What are screeners? What is “screener season”?
Screeners are copies of the movies studios want us to vote on over awards season. Industry folk get them via their unions, generally, so I get mine from SAG. We usually get them around this time of year — so we can watch them all over the big ol December shut down (this town EMPTIES OUT from about December 18th through Jan 8th).
My screeners come for the SAG awards movies. Other unions get different films (sometimes) and have different awards to vote on and at the end of it all, we’re supposed to break all the DVDs and hurl them into a fiery abyss. Everyone in this town 100% absolutely does that.
More and more, we get DIGITAL screeners — which can be an insanely shitty way to watch movies. They would send them so you could ONLY watch them on iTunes or on the studio’s god-awful video platform so we were forced to watch things on a small computer with mediocre/bad speakers. It was enraging. Now at least the iTunes films I can stream to my TV. (On the other hand… those DVDs were SO DAMN WASTEFUL).
They also often come with watermarks that pop up randomly in the movie. It can be a little jarring.
But… free movies!
It’s the single thing about my job that impresses my family, so I’ll TAKE IT.