grant
10-01-2002, 12:00
An article at MSN recently......
http://www.msnbc.com/news/683680.asp#BODY
Era of DVD extras may disappear
Studios likely to pare bonus material on discs as stars demand extra payments
Overall sales of DVDs are soaring, but so are the costs of all those interviews, out takes and extras that come with the disc.
By Lisa Napoli
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
Jan. 8 — Quick: What’s the greatest thing to happen to movies? Color film? Surround sound? Cable TV? Stadium seating? Unbuttered popcorn? My friend and film fanatic Dave Dadekian says emphatically that the answer to the question is clear: it’s the DVD. Yet while every remotely digitally cool person on the planet was snapping up DVDs and players as presents this holiday season, a story slipped into the media maelstrom about the fate of the extra bonuses featured on many of the discs. Note to all you fans who didn’t catch the news: lots of those extras may soon be history.
NOW THAT THE DVD is firmly embedded in our culture, the bean counters and other forces are swooping down on this fabulous bonus we get for living in the digital age. They got us addicted. Now they’re threatening to cut off the supply — or at least reduce it.
A recent Reuters Variety report proclaimed, “Until recently, directors and others have mostly agreed to sit at no charge for DVD interviews or commentaries to help promote the movie or for purely nostalgic or personal interests.” But, the story continued, “Lately, producers and studios are reporting an increasing number of demands for payment by stars for audio commentaries and interviews. At least two commanded payments of $10,000 each for one recent DVD release.”
And those payments, some a result of renegotiated actor and writer contracts, are eating in to the budgets for producing DVDs — which puts many of those extras in peril.
Some of us are old enough to remember a time when you had to wait for The Wizard of Oz to be played on TV once a year. Now, of course, kids can not only watch a movie a thousand times in the privacy of their own bedroom — they can dissect it scene by scene, frame by frame, and listen to what the director had to say about each and every shot. My friend Mark says watching movies with his god kids is a “trip” — “they like the multilingual stuff, like when you buy Willy Wonka, you choose the language on the DVD when you start, so seeing it in Spanish or French is cool, ” he said. “Oompa Loompa in another lingo.”
And arguably, hearing Oompa Loompa in another language could make the world a better place.
So could the fact that on the DVD version of the cult movie Brazil, a fan can see the film the way Terry Gilliam intended it to be, as well as the studio version.
How many of you out there have sat mesmerized by the music only version of the Matrix, the movie that compelled so many people to get a DVD in the first place?
I personally have no desire to see an interview with Hans Zimmer about the score of the Gladiator, but someone out there must — perhaps the same people who would watch the 100 minutes of deleted scenes from Dogma.
These are bonuses that people like Dave hope will never disappear. Rather than forking over <b><i>$75-grand to Arnold Schwarzenegger to do a voiceover, as was done for the recent re-release of Total Recall, </b></i>Dave hopes that in particular the lesser-sung heroes of the movies — the guys and gals who make them — will keep on doing the narration, the sit-down interviews, the retrospectives. And that the people who produce DVDs won’t let them become receptacles for movie promotional materials alone.
I myself agree. But I’m glad that either way, Dave is going to keep zealously adding to his collection, so I can borrow from it.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/683680.asp#BODY
Era of DVD extras may disappear
Studios likely to pare bonus material on discs as stars demand extra payments
Overall sales of DVDs are soaring, but so are the costs of all those interviews, out takes and extras that come with the disc.
By Lisa Napoli
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
Jan. 8 — Quick: What’s the greatest thing to happen to movies? Color film? Surround sound? Cable TV? Stadium seating? Unbuttered popcorn? My friend and film fanatic Dave Dadekian says emphatically that the answer to the question is clear: it’s the DVD. Yet while every remotely digitally cool person on the planet was snapping up DVDs and players as presents this holiday season, a story slipped into the media maelstrom about the fate of the extra bonuses featured on many of the discs. Note to all you fans who didn’t catch the news: lots of those extras may soon be history.
NOW THAT THE DVD is firmly embedded in our culture, the bean counters and other forces are swooping down on this fabulous bonus we get for living in the digital age. They got us addicted. Now they’re threatening to cut off the supply — or at least reduce it.
A recent Reuters Variety report proclaimed, “Until recently, directors and others have mostly agreed to sit at no charge for DVD interviews or commentaries to help promote the movie or for purely nostalgic or personal interests.” But, the story continued, “Lately, producers and studios are reporting an increasing number of demands for payment by stars for audio commentaries and interviews. At least two commanded payments of $10,000 each for one recent DVD release.”
And those payments, some a result of renegotiated actor and writer contracts, are eating in to the budgets for producing DVDs — which puts many of those extras in peril.
Some of us are old enough to remember a time when you had to wait for The Wizard of Oz to be played on TV once a year. Now, of course, kids can not only watch a movie a thousand times in the privacy of their own bedroom — they can dissect it scene by scene, frame by frame, and listen to what the director had to say about each and every shot. My friend Mark says watching movies with his god kids is a “trip” — “they like the multilingual stuff, like when you buy Willy Wonka, you choose the language on the DVD when you start, so seeing it in Spanish or French is cool, ” he said. “Oompa Loompa in another lingo.”
And arguably, hearing Oompa Loompa in another language could make the world a better place.
So could the fact that on the DVD version of the cult movie Brazil, a fan can see the film the way Terry Gilliam intended it to be, as well as the studio version.
How many of you out there have sat mesmerized by the music only version of the Matrix, the movie that compelled so many people to get a DVD in the first place?
I personally have no desire to see an interview with Hans Zimmer about the score of the Gladiator, but someone out there must — perhaps the same people who would watch the 100 minutes of deleted scenes from Dogma.
These are bonuses that people like Dave hope will never disappear. Rather than forking over <b><i>$75-grand to Arnold Schwarzenegger to do a voiceover, as was done for the recent re-release of Total Recall, </b></i>Dave hopes that in particular the lesser-sung heroes of the movies — the guys and gals who make them — will keep on doing the narration, the sit-down interviews, the retrospectives. And that the people who produce DVDs won’t let them become receptacles for movie promotional materials alone.
I myself agree. But I’m glad that either way, Dave is going to keep zealously adding to his collection, so I can borrow from it.