Posted by Vince Maskeeper at dhcp024-166-078-226.neo.rr.com on July 08, 2001 at 17:01:45:
Of course I understand comepletely the legal issues that caused the Bleeped commentary, caused the long edited holes in the commentary, caused the omission of the Hosties anamatic, caused the removal of the "in defense of dogma" documentary...
However I am greatly disappointed to find that CTHV has not included the hi-res versions of the deleted scenes that Vincent supplied; rather chossing to include just the low res avid output. If low-res avid was the only material available for the deleted scenes it would be one thing, but the full versions were provided and CTHV simply decided it was not worth the effort to put together the edits necessary to include them.
I know legally VA has no real grounds to make demands as far as this goes- however I would think that Kev and especially Vince would be greatly disappointed at this- much more so than anyone buying the disc. I just wondered if there was any chance that VA could light a fire under CTHV's ass to prepare a new production master for disc 2 and start pressing copies with the right deleted scenes.
Overall the Dogma SE is a nice package, disappointing to see the deleted scenes be the victim of laziness at CTHV.
-Vince
PS: Just a few quick notes for Vincent. I know you didn't produce this disc, but being as you are the more technical person at VA, I figured I'd point out:
1) Why was the video commentary presented via seemless branching? This makes it so you have to press enter on the remote when the buddy christ logo appears- meaning you have to have the remote handy at all times. In addition when selecting the option- the audio/video section start at the begining of the branch, so this usually means hearing the first 2-3 sentences again. The alt-angle approach of mallrats was MUCH MUCH better- you could just switch your player to angle 2 and leave it- and it would play the video anytime it was available.
As a fellow DVD producer I would suggest that if in the future video commentaries are presented via branching, make it a single selection at the beginning so it follows the "video branch" throughout the whole film. Or better yet, use the multiangle option that was used on Rats!
2) Also related to the video commentary. If you listen to the commentary with the buddy christ option OFF- so the BC logo didn't pop up- it defaults to subtitle * rather than english off... This wouldn't be a big deal HOWEVER, every place where the BC logo would have popped up, a white square appeared in the upper left corner of the screen (which is, I assume the actual hotspot to jump to the video).
I think the average TV viewer would not have seen it as it would probably been eaten by overscan- but on my projector (set with right about 1% overscan) it is really distracting (everyone in the room noticed it).
It would be nice if when the BC logo is disabled that it would play the subtitles the same as it does when watching the film- English set to off- that way the square doesn't appear.
3) There is no play all option for the deleted scenes. Despite being completely linear, with the intro for one clip serving as an outro for the previous one- you have to select to play each one from the menu. Seems counter user-friendly. One long track marker with chapter headers for each one would be a bit more elegant.
Again- not trying to bitch- and not really huge issues (don't need to be corrected or anything)- just maybe things to keep in mond for future projects as I'm sure the VA guys feel the same way I do, looking to constantly improve the output.
Thanks again- and keep up the good work!