I may have been one of the last non-technophobic people in the US to get a DVD player… but I finally got around to getting one and setting it up, and now I can not only watch movies, I can get commentaries on the movies. I’d heard/read about all the great commentary that I thought it would be a great addition that I couldn’t get on VHS.
But after having seen parts of the commentaries on several movies and shows (movies I really liked, even), I can’t figure out why anyone would ever sit through two hours of listening to people talk over the movie. With the commentary on, I can’t really watch the movie, because I can’t hear the dialogue, all I can hear are these people yapping. And they’re not talking about anything interesting (like plot or character or staging or background) - they’ve been along the lines of:
And while this is going on, I can’t watch the movie and I’m thinking that if these two people were anywhere near me at a movie theater having that conversation, I’d try to find the usher to get them forcibly removed.
But apparently commentaries are a selling point…have I just been watching the wrong commentaries? Do I have the wrong mindset to enjoy them? Why do people sit and listen to someone (several people) talking over a movie? What are they hearing in them that I don’t?
Basically, it’s like this: When DVDs first entered the mainstream, filmmakers realized the cool things they could do with this new technology. They could make special editions, commentaries and a million other things. These things, especially extras and commentaries, became so heavily associated with DVDs that they are now necessary. A DVD has to include them. It’s just the culture. So filmmakers with no time for or interest in making meaningful commentaries, make the kinds of commentaries you describe, because they simply cannot release a DVD without any commentaries at all.
Watch a great movie with a great commentary track by a great director/producer/writer, and you can get amazing insights into the give-and-take involved in putting something on the screen.
A recent example is Brad Bird’s commentary for The Incredibles DVD; he talks about the artistic challenges in animating weight (and why “the Spainards” are the go-to guys for that), the scenes that got painfully cut to keep the movie to a reasonable size, the challenge in doing quality storytelling so the audience forgets they’re watching a movie and feel true emotional bonds to the characters, and throws out a bunch of backhanded swipes at small-minded pundits who are more interested in gimmicks than craftsmanship.
A commentary is only as good as the person giving it, and the subject matter involved.
I started a [thread=307215]thread[/thread] awhile ago asking people to name the best or worst DVD commentaries. You might find something there if you’re looking for a good one to try out.
Like you wrote, commentaries are a selling point but the vast majority are pretty painful to sit through. Nothing more discouraging than listening to a crappy commentary to a film or show that you really like.
A good commentary can be enjoyable and let’s you catch a glimpse of the filmmakers’ personalities and get an insight of the behind-the-scenes making of a film. Some interesting, some throw away.
A great commentary can help you appreciate the film even more so when they talk about the meaning and influences that inspired them. This doesn’t happen very often.
Some people just don’t like film commentaries no matter how good they are. I can understand that but I enjoy a good commentary myself. It also makes for good background noise when you’re doing something else, like writing on the SMDB.
However, do not listen to the Animators commentary on The Incredibles. It is absolutely awful. A bunch of geeky people having a totally uninteresting conversation about things nobody cares about and has no relationship with what’s on the screen. And I am a big animation fan and an amateur CG artist!
A well-made commentary track will give you a whole new appreciation for a movie (or TV show or whatever). The best example of this I’ve ever seen is This Is Spinal Tap, where the commentary adds an extra layer of hilarity to an already great film. The lead actors recorded the commentary in character, so you hear the members of Spinal Tap reacting to a documentary made about them.
A reasonably good commentary track will provide you with an enjoyable distraction while you’re watching something you’ve seen before. Futurama and the Naked Gun movies, for example, feature a bunch of people basically being silly and palling around, pointing out very subtle stuff you might have missed and giving interesting trivia.
Then you have godawful commentary tracks like in The French Connection. The first 5 or 10 minutes of the commentary are pretty interesting, but then the director runs out of things to say. He’s reduced to basically narrating the movie (“Here they’re going into a bar for a drug bust, and as you can see he really takes command of the situation very forcefully…” :smack: ) and mentioning every now and then that they didn’t have dolly tracks so they used a wheelchair instead.
Anyway, the point is that amazing commentary tracks are few and far between, but most of the ones I’ve listened to have at least been passably interesting.
Yeah, it depends on the commentary track, who’s doing it, and how much substance they contribute. For instance, on the LORD OF THE RINGS movies, the commentary tracks by director and technical people tend to be interesting, the commentary track by the cast tends to be merely amusing (“Remember that time we went to that Indian food place?” kind of anecdotes.)
Generally, if you have a commentary track by a film historian (say), it will be interesting, but not always. Among old movies, the BRINGING UP BABY commentary track by Peter Bogdonavich was pretty disappointing – basically, he just laughed and repeated favorite lines, amid a few personal anecdotes about Howard Hawks. OTOH, Jean Wossname’s commentary track on PHILADELPHIA STORY was very interesting, with history of the film and actors, subtleties of plot, etc.
I think you have the wrong mindset. Of course you can’t “really watch the movie” with the commentary on. You’re meant to listen to the commentary after you’ve already seen the movie. It’s a separate, different experience.
Bad commentaries are pretty bad, but good ones are terrific. On the commentary to Three Kings, for example, David O. Russell goes into detail about how the script he was given was basically just a heist movie, and he spent 18 months deepening it and enriching it by making it more relevant to the politics of Iraq and the Middle East. It’s almost as fascinating to listen to as the original movie was to watch.
