Gadgetory

the way we watch and discover movies has changed we have Netflix Hulu and just about everything right at our fingertips but like everything online there's an algorithm telling us what it thinks we want to watch you know our personalization learns from what you watch how long you watch it how quickly how quickly do you go to the next episode and while that can be helpful and also restricts us to watching the same kinds of movies but there was a time before the algorithm when your movie selection was based on spontaneity word of mouth and for most of us that experience came from blockbuster nobody has the movie I want in 1994 Viacom acquired blockbuster for 8.4 billion dollars and by 2004 blockbuster had over 9000 stores across the world now in the u.s. there's only one we went to Bend Oregon to see what we lost and algorithms replaced human curation and how a small town became home to the last blockbuster in America so we are in Bend Oregon we're going to a big-box retailer to watch the general manager hand-picked DVDs for the store so that people can rent them later from Blockbuster she has to go to the store because blockbuster corporate doesn't exist anymore there's nobody sending them DVDs so full disclosure we called the big-box store before shooting here to get a location release but out of concern for the blockbuster manager of Sandy the store didn't want to sign because technically what she's doing here goes against the retailer's policy up it's probably the most popular one that I bought in here we sell that one a law and rent at a time wolf of Wall Street very popular Leonardo DiCaprio yes Lord of the Rings always we sell this one constantly and rent it out all the time sandy Harding is the general manager of Blockbuster where she's been working for the last 10 years she knows what movies her customers want and she can even identify a lot of them just by their voice when they call the store she uses a service in Portland that sends them about 80% of their videos and she shops through the rest every Tuesday morning you get the new ones online it's the classic stuff that people can't always find so they come in to see us because they know they get it sandy is basically doing what Netflix does knowing what her customers want to rent and serving that to more people I mean that's business but in the case of this store there's a specific community in mind which makes the whole thing more personal oh there it is I never thought I would see that sign again it smells the same it absolutely smells the same oh wow I haven't seen any of these things any of these cases or any of these movies before it's been so long since I've been in a DVD rental place like this is so much stuff there's a place for both there's a place for Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and there's a place for this and I think that we finally found that comfortable spot and so I think that people are starting to realize that coming in here picking up a movie walking around talking about movies is something that people miss it's hard to find spaces where the point is discovering things or the point is being around people who like the same things as you the employees of the store care about movies and more importantly they care about sharing them with people I mean just look at the section of employee tix it's updated regularly from me theas is a really cool sci-fi movie it's actually based on the alien series another one rec room for a dream is great the employee showing me around the store is Sandy's son Ryan this is actually completely edited on a software that's totally free for anybody which is a DaVinci Resolve as we move toward these digital spaces we lose the expertise of people like Ryan you can walk down the aisle and have a movie jump out at you or you can ask someone for a recommendation you definitely walk in and you will be looking along bookshelf and then next thing you know you see something that might catch your eye it's not something that's just right on the screen my kids can wander around and a lot of times they're picking out movies that wouldn't be as popular as others sometimes they come in and I just want to I feel like seeing a movie and I don't know what it's gonna be and sometimes I walk out of here with like five totally different genres it was I was surprised to learn that we were the last one so while they are the last blockbuster in the u.s. there was a time when they were an independent video store before they were consumed by the corporate chain we converted in 2000 Blockbuster they made us an offer we couldn't refuse we were in in here being Pacific video being very happy and they came to town and said well we need more blockbusters in this town and we'd likely to convert and if you don't we're gonna put a couple more blockbusters in so Kentish er is the owner of this store and has been since it was Pacific video back in the 90s and is a great movie town boys has been people were amazed when we had four stores the population was only about fifty fifty-five thousand and they said there is no way that that town can support that many stores and yet it did Bend is located three hours outside of Portland and it's small it seems like everything is five minutes away the people here really care about their art downtown you'll find literally dozens of shops town and locally made products there's a yearly Film Festival and outside of that there are three theaters two of which are independent that show features and shorts year-round it's a town that takes pride in its craft and its community it's a really interesting town in that you know it's relatively small but people have such a love for the art form that all of us including Ben film are able to do pretty well that's Todd Looby who runs Ben's film festival it's celebrating its 15th anniversary this October I think the curation aspect is super important like you know in a lot of any movies that say came out in the 90s there'll be the video store guy I mean like the Kevin Smith surrogate who is the guy at the video store who's you know telling people what movies to get the curating own sections of the movies they love and want people to watch so people are gravitating towards that experience some kind of curation someone who they trust to tell them what to see people here really value these face-to-face interactions it's the same with Sandy the employees of the big-box retailers around town know her and so they let her buy DVDs from the store even though they're not really supposed to it's easy to see how this town is home to the last blockbuster but most of us don't live in Bend and while there are local video stores across the country we need new ways to discover movies that are more accessible because most of us don't live near video stores either but there are some companies thinking about that kind of accessibility and they handpick videos you can watch online where we come from as a place of knowledge and passion choosing films that we think are interesting and vital and important versus data that makes assumptions about well this was popular so this should be popular to you like this so maybe you like that test that has no human quality at all Daniel Casman is the director of content at movie a video streaming service that uses human curation to select its movie catalog what we may see now is just an increasing amount of channels so Disney is about to launch their streaming service Netflix is promoting their original content Hulu as their original content but I think more valuable are this sort of channel idea that it's more specialized when you look at something like shudder which is a channel it's specifically dedicated to horror films it's much more focused in terms of the programming that it offers curation I feel like always needs to exist hand in hand with a venue whether you're talking about a physical venue like a theatre Cinematheque or an online venue like movie or Hulu or Netflix going forward I think technology can leave us somewhere in the middle somewhere between Netflix and the video store but right now streaming services seem to be more focused on improving their algorithms and diversifying your movie palate the Internet should have made Discovery easier and maybe it did early on but over time the open web has become much more closed into apps and feeds admittedly this blockbuster and a lot of other video stores still partly exists because of nostalgia and sure that'll bring instagramers and news teams to cover them as an oddity but that nostalgia isn't what's going to keep this store in business it's the loyal customer base that the employees here have cultivated over the years this blockbuster is a product and a part of the community here in Bend and while we currently live in a world driven by algorithms maybe we can find a way to bring a little of that onto the web hey thanks for watching if you like this video please subscribe for The Verge on YouTube and 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