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Audio commentary

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A major selling point of DVD video is that its storage capacity allows for a wide variety of extra features in addition to the feature film itself. This can include audio commentary that is timed to the film sequence, documentary features, unused footage, trivia text commentary, simple games and film shorts.

Contents

[edit] Background

On a DVD, an audio commentary is a bonus track consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, who talk about the movie as it progresses. Depending on the nature of the movie, and upon the person providing the spoken dialogue, it can add a wealth of informative, entertaining information about a movie of which most audience members would not be aware.

Audio commentaries are located on separate 'audio tracks' on the DVD. A single DVD disc can have several of these that can be selected by the viewer from the main menu of the DVD or by pressing a designated button on the remote. Each contains different content: one has the actual dialogue and sound of the movie, while others can contain different language dialogue (for translation purposes), a different type of audio encoding (Dolby Digital or DTS), music-only soundtracks, and audio commentaries. Some DVD productions include multiple commentary tracks.

There are several different types of commentary:

  • Partial, which only covers selected scenes of the film.
  • Feature-length, which goes from the beginning of the film to the end.
  • Live, which is recorded in one session: the speakers watch the movie from beginning to end and give their thoughts.
  • Edited, which is recorded at various sessions, often with various speakers. Multiple-person commentary tracks recorded for The Criterion Collection are noted for this technique. The audio is edited into a cohesive whole.
  • Single-person, which is just that: one person taking you through the film.
  • Multiple-person, which can either take live or edited form. A live multiple-person commentary track is sometimes called a party track.
  • Cast, crew, or director, which is from particular people involved in the making of the film. They can often describe how the work was done, why a certain choice was made, or discuss generally the themes and limitations.
  • Character, which features one or more actors commenting on the movie while in character.
  • Scholarly, which is performed by a film critic, historian or scholar, taking the viewer through the significance of the film, the technique, and at times telling the story behind its making. Variations on this may feature fans or comedians, who would also have some level of expertise concerning a title.
  • Carrot-top, which features someone not associated or knowledgeable about the film in any way, shape, or form. They are very rare and so-called because of the commentary track by comedian Carrot Top on Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction.

[edit] History of audio commentaries

The value of audio commentaries as a marketing tool was revealed during the heyday of laserdisc, the laser-based video format produced before the introduction of DVDs. The Criterion Collection company, for example, produced high-quality "deluxe" editions of classic movies on laserdisc, using the best available prints and re-edited versions. These were often very expensive compared to today's DVDs and included bonus features such as production stills and movie trailers, deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes information, and audio commentaries from the directors, producers, cast, editors and cinemaphotographers and designers. They were marketed to movie professionals, fans and scholars who were seen as an elite niche of consumers who could afford to pay more for definitive, quality editions. The audio commentaries on laserdiscs were typically encoded on secondary analogue tracks which had become redundant, as modern laserdiscs had stereo audio encoded digitally alongside. This is why certain older videodisc players, which predate the digital audio standard, are only able to play back analogue tracks with audio commentary.

The decline of the laserdisc format and the increasing popularity of DVD was highlighted in the fall of 1997, when simultaneous laserdisc and DVD editions of the movie Contact were released. The former contained one bonus audio commentary track by director, Robert Zemeckis, and producer Steve Starkey. However, the DVD contained two additional, separate audio commentaries (by Jodie Foster and the special effects producers), as well as other bonus features.

The first ever audio commentary was featured on the Criterion Collection release of the original King Kong movie, on laserdisc in December 1984. It featured film historian Ronald Haver and his first words were:

"Hello ladies and gentlemen, I'm Ronald Haver, and I'm here to do something which we feel is rather unique. I'm going to take you on a lecture tour of King Kong as you watch the film. The laserdisc technology offers us this opportunity and we feel it's rather unique — the ability to switch back and forth between the soundtrack and this lecture track..."