At the other end of the seriousness scale, everyone who sits in on the The Simpsons commentary tracks is just so funny and charming. It’s like watching the episodes over with my wittiest friends.
Oh, and a tip: turn on the subtitles when you listen to the commentary, so you can tell what dialogue the commentators are talking about.
GuanoLad, I’m right there with you re: the Animators commentary on The Incredibles. I listen to every commentary, almost religiously, no matter how banal. But the signal::noise with the animators was so low, I turned it off after ten minutes.
Brian Singer has good commentary tracts, too. He brings a friend who (it sounds like) has a list of talking points and will direct Brian’s conversation.
Peter Jackson is also a good commentary tract person… thingy.
I occasionally have enjoyed them. Generally, I’ll only watch a commentary on a movie that I really, really love, and it’s not the same as sitting down on the sofa to watch a movie - generally I’ll have it on while doing something else. It’s more akin to a long bit of commentary on the radio or something. Not enough to hold my attention in itself. I really enjoyed, though, the cast commentaries on the Lord of the Rings movies, mostly because the cast was funny. The directors’ commentaries were fascinating too, but the technical ones simply weren’t very interesting (four separate commentary tracks, if I remember right.)
But if it’s not one of my absolute favorite movies, then I’m not interested. I have a friend who really, really enjoys them, and I think she watches the commentary on just about every movie she rents. I just don’t understand why.
As has been said, it all depends on the commentators and the substance. I particularly enjoyed the Princess Bride commentary with Rob Reiner. He had a lot of nifty little tidbits to throw in there, like the fact that Mark Knopfler said he’d only do music for the movie if Rob’s hat from “This is Spinal Tap” appeared somewhere in the movie. He also pointed out a scene where Carey Elwes had injured himself, but continued working. I’d never have noticed it if Reiner hadn’t pointed it out, but there were clearly scenes where he was favoring his leg. Little things like give me a sense of depth to the actual craft of moviemaking - maybe I don’t appreciate the movie itself in any greater amount, but I have a deeper appreciation for what went into it, and what goes into all movies in general.
Are you listening to the commentary during your first viewing of the movie? I enjoy commentaries, but I never do that. I usually watch the movie normally first. Then if I enjoyed the movie and want more of the experience, I’ll watch the commentary.
Usually commentaries by directors, writers, DP’s, and other crew are about the making of the movie. They’ll be more technical and talk about how a shot was made.
Usually commentaries by the actors will be more light-hearted and focus on their experiences in making the movie.
So who is doing the commentary will have a great effect on what type of commentary it is.
Bad analogy. If you were in a movie theater, you’d probably be watching the movie for the first time, and you want to be immersed in the movie. But if you’re sitting around at home, watching a movie with some friends, and all of you had seen the movie “properly” at least once before, you might not mind if they sat around and talked about the movie as it was playing. And wouldn’t it be cool if those friends you were watching the movie with were people who had actually been involved in the making of the movie, and they could tell you about what that was like, or point out to you things that you might not have noticed in the movie?
If you’re at all interested in the movie-making process, in the craft of filmmaking, you can learn a lot from commentaries. If you’re not interested, you won’t find the commentaries nearly as worthwhile. But I daresay today’s average movie fan with no formal education knows a lot more about movemaking than those of earlier generations did, thanks to DVD commentaries.
A great tip, and I do so myself when watching commentaries. Especially when the audio track is completely replaced (sometimes the main audio is simply quiet underneath the commentary).
First of all, never watch a DVD movie the first time through with commentary (unless you’ve already seen the movie in the theaters and don’t want to see it again on DVD). After you’ve seen the movie once without the commentary, you go back and watch it with commentary to get some insights on how the movie was put together, possibly the thought process of the director, etc. When I watch with commentary on, I turn on the text caption so that I can still see what’s being said in the movie. The quality of commentary is extremely variable. There are some really worthless commentary (the one that comes to mind is the useless prattle in the commentary for The Magnificent Seven). OTOH, any disc that has commentary from Mel Brooks is gold. I’ve generally found commentary by the actors pretty uninteresting. The best commentary seem to come from specific directors or film critics who really know their stuff.
Actually, if they were just talking over the movie about whatever random thought came into their heads, I probably would mind. (Or pause the movie until we were ready to go back to watching it).
If it was about the movie itself in general, or the scene we’re watching in particular, I wouldn’t mind. To a point. But after a while, I’d still want to stop the movie, have the discussion and go back to the movie (or just have the discussion without going back to the movie). Once it’s more than interjections, the movie would distract me from the discussion or the discussion would distract me from the movie, and I’d end up generally annoyed at the whole thing.
I looked at bclouse’s thread - and I have yet to rent or buy any of the movies listed as having good commentary tracks. The ones I’ve tried to make my way through so far have not given any insight into the movie making process or talked about decisions that anyone made while making the film or pointed out anything that I missed when I watched the movie the first time. They’ve been more along the lines of the curry discussion or those old SNL sketches where Chris Farley used to interview actors (“Remember in that movie when you drove off the cliff? That was really cool.”), but even less informative.
Like the OP, I am generally baffled by the appeal of commentaries.
But if I’m unfamiliar with a genre or time period of film they can really help me get my mind around what made certain films great in their time.
The best yet for me was a historian’s commentary included on Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. Watching the film, I knew I was watching something special, but I wasn’t able to articulate for myself what I liked so much.
Hearing someone versed in the film talk clearly and passionately about it made all the difference, because it gave me a vocabulary for understanding my own enjoyment.
