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DVD Format Changing Movie-making
rgmoore writes "The Los Angeles Times is running an interesting article on the impact of DVDs on the movie making process. They briefly mention the possibilities of end-users being able to re-edit the movie (with a veiled reference to The Phantom Edit) but focus more on the way that it's starting to influence directors and producers during the course of making the movie."
THis would help in editing the bad content of movies (cursing, nudity, etc.) and making some movies out there viewable for the whole family. I like this and hope to see this soon.
I do hope though that this is not limited in any way, if I want to cut the movie up and make my very own "KDENCE's Cut" I should be able to.
"Entertain the Brutes"
Does this mean I can change the end of the recent "Planet of the Apes" so it makes sense and doesn't suck? I'll add my own commentary too -- anything is better than the sham that Tim Burton slapped together on that disk.
~dlb
According to the article, it sounds like they are trying to make things better
for the consumer, considering things like camera angles and music to make a
more enjoyable home experience. I guess since we can more easily see what
mistakes, or whatever go into the movie now, they are trying to take that into
consideration.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
In case you're not familiar with it, you can read all about it here.
Thats what I bet one of the biggest changes has been. Now almost any half-assed movie is gonna have a "making of" featurette on the DVD release.
I don't know about any of you, but I predict that DVD as a form of data storage will soon become a LOT more popular. DVD movies have been out for a few years now, but DVD as a form of data storage hasn't had much of a chance because of availability. With DVD-Burners becoming much less expensive, it'll be easier to backup our data on to these. I'll also mention the fact that a HUGE portion of new "pre-built" computers, whether they be crappy name-brand or corner-computer-store generic, come with DVD drives as a standard.
I'm also going to guess that movies will move on to something different. I haven't personally used a DVD-Burner yet, but I would assume that it's just as simple now to copy a DVD as it has been to copy a music CD for the past few years.
The movie industry likes money..... I think they'll move on to something they can have a stronger grip on and get more out of (bigger is always better, anyways, right?).
-kwishot
How is THIS story pertainant to anything Slashdot regularly comments on??
And wasn't michael supposed to be fired after he posted that repeat story about the face-motion-recognizing-cell-phone technology? That's what one of the comments by other editors said... followed by someone else saying "how many times does it have to be said before it's true"?
Everyone's a critic, I know but this story doesn't fit.
(since I am too lazy to read an article at 11:30 at night) but I remember reading that now actors are charging extra for all of the outtakes, deleted scenes, making-of footage, and commentary tracks that may or may not even be in the final DVD (and was, before this, basically all thrown away).
Of course now the "commentary" track is being ruined. Take Eye of the Beholder: Ewan McGregor[sic], Ashley Judd, Nonsensical everything, Shittiest movie Ever. And IT has a director's commentary track. Wild Things. Battlefield Earth. WTF? Are they STILL trying to snowjob you? Not like they need to after you shelled out 24 bucks for the DVD. At least if they were fucking honest on them.
Director: Now Ashley Judd starts crying here. [Puffs on cigarett] You know, I must have blacked out here 'cause I don't know what the hell I was thinking...
Instead it's like this:
Director: You can really see Denise Richards reach deep for that emotion. People say that she's just a hot piece of dumb ass but I really think she made a statement with this film...
Goddamn and Goodfellas DOESN'T have a commentary track? AND it's on a two sided DVD?
Kurosawa would never talk about his own movies. That wasn't his business. Let the scholars talk about them. What would he respond when people would as him what his favorite movie was? "The one I'm currently working on."
Says a lot (... damn, Eye of the Beholder!!! Now I'm in a really bad mood. Damn, Slashdot...)
What is music when you despise all sound?
I know this aint exactly on the radar of geeks, but the question becomes if comsumers can change the content of the movie, what happens to the Director's Intent. What I mean is we all know of movies that seemed to suck when they first came out, but then everyone finally caught up withe Director's ideas in the movie and becomes a classic.
Will this make Director just slap shit together and tell consumers to maek it better?
What if a Director doesnt want You changeing his movie because he has an exact reason for every scene but you still change it? Are you still watching the same movie the Director made?
Sigs are dangerous coy things
Quote:
Those developments, and video on demand in particular, had the potential of endangering the lucrative retail home video market in much the same way that the free downloading of songs eventually hurt the music business.
ah. what I find so weird about this quote is that the ONLY way MP3s have hurt the music industry is by the RIAA's alienation of consumers. I enjoyed the rest of the article, though...
You see, without that little doohicky, the universe stops.
http://propheteer.org
So they can insert their product placements into existing movies viz:
Goon 1 : "Do you know what they call the Whopper in France?"
Goon 2 : "No? What do they call it?"
Goon 1 : "They call it 'Le Whopper'."
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
There's no copyright infrigement if you can get The Phantom Edit in the form of a small file containing timings on a DVD that are to be skipped (or retained).
Of course, you won't see any commercial DVD player offering to play dvds with fan-edits because, well, users shouldn't be interested in doing that.
That leaves it to hobbyists. So where is my fan-edit enabled DeCSS-based player, and where can I get timings for a Jar-Jar-free playback of my TPM dvd?
I thought that various movie studios wanted these extras removed because of production costs (although the Warner Bros. spokesperson declined to disclose any information as to what the production costs were).
I think that these ideas are great (i.e. end-user re-editing) but it's all up to the studio as to whether or not we see these features.
when it was a VHS copy that was edited.
