to DVDs. Often forgotten qualities include main menus and Special features. Something I do as soon as I come home from DVD shopping is sit down and go through every movie bought, inspecting the menu and special features. This is definitely a topic I want to devote to its own blog post, but I truly believe menus can make or break a movie. If your movie is disturbing, I want to feel it as soon as I put in that disc.

A great example of this is the SAW: Uncut Edition menu. The backdrop uses a markup drawn in an early stage of designing what would be the iconic bathroom set. It’s eerie and unsettling as ambient music plays from the official score. Each button brings you to a different part of the bathroom (Bonus points because you get to hear Leigh Whannell screaming during transitions). The over exposed graininess of the markup mixed with the lost feeling of music makes for a menu that I would NOT want to wake up to at three in the morning, and that’s exactly how the movie itself makes you feel.

In addition to the menu, the Saw: Uncut Edition DVD set also comes with an entire disc of special features. As DVDs slowly go for less demand, the art of audio commentaries, behind the scene documentaries, and deleted content are going extinct. You can learn so much more about a movie from the history behind it and it pains me to realize that it’s slowly becoming a lost art. S7VEN (1995) has FOUR audio commentaries, even including commentary of just the sound/music artists. ‘The Making of’ documentaries and other BTS content is not only entertaining, but is also extremely informative about the intention and work that goes into creating a product. It adds depth to the smallest of decisions, whether it be characterization, score, set, or shots. Whether this is controversial or not, I believe loving a film, truly loving it is also loving the process that went into making it. It’s utterly fascinating.

THE ART OF COLLECTING

This last section is less of a perk and more of my own love letter to DVDs (and really all pieces of physical media). My collection is very personal to me and I’m no stranger to buying multiple editions of my favorite movies. Albeit sometimes it’s just for different menus, a ton of my duplicates are from different editions or collections. Pulling from my S7VEN example, I had just bought the New line Platinum Series edition in which the DVD sleeve resembles the composition journals used in the movie. Another great (and new to my collection) edition is The Sixth Sense (1999) VISTA Series which includes a small story board card. It’s the little things that make up such rich additions to my collection.

This all comes back to wanting more for less. We’ve become so okay with companies giving us less that we actively reject the better option. For twenty bucks, you can get a beautiful edition that includes mountains of content to go through or you can buy to use the license of a movie, but hey, it’s more convenient.

Maybe I have no object permanence, but seeing a physical collection of my films is just more rewarding. Being able to physically hold my movies will always be better than some digital library or praying that it’s on one of my 500 subscription services. It almost feels like a manifestation of myself, an array of all the stories that make up my flesh and blood.

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