The Arrow Thread

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by Michael Brooke

DVDActive on Lifeforce - the first in-depth review that I've seen.

Well reading that i'm glad I held of buying the scream factory release!

[Michael Brooke]

Arrow used the same master (from MGM), but encoder David Mackenzie worked really hard to wring the best possible picture and sound out of it. One big advantage was that each cut of the film got its own separate disc, so he had a fair bit more space to play with, but he reckons that he was also using more sophisticated compression algorithms.

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by Michael Brooke

Arrow used the same master (from MGM), but encoder David Mackenzie worked really hard to wring the best possible picture and sound out of it. One big advantage was that each cut of the film got its own separate disc, so he had a fair bit more space to play with, but he reckons that he was also using more sophisticated compression algorithms.

Lets not forget that the arrow release has more bonus material. A lengthy making of not on scream factorys disc. A real coup for arrow here!

[Michael Brooke]

Originally Posted by keirarts

Lets not forget that the arrow release has more bonus material. A lengthy making of not on scream factorys disc. A real coup for arrow here!

This is always a swings-and-roundabouts situation - if you're first out of the block worldwide, you'll hoover up customers who just can't wait, but if your release is a few months later you have the opportunity to analyse the rival product and work out ways of improving on it.

I remember waiting for the Zeitgeist version of the Quay Brothers shorts compilation with some trepidation, as I produced the BFI edition. As the primary rightsholders, the BFI had engineered a six-month release-date gap into the licensing deal, but I thought there was every likelihood that Zeitgeist would use those six months to create a whole host of extra features, and was pleasantly surprised when they merely consisted of a couple of additional trailers.

[Wes]

Michael have you ever worked on something where a great extra couldn't be included for whatever reason ? I mentioned it a few posts back but it was a real shame that Warners didn't include Donald Cammell The Ultimate Performance on their DVD of Performance. Even though Rodley's documentary is a career wide retrospective, the centerpiece of that film relates to Performance. I wonder was it lack of interest on Warners' behalf or they couldn't include it for some reason...

[Michael Brooke]

Originally Posted by Wes

Michael have you ever worked on something where a great extra couldn't be included for whatever reason ?

Yup - I've just had to make that very decision between Paul Joyce's Giggle and Give In (a superb 56-minute beginners' guide to Robert Altman) and a ten-minute archive interview with Sterling Hayden.

Jaw-droppingly hilarious though the latter undoubtedly is, there's no question that the former is infinitely more relevant to The Long Goodbye (not least because the Hayden interview was filmed in 1970), and I could only afford one, so I went for the Altman doc. Although I've mentally put the Hayden interview aside for future disinterment in case Arrow picks up any more of his films.

Something similar happened with the BFI's Jan Švankmajer shorts compilation - I originally planned to feature a whole montage of his effects sequences from other people's films, but as soon as I started making enquiries into rights, materials and licensing costs it became clear that five minutes of effects from just one film would be much more practical, so that's what I went for. I also watched two documentaries that I ended up dropping - the first was a 25-minute BBC effort for which the Beeb wanted fully twenty times the reasonable market rate that I was prepared to offer, and the second was an hour-long Czech TV documentary about the Laterna Magika multimedia theatre where Švankmajer cut his creative teeth at the turn of the 1960s. This was more of a wrench, as it was fascinating stuff, but I simply didn't have the space and it was a bit of an indulgence: he's only onscreen for about three minutes, but scattered throughout the documentary, so simply extracting his bits wouldn't have worked very well.

And while I'm in Švankmajer-reminiscence mode, I originally planned to include HD versions of his Lewis Carrollesque shorts Jabberwocky and Down to the Cellar on the BFI's Alice Blu-ray, but HD masters didn't exist, we didn't have the budget to create new ones from scratch, and I assumed there'd be a massive overlap between purchasers of Alice and the shorts collection - in other words, they'd have SD copies already. Also, the BFI had five Alice-themed shorts already available (four in HD), so that was a bit of a no-brainer - the final release arguably did a better job of fulfilling the BFI's cultural remit of increasing access to both outstanding foreign and British cinema.

I imagine pretty much every other ambitious DVD/BD release will have similar stories behind it.

[Wes]

Originally Posted by Michael Brooke

I imagine pretty much every other ambitious DVD/BD release will have similar stories behind it.

Fascinating stuff. The Švankmajer material would have made wonderful supplements... One that comes to my mind was when Anchor Bay UK announced their DVD of Dead & Buried, there was a big hope that the disc would include the fondly remembered The Orchard End Murder, a 1980 short that accompanied Dead & Buried on its UK theatrical run, but as far as I know rights could not be secured...

[Michael Brooke]

Don't get me wrong - I'm very very happy indeed with how both Švankmajer releases turned out, and I think it's much better to spend the budget on a completist shorts survey or a superlative HD transfer of Alice than in trying to chase and secure every conceivable extra.

In fact, the Alice-themed shorts turned out to be an inspired idea (not mine, for the record, although I was delighted by the suggestion), as the BFI owned rights and materials outright. As a result, the on-disc extras budget was effectively slashed to zero, which compensated for the main transfer turning out to be more expensive than originally envisaged (partly because it involved flying James White over to Prague, although I don't recall him complaining).

As ever, it's swings and roundabouts - the crucial thing is to make sure that the release is the best that you can possibly make it within the agreed schedule and budget, and not to beat yourself up too much if you can't cram in absolutely everything.

[Wes]

Originally Posted by Michael Brooke

Don't get me wrong - I'm very very happy indeed with how both Å*vankmajer releases turned out, and I think it's much better to spend the budget on a completist shorts survey or a superlative HD transfer of Alice than in trying to chase and secure every conceivable extra...

Absolutely, considering margins are so tight... I think one my favorite extras discovered recently was on Network's Blu of Things to Come - among the supplements was a vintage 25min piece featuring Brian Aldiss reflecting on the life and career of HG Wells. A really nice find...

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

It looks like the Tenebrae steelbook is a Zavvi exclsuive.

The pre-order goes live tomorrow, apparently.