Could that be...Sum of All Fears based on Tom Clancy's Sum of All Fears??
DVDs lend so many possibilities for extra content. As a person with close connections to the documentry film world, I know that there is a conflict between people wanting 2 hour specials, and people wanting FOX like 15 minute ADHD adapted summaries. The ability to include both is a real opportunity. Since so many people watch DVDs, they can watch what they want. Unfortunatly, people will start coming out with crap made just to fill up the 4.7 gigs of space. So film has found a new media, perhaps we should concentrate on making good use of it, instead of filling it with crap. How long until everyone will get Holiday DVDs with 4 hours a family footage? Sounds like the 7th level to me.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
The article mentioned something about homebrew SW:Ep 1 DVD edits and it got me to thinking:
*If I could use this technology I'd be able to edit out Jake Lloyd from Star Wars. What Glee!
*Oohh! Jar Jar has to go... I shoulda thought of him first.
*Ooohh! And ALL of the freaking gungans!
*And so on...
until it became apparent that my new "movie" was nothing more than Natalie Portman footage and light saber duels.
Alas, who was the cinematic Atlas that put DVD fire in our lowly mortal hands?!
:)
PS. I'm still not totally convinced that my home edit would be worse than SW: Ep 1.
If you would READ the post.
"They briefly mention the possibilities of end-users being able to re-edit the movie (with a veiled reference to The Phantom Edit) but focus more on the way that it's starting to influence directors and producers during the course of making the movie."
If you run a business and you provide what the customers are asking for, your sales go up and so does your profit!!
Wow - what a concept!!
To bad the movie and music industry still don't understand this.
(And that does not mean Darwin Venereal Disease)
It's only natural that things would be adapted for new technology. I'm willing to reckon that within my lifetime Pan-n-Scan will be a thing of the past. (Resulting in letter box, not more widesceen tv's)
However, the DVD won't make the plot any better, or the writing any better, which is a SERIOUS Problem. When they make enough DVDs worth having with DECENT fetures, then even the hardcover VHS people will be overtaken. The American Beauty DVD got my non-tech parents to swear by DVDs (even if the only one they can work is the PS2 and they Can't work the controller)
Btw, I missed this but the Jerk is on DVD! Now those are some commentaries worth listening to!
I just hope that TV Will catch up to the movie industry's acceptance. We want commentaries on our TV shows too! I want to hear alllll about The Prisoner.
oh, and hey hollywood? Scripts on DVD players suck.
Maybe more standard movies outside the adult film industry will start using this feature. Many movies are filmed using dozens of cameras and then only one shot is used in the movie. I think a lot of people would like to view certain key parts of a movie from diffrent angles (Again standard movies not adult movies)
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Don't underestimate the contribution the adult film industry has contributed to all sorts of video formats. According to Ron Jeremy, "People in porno have always been the leaders in new eras and new things--on tape, on CD. [...] ...Adult films have always been leading the way when it comes to technology."
Just think. If it wasn't for porno, we might not have the DVD format today. Just like porn was the pioneering format for VHS when it was first introduced. Kinda the reverse of the article's direction when you think about it... porn has probably had more of an impact on video formats than video formats have had on the film industry.
On the downside, DVDs allow perfectionist filmmakers the opportunity to keep tinkering with their creation, adding things here and deleting things there. I wouldn't be surprised if a filmmaker has already decided to shoot brand new extra footage exclusively for the DVD as a way to boost sales.
I think one of the greatest things about dvds is that the director can show you multiple ways to watch the same movie. Once you're done with a movie, if you really like it, you can listen to the director talk about how he made it. I did this for American Beauty.
Also more directors are able to put out the movie in wide screen, and I'm sure they love that. It's much more similar to the actual way we view things, and the film doesn't have to be "modified the film to fit your screen".
Anyways. Hooray for DVD.
I'm gonna edit the Memento DVD so that it plays in correct chronological order and my idiot roommate can work out just what the fuck is going on!
ROOMMATE
(perplexed)
My head hurts! What just happened then??? Who's John G? What the?! Who the?!
ME
Here you go somewhere else and watch THIS version! Away with you!
:)
woo hoo! this will make porn 10 times better!
But seriously, I am happy that LOTR-FOTR is being released in a four-hour version. I really like the idea of DVD-directors cuts. I'm pretty confident FOTR would have made a lot more money if it had only been 2 hours long, because it could be shown five times a day per screen, rather than three. There is a lot of pressure on studios to avoid long movies. They want people to pay and free their seats as fast as possible. DVD releases are not under that same pressure, so I think we will see more "unshortened" versions of movies.
I hope that enough people buy the FOTR DVD for the extra footage that movie studios actually learn to always shoot extra scences (character-development, background explanations, and cheap stuff like that) that don't appear in the theater release, but show up on the DVD to drive up sales/rentals for people who loved the movie in the theater and want to see more. FOTR is one movie that definitely needs another hour or so to make it seem less rushed.
According to the phantom edit forum (only thing I can get to right now, the site is down for "6 hours" right now) a new 2001 aka DC version (what's with the city names?) has been released. One person provided an ftp to download it from, but the ftp is dead. As someone who is just now hearing about this for the first time (and has too many SW-obsessed fans for friends) I'd be *very* interested in seeing this, or really any of the 3 (LA, NY, or DC) versions. Anyone out there have a mirror of any of them on a descent connection and be willing to share with the community or know of someplace we can get this from?
I for one think that this phenomenon is opening new possibilities for the filmmakers to tell their story. A director might be able to include on a DVD the version he or she wanted to create but could not do so within the confines of the major studios. The final cut is no longer the final cut.
However, I don't think that having the ability to "interactively" select a film rating is a good idea. The ratings system has already done much to stifle films tackling serious subjects. The NC-17 rating is a financial kiss of death. (perhaps not that extreme, but close). I fear that people would self-censor themselves in some kind of denial that serious subjects and issues and violence exist. Whenever I see a movie that has been censored, time compressed, cropped and edited for the masses on a television I am saddened that I am not seeing the whole movie the way it was supposed to be, and thus may not be getting the messages at all that the film was meant to convey but did not due to the cuts.
As high quality digital tools become available at lower and lower prices, the democratization of the filmmaking process will be interesting to watch to see what happens. DVD at least offers a way for the stories to be retold or restored to the way they were intended. I hope that trend will continue. Please no more censorship, we have enough already.
yes - but in the article (you did read the article right? :-), it mentions that DVDs were introduced only for the movie industry to get more money from a saturated VHS market.
And then when DVD sales rocketed, it took the movie industry by surprise.
So my point is that the movie industry still hasn't figured out that giving consumers what they want increases sales.
Yeah, I mean, it's not like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson or John Brunner wrote about digital technology. No, they just wrote about... er, computers changing society.
For instance, Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid $75,000 to do a two-hour commentary for the recent Total Recall DVD. Artisan, the producer of the disk, has to decide between paying for that and reducing profit/raising price, or dumping it and alienating fans/Arnie.
Bottom line: don't blame the movie industry for everything. Worker bees can be greedy too.
THis would help in editing the bad content of movies (cursing, nudity, etc.) and making some movies out there viewable for the whole family. I like this and hope to see this soon.
I've been thinking about and half-heartedly working on this idea for quite some time.
What I'm working on is taking an open-source DVD player (I picked Xine, but I'm questioning the wisdom of that decision) and hacking on-the-fly editing capabilities into it.
The basic idea is that for a given DVD, a person can go through the movie and carefully "mark it up", generating a file that annotates all of the portions of the video and audio tracks that are potentially offensive, tagging each one with descriptive information including the nature of the material, relevance to the plot, etc. Then, an individual can create a personalized "viewing stylesheet" that specifies how he or she would like kind of offensive material to be handled. Obviously, some default stylesheets could be provided as well. The markup and stylesheet languages will both be extensible, (so you can add the "Jar Jar tag"), and you should be able to edit pretty much anything that's marked up in any way you want. A buddy of mine wants to make himself a stylesheet that will show *only* the offensive parts ;-)
Then, of course, when you play a DVD on my hacked-up player, it would look up the markup file and use that and your personal viewing stylesheet to automatically edit the movie.
I think it would also be cool to provide another sort of editscript that allows more sequential editing, rather than a rule-based system, so that you could do more "artistic" edits, grabbing snippets of video and audio from various places and maybe mixing them with your own. That's not my major interest, though, mainly since such edits probably wouldn't be done 'on the fly' anyway.
The project has been languishing for a few months, though. The Xine support for playing DVDs is quite rough and doesn't seem to be improving quickly. The Xine developers had been talking about a 1.0 release in December, but it hasn't happened yet, AFAIK (haven't checked for a while). Actually it's the dvdnav plugin (which supports menus and such) that has been really lagging, and the regular DVD plugin doesn't support encrypted DVDs, which makes testing difficult, since I don't have any unencrypted DVDs.
What I have done is implemented various edits (masking blocks of the image, skipping short scenes [long skips are much harder; seeking doesn't work in dvdnav yet], muting the sound and substituting alternative snippets of audio, altering subtitles, etc.) to verify that it can be done easily. I have also found what I believe is the best way to insert the editing stuff architecturally; as part of a general filter plugin architecture. I've also begun to define the markup and stylesheet languages (both in XML).
I've mostly been waiting on Xine, though. Just recently I've gotten tired of that and I've started looking into some of the other options. Ogle, VLC and gstreamer are three I'm considering.
If anyone knows of other players I should look into, or has any interest in helping me with the code, drop me a line.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
So my point is that the movie industry still hasn't figured out that giving consumers what they want increases sales
"The Olsen Twins.. Grown up.. and XXX-RATED"
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
DVD Format Changing Movie-making
Its changed the Movie Buying experiance all right.
THEN: I just went to blockbuster and grabbed a movie on VHS and bought it.
NOW: go on internet.. search sites.. Collecters Edition has X amount of footage, Directors Cut has Y amount of Footage and comments. the SuperBit version has Better footage but no Z and no Y. and of course finding a review that says EXACTLY what one has over the other is hard to find.
and obvisoly i go to the store and they dont have that version i wanted.
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Can we edit the movie to include cursing, nudity, violence, etc. I would wait until a lot of movies were on DVD just to get the uncensored NC-17, x rating that many movies avoid just to make more money in the theatres.
I'm not sure how that will effect compressing them into DivX / MPEG-4 format to share over the network though.
Hmmm. RIAA is currently unhappy that digital technology
(particularly broadband and P2P software) will soon make
it feasible to copy and download movies.
Solution: keep expanding the content of a typical movie
so the average viewer feels it's cheaper and easier to
just go buy it, rather than spend 10 hours downloading.
To quote an old MTV ad, "Too much is never enough".
So, a typical "movie" in 2010 might include 32 different
camera angle choices for each scene, dubs for most major
languages spoken on earth (complete with CG airbrushing
to resync the actors lips), etc. etc. etc.
>;K
>;k
Are you new to DVD's?
From the article:
"Sales of DVDs last year reached $4.6 billion, 21/2 times their 2000 revenue, according to the L.A.-based DVD Entertainment Group, a consortium of the major studios and distributors."
Isn't this just another reason why we don't need digital controls on hardware and yet another reason why we don't need the sssca?
- I think so.
From the article:
"New low-cost digital technology gives enthusiasts the chance to be desktop filmmakers, shooting new footage and combining it with existing movies. While DVDs are encoded to safeguard against piracy and copying, and the studios vigorously pursue civil and criminal proceedings against people they catch, more sophisticated computer users still find ways around that. With DVD-writing software, and illegal but fairly easy to find encryption decoders, not only can adventurous viewers reedit movies like "Star Wars" on their computers--removing "characters from a movie that they don't like," as Coppola suggests--but there's the possibility of creating entirely new movies from existing ones."
Couple interesting things here. In this article we are not criminals, we are sophisticated computer users.
And number two, it seems to me that there is support for this behavior by the directors of these films.
Maybe they realize that this is not a crime, it is simply our fair use right when we buy the dvd.
- Just my 2 cents.
I could be the first person (legally) to cut up Memento and put it reverse order so the story makes sense from the beginning thereby wrecking the novelty of the twisted ending.
to-en-Mem
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
The article went a bit too far in casting DVDs as a heroic art form. What was most irksome was it failed to mention the single biggest reason I was an early adopter of the DVD format. Yes, the directors' commentaries are fascinating. Yes, the deleted scenes, making-of documentaries, bios, trailers, and other assorted doo-dads are keen. Yes, the improved picture and sound quality are wonderful. However, even if DVDs were missing all that, I would still be buying them at a voracious rate for one simple reason -- they don't degrade.
The back end of my twenty year old VHS collection is crumbling away. In another twenty years the front half will be gone too. But in 100 years all my DVDs will play with the same quality they do today. You never really own a VHS tape. You're renting it from a decaying universe, and every 15 or 20 years you have to make the rent payment again or you lose your lease.
Man, the film industry is going to get *killed* by the games industry in a few years, and it seems they don't see it coming.
Seriously, 'interactivity' is not about downloading a flick and laboriously re-editing it (a process of questionable legality in the curent political climate), it's about the viewer/audience being able to influence the content at 'run-time'.
DVD offers minimal interactivity, and everyone who has ever tried to 'interact' with a DVD knows this.
The moviemakers are just trying to talk up their pathetic 'interactivity' to make it seem like they aren't still just rehashing the same old shit and ripping off the viewing public over and over again.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
The underlying force to storytelling is pace. The rhythm of storytelling can perhaps adequately be referrenced by Ezra Pound's injunction that music must never stray far from the dance and storytelling (poetry) must never stray far from music. Film as we experience it in a moviehouse demands suspension of belief while the storyline carries us along. Those of us who have difficulty relinquishing the critical faculty perhaps best enjoy the polished gems extracted from the narrative stream which all too often demands too much naivety especially as the neverending story flags after viewers attain an adequate understanding of their culture (such as the western civilization's troubadour traditon of courtly love and trial by ordeal or contest). Is it possible that the DVD experience will disenfranchise movie makers as viewers are able to revisit the storyline at will and learn the tricks of the trade to the extent that only the special effects gems and big punch of the climax is culled from the 'usual filler' that serves only to set the tempo for the storyline? Will pushing so much of the film maker's technique into the public in the hope of wringing the last bit of revenue prove to be a misstep, or, will it up the ante and provide the impetus to break free from the traditional storylines of our culture and provide film makers an opportunity to educate a new audience?
Just a thought. To hold the mirror up to the nature of our culture... but now I have to go listen to my fav two hours of radio drama shows from the 40s and 50s
:)"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The DIVX goons specifically did NOT allow porn, softcore or hardcore, on their format. In the post mortum analysis that followed, I remember that this prohibition was compared to a lack of porn (I don't know if it was actively blocked or not) on the Betamax format. Most people tend to believe that blocking porn was one (of many) reasons why DIVX failed.
:-)
On the other hand, the porn industry threw their support completely behind Open DVD (just like they did for VHS), and you can see where the state of things are today...
just picking a nit, but someone interviewed the article mentions that "nowhere in SF was digital technology's impact predicted"
Spinrad's "riding the torch" comes pretty close in my opinion, and it's from the early 70s. I first read it in the mid '90s, and my immediate thought was, "groovy, he's talking about the internet."
Of course, in the 80s a great deal of people starting thinking about digital communication & media, not least of which was Gibson...
i won't go into details, you can find them out by doing a google search but while it is possible it is not nearly as easy to copy a DVD, especially if you want a true duplication of the original disc.
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
And what about letting Joe Blow edit other works of art too, like the Mona Lisa maybe? Really, who wants to edit a film except a film student, for experimental purposes? Yet another great idea doomed to failure. Someone, once again, should be fired...
The original.
Too many movies are chopped and edited for home release. I liked Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I loved the tearing up of the garden. The obsession of enhancing the train layout is missing. The finished hill looks nice and all, but they needed to keep in driving the wife crazy getting all that dirt into the living room. Too bad they chopped it up for home release to add the extra footage at the end.
Disney is doing this way too much. I loved the scene in Pete's Dragon with the song Candle on the Water sung at the top of the lighthouse. Don't look for it in the home tape version, it was chopped. They cut the beautiful sensitive moment. I think the song ran in the closing credits, not in the movie. Some Disney movies are even released with a new title for home release. The Unidentified flying Oddball and A Spaceman in King Arthurs Court is one example of one movie with two titles.
I am not buying these on DVD just to see if these scenes are back in the movie. When you buy a home verion of a movie, It's like a box of chocolates, you just don't know what you are gonna get.
The truth shall set you free!
Is an opinion flamebait? So I take it just cause a comment such as the one I made causes a string of replies then that means that it was my intention to spark up conversation or arguement? Common, give me a break fellar! My commnet was just that a comment. I am getting tired of individuals mod'ing my comments as if I had nothing better to do on a Sunday night than to post a "flamebait" comment (I think this is either my second or third since I have started posting). Give me a break, look at my history of articles and see if that is my style. Sorry if I sound a little ticked off, however I think that it is silly that because of a moron with a mod point who decided to use this against me and better yet a tag of "flamebait" on my comment which I made with a sincere heart and I think is true just will not get seen by individuals who might think like me that this would help bring cleaner entertainment into our homes. Anyway, tahnks for lending me your eyes and minds in ths gripe session! "Entertain the Brutes"
Here's an idea that's been dancing around in my head. Let me see if I can make sense of it. Basically, I'm thinking of a program that would allow people to produce custom edits of DVD's. It would depend on someone owning the actual DVD for the video, but could import audio tracks (for commentary) and tracking scenes (for custom edits).
In essence, you end up with a little script that tells the end user which audio track to play when and where to "drop the laser" on the video. No explicit IP problems that I can think of.
MikeAtIF*ckStuffedAnimalsDotCom
How about pulp fiction?
"The Olsen Twins.. Grown up.. and XXX-RATED"
Ewwww! I feel.... dirty... somehow. Now how do I get that horrid image out of my head?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
"Horrid images"?
What fucking gender are you -- have you seen those two lately?
They'd make some fucking amazing porn.
Too bad thier mommy and daddy played intelligently with thier money, and they aren't that broke yet
I wonder what the director commentary for the "Girls Gone Wild" DVDs is like.
"This film has been described by Video-Audio Canada"
No DVD burners on the market have anything like the capacity of the discs being sold commercially with videos on them, explicitly so you can't copy them.
So, the whole storage medium (and thus, the progress of computer science) is being held back because they want to make it hard to copy videos.
The Olsen Twins.. Grown up.. and XXX-RATED
It may happen yet. The Olsen Twins could be subject to the same phenomenon that prevented Shirley Temple from ever becoming a successful adult actress, that being that they will always be seen by the public as some kind of pre-pubescent ideal. When an icon of pre-pubescent virtue like Shirley Temple or the Olsen Twins becomes publicly sexual the public gets creeped out. I know I do. And I'm not even heterosexual. If I were heterosexual, I'd probably be forced to sever my genitalia out of sheer terror upon seeing things like this.
At any rate, we need Jon "My Sworn Duty To Explain The World To Its Oblivious Residents" Katz to handle this kind of social pontification.
until it became apparent that my new "movie" was nothing more than Natalie Portman footage and light saber duels.
Your point being...?
c-hack.com |
I'm still waiting for my copy of the Really-Super Extra-Special Director's Cut edition of Blade Runner
Commercially available DVDs hold up to 9GB of data. This is divided between 2 platters (typically referred to as layers but I thought platters made sense visually for this explanation) that are basically glued together. Note that this is not the same as dual sided discs which are capable of holding 9GB per side for a total of 4 layers. The first platter can hold 5GB and the second holds 4GB. The second platter is read through the first layer and therefore can hold a little less data. Consumer level DVD burners can only write to the first platter/layer. Without a fairly radical technology departure from current burners, they never will. Therefore duping a commercial DVD is impossible with currently available hardware.
Note that this does not include the actual DVD production machines that are surely in use by large scale pirate rings. Also of note is that using DeCSS, you can rip the video data, recompress and store to the medium of your choosing. I assume that neither of these solutions is what the original poster meant by "copy."
-matt
I suppose. Or maybe audiences just got desensitized to mishmash logic and gaping plot holes, because their attention spans were shrunken past the Schwarschild radius... I happen to believe that the influence of music video directors on mainstream media has been a disaster that's consigned nearly a whole generation of films to the dustbin of failed art.
And don't even get me started about the influence of advertisement directors....
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Pretty much every movie out there is made on a DVD-9 (9 gb), dual layer disc, while all burners you see DVD±R(W) are about 4.5gb, single layer disc. So, no, you can't copy them directly.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You mean, by empowering end users and thus driving further sales of things they would otherwise not buy? Oh, yeah, I guess it's true. Exactly the same way the VCR "killed" Hollywood.
It disturbs me to see such a misreading of the actual trends (hmmm: Napster peaks, CD sales soars; Napster shut down, CD sales contract) slipped so quietly into an article about something else.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Typically, most movies only have 1 camera rolling at a time. For instance, when two people are facing each other and speaking (the typically camera looks at one, then the other, then back scene) the camera is only photographing one actor at a time. Then the other actor is filmed. Sometimes when one actor (actor A) is being filmed, the person they are acting with (actor B) in the scene may be unavailable and the scene will be shot with someone else so they can get the shot of Actor A.
So my point is that you would have to re-edit in all this extra footage and it isn't even shot at the same moment.
The exception is that explosions are often shot on mutiple cameras so they are sure they captured it. it would be too expensive to redoo if they fucked it up.
Currently, some DVDs use the multi-angle function in the extra features for comparisons between the storyboards and the finished edit.
-matt
Aah, the usual argument from an elite that feels the ground slipping out from under it. (Believe me, I don't despise elites... just ones that can't provide enough extra value to maintain their survival). "Demystification" is a tired rallying cry used by people defending the status quo... It boils down to, "I can't tell you why I am an expert and you are an uninformed boob, but it's just so. Now listen to me!"
Again, we see that a major concern of the Content Cartel is not preventing illegitimate copying or even maximizing profit. It's about maintaining control. It boggles my mind that in a culture that purports to embrace individuality and democracy in politics, we suffer the arrogance of people who despise that impulse in art. If art is about universal human truths, maybe actual humans should have a say.
Coppola points out the impetus behind things like CSS and the proposed CBDTPA:
'Cause as my man Cosmo said, "It's about who controls the information... what we see and think".
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Me, I'm against it. I remember the first time I heard of this was when Titanic came out on video and some video store in Utah started selling versions of Titanic that they had edited to remove the nudity. Nevermind the people screeming as they died a freezing death - that's all OK for little johnny and jane - but a woman's bare breast (!) banish that! Let's all just forget that every child (well almost - a few people choose not to) suckled from their mother's breast and it was also probably in use during their procreation. But death due to tragedy - bring it on! No one is too young!
Sorry for the rant. As I see it, film can allow for a small amount of growth in a person. One can see lives of other people and places. You may not like what you see and that is your perogative but at least you've been exposed to it. The bare breast scene in titanic was an important part of who those people were and the ways in which they had grown together. If you want to remove it then you just don't get the movie at all. And by not letting your children see it, you are sending a message that being naked is bad - regardless of circumstance.
Sorry for the rant #2. I really am interested to hear what others have to say on this topic both for and against. Are movies as important as I have made them out to be or are they just weekend filler?
-matt
To better illustrate my point, would anyone bother to do a re-edit of a "classic" like, say, 2001. It seems that the only movies which are getting the "interactive" (re-edited) treatment, are those which have been hopeless butchered to appease some market demographic by a director who has always been overrated (like Star Wars EP1).
Perhaps, guys, rather then playing this up as a "feature", you should take some heed now, to lift your game. After all, how long does it take before these same people tire of fixing your crap, To find out that they could do a better job with their cheap-arse Dvd-cam, making your chosen occupation redundant.
However, I feel that with so much money coming in from dvd sales you can always lobby congress, to make any form of creativity, which doesn't directly benefit you, illegal.
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
I want to be entertained by my films and told a story. I want to be presented with a work of art.
When I play games, I want things left nice and open, so I can do what I want, but with films I want to see the directors vision up there on the screen.
My Journal
Whilst I totally agree with the original poster about DVD's being hardy, I'm not sure 100 years is an accurate figure.
There are 2 main problems:
1) Stability of the product
Lets face it these things are churned out in high volume, the double sided disks are 2 thin disks glued together... despite simulated 'rapid aging' of these materials do we really know how stable the plastics / aluminium playing surface / glues are going to be.
For instance I have early CD's that are now unplayable because sulphor from packaging / acrylics corroded the aluminium foil playing surface.
And don't get me started on CD-R - it is not an archive format, I'd give most discs 5-10 years tops before the playing layer degrades due to UV and physical damage - the only advantage is you can regenerate the digital data in a way you can't with analogue data.
2) Hardware
Lets face it, DVD hardware is going to change and evolve. With CD we've been lucky because it was ubiqoutous and had solid standards, so support is still good. But when the 'next' DVD standard comes out, and they have to use the second head in the DVD+ deck to support the 'old' DVD format, then support for CD will probably die off.
Hardware is good for ~10 years, after this the head lasers tend to go as anyone with older cd-players will already have found. And you can bet when they do go there will be few spares.
Ironically the source material will almost certainly outlast the technology to play it back. Ask NASA about some of its early data!
Why are you comparing a notably good movie (2001) to modern Hollywood tripe? Are you suggesting any movie directed prior to 1980 was better than anything directed after? How about I use your argument but with Shichinin no samurai, it is a classic and a notably good movie, anything not directed by Akira Kurosawa is crap and ought to be reedited in the Kurosawa style. Please. There's plenty of good directors and plenty of bad ones, comparing all directors to a "classic" or merely your favorite movie is stupid.
Fan re-edits are an indication that directors aren't doing their job? Nobody is sneaking into a film studio to take all the movie's raw footage and make a fan cut of it, they are just rearranging scenes to better suit their preference. That is not a fucking reedit. I don't think you've got the skill to edit a movie, if you did and had edited ANYTHING before you wouldn't make such retarded comments. By the time you're done editing anything, be it music, video, or literary you've seen it so many fucking times and are so displeased with it (even if it is good) that you can hardly stand to watch it. It isn't like people don't make their own movies, people make movies all the time just most people don't like them. Where can I buy a Dvd-cam anyhow, it would be interesting to get ahold of one of those.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Any particular reason you feel compelled to post
your propaganda here on Slashdot under a DVD story?
You almost smell of a Scientology activist.
lets see, we'll take this movie...it came after these other ones, but we'll change the roles of everybody, and while we're at it, muslim terrorists arent good right now, so we'll go with neo-nazis, and...