[edit] Notable DVD audio commentaries

  • The DVD release of Ghostbusters contains a so-called 'video commentary' track with director, Ivan Reitman, writer/star Harold Ramis, and associate producer Joe Medjuck. Silhouettes of the trio were added to the picture using one of the subtitle tracks, in a manner that made it seem as if they were sitting in a theater commenting on the movie as it was screened for them.This was seen as a homage to (or imitation of) Mystery Science Theater 3000. In some scenes, arrows, lines, or circles may be drawn onto the screen to highlight things the directors are talking about. The DVD releases of Men in Black and Muppets from Space had similar features.
  • The DVD release of Fantasia features two separate commentaries: one by Roy E. Disney, James Levine, and John Canemaker; and a second by Walt Disney, created using audio clips of interviews and a voice actor reading his production meeting notes, hosted by Canemaker. When its sequel Fantasia 2000 was released on DVD, it also included two separate audio commentaries: One featuring Roy E. Disney, Levine, and Canemaker, and the other featuring commentary on each of the separate segments of the film by the directors and art directors of each segment. For the sections starring Mickey Mouse ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice") and Donald Duck ("Pomp and Circumstance"), voice actors Wayne Allwine and Tony Anselmo were used to make it seem as though Mickey and Donald were providing their own commentary on their appearances in the film.
  • The DVD releases for Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Special Edition) and Finding Nemo contained specially-edited 'video commentaries'; the feature-length audio commentaries by the directors and producers were punctuated by cues to video segments illustrating various behind-the-scenes aspects.
  • Seth MacFarlane, creator of the animated series Family Guy, recorded a commentary track entirely in the voices of Brian and Stewie, two characters he voiced on the show. The commentary was featured on the Family Guy "Freakin' Sweet Collection" DVD release.
  • The second DVD of This is Spinal Tap, released in 2000, features a commentary by the three members of the band, in character. They relate how they felt slighted by the film, and how the director (Marty di Bergi in the film) did a "hack job" with the documentary. The commentary is another added element to the fiction of the band. Actors Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer had previously recorded a commentary for a Criterion Collection DVD which had gone out of print.
  • The Ultimate Matrix Collection, a box set of the entire Matrix trilogy, has two audio commentaries on each film — one by philosophers who loved it (Dr. Cornel West and Ken Wilber), and one by critics who hated it (Todd McCarthy, John Powers and David Thomson).
  • The commentary on Trey Parker's Cannibal! The Musical (aka Alferd Packer: The Musical) is notable in that the commentators — cast and crew — start out sober at the beginning. As the movie progresses, the group drinks and gets more and more inebriated. A similar commentary, featuring many of the participants from that commentary, was recorded for Orgazmo.
  • The laserdisc version of Chasing Amy featured a commentary track by the director, Kevin Smith, who says in the commentary track "Fuck DVD," echoing the thoughts of many Laserdisc fans about the then-new DVD format. On the DVD edition of the same film, the same commentary track was featured but the film begins with a video introduction by Kevin Smith putting his comments into perspective and giving a more favourable opinion of the now more mature DVD format.
  • The fourth, fifth and sixth season box sets of The Simpsons contain special "illustrated commentaries" on selected episodes, where two animation directors draw on screen while commenting on the episode. This is achieved by using subtitle data to produce the drawings overlayed on top of the video in sync with the audio commentary track.
  • The Simpsons and Futurama, both Matt Groening creations, are among the few TV series to have audio commentary tracks on every episode in their season box set DVD releases. Twin Peaks, Mr. Show, the first season sets of The Shield and Goodnight Sweetheart and all episodes and specials of The League of Gentlemen are other examples of these rare instances.
  • The commentary for Eurotrip has the writers and director playing a drinking game to their own film, while giving a commentary.
  • When the first season of Veronica Mars was rushed to DVD so first-time viewers could catch up before the second season began airing in Fall 2005, the creator, Rob Thomas, recorded an audio commentary for the pilot which was a downloadable podcast because there wasn't time to get it on the boxed set.
  • The audio commentary for Bowling for Columbine features non-prominent staff members such as interns and the receptionist of Michael Moore.
  • In several commentaries on the first season of Lost, the commentators would actually stop the episode's progress and play behind-the-scenes clips, continuing to talk over the footage.

