screened.com could have been huge!

I just got nostalgic and a little annoyed today when I realized that IMDB hasn't had discussion boards since February 20, 2017. I used to go there after watching a movie to see what people had found interesting, while ignoring the trolls for the most part. I started thinking of what other site could offer per-movie/actor/director/producer forums. Oh I know: screened.com! Note: please don't go there now unless you want to be depressed.

Screened was so great and underappreciated I think. It could have really grown to become the main destination for movie lovers, even more than IMDB. @rorie and @alex used to make awesome content there and it would have been a natural place for a Film & 40s feature.

CBSi should get hold of some old backups of the site and buy back the domain. If the right people were behind it, I would definitely become a frequent user again.

My second favorite site behind Giant Bomb.

It's funny you're saying this, because as much as a lot of us fondly remember the Screened.com content, especially the podcast in my case, I'm guessing that it was far and away the least successful of the 5 Whiskey Media websites as far as internet traffic and potential for commercial success back in the day.

I really miss Screened. Is there any way to listen to the podcasts anymore?

@pompouspizza: A duder actually archived a bunch of screened podcasts and other video content up on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/user/untitledproductions1/playlists?shelf_id=12&view=50&sort=dd

EDIT: I think he has most of them, but seems like he hasn't uploaded much in a while.

Screened was a fantastic site. Seemed everything they put together was meant to be of the highest quality. Joey did some incredible editing work week after week, while Rorie and Alex constantly hustled to keep things exciting.

The features were creative, the podcast discussion was smart, the forums were fun to visit, and all the work probably drove them a little insane.

I'll say that Screened was the period when I became a dedicated movie fan. These days I visit Red Letter Media for my movie talk, but Screened was something special.

Didn't Screened kinda die out because of how much of a pain it was to deal with movie studios?

I swear I remember a podcast or a video or something where Jeff made a joking remark about that.

Yep, Screened was right up there with Giant Bomb for me back in the day. Amazing podcast and great articles.

Screened was great. They had so many great video features like half good half bad (discussing what was good and bad about polarizing movies) and another video feature where they discussed which movie was worse. There was one video I remember where Rorie and Alex debated on which Lethal Weapon sequel was worse, 3 or 4, and Ryan Davis helped end the debate once and for all (thought 3 was inferior). It's a bummer that its not around, but it is what it is. We at least have Films and 40's to watch movies with the GBEast duders and hear their commentary.

I think their location was the big hurdle. San Fran wasn't/isn't the epicenter for movies. An LA or NYC base of operations would have done wonders for screened. R.I.P.

IMDB getting rid of their boards is probably the best move they could have made. Each time I ventured there it was nearly as bad as the YouTube comment section, full of people insulting each other rather than any thoughtful discussion taking place.

Screened was amazing. It was where I had planned to go once Giant Bomb had reached its natural conclusion.

Screened was the only site that I put work into on the wiki. I loved putting together wiki pages for actors, actresses and movies. That was a lot of fun. I do think, as @corwag put it, not being in LA or NYC really hurt them.

@humanity: Yeah I agree. It's probably a huge relief for them to not have to deal with the moderating and the policing. A more community focused site is better suited for that kind of thing. I do think that the internet needs a place where people can discuss movies and actors etc. I can't think of a place that provides a similar service other than generic phpbb-like forums spread around different sites. I personally prefer more professional sites like IMDB or Screened where the content is produced by a dedicated staff, the community is moderated, and has a fairly large user base.

I watched so many movies during the 2009-2011 period because of Screened. I have watched so many good movies that I would have never even heard about thanks to their reviews. Also, if it wasn't for Eric Pope's 5 star review of I Saw the Devil, I would have never watched that amazing movie. Screened, I miss you dearly.

Okayplayer and RateYourMusic's forums have decent film discussion, less traffic but better moderated (or at least a more focused community). Okayplayer also has the bonus of being frequented by several people who work in the industry in production and screenplay capacities so you get some pretty good insight into and discussion on why a film was good, bad or in between (as well as pre-release hints as to which will likely be the case).

It's a pretty slow moving board, though, so it takes a pretty huge movie for any real discussion to be generated most of the time. But I find it a primary resource for thoughts and discussion on anything that's a big deal in a given month.

It was the only wiki I've contributed to. Shame things turned out the way did.

For anyone interested in listening to the Behind the Screen Door Podcast you can download most of the episodes from this Google Drive Link here. I am not sure if this has been posted in a previous thread but here is a repost of another video link with some more stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsAvBC9cNnW4AqzpVgDlU2Q

I put so much time into the Buffy and West Wing wiki pages, such a shame that it's gone. I had a lot of fun with that site

I feel like Screened was ahead of it's time. It was around during that era like directly before movie-focused Youtube channels like genuinely blew up. They were around, sure, but like NostalgiaCritic and RedLetterMedia are the only big names I can think of who were still somewhat big back then.

This is just me playing wannabe businessman, but I feel like if things didn't go down the way they did and they kept cranking out Youtube content, they'd probably be a pretty big name.

Yeah I really always got that impression. Something as general as IMDB can thrive but I don't think that many people care to take in movie based content of that kind.

