Several years ago I swore off watching cam copies because they are fucking annoying, you often can’t see or even hear what the hell is going on the picture quality is so bad. Often there are missing segments of picture because the cam operator had to hide it because of an usher etc.
However my friends would often watch these as if it was some kind of forbidden pleasure, ooo forbidden 
Now that we can get blurays from Europe/Asia before a film even hits theaters in the US, cams just don’t have the same appeal…
Because they are cheap bastards who care more about seeing everything that comes out than actually getting any enjoyment from said movie. If they really want to see it they’ll go to the theatre, but cams have replaced the whole ‘eh, I’ll wait and rent it later’ mentality.
I used to enjoy the cheap (free) thrill of cams but not anymore. There’s too much content I want to watch and don’t have time for, so I’m content to wait for legal, best quality versions of movies. Plus, I believe that to be able to enjoy and judge a film, you need to see it in the best possible presentation.
I’ll meet you halfway and say it’s the factor you propose AND the fact that movie theatres are gouging bastards who care more about getting every possible penny out of your wallet than providing an enjoyable watching experience. Everything from having just one or two damn ticket windows open, even at peak hours, to showing the films at half brightness to extend the projector bulb lifespan. That’s on top of rampant Ticket Inflation, gimmicks like 3d glasses(which cost them pennies but they charge you dollars), and concessions(which are also usually under-staffed).
One of the local megaplexes had sold out of all their Avengers showings opening weekend and was actually adding showings, but they still had just two ticket windows open(booth was built for six) and three concessions lines open(they have two concession booths, one with six line capacity, one with four line capacity). The theatres were jam packed, with people who had paid about ten bucks each, WAITING in massive lines for either tickets or concessions.
Throw “avoiding the massive inconvenience and overcharging modern theater experience” on the “pro” side of the scale when looking at cam bootlegs.
Enjoy,
Steven
I’ve come up with a sure-fire way to avoid those long concession lines and outrageous popcorn and drink prices. Go straight into the auditorium.
But with cams, you’re trading in what you came to see - a movie on the big screen - for a grainy, tiny, often out-of-sync movie. So you get to avoid the lines and high prices, but you get screwed on the reason you were there in the first place!
Any creative ways to avoid understaffed ticket booths, paying full price for used 3d glasses, or tickets which seem to rise at about double the rate of general inflation? Because they certainly seem to be gouging people for those items, which aren’t nearly as optional as the concessions.
Except you’re getting the grainy, tiny, often out of sync movie for free and at your own convenience, with your own preferred foods prepared on your schedule. You can pause it to go to the bathroom, you can watch it over and over to get something you missed. Those are not inconsiderable perks, and become larger when you consider the large number of films which are not based around visual effects that only really work in large formats and high definition.
Enjoy,
Steven
Tickets are rising at more than inflation because audiences are shrinking. It’s hard to see in the total numbers because the population is growing and new theaters are being built to service those new areas (although even so, we’ve had some years of ticket falloff recently, which had never happened before ever), but same-store sales had been dropping pretty good even before the Recession. So for any given theater, they have to spread their substantial fixed costs across significantly fewer tix sold. Of course prices go up in such a situation.
Outside of a monopoly situation or, very occasionally, runs on staples, “gouging” is nonsense. Businesses exist to make money. They, each and every one, charge the highest price for their services they think they can charge and still maintain their customer base. If you think a price for some good is reasonable, they’re still trying to squeeze every dime they can out of you – they just happen to toil in a price-sensitive segment. On the flip side, even if gouging were a real thing, it’s not possible. When they try to raise prices too much, their customers leave.
–Cliffy
Nobody watches cam copies when there’s a better quality pirated version available, right? So, some combination of cheapness and impatience.
Let me take a different tack. It’s considered common knowledge now that Tivo and other digital video recorders have revoutionized the way people watch television. Before Tivo the network executives and production companies were really worried about declining broadcast television viewership and the death of TV as a broadcast medium. Ad revenues were down and people were splintering into cable and satellite tv viewership.
Two things came about which changed things. Tivo and dvd box sets. The wild success of both showed production companies that people DID want to see their shows, but at their own time and in their own way. They didn’t want to have to stay home from certain activities on a particular night of the week to see an episode. They wanted to be able to time-shift it, pause it, skip ads, etc. They were even willing to pay cash for dvds of full seasons of content that went out over the air for free originally.
People were willing to trade the TV experience with network scheduled shows, ads, etc. which was all FREE, for more expensive but more controllable forms like DVR and DVD.
Moving out of the cam of a film in a theater to the broader topic of bootlegs in general we can see the tradeoff is the inconvenience and high cost of a movie theater experience for a lower quality, sometimes really terrible quality, virtually free and 100% convenient viewing, even repeat viewing, experience.
They’re also sometimes the only way to get access to a film if the studios don’t distribute it in a particular area. This is mostly for art films, foreign, and independent films, as well as live shows that may not be broadcast outside a certain area/time.
Enjoy,
Steven
You get many of those advantages if you just wait for the official release to DVD/BluRay and the quality of the picture is better. Plus if you use Netflix or Redbox, you can watch a movie for only a dollar or two. If you’re really cheap, wait for the public library’s copy.
To specifically answer the OP, people watch cams because they are anxious to see the movie, don’t want to pay for it and are too impatient to wait for either a decent torrent release or an official DVD/streaming release.
For a lot of people it’s just not “going to the movies” without popcorn and not everyone likes going ~2 hrs without something to drink.
But yeah, there are plenty of reasons to avoid going to the theater other than being a cheapskate. When did people stop being civilized in public? It just seems to get worse every year. Especially now that everyone has some bright blinding phone they can’t keep their hands off for more than 5 mins at a time.
Not that I bother with cams. They’re usually so piss poor in quality as to not be worth bothering with. Just wait for the DVD (or rip, I suppose)
Wait until they get older, then try going 2 hours without having to take a leak. I don’t need a 99 oz. soda making things worse.
One advantage of bootlegs is that you see the movie while everyone is still talking about it.
I stopped buying drinks at the theater a few years ago, purely because it always hit my bladder right at the climax of the movie, leaving me with the unpleasant choice of either getting up to use the restroom and missing the climax, or staying seated to see the climax while my bladder painfully screamed for release. I once missed boobies because I got up to relieve myself!
Someone asked me to download a copy of Knocked Up soon after it opened in the US because it wasn’t due in Australia for a while. I explained that it would be a cam but they didn’t care. I attempted to watch a bit to check that it was what it purported to be but it was unwatchable so I listened for a while.
What I heard was funny enough that I did go and see it at the movies but I can’t help the OP with reasons for people to willingly watch them.
Cams come in different flavors. Firstly you have your audience cams, filmed from the seats, heads getting in the way, poor picture quality, poor sound.
It’s another story with projectionist cams. These are made by the cinema projectionist from a fixed position and with high-quality cameras. They are usually first-rate in both sound and vision.
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Not that I advocate watching them, you’re never going to recapture the experience of the cinema version, even with the ne plus ultra of pirated copies, the DVD screener sent to selected movie folk in advance of the film’s release and often leaked on to the net.
We’ve gotten several reports for this as referring to illegal activity – for which, thanks.
Since the discussion is about why people perform that illegal activity, and isn’t addressing how to do so – and, more importantly, other than a couple of spam posts that have been deleted, where to obtain illegal copies – it’s within the rules. We’re therefore leaving it open.
Again, appreciate everyone who has given us the heads up on this.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator