Downloadable Film Commentaries Becoming Popular?
FilmFan writes "Now that Kevin Smith is offering a downloadable commentary for Clerks 2, will other Directors follow in his footsteps? Some studios think so and are already offering similar content for shows such as Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Who, and Star Trek: Enterprise. Other websites offer fan-created content and even offer a free DVD player capable of playing these downloaded commentaries in sync with a DVD."
Scrubs did this too, except while the show was on air. They released the commentary of a repeat and then you were meant to listen to the commentary while it was on NBC. It was a cool idea but I could never quite get it to sync up perfectly. The mp3's are still online too.
I guess having an iPod would drown out the noise from the crying babies, the ringing cell phones, and the talking loudmouth.
More seriously (and less grumpily) though, it's definitely a neat way for fans who really enjoyed the movie the first time to get more out of it the second time. I give them credit for coming up with a new *positive* experience for watching movies, instead of advertisements and commercials, and etc etc.
Prepare for the next buzzword: Moviecasts!
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This would be an excellent use of Second Audio Program (SAP) for TV shows. It would always be in sync, it wouldn't require anything to download/play, and most modern TVs support it any way. Everyone speaks english, so what is the big deal?
I don't know about the average man or slashdotter, but one of my favorite things in this world are commentaries on DVDs for good movies.... particularly for Kurosawa movies.
One wierd thing I've noticed on commentaries for movies that were released before the invention of DVDs is that they, too, were recorded years before the DVD came onto market... I've heard several introductions for commentaries mark that they were created in '92 or so. I've always wondered why film studios would go to the trouble of booking notable figures in the film industry as well as prominent actors for commentaries before they knew what the hell kind of format would support them. Just a thought.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.