Screener (promotional)

A screener (SCR) is an advance or promotional copy of a film or television series sent to critics, awards voters, video stores (for their manager and employees), and other film industry professionals, including producers and distributors. It is similar to giving out a free advance copy of books before it is printed for mass distribution. Director John Boorman is credited with creating the first Oscar screeners to promote his film The Emerald Forest in 1985.

Overview

Screeners help critics and awards voters see smaller movies that do not have the marketing advantage or distribution of major studio releases. Positive mentions can result in awards consideration. A screener often has no post-processing. According to critic Alan Sepinwall, DVD screeners occasionally give picture problems. Nowadays, physical DVD copies still appear to be issued, but screeners are also distributed digitally to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the media/publicity sites of individual television networks for television shows. A group of independent film makers sued and won a decision against the MPAA. The MPAA later reinstated the screeners with the implementation of a new policy requiring recipients to sign a binding contract that they would not share the screeners with others. That year, screeners were only distributed in videocassette format, with procedures in place to protect them.

In January 2004, academy member Carmine Caridi was announced as a person of interest in an ongoing FBI investigation into video piracy. He was subsequently expelled from the academy, after he was found to have sent as many as 60 screeners a year for at least three years to a contact called Russell Sprague in Illinois. Caridi was later ordered to pay Warner Bros. for copyright infringement of two of their films, Mystic River and The Last Samurai, a total of $300,000 ($150,000 per title).

In early 2006, Lions Gate Films sent a DVD of Crash to every member of the Screen Actors Guild during voting for the 12th Screen Actors Guild Awards; the film ultimately won its prize for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, and subsequently went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. This was the first time screeners had been sent to SAG's entire membership, as its large size (over 130,000 at the time) had presented cost and security concerns. Variety reported that Lions Gate was not concerned about screener piracy, because the film had already been released on home video. It was later said that the success of this gambit had largely outweighed any remaining reservations about large-scale screener distribution among film studios.

In 2014, a copy of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty appeared on file sharing networks, bearing the watermark "Ellen DeGeneres 11/26/13". 20th Century Fox sent the copy to her show around the time she interviewed actor and director Ben Stiller. It was not an Oscar screener, since the studio forensically watermarks those copies differently. It is unusual for a pirate copy to identify a specific individual. Andy Baio, former CTO of Kickstarter, reported the appearance of the pirated copy on his blog Waxy. Baio started tracking the illicit distribution of Oscar screeners in 2004 and publishes his findings on his blog, which turned into an annual ritual whereby he updates his spreadsheet.

In March 2016, TorrentFreak reported that original screener DVDs appear in dozens of eBay listings. According to eBay seller NoHo Trader, the sale of Emmy screener DVDs is lawful, although studios occasionally still take down Emmy DVD auctions and other lawful promotional materials. The Television Academy indicates the limited license governing the use of these screeners prohibits further distribution.

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