Scarecrow Video Presentation

1. Northwest Film History –
Scarecrow Video
Preserving a northwest testament to film.

2. Intro to Scarecrow Video
• Scarecrow Video is an independently owned video sales and rental
store located in the University District of Seattle, Washington.
• It has one of the largest known catelogs of privately owned movies in
the world.
• In 2004, the store produced The Scarecrow Video Movie Guide,
published by Sasquatch Books

3. Why did the store's founder establish the
store and start renting out movies?
• Our founder George decided on a whim one day to open a video
store, which he did in the back of a record store.
• In 1985, George Latsois started renting movies out of the back of Backtrack Records.

4. When was the building first used for a video
store.
• We've been in this building for more than 15 years now.
• It was December 8th, 1988 when the first official Scarecrow video stroe was opened with its library of over 600 moviesand
films.

5. Does Scarecrow sell movies or has it always
rented them.
• At first we just rented films, but eventually moved on to sales.
• The first store had 200 videos for rent. Upon moving it went up to initially 600, and subsequent remodels and
reorganizations have made it from from exponentially since then.

6. How is scarecrow different from other film stores
and why do you think it is still open while others
have closed?
• What makes Scarecrow different is its huge collection, over 125,000
individual movies, from what we can tell the biggest
in the world.
• This statement is even more true nowso than ever, as current info on their website states there is well over 200,000 video titles
stored in their building.

7. Do you think renting physical movies will ever die
out? Or do you think the store will stay open for
decades to come and why.
• There's really no way of knowing that. Hopefully, with the help of the
community and our customers, Scarecrow will be
around for a long time.
• Scarecrow video has since closed and just recently re-opened as a non-profit company after raising money through a
successful Kickstarter campaign.

8. In summary…
• When people began with wanting to take videos home if only for a short while or even to own videos in their
own home people would go to stores where they could either buy or rent a movie of their choice from a
selected library of various VHS tapes of different movies that were available. These businesses continued
popularity into the DVD era but as movies and media became more and more readily available for the use in
computers as well as phones, game consoles, the internet, and other devices that allowed people to have
films readily available in their own homes the film rental and purchase stores quickly became more and
more obsolete and many of these stores closed down. For this project about film history, Justin and I chose
to interview one of the oldest video rental stores that is still operational today. This video is called the
Scarecrow which is located in the heart of Seattle. When talking with the employee in an interview, they
were very enthusiastic about teaching us a bit more about their store as well as the film rental and purchase
industry from the Scarecrow's experience. The first questions were, “when did the building first become a
video rental store?” and “when the building was first used for a video store?” The Scarecrow itself has been
in business for over fifteen years now and was originally a record store. So history shows this building
following from the era that was sound passed into to the era dominated by sight as well as sound

9. • The fact that this building went from one medium of art to another lead me to ask if the store sold movies or
if it has always rented them, but I quickly found out that when the store first began stocking films that it only
allowed the option of rentals and eventually expanded into selling films to their loyal customers. This still
standing business caught our attention very quickly and we couldn't help ourselves from asking why the
owner decided to open the business in the first place. The employee informed us that the founder, George,
opened the shop on a whim and originally opened the back of the record store as a film rental section. But
with the opening and eventual closing of businesses such as Block Buster, I asked what exactly made
Scarecrow different from the other film stores and why did they, the employee, think it is still open and has
not succumbed to obsolescence like their competitors. The answer shocked me. According to theemployee,
the film library housed by Scare crow is one of the largest, if not THE largest, in the world at 125,000 films in
their repertoire. To end the interview, we asked if the employee thought physically renting and buying
movies will ever completely die out or if they thought the store would stay open for decades to come and
why. The employee thought for a moment and then replied there was really no way of knowing such things
but they hope that with the help of their community and their customers the Scarecrow will be open for a
very long time.
• During this project Chelsia came up with the outline for the project, contacted the Scarecrow for the
interview/conducted the interview, and wrote the summary and Justin came up with the photos and had the
skills and know how to put together the power point slides.