Leonard Maltin Journal Entry on Shoddy DVD Production

[Ravi]

http://www.leonardmaltin.com/

THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS...

The DVD boom has been a blessing to film buffs everywhere, not only making rare films widely available but adding documentaries, behind-the-scenes footage and commentary tracks that in some cases amount to master classes by preeminent filmmakers and historians.

While I have little patience for some of the DVD review sites online that seem to lay in wait, ready to pounce on any inconsistency or perceived shortcoming in the newest releases, I must admit that even I get frustrated by some of what I see.

Several of the major studios simply don't care about films, old or new. They release them with no extras at all or with featurettes that can best be described as perfunctory. Worse yet, they have little concern about picture and sound quality. If their parent company happens to have restored the negative and soundtrack, fine; if they haven't, that's just too bad.

In some ways, this is a direct result of the medium's success. At a time when box-office receipts are plummeting, the majors are turning more and more to their home video divisions to shore up quarterly profit statements. This forces those units to keep pumping out "product," with too little time to do proper restorations or commission thoughtful documentaries.

Sometimes, this results in happy accidents. Fox had already restored 35mm elements on its 1930 feature Soup to Nuts, featuring Ted Healy and the earliest screen incarnation of The Three Stooges. When the studio decided to release the film as part of a budget line, retailing at just $9.98, fans could hardly believe their eyes; one couldn't ask for a better-looking copy of this early talkie (I learned about this release long after the fact because Fox didn't even bother to send out a press release. The same studio has just made exclusive deals with Amazon.com to sell complete sets of its Studio Classics and Film Noir series at greatly reduced prices.)

More often, there is no rhyme or reason to what gets released—or how. I recently ran into a friend who directed a small movie years ago that's always had a loyal following. It's just been acquired by a major studio and is due for a reissue on DVD . He was asked to appear on-camera for an interview, but when he inquired if the studio would be re-mastering the film (which looked worn and beat-up in its first DVD release) he was told there wasn't time to do it.

Another friend who produces bonus features for DVDs bid on one of the most prestigious projects of the year, and then was told that if he got the job he would have exactly twelve weeks to deliver the final product, which required extensive travel, shooting of interviews and background material, and elaborate post-production. He lost the gig and was almost glad he did. No wonder some of these video "documentaries" seem to have been stitched together rather than carefully conceived and written.

I begged one company to obtain an interview—even if it was just an audio track—from a famous writer who was intimately involved with an old movie they were about to release. I had no vested interest in this project, but I knew how much it would mean to the author (and his fans) to have his involvement in this DVD . My pleas fell on deaf ears.

I don't like to print "blind" items, but I must protect the identities of these colleagues who try to do quality work in an atmosphere that is increasingly characterized by the "faster, cheaper" mentality one associates with the heyday of Hollywood B movies.

I also don't want to generalize, as there are many dedicated people who consistently go the extra mile to create DVDs that film buffs and fans can savor. These projects stand out like neon signs against the night sky; you can tell they've been made with tender loving care, from the packaging to the menus to the content on screen.

I've just posted reviews of some recent examples on the Leonard's Picks page, including the third volume of Warner Home Video's Looney Tunes Golden Collection and two great packages from independent sources: Kino's Mountain Films series including The White Hell of Pitz Palu, and Image Entertainment's staggering boxed set Unseen Cinema.

Even Warner, almost certainly the best of the "big boys," has its occasional lapses: who is that character Bugs Bunny is holding on the cover of the new Looney Tunes box? Is it a character I'm supposed to recognize... because I don't! (At least Bugs looks like himself, which is more than can be said for the character "likenesses" that appeared on the cover of Volume Two.)

And Disney, with many great achievements to its credit (most recently the breathtaking restorations of Bambi and Cinderella) released a Best of the Original Mickey Mouse Club disc this summer that listed episode dates on the back of the package from 1962 and 1964. Did no one know, or remember, that the series went out of production in 1959? (The dates cited were apparently when those episodes were rerun in syndication.)