COME ON! I know that movies rarely follow the books, but this is too fucking stupid. maybe the dvd will have the option of actually following the book.
Guns are like umbrellas and condoms. Better to have one and not need it, than need it and not have one.
There was a time where the people who made the movies where the ones which where passonate about the movies Now, movies seem to be glued together without much thought, and normally by people whose interests are not in making a good movie, ie producers. Sometimes only wishing to make a buck.
That it is getting to the point where the fans of these movies, have to correct the mistakes that these people make, I mean, half of that Star Wars should have been on the cutting room floor, and would have been a good movie had that been the case (as the re-edit proves).
Also that these are the same people who will be making movies in the future, sometimes without the cost of having to rent a stdio, or overrated hollywood actor, or crappy over-promotion (unless its made illegal ofcourse).
I never said that there weren't examples of good direction today, or acting or writing. rather that marketing movies just cause of a bunch a extras is a road that hollywood shouldn't be follow. Or, to the extent of forgeting about making decent movies to begin with.
btw, could you name one good movie from today that has been re-edited?, hell, its called the star wars correction.
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
Remeber the Slashdot slogan? News for nerds, stuff that matters. This doesn't exactly qualify as news and it sure as hell doesn't matter one damn bit.
Slashdot is getting to be more and more like the mainstream news media. I hear 2 minutes about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and 10 minutes about the bus driver's strike, and another 10 about how all the movie stars dressed at the latest hollywood function.
Who gives a damn? It's not important in the slightest. Besides, if we kept up on all the rumors and assumtions on what's going to happen in hollywood, there'd be tons to read about, and 1 in 10,000 would actually have a small bearing on reality.
Go right ahead and mod me down if you like... I'm posting at +2 because I've got too much karma to care, and this is a rant. But it's informative, insightful, ontopic, and neither flamebait or a troll.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Because a large portion of European copyright law is based on it ("moral rights")—contrary to freedom-loving Americans, there are those that think the author has non-transferrable rights to the work that even go so far as to allow retraction of the work if it's not received according to the author's wishes. A previous /. story talked about this where some half-baked /. submitter agreed with Michael Fraase's article that America should adopt European artists rights, perhaps not realizing that doing so would grant an author the power to squelch parodies of their work. Moral rights, like "property" talk and "idea protection" (a growing body of law that will be the next battle for freedom-minded Americans) create the ability for copyright to limit the use and distribution of ideas (which copyright explicitly does not protect) instead of expressions.
What Fraase's conclusion doesn't acknowledge a full awareness of is that US copyright law evolved as a utilitarian bargain among authors, publishers, and the public, while European copyright evolved as a way to reward artists and authors for building culture. As Vaidhyanathan explains in his book far better than I can here, Mark Twain was integral to American copyright, he fought for perpetual copyright (see Twain's "The Great Republic's Peanut Stand") so his heirs and estate would be benefitted forever. He liked the control moral rights gave authors. He thought the public's claim on his works was unjustified and therefore undeserved. Unfortunately his influence exceeded his prescience and he didn't realize moral rights help threaten, not support, creativity. Modern corporations share Twain's motivation—greed—and they share the same conclusion as Twain—everlasting copyright power.
Instead of reading the all-too-short Fraase article, read Siva Vaidhyanathan's "Copyrights and Copywrongs" (ISBN: 0-8147-8806-8) for more on the exchange that built American copyright and why preserving the idea-expression dichotomy is so important for freedom and maintaining democracy.
Digital Citizen
Where have we already seen these groundbreaking developments?
Porn, that's where. Where the porn industry (and niche market filmmakers in general) innovates, Hollywood trails along, years afterwards.
Want the know the Next Big Thing? Real time audience generated scripts. I'm thinking ho cams chat sessions, I'm thinking Troma and their script contests, especially the one where each scene was written by a different fan. Throw some budget at it, put a film crew and some Semi Big Names in a shiny van with a satellite uplink, webcast the filming and solicit "what happens next?" in real time from viewers. Zoom around Hollywood (or Toronto, more likely) with a lawyer and a light meter, spending bushels of money to shoot a quick scene in this cafe or that warehouse among real honest Joe Public, then edit it up and release a movie/DVD of the final version, complete with various alternative scenes, "the making of" documentary, and some stuff about the scene submitters. Cinema verite on steroids: "Yeah, my aunt's boyfriend's dog walker wrote this scene! Look, that's him in the credits, telling Harvey Keitel what to say!"
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Finally, I can make every movie I watch End in a porn scene! A true techies dream.
Listen to the commentary to that movie. I loved the movie, but the director had a few things to say.
I actually thought the Seven Samurai Criterion guy got better as he went along. He talked about Kurosawa's brother and other effects upon the actor, the production of SS (which almost bankrupted Toho), and other little technical throw away stuff (like the scene of chopping firewood).
But the best DVD Commentary Track? Chopper on his autobiographical movie Chopper! Hands down! Mark "Chopper" Reid: psycho crim, proletariat sociologist, best selling Aussie author, humorist. I mean it has it all.
You can hear him pitching back the beers while their recording, its great!
Just hear him say "The year two-THOUSAND???" is worth the 20 bucks itself!!!
What is music when you despise all sound?
Imagine how much better pr0n will be!
-- dan.sherman
And it wouldn't have taken up that much space on the current disc, so I'm surprised it's in an R2 edit but not R1
A few things:
First, the Canadian release is nowhere near the picture and sound quality of the US release.