Podcasts have taken off and I think that could have kept going. But I think people care less than ever about writing on film.

That's an entirely different model though. You keep costs low and focus if you are just doing YT. Operating a site, wiki, etc is a whole different beast with bigger costs.

To me, the wiki stuff on Whisky was always facing an uphill battle. It has worked on GB mainly first because I think it's a good site editorially and the community has been good. That was enough of a draw and the rest worked. Video games made more sense this way I think also with forums and all that because it was a younger medium with fans who grew up on forums.

With movies and TV there is less of that I feel. There is less room for discussion (how did you play?, what did you choose?, How do I fix X or how do I beat X? topics are all gone, which is common stuff) and movies are small investments. I think the wiki stuff for those areas is mostly just set up around other sites already in a way that was harder than GB.

There is room for that kind of niche coverage of movies and music and mediums like that but I think they pretty much have to be small set ups. Youtube channels, not sites with forums, wiki, etc.

As others have pointed out, movies don't jive well with the Giant Bomb format, but I think the bigger reason is that dedicated movie sites really don't exist anymore. Look at what happened to sites like the Dissolve. There are still sites that deal with movies, for sure, but alongside TV, food, culture, etc.

I also miss Screened. Enjoyed editing the database and the forums had some good conversations on movies, like plot points and etc.

Where is a good place to disuss movies online these days?

Some of the community created this Wiki. I haven't had time to spend much time on there. So I can't say what the community has been like.

There's also this other YouTube channel with more stuff. It also links to some Vimeo links in some of the descriptions.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsAvBC9cNnW4AqzpVgDlU2Q/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=0

Screened was a treasure not fit for this world, I suppose.

Their video features were so interesting :( I really haven't seen anything like it elsewhere.

Again just a quick bump for my comment above if it was missed. Here is a google drive link for about 90 episodes of the Behind the Screened Door podcast.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-nXMepriHp7MjcwbTE5eFdGV3c?pageId=115337442451733518897

y'all are too kind

My favorite memory of Screened was when they did the live show of watching a movie and they did one for Blade 2. They had a banner contest and I won! Also having Alex talk about it made me fan girl out a little.

Here's the banner I made:

RIP Screened

@corwag: Red Letter Media do ok and they're in Minnesota, and they are the closest thing I have seen to a Giant Bomb of films outside of Screened. Depends what type of coverage you do, really.

As others have said, the film industry does seem a lot harder to work with than the game industry though - you notice that the mainstream outlets only ever get one arbitrary 30 second clip to use, while RLM has to do various things to avoid copyright strikes when they show clips using bits of the trailers of modern films. And it must be a nightmare for anyone other than the traditional major media outlets to get an interview with someone for any kind of studio release. As a result, RLM's best videos tend to be of older films.

The majority of movie youtubers tend to be pretty godawful shills, sadly.

Thanks for the youtube link! After watching couple of videos, I only wish I've seen them sooner. I only joined the site on 2014, so even though my first online review was by @alex ,telling me about God of war, Screened has always been quite the mystery for me.

Defending Your Movie: Mars Attacks! by @rorie made me remember how good Mars Attacks! was and is.

One can only hope, that this site about collecting coins and fixing old arcade machines, could someday do something similar, even in way smaller scale. (Like the Fifth Element :) )

See that would have been my impression. Big sites like that have likely a nearly impossible "moderator & moderation" issue. There are just too many pages and too many posters to have any amount of mods keeping a check on run-away threads.

Screened was quite a bit of fun! We were making good progress in terms of traffic when it was sold to whatever company took it over. I am still fairly mad that they wiped all the content from the web, but I guess that's the breaks you accept when you work for someone else.

Rorie's renditions of "Faith of the Heart" still haunt my dreams.

Screened WAS huge. It's the Internet that got small.

Screened was so much better than IMDB in just about every way, it sucks the way things turned out for them in Whiskey buyout. I use Cinemos/RateYourMusic film site a lot now though.

I loved screened. Even stuck with it (for way too long) after it was sold off. Finaldasa did a good job of keeping it going, but Rorie and Alex's magic is hard to compare.

Awesome to see that some of the content has been preserved. It's still fun to watch to this day.

@rorie: Every few years, it seemed like someone had some archived videos to upload. Do you guys happen to have any of your old stuff on your personal drives?

Not asking to upload somewhere because movie studios, but I'm curious if you can go back to your Screened work whenever you'd like.

Joey Fameli has all the old stuff on hard drives somewhere, but I doubt it's easily accessible for him!

Think of all the YouTube thumbnails with a red circle and a red arrow pointing at the red circle that Screened.com could've uploaded!

Honestly, in today's environment where a movie news YouTube channel can't compete without dozens of breathless "IN THE LAST JEDI TRAILER LUKE SKYWALKER'S FINGERNAILS ARE SLIGHTLY LONGER THAN IN RETURN OF THE JEDI WHAT DOES IT MEEEEAN?!" videos, I can't imagine either Rorie or Alex being willing to play that game. They got out before internet movie news websites lost all sense of dignity.