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."

More info on The Phantom Edit

[Zuna]

In case you're not familiar with it, you can read all about it here [salon.com].

Re:Phantom Menace DVD Edits

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did Atlas give us fire?

If I was prometheus I'd set you on fire.

Re:I dunno if the article mentions this

[instinctdesign]

It really depends on a lot of factors whether a commentary track will be good or not. One the DVD of my favorite movies, Seven Samurai, has a commentary track by an "expert" on Kurosawa. Sounds interesting, no? Well... its just like the example you mentioned. "Here we see a scene with horses silhouetted against the sky." A minute or two later, "Kurosowa did that often." (obviously paraphrased) And it goes on and on like this for at least the first 30 minutes when I just turned it off and watched the film.

Now, quite ironically, the best commentary track I've ever listened to was also on a Criterion DVD but of a vastly different caliber of film, Michael Bay's Armageddon. If you rent/buy it, (frankly I wouldn't recommend the film by itself but the extras make up for it) I highly suggest you listen to the commentary. Its got great tidbits from Bay about the making of such a huge scale feature, from an ex-NASA guy who talks about the "facts" of the film (one of the greatest lines, "now this just couldn't happen in real life"), and others.

Its really hard to make a great commentary track, and you can never really tell what movie will have a good one and what won't. Another example, both Mel Brooks commentaries/movies, Spaceballs: boring commentary track, like a voice track for the blind; Young Frankenstein: hilarious, like Armageddon, worth listening to.

Re:Riding the Torch (slightly OT)

[Anonymous Coward]

Spinrad's "riding the torch" comes pretty close in my opinion

Michaelmas, by A.J. Budrys, also touched on a few points.