I have been reluctant to purchase items from JEM because I find them way to expensive. I admit I know little about what goes into making these available to the public- and thus the price may be justified. I assume that different things are more costly (like interviews and restoration), but I cannot imagine a Fabreingan requires that much capital to produce.
Bottom line- for a company that raises 1 mil a year from the community I would hope the products would be subsidized or just cheaper. I give them every year when they raise- but I cannot bring myself to pay so much for the DVD's (besides when I do). Thus I know if they were cheaper they would sell more. I Love what they do and find it essential for the next generation, but making it so exclusive defeats the purpose.
Does any else have this opinion?
If you think otherwise please elaborate.
Disclaimer: Not looking to attack or offend anyone. I am just Schmoozing.
http://www.jemstore.com/Default.asp
Every aspect of the process of getting photos or videos to you costs exponentially more than you would guess.
Let's take the example of subtitles you mentioned. You need to pay someone to translate in every language you have the subtitles. This can't be just anyone proficient in those languages, it needs to be someone with the knowledge and appreciation of chassidus and the Rebbe to be sure the translation is not only technically accurate, but in the correct context and spirit of the Rebbe's words. You then need to have each of those translations edited by likely two or three editors of equal or greater qualification.
Already, a 10 minute sicha has a few dozen hours of work by expensive professionals.
Now you need a video editor to place the subtitles on the video at the correct time - again, keep in mind this is happening with multiple languages. This is not just a matter of slapping text on a video like you can do on movie maker, it's a complicated process to get the contrasts right, without switching up the formatting and keeping it all uniform.
Add in another dozen hours for a 10 minute sicha by video editors.
Now think how much time went into a full length farbrengen - just for the subtitles!
Subtitles might be the easiest aspect of the whole video. Proper storage, restoration and archiving costs thousands more than you would guess each month.
For example, I saw a collection of thousands of pictures JEM obtained - they were on about 20 external hard drives lying in a box in a mess of tangled wires. Every time they plugged in a hard drive all they could do was hope and pray it hadn't been corrupted. They spent massive amounts of money backing up those photos in multiple off site locations, and hundreds and hundreds of hours sorting through them, editing and posting them online.
That was a digital collection. A film collection, like Freidin, was exponentially more expensive to store in temperature and environmentally controlled vaults, and then to restore, edit and correct each photo and make availble.
The costs are staggering, but pale in comparison to storing, restoring and editing video.
I don't work for JEM, though I have worked on a few projects with them.
Believe me, every penny is justified and then some. No one is getting wealthy there, quite the opposite - they run on a skeleton staff compared to what they truly need.
I'm not saying that JEM does nothing I disagree with, that's far from true. I also take advantage of some of "the competition" - which, incidentally, would almost certainly lose any Din Torah or civil suite if JEM chose that route - but your question is whether the costs are justified, and the answer to that is a resounding yes.