Second, watching Memento in chronological order is an unbelievably boring and predictable experience. It's brilliant backwards, but it's also a very simple story: it had to be, or no one could follow it.
Lastly, a 2-disc special edition, with director's commentary and other goodies, is on it's way May 21st. Check out the cover art here, and go to the digital bits for more info. I don't think it has the chronological order option, but it might be on there as an easter egg (for those desperate and/or bored enough to watch it that way).
For lame romance movies: "If you are male, please leave the room for the next 2 hours"
For chain smoking movies: "There will be 259 cigiaretts smoked during this film, one every 1.5 minutes. Please keep that in mind when the actors profess to want a clean environment."
Chain smoking movies #2: "Warning, the director had 20 extra minutes of film to use for manipulating a cigaratte"
For lack of dialog via using too many cliches: "Warning, there is no actual dialog in this film, turn the sound down and make up your own"
What's risky? Why is the filmmaking process "mystical" and what's the big deal if it's demystified? I must be missing something since I didn't realize it was "mystical" in the first place.
Not in my mind.
It's great idea to boost DVD sales, but from movie point of view it's bad imho.
I mean why would I want it? It's like having 100 types of icecream.
Movie is a piece of art (at least the ones I watch), and it's complete. Especialy on DVD where director can put what he wants.
Movie should leave certain expression in the end.
If you fool around with the DVD Edition of Made (by Jon Favreau of Swingers fame), you'll see an example of in-DVD editing.
You're allowed to 'edit' a few scenes. The tone and feel of one scene in particular, the 'pottery painting' scene, can be completely changed by your editing. Basically, the DVD splices the scene up into three or four shots, and gives you three or four options for each of these shots. These shots include the one used in the movie and some that were left on the cutting room floor. Once you've finished selecting your shots, the DVD shows you your completed splice. Granted, the splice is a little rough on the edges, but, man, what a cool-ass feature.
The editing feature not only gives you an insight into what an editor's job is like (having such control over the tone of a scene is really amazing), its just a fun toy. It also neatly showcases the incredible power of DVD.
If you haven't rented it, the DVD is worth a rent - packed full of special features, and just a good movie to boot. Highly recommended.
--
Disclaimer: The above statement probably includes half-truths, because real truth is too complicated.
Before you can interact with a DVD movie, MPAA will slap a heavy lawsuit to ANYONE want to get the hands on every video editing software for DMCA/CBCDTA/etc. violations. This guy is out of his freaking mind to even suggest such a possibility even exist to anyone but these blood sucking studios themselves.
Making movies isn't a fucking commitee action. Just because you're a "fan" of a particular movie doesn't mean you somehow have a better idea on how the movie should be directed. That is foolishness. Are you going to go in and add a Gundam to Starry Night because you think it would fucking look better? What ridiculous crap. If you think you're such a badass editor why don't you do it for a living and make your badass movies that "fan" don't have to reedit. It is so easy to do of course you shouldn't have a problem.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
porn had multiple camera angles years ago
Spinal Tap.
You know, the hilarious mock-rockumentary?
The commentary track is by the 3 main actors (and band members), which is no biggie.
But the whole thing is done completely IN CHARACTER. As the band, commenting on the DVD as if it is still a real documentary. Complaining about this and that, ripping the "director" to shreds, filling you in with "backgroud stories" and telling you about the "stuff that got cut out".
It's like a whole new Spinal Tap movie, all over again. Funniest damned thing I've ever seen.
>When an icon of pre-pubescent virtue [...] becomes publicly sexual the public gets creeped out.
;-)
Then how do you explain Drew Barrymore?
It seems a lot of people here have a lot of opinions about what should be included with a DVD. Being this is "News for Nerds" it might be a good idea to know how they really work. Not the simple imac stuff. I work in Multimedia for the largest Fiancial services company on the planet. We do a lot of Corporate video and recently we turned from VHS to DVD. Which basically ment I had to figure out how to do it. The company shelled out 5K+ for the just Sub-Hollywood burner and software (Spruce DVD Virtuoso).
DVDs are just like anything else in the computing world. You have to program it. You have to say what happens when you press whatever button at whatever time.
Also something to keep in mind is that video at this resolution is really freakin big. Video is anything from 6 - 9 Mbps. Imagine a 4 hour movie with maybe a half hour of "extra footage" plus menu screens. That's maybe 9 Gigs of Data if encoded at 7 Mbps.
Needless to say I can no longer really enjoy DVDs for the content. I was blown away by the Zoolander DVD. Not because of the movie, extra stuff, or commentary but because of the freakin cool way they programed the DVD.
-- No Comment
So your a jew?
Another essential factor in "control" is to conceal from the controlled the actual intentions of the controllers. -WSB
What the fuck do you care? If fans want to play around with a movie and re-edit it, who are you to say otherwise? Especially if the end product turns out to be more popular than the shit released to the theaters?
There is no mystery here; being employed in the industry doesn't grant one automatic access to skill. Nor does *not* being employed in the industry somehow guarrantee that a fan won't be as good as the as the people who get paid for job.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Uh, I hate to break it to you, but they already mention the Whopper in that scene.
Here's a question that'll never see the light of day.
Are there any publishers putting out enhanced books on DVD?
So now the directors can shoot a whole bunch of (possibly crap) footage, slap together something that resembles a basic film and then expect us to re-edit it ourselves using our DVD players?