I know that I’m very lucky that I have so many opportunities to see movies, and most of those opportunities are free for me. Things still aren’t exactly the way they were before the pandemic, but there are still free movie screenings at theaters and screening venues, I just haven’t been to one yet. I know that I’ll start going to those again eventually, but I’m still hesitant to go to theaters. But fortunately, I also have the chance to watch things at home when we get screeners for the SAG Awards.
When I first joined SAG-AFTRA, all the screeners we got at home were DVDs. This included TV shows where we would sometimes get an entire season of a show on DVD. There was one year we got a free month of Netflix so we could watch all the Netflix shows directly on the service. And over time, we started to get more and more screeners as either digital downloads or through various online screening services. I liked the digital screeners because they were instantly available for us and we didn’t have to wait on the mail. And once I got an upgraded AppleTV, I was able to watch the digital ones on my tv instead of on my computer.
In the past few years, we were given the option to opt out of physical DVD screeners and just get digital ones. The first year it was offered, I paid attention to what we got as DVDs versus digital options. And everything that was a DVD was digital too, so I opted out of the DVDs since I didn’t need them anymore. I found the online screening services pretty easy to use, so I didn’t see any reason to get DVDs.
Most years, I make a good effort to try to watch everything that is nominated. I don’t usually make it through everything, but I try to get through the majority of them. And this year, I tried to make a plan to figure out how many movies I’d need to watch each week in order to get through all the movies before we had to vote. It pretty much came down to watching 2-3 movies a week, which is a lot but doable. Or at least it seemed doable until I got sick. I couldn’t focus enough to watch an entire movie. I also didn’t feel up to watching anything and just wanted to rest. And after I was feeling better, I had a lot of things I needed to catch up on that were more important than spending a few hours in front of my tv. So by the time we had to vote for the winners, I had only seen a handful of movies and none of the ones that were the front runners. I decided not to vote this year since it didn’t seem fair, but I still planned on enjoying the awards show and seeing what happens.
Previously, the SAG Awards were on cable. But this year was the first year the show partnered with Netflix. In the future, the show will be streamed live on Netflix once they get their live streaming service set up. But this year, it was available on YouTube through the Netflix YouTube channel.
I actually loved this new format. There were no commercial breaks, so the show was shorter than normal. In place of commercials, between awards they had short compilation clips of past winners and past shows. I really liked how that worked out and it felt much more of a celebration of the union as a whole and not just those who won. And I think those who won had a similar feeling as many of the acceptance speeches recognized SAG-AFTRA members who are not household names and are still working hard for their next role. I really felt inspired by so many of those speeches and I have a feeling I’ll be rewatching some of them in the future when I need a pick-me-up.
Even though I don’t have access to the screeners anymore, I hope that I’ll be able to watch several more of the nominated films. I know they’ll be online eventually and I’ll just have to make the effort to find them and watch them. And hopefully, next year I’ll be able to plan watching screeners better or be able to watch more movies over time if I start going to in-person screenings again.
You Might Also Like
It’s SAG Awards Time! (or I Still Love Watching To See Who Wins)
Awards Season (or I Have No Idea How I Can Watch All The Movies)
SAG Awards (or Watching After Knowing The Winners)
A Night Of SAG Awards (or Watching Union Unity)
The SAG Awards (or I Am An Actor)
Being An Active And Interactive Viewer (or SAG Awards Live-Tweeting)
