My wife and I just streamed a movie a few days ago. It had a ton of bloopers intermixed with the end credits.
I never cared for “extras” anyway.
Just let me enjoy the film.
Sometimes there are genuine jewels in there. Talledaga Nights directors commentary is absolute gold. Might be as funny as the movie itself. Adds a layer of lore you didn’t know you needed.
and how much could it possible freakin cost?? a single audio track with a buncha guys sitting around speaking unscripted?
Fair, I’m not convinced I do need that layer.
I guess if people are into films as a topic, or even a specific film, then that’d be interesting.
Not for me.
I feel the same way. I like the streaming/VCR experience of hitting play and seeing the media. Those old DVD menus that wanted me to mess with extras sucked.
99% of DVD menus would have the “Play movie” pre-selected, letting you activate it with a single press of the Play or Select button.
I have vivid memories of sitting through the copyright banner/FBI warning, waiting for the janky menu to load, trying to figure out which button had focus, starting the movie, sitting through ads for movies that came out years ago, and then the movie would play.
Maybe my memory isn’t accurate, but I don’t miss DVD menus.
Have all these features still in my plex library
Ditto
ownership
the simpsons dvd and the commentaries on them were amazing.
I do miss the “making of” features that showed behind the scenes but as computers got better and movie execs got cheaper it wasn’t that interesting to just be like “well we did it with a green screen and then in post.” for fucking EVERYTHING…
It was much more fun watching pure artists at their craft making models and explosions and trick camera work for practical effects.
My theory is that practical effects takes a monumental amount of knowledge and skill and as those people got more and more expensive it was cheaper for the vultures to just hire college grad artists and grind them into the ground than pay the union salaries.
One thing I always appreciated about the Fast and Furious movies were their lean to practical effects, at least the earlier ones.
I want to live in the world where the F&F franchise never stopped doing practical effects, and actually launched a car into space.
In a way, Musk is part of that F&F franchise- and he could have made a good villain in there.
My theory is that practical effects takes a monumental amount of knowledge and skill and as those people got more and more expensive it was cheaper for the vultures to just hire college grad artists and grind them into the ground than pay the union salaries.
I think it takes the same amount of knowledge to do well.
But cheap CGI looks better than cheap practical effects. Or it can be made cheaper. Maybe both.
Anyway, even Empire Strikes Back involved using computers for some work. Yep, late 70s’ computers.
It’s not one or another with these.
I think the reason for the drop in quality is moviemaking becoming corporate. Not “owned by corporations” kind of corporate (obviously that too), but “no way to get in without acquaintances or patrons inside” corporate, nepotism.
CGI gives the producers the ability to re-do complex shots over and over again. With practical effects you don’t get to say “That fireball isn’t red enough, make it redder” without a ton of extra work.
You can sort of redden it frame by frame, like they do when colorizing movies. A lot of work, yes.
My point was that a qualified person will do good things with CGI too. It doesn’t have to look worse.
But again, about time spent - for a hobby I can spend hours on making a burning torch look realistic in my POV-Ray scene. For actual work - I suspect they just take available things from enormous libraries of ready meshes, normals, textures, shaders, which sort of fit all cases, but are not perfect. But I haven’t yet even learned to use Blender, so.
Totally agree that qualified people can do good or even great CGI. But the reason everything is CGI these days - and why end credits are getting longer and why budgets are going through the roof while VFX firms are going bankrupt - is because it allows executives to send shots back over and over to get “fixed.”
This is a real problem in the VFX field, and leads to a ton of burnout. They even have a term for it: “Pixel fucked.”
This seems a business problem. Something in the contract should make it impossible to just go on until such a person likes what they get. Maybe pay per time. I dunno.
It is definitely a business problem. I deal with similar sorts of contract work and we always put in clauses about rework and going over time and I’ve got strict restrictions on what work I’m supposed to do. (Actually dealing with this now, honestly. Customer wants extra work done and I need to get approval for it.)
The problem is the VFX firms are at a disadvantage when dealing with studios. The studios have the work and all the lawyers, so they have the power in negotiations. If they studio says do more work and the VFX firm doesn’t they’ll get blackballed and go out of business.
I always loved the behind the scenes for Eternal Sunshine. Kate was so excited about the production, she’d be like “I had to crawl through this hole into a different set and do a quick costume change so we could do it all in one take.”
The making of Fury Road is quite fascinating, the bulk of the vehicles and stunts are real. A lot of the Fast and the Furious stunts and vehicles are real as well.
Now it’s possible to browse hundreds of movies you don’t watch to watch from the comfort of your sofa.
Back when the remake of Battlestar Galactica was on the air the showrunner Ronald D. Moore had a podcast where he’d sip some scotch and smoke a couple cigarettes and provide commentary for the episode. It worked really well, and got me to watch the show twice because I wanted to follow along. Eventually they made it onto the DVD/Bluray releases as commentary audio tracks.
With the growth of podcasting I’m amazed other shows haven’t done something similar.
I really miss video rental stores.
walking in to the smell of fresh popcorn, getting an enormous bag of it for like 99 cents, walking up and down the aisles browsing the latest releases for something that non-algorythmically catches your eye to watch over the weekend.
Maybe even swinging through the game aisle to pick up the new game that just came out.
It was an experience that is lost and will never be replicated by streaming/rental boxes/etc/etc.
Worse, the loss of physical ownership. You do not own anything you buy on a streaming service. Sony as proven that on more than one occasion. You are also stuck to the whims of your internet connection.