[edit] Prolific commentators

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[edit] Alternate commentaries

Originally inspired by a column by Roger Ebert, a small but active fan base of DVD commentary enthusiasts has sprung up since 2002 offering their own specially-recorded fan-made DVD commentaries. These tracks (usually made available in mp3 format) allow the fans to put forth their own opinions and expertise on a movie or TV series in much the same way as an on-disc commentary.

The idea of downloadable commentary tracks has since been co-opted by TV show creators themselves, as creators of TV shows such as the 2003 remake of Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek: Voyager, and the Doctor Who revival have recorded downloadable commentary tracks meant to be watched along with the episodes as recorded from TV. Kevin Smith has recorded a commentary track for Clerks 2 that can be downloaded to an MP3 player for viewing in the movie theater during the movie's first run; however, the commentary was not released because theater chains felt it would be distracting to viewers who were not listening to the commentary.

Generally, these tracks are viewed by starting a DVD player and a separate MP3 player at the same time. However, a Windows program called Sharecrow has recently been created to allow downloaded commentaries and DVDs to be viewed in synchronization more easily. The Sharecrow homepage also includes a directory of web commentaries sorted by title, here.

There are only a few fan groups currently doing commentary recordings. The main groups currently active are:

There is no specific established term by which to call these fan-made commentary tracks. In his original column, Ebert called them "do-it-yourself commentary tracks;" they have also been called alternate or alternative, third-party, or fan commentary tracks, or "movicasts". The creators of the program Sharecrow refer to them as "CROWs," for "Commentaries Released On the Web," though this term covers not just fan-created commentary tracks but also the official downloadable tracks.

The CROW acronym was also meant to be an homage to Crow T. Robot, one of the characters on the cult hit show Mystery Science Theater 3000. Head writer and on-screen host Michael J. Nelson even started his own website of downloadable commentaries called RiffTrax.

[edit] Parody

DVD commentaries have been parodied by a number of people. Most notably:

  • The Coen Brothers movie Blood Simple has a fake commentary written by the Coens and read by an actor posing as a film historian. This "historian" Kenneth Loring gives information about the production that almost everyone would recognize as being totally ludicrous. He claims for instance that one the opening scene was shot upside down with the actors saying their lines backwards and that some roles were reserved for Rosemary Clooney and Gene Kelly.
  • The Welsh comedian Rob Brydon wrote and starred in the ITV comedy show Director's Commentary (2004) in which he played a fictional director, Peter De Lane, and parodied the often conceited and pompous nature of directors when giving DVD commentaries by articulating his thoughts over archive footage. Although the show was well received it did not sustain viewer interest and only one six-episode series was made (as of 2006).<ref>BBC Comedy: Director's Commentary</ref>
  • The book "Speak, Commentary," by Jeff Alexander and Tom Bissell, collects a series of fake audio commentaries purportedly made by well-known American cultural critics and political pundits on popular science fiction and fantasy movies. The contents include Ann Coulter on Ridley Scott's Aliens, as well as Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn on Peter Jackson's films of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.

[edit] Quotes

Brooks: [on the virtues of the then new DVD format] "It's a better mousetrap."
Nicholson: "...What's better? What's better? You know, we're sitting here being remunerated for what is ultimately the cancer of film, which we claim to love above all else."
  • Ridley Scott is an enthusiastic supporter of commentaries and the DVD format in general. In the July 2006 issue of Total Film magazine, he stated:
"After all the work we go through, to have it run in the cinema and then disappear forever is a great pity. To give the film added life is really cool for both those who missed it and those who really loved it."

[edit] Trivia

  • In order to save money, some film companies transfer the audio commentary of the laserdisc release of a film on to the DVD rather than creating a new one. For example, El Mariachi Special Edition, Total Recall Special Edition and Spaceballs all contain the commentary from the laserdisc release.

[edit] References

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[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Audio_commentary"
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