I would consider what the collective is doing a success…considering they have won awards and forced a complete change in the pace that bike movies are being done..one should definitely consider that a success. It definitely goes well beyond monetary ROI (cultural shift ROI would be far more important to me).
Surfing will always be far more successful money/exposure wise. The sponsors have more money and are willing to put in as much as it takes…there is national/international coverage of almost all events and the sport is not seen as a renegade sport anymore. Bad comparison.
Would you have considered the Down videos as a "huge success"? They won awards for their time, but I still wouldn't have considered them as a success unless you are comparing them to what has been done before. They were better as is the Collective now, but the numbers are still not close to impressive. This all depends on how you define successful. I liked the film, as did you, so they were successful on that level. But the fact that such a small number of the mountain biking population did not buy the film would ultimately be considered as a failure on that level. I'm not saying that it was a bad film, because it wasn't. It just wasn't good enough to sell to even a tenth of the MTB DH/Freeride population.
There are obviously some problems with the films that are currently available, and many of you will disagree, but there is no reason why there can't be a mtb film that attracts more mtbers..
I would like to ask the people who don't worship the Collective/Roam/Disorder what the problems are with these films and others, and why they wouldn't buy them, and what would have to be changed in order to appeal to you.