But that's child's play (no pun intended) compared to some of the problems other seasonal boxed sets of TV series offer diehard fans. Image Entertainment has set the bar for such releases with its exhaustive treatments of The Twilight Zone and The Dick Van Dyke Show, making high-definition transfers from original source materials and surrounding them with extensive bonus features...as well as involving as many of the shows' creators as possible. Longtime Combat chronicler and aficionado Steve Rubin brought his expertise, and audio interviews, to those Image releases. Paramount has also done right by I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners.

Other studios haven't wanted to bother with the time or expense of new transfers, which would be bad enough if there weren't another stumbling block: many shows originally produced for networks were cut (for time) when they were sold to syndication, then edited again for cable television reuse.

The alternative to cutting was running the shows through a machine that speeds up the action and dialogue, which is the way many series still play on networks like Nick at Nite and TV Land.
Alfred Hitchcock takes the Universal Studios tram tour with Frankenstein's monster in this undated photo. The same studio hasn't done right by his TV series, alas.

This was my biggest concern when I received the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents from Universal. The last time I watched some of these shows was on Nick, where Hitch's slow, deliberate delivery of his droll introductions was noticeably accelerated, and where some scenes looked like spoofs of silent comedies.

I timed the first episode and was relieved to find that it ran a little more than 26 minutes, which seemed about right for a 1950s network half-hour. Then I checked with an old friend, Gary Stark, who is the savviest TV buff I know.

At first, he wrote, "After watching the two sides of the first Hitchcock TV DVD (14 episodes), I have to give Universal a D- when it comes to the finished product. I hope you know someone well enough over there to convey the disappointment I found (and probably you did as well). First of all, while the picture quality is quite sharp with good blacks and grays, it's obvious that they did not go back to the camera negatives or mag tracks for any of these transfers. The audio is muddy on a number of the episodes and the audio levels seem to vary.

"They apparently took a 35mm print (although some of Hitch's intros look like they came from 16mm) from storage and did the transfer. The most shameful transfer on disc one is the Hitchcock-directed Breakdown with Joseph Cotten. There are deep emulsion scratches at the beginning and end of the episode and some bad spots during (fortunately no splices). I can't believe they would have allowed this to be released this way and even if they claim this was the best print they could find (which I wouldn't believe), they obviously made no attempt to do any restoration or cleaning up of the elements.

"Considering what a nice job Universal does with their transfers of movies, this is really bad."

Later that week, he added, "As I have now finished another DVD in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents set, I think I erred when I gave Universal a D- for the job they did. I'm changing it to an F. I have now encountered a number of episodes where Hitch's intros and closes are truncated because that is how Universal edited them when they ran on TV Land. Obviously they made no attempt to go back and restore the ones that had already been edited. These were not edits in the original materials so they could have gone back and retransferred the opens and closes but apparently they figured we Hitchcock fans wouldn't notice. Ha! I'd demand a refund if it weren't for the fact that the stories themselves
appear to be full length (except for the elimination of the mid-show bumpers). I'm just really angry.

"This TV on DVD craze is unfortunately going exactly as I could have predicted: get as much stuff out as quickly as possible while people are still interested rather than take the time to do it right (unlike what these same companies are doing with their classic feature films). Very, very frustrating."

Online buzz over Warners' new release of Season One of The Adventures of Superman raises another interesting issue: in some cases, there are better materials, as well as rare "extras," in the hands of private collectors than there are in the studios' vault! Warner Bros. didn't produce the Superman show; it acquired the series long after it was made in the 1950s along with the purchase of DC Comics.

On the other hand, the new Huckleberry Hound set from Warner has animation fans cheering for its beautiful quality, and for reassembling the original half-hour episodes just as they aired in 1959-60.

The conclusion? Fans should let studios know when they are disappointed; perhaps someone will listen. In the meantime, caveat emptor!

[Pubrick]