Special edition
Encyclopedia
The terms special edition, limited edition and variants such as deluxe edition, collector's edition and others, are used as a marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
incentive for various kinds of products, originally published products related to the arts, such as books, prints or recorded music and films, but now including cars, fine wine and other products. A limited edition is restricted in the number of copies produced, although in fact the number may be very low or very high. A special edition implies there is extra material of some kind included. The term is frequently used on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
film releases, often when the so-called special edition is actually the only version released.
Collector's edition
Collector's edition may just be another term for special edition. It may also refer to books in special limited and numbered editionsLimited edition books
A limited edition book is a description of a book which is released in a limited print run quantity, usually much smaller than publishing industry standards, and connotes a level of scarcity or exclusivity...
, sometimes hand-bound, and signed by the artist and containing one or more original works or prints produced directly from his work and printed under his supervision.
Disc products
Popular culturePopular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
widely employs special, deluxe, and limited edition in marketing, releasing subsequent, improved versions of film DVDs, music and video games. Companies widely use special editions and incremental improvements to sell the same products to consumers multiple times. This has been seen in the 10th Anniversary edition of Titanic
Titanic (1997 film)
Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater and Billy Zane as Rose's fiancé, Cal...
, which simply consists of the first two discs of the previous Special Collector's edition, only with new packaging.
In many cases, successful film releases have had items made in limited numbers. These "limited editions" usually contain the best DVD edition possible of a film with special items in a box set, sometimes containing items available only in the limited edition. Items marked thus are often (but not always) released for a shorter time and in lower quantity than common editions, often with a running number (e.g. "13055 of 20000") printed on the products to boost the rarity feel, as the company implies not to manufacture more. It is also common to have such items packaged with unique designs.
With the success of DVDs, special editions of films themselves (instead of just special editions of film DVDs) have also become fairly common. Sharing similarities with the concept of a director's cut
Director's cut
A director's cut is a specially edited version of a film, and less often TV series, music video, commercials, comic book or video games, that is supposed to represent the director's own approved edit...
(another long-suffering inflation-by-marketing term). These generally feature additional in-movie material. The material may be footage originally deleted from the final cut, or new digitally-created, interpolated content. Unlike true director's cuts, the directors may not have had part in such projects, such as in Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut is a 2006 re-edit of the 1980 superhero film, Superman II, by Richard Donner, who shot a large part of the original movie before being replaced as director by Richard Lester. It stars Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Terence Stamp, Margot Kidder and Marlon Brando...
, in which Richard Donner did not help create the new version, just supply the material. The Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
telemovie The Five Doctors
The Five Doctors
The Five Doctors is a special feature-length episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, produced in celebration of the programme's twentieth anniversary. It had its world premiere in the United States, on the Chicago PBS station WTTW and various other PBS member stations...
was edited, recut, amongst various other changes to make the "Special Edition" in 1999 for the first DVD release of the episodfe.
Limited edition prints
Limited edition prints, also known as LE's, have been standard in printmakingPrintmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
from the nineteenth century onwards. A limit to the print run is crucial, as many traditional printmaking techniques can only produce a limited number of best quality impressions. This can be as few as ten or twenty for a technique like drypoint
Drypoint
Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. Traditionally the plate was copper, but now acetate, zinc, or plexiglas are also commonly used...
, but more commonly would be in the low hundreds - print runs of over a thousand are regarded as dubious by the serious art market for original prints, even though with many techniques there is no loss of quality.
Edition sizes higher than about 500 are likely to be of print reproductions of paintings, of much less value, though some modern techniques blur this traditional distinction. As in other fields, the use of the concept has become largely driven by marketing imperatives, and has been misused in parts of the market. In particular, lithographic, photogravure, rotogravure, and giclee
Giclée
Giclée , is a neologism coined in 1991 by printmaker Jack Duganne for fine art digital prints made on ink-jet printers. The name originally applied to fine art prints created on IRIS printers in a process invented in the late 1980s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is...
reproductions of prints, derived from photographs of an original print, which are most unlikely to have any investment value, are often issued in limited editions implying that they will have such value. These need to be distinguished from the original artist's print, carefully produced directly from his work and printed under the artist's supervision. In UK and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
the Fine Art Trade Guild
Fine Art Trade Guild
The Fine Art Trade Guild is an organisation representing the fine art and framing industry. Based in London, the Guild operates primarily in the United Kingdom and Ireland, also in a smaller capacity in New Zealand....
ensures the quality and verification of limited edition prints by employing a number of strictly administered regulations for all processes and aspects related to them.
A limited edition is normally hand signed and numbered by the artist, typically in pencil, in the form (eg): 14/100. The first number is the number of the print itself. The second number is the number of overall prints the artist will print of that image. The lower the second number is, the more valuable and collectible the limited editions are likely to be, within whatever their price range is. A small number of "artists' proofs" may also be produced as well, signed and with "AP", "proof" etc.
Music
In terms of musical albums, the term "deluxe edition" refers to a re-release of an album, generally a sufficient period after the initial release, featuring extra content related to the album. This often includes some or all of the following: demo recordingsDemo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...
of album tracks; live recordings of album tracks; alternate takes, mixes, or edits of album tracks; B-sides
B-Sides
B-Sides is an iTunes-exclusive album from the Coventry Trio The Enemy, consisting of ten songs that were B-sides to the single releases from their debut album We'll Live and Die in These Towns.-Track list:#Fear Killed the Youth of Our Nation...
from album singles that did not appear on the album; DVD content, including music videos. These editions are commonly repackaged, with the new content on a second disc and many feature additional liner notes
Liner notes
Liner notes are the writings found in booklets which come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for vinyl records and cassettes.-Origin:...
.
Also, some albums are initially released in two editions, a regular retail version and a "special" or "limited" version in distinctive packaging and often including extras such as a second disc, a video DVD, or liner notes expanded into a hardback book. Generally, the special package is only produced for the first pressing or a set number of copies - some are limited to only being sold at one chain of retailers. It is important to distinguish this from an expanded re-release, since those are generally available widely and for a long period of time.
Milking
Milking, or double-dipping, refers to the practice of releasing multiple editions of the same product (usually a CD, DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
), simultaneously or at different times, with the purpose of enticing consumers to buy more than one edition. This can be done with, for example, a special edition, a director's cut, an ultimate edition, and a collector's edition, sometimes with different features or supplementary material.
The consumer may be persuaded to purchase multiple editions, with the belief that the additional features or content will be worth paying for a product that is largely equivalent to one already owned.
See also
- Box sets
- Director's cutDirector's cutA director's cut is a specially edited version of a film, and less often TV series, music video, commercials, comic book or video games, that is supposed to represent the director's own approved edit...
- Limited edition booksLimited edition booksA limited edition book is a description of a book which is released in a limited print run quantity, usually much smaller than publishing industry standards, and connotes a level of scarcity or exclusivity...
- List of video game collector and limited editions