Boutique Blu-ray Labels Keep Physical Media Alive — and Preserve Film History in the Process

while DVDs are no longer the massive revenue generator for studios that they were throughout the first decade of the 2000s, it has never been a better time to be a physical media enthusiast. Thanks to independent labels like Criterion, Kino Lorber, Shout! Factory, Arrow, Imprint, Indicator, and many others, every month sees the release of well over a dozen exceptional titles, often lovingly restored and with indispensable scholarly extras.

That we’re living in such a flourishing golden age in terms of quality, even as the economics seem increasingly discouraging, is thanks to an intrepid community of cinephiles. Their passion has led to boutique DVD and Blu-ray labels that release titles — both well-known and obscure — that might fall through the cracks if left to the vagaries of corporate overlords. The excellent coming-of-age film “Little Darlings,” for example, was released by Paramount in 1980 but never given a proper home video presentation until independent label Vinegar Syndrome’s new sub-label Cinématographe put out an exquisite 4K Blu-ray. While Paramount never saw the value in releasing the film in its correct aspect ratio or fidelity to its intended color and sound mix, Cinématographe producer Justin LaLiberty felt that licensing the title and creating a new transfer from the original negative was in keeping with Vinegar Syndrome’s mission to fill in the gaps of film history.

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Hertzberg also notes that while the customer base for boutique Blu-ray labels is dedicated and passionate, it is also finite — a major challenge given the high costs involved with keeping a label running.

Those costs are largely front-loaded, as studios require minimum guarantees in the form of initial fees, as well as a percentage of royalties once the discs are released. One of the added difficulties is that no two studios are alike, and even for the same studio different titles dictate different terms. “Each studio has its own way of doing things,” Vinegar Syndrome‘s Joe Rubin told IndieWire.