Hamsters, Frontiers and Legacies

Since the advent of laserdisc, the documentary and/or featurette have been a mainstay of the video disc industry. With the introduction of DVD a few years ago, the market for those featurettes opened up immensely.

Still, not all the studios know how to do them properly. This is evidenced by sub-par offerings from studios like Buena Vista (two incredibly sub-par featurettes on the Enemy of The State disc), Fox (The X-Files), and even Columbia Tristar (the Go featurette is a blemish on an otherwise stellar disc).

Of course, taste is a personal thing, but I think everyone agrees that the little three to five minute extended trailers do nothing for the DVD audience. These were usually created as press kit materials, and sent out to television shows like Entertainment Tonight or E Now. The biggest problem with these featurettes is that they focus entirely on promoting the movie ("this movie is interesting because it features Brendan Fraser in a loincloth - again!"), and not on telling the story of how the film was made.

The best featurettes are not usually featurettes at all, but full-on documentaries, which get right into the production of the film. These are films produced solely for the purpose of telling how another film was produced. They wouldn’t seem out of place on a show like Movie Magic or a channel like E, and rather than simply retelling the story in brief clips with a few actor interviews inserted, they show real behind the scenes footage (rather than canned promotional footage).

I’m not going to spend any time pointing out the numerous garbage "featurettes" out there. Suffice it to say there are too many great examples to pick on but a few.

Sadly, most of the newer films released to DVD are not afforded the treatment they deserve. Most of the time the studio doesn’t want to go to the trouble of producing an expensive documentary feature for a film which has a high profile. They’d rather save those production costs for down the road, when the "Ten Year Special Anniversary Edition" is released. After all, why sell a movie once when you can sell it twice and make twice as much money?

Classic films, on the other hand, are quite often afforded great treatment by the studios. Probably the best recent examples are The Thing and The Last Starfighter from Universal Studios, and Alien from 20th Century Fox.

A common feature among all these special editions is anything but a coincidence, they all feature documentaries produced by Sharpline Arts (www.sharplinearts.com). These guys know their special editions, and it really shows in these documentaries.

Rather than focusing on selling us a movie we already own, all three of the documentaries mentioned tell the story of how the films in question were made. They use interviews, behind the scenes footage, test footage and story board illustrations to demonstrate the process by which these classic works were created.

A great example is The Last Starfighter documentary, Crossing The Frontier: Making The Last Starfighter. The documentary tells the whole story of how the film was made, and spends a great deal of time on the quantum leap the film represented in special effects technology. The Sharpline Arts people even managed to dig up computer animated X-Wing footage that Digital Productions created for ILM as a test demonstration.

To further show their dedication to their craft, one only needs to look at The Alien Legacy, the infamous "fifth disc" for the Alien four pack of DVDs released earlier this year. The documentary not only does a great job of telling how the film was made, from the first taps of typewriter keys to the last notes of the score, but also managed to dig up some stuff that people had been unable to find in years. Just take a look at the original model of the Nostromo in the background during one of the interview scenes. James Cameron was unable to locate this model when shooting Aliens, but the Sharpline Arts people managed to find it. Amazing.

On a digressive Sharpline Arts note, I received (along with just about every DVD web site out there now) an email from Catherine S. Pierce (no relation, as far as I know) at Sharpline Arts asking me to get our readers to email her with comments and suggestions in regard to the features they’ve produced for DVD. If you’re interested in contacting her, you can email her at csp@sharplinearts.com. She’s especially looking for comments in regard to The Alien Legacy DVD which should be arriving in mailboxes across the US and Canada as I write this (and it’s not their fault the disc was a mail-in supplement…blame Fox for that). If you do decide to email her, tell her Ken sent you.

If you’re interested in learning more about the work that goes into these documentaries, I’d highly recommend visiting the Sharpline Arts website (www.sharplinearts.com). They have some great behind-the-scenes stories about their behind-the-scenes documentaries. How long until we have a behind-the-behind-the-scenes documentary?

Lest you think this week’s column is a love-fest for Sharpline Arts (even though I love their work, and wish more of it were out there), let’s take a look at another great documentary feature, even more rare in that it’s from a recent film.

The documentary included on the 12 Monkeys DVD, The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys features an incredible behind-the-scenes tale of how the film was made. It not only shows the stuff you’d expect the studio to want us to see, but shows us that the set was anything but a love-in. We see Terry Gilliam fighting with studio producers, we see Bruce Willis unsure of Gilliam’s direction, and we even get a hint of Gilliam doubting himself. Absolutely amazing, and especially when taken in context with the film it’s attached to.

Now, I’m not saying that every single DVD released has to have a forty-five minute documentary attached to it. Far from it. I believe that only those films that have an interesting enough story behind them to maintain the viewer’s interest for that length of time should have the documentaries. Still, there are a lot of films out there now which have no documentaries attached and which we all KNOW have great stories behind them (Titanic, anyone?).

Fortunately, my hopes remain high. The fact that a company like Sharpline Arts can exist solely to produce excellent content for studios releasing movies on DVD is a bright shining light in the marketplace. After all, if there were no market for this stuff, they wouldn’t be around, would they?

If all you faithful readers out there have any interesting comments on DVD documentaries and/or good suggestions for must-see documentaries on DVD, feel free to email me at ken@dvdfuture.com.

Last week’s quote of the week went unanswered. Let’s just say I’m hardly surprised given the obscurity of the quote, and the rarity of the DVD. The quote came from Peter Jackson’s bizarre comedy, Meet The Feebles. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s about a troupe of muppet-like characters who go through a series of very adult mishaps. Don’t rent this one for your kids, but if you like black comedies you might get a kick out of it. I do recommend a rental first, because it’s definitely not for everybody.

This week’s quote is a little easier, and a little more mainstream. It’s from a film currently available on DVD in a special edition. The film I’ve chosen has absolutely nothing to do with documentary features.

Wow, I didn't know we'd become such good friends, because if we had, you'd know that I give head before I give favors and I don't even give my best friends head so your chances of getting a favor are pretty slim.

This one’s a gimme for film freaks and DVD addicts like me. If you know the film, and preferably the director (it’s an easy one), email me at ken@dvdfuture.com.

Until next time...