But physical media? You can play that anywhere, any when, any how. WIth no worry for stable internet connections and other bullshit.
Physical media isn’t dead, you can still buy DVD/Bluray disks for popular content, unless it’s a platform exclusive.
So if you really value physical media, buy it and refuse to use streaming services. I rip mine to Jellyfin so I get the same streaming platform experience, while owning physical media. If my kids want to watch something, I order it and rip it. If my internet connection dies, I still have access to it because it’s on my local network. If someone wants to borrow it, I just give them a copy (or I can point them to my Jellyfin service, which is also available outside my house).
Yeah, it’s definitely a vibe. I took a wormhole (time travel) to 1991, walked into a blockbuster and keeled over from nostalgia.
Nostalgia is such a complex/convoluted feeling – you can’t have it if you didn’t have a past to draw the experience from, but when you do have it, it’s almost like a religious or philosophical experience both acknowledging and becrying (or grieving) the passage of time.
Unfortunately, even with a “time machine”, we the people who walk through the portals are ever changed. We won’t ever live in the past again. We can see those places and experience them in our present states, but…
Just like a glass shattering on the ground and the pieces scattering: Entropy cannot be undone.
my local video store had the perfect setup. they were next to a pizza place and actually installed a window connected to it so you can order a pizza and look for a movie to watch while waiting for it to be ready. it was perfect. now its a stupid ass dollar store
Do you live where I live? Exact same scenario, including the fate of the building.
holy shit its possible. family video connected to a marcos pizza?
YES!
holy shit i never thought id find anybody from my hometown on lemmy LOL this is amazing
Me either! Is it now a dollar general?
yep it sure is
I mean those things can exist outside of DVD
I do not miss 480p. Just go on YouTube and watch a video on the lowest resolution if you miss the experience lol
The 480p streams on Youtube are significantly worse than 480i/p video on Laserdisc or DVD, that’s not a fair comparison. Youtube’s compression algorithm is utter shit for picture quality.
480i blown up on a 4k 50 inch display is going to look terrible compared to native 4k content, but on a 30 inch CRT it looked just fine
It seems like the extras were for a specific limited demographic. When the costs of producing the extra content, and sales of the physical media are taken into account… I would guess that when a no-extras vs extras version of the same movie was available, the one that was cheaper with less content sold more.
I enjoyed the extra features on a handful of shows, but I think this is a smaller sales-base than the author realizes.
Yeah, I honestly don’t care about those extra features. What I do care about is being able to have perpetual, legal access to content. I can’t get that w/ streaming services, so my only other option is to buy physical media.
You missed some crappy menu at the beginning that possibly spoiled the movie.
I love watching movies without knowing nothing about it. Like the menu, I simply saw the coverart.
Also why I don’t go cinema anymore. They often spoil a lot in ads
I haven’t given up on DVDs. Don’t assume we’ve all abandoned the disc format, because I’m certain many of us still use them.
There’s literally dozens of us
Making toxic trash and wasting resources just to be a hipster, we’re all proud of you
You’re a drip. I buy DVDs used from pawn shops and garage sales. I’m leaving a mouse-sized carbon footprint; there’s no “toxic trash” that didn’t already exist.
….he smugly typed on his slave labor made iPhone.
Ha no I’m not an iPhone user but regardless a phone is useful as it allows me to live more efficiently - not traveling to have every important conversation saves resources on its own and there’s thousands of other practical uses – wasting resources needlessly just to be a hipster is totally different.
I just find it funny that lemmy on one hand clmaours to cheer on terrorism in the name of the climate and all that stuff but simultaneous gets super mad any time anyone suggests the slightest lifestyle change for the sake of the environment - even if it’s objectively better.
DVD is a digital format so if you want to watch it in that lowered quality then you can download it in that codec and get literally exactly the same experience - but no, you need an entire wastful industry making short lived plastic disks just to make you feel superior to everyone using the objectively better technology.
Let the DVD factories close, stop making chemical coated plastic needlessly and grow up.
No, DVDs/Blurays are the only way the average consumer can get perpetual access to content. If companies stop making DVDs/Blurays, they’re not going to suddenly offer DRM-free downloads, they’ll just force people to use their streaming service.
If you pirate, you’re not helping to solve the problem for the average person. Buy physical media to show companies that permanent access to content is still wanted.
Also, even if you’re okay with streaming services, the only way to reliably get 4k content is to buy 4k Blurays. Streaming services frequently downgrade you to 1080p or worse, and you’ll need consistent internet for it to work reliably.
The economic impact of DVDs/Blurays is minimal and IMO well worth the value it provides to consumers.
Dvd is 480p so let’s not cry about only getting over twice the pixels through a stream, dvd also has jank compression compared to most streaming codex.
And I don’t pirate, I just watch higher quality content that isn’t proprietary by focusing on small creators especially those making under copy left licensing or cc0 like Jago Hazard
Why would I care what a billion or trillion dollar corporation wants to brainwash me with? You’re never going to see honest opinions in a Marvel movie or accurate social commentary, how many times do I need a film with the moral message ‘rich people are good actually’
You know there are still a lot of people in North America alone that don’t have good enough internet to stream movies, right?
Are they just supposed to sit and stare at the wall? Railing about DVD trash in a landfill seems… pointless, compared to all the other ways we’re poisoning the planet. Weird battle to fight and especially cast stones at someone else for.
Who’s said bye to DVDs?
