Who Gives Good Commentary?

Discuss North American DVDs and Blu-rays or other DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#301 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:44 am

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:57 pm
Martin’s rate is over three times what Ellinger et al accept from Kino Lorber.
I'm not sure where you're getting that from, but it doesn't chime with my experience of commissioning both several times for more than one label. Adrian's rate is slightly higher, as befits his extensive experience and bankable name, but it's certainly not "over three times" or anywhere even slightly close.

Although, that said, I know that one of my favourite commentators no longer takes on commissions because the going rate is much less than it was fifteen years ago. But the going rate is much less for pretty much everything to do with extras. This is partly thanks to technology (when I started in 2006, I was dealing with professional tape formats like Digibeta, so was dependent on facilities houses with the necessary equipment; now, it's all ProRes files that can be handled directly by me at home), but also because physical-media profit margins are now so thin that it's frankly a miracle that extras still get commissioned at all - although of course they have to be because barebones discs got completely clobbered by streaming services (and quite rightly).
tenia wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 2:19 am
But if audio commentaries are getting revived thanks to the hundreds annual releases of Kino, isn't it also a question of supply vs demand question ? It's bound to require more people to cover all those, thus opening the market for more people and "massify" it a bit, hence the expectable lower rates. It's not always a question of qualifications, but it's easier to maintain high rates when it's "either you" or nothing since the label won't have a lever for negociation.
I'm fascinated by the way that commentaries continue to be fetishised as the ultimate extra - we recently had someone in another thread complaining that a director didn't record a commentary instead of a lengthy (40-minute-plus) interview, but I'd be very surprised if he hadn't been offered the choice and preferred the interview. And I've offered people a similar choice and found them similarly picking a format where they'd have more control over the timing - hell, I did this myself on The Shop on the High Street (see above) and may yet do it on an upcoming Second Run release if I ultimately don't think that I can fill an entire commentary track to my satisfaction. Frank Krutnik and Neil Sinyard tend to favour either a video piece or a selected-scene commentary (or, in Krutnik's case on more than one occasion, both), and that's fine - I'd honestly prefer someone to deliver consistently high-quality content for 40-50 minutes than listen to them stretch the same material over 100 minutes.
Last edited by MichaelB on Mon Feb 22, 2021 7:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

Calvin
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#302 Post by Calvin » Mon Feb 22, 2021 5:39 am

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:44 am
I'd honestly prefer someone to deliver consistently high-quality content for 40-50 minutes than listen to them stretch the same material over 100 minutes.
I fully agree with this, Michael. As the discussion has already highlighted, there appears to be an increase in 'commentary for commentary's sake' when the same information could be repackaged into an interview / selected scene commentary / video essay (pick your poison) of shorter length without any loss.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#303 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 22, 2021 5:54 am

The first thing I do when offered a commentary commission is check the running time! I frankly chickened out of tackling Man of Marble at 154 minutes - today, I'd probably either say yes outright or propose a selected-scene commentary, but this was early 2014, I'd never recorded one before, and it seemed to me that it would have been an absurdly ambitious project to tackle for a debut. (My extensive research found its way into the booklet.)

The 122-minute Blind Chance is my record to date, and frankly the 75-minute Viy came as a welcome relief by comparison! Although, that said, one of my toughest ones was the shortest, the 67-minute Diamonds of the Night - but that was partly because I knew that Second Run would be recycling my old DVD booklet essay and I wanted to minimise content overlap, so I couldn't say much about Jan Němec's career and there wasn't much to say about his exclusively non-professional cast either. Although you can probably imagine how hard I punched the air when I discovered that Ladislav Jánský, who plays the older boy, later emigrated to the US and worked as a professional photographer for Frank Zappa and Hustler magazine, in which latter capacity he was an uncredited adviser to Miloš Forman on The People vs Larry Flynt, because something like that is an absolute gift to a commentary track.

Robin Davies
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:00 am

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#304 Post by Robin Davies » Mon Feb 22, 2021 9:21 am

MichaelB wrote:
Sun Feb 21, 2021 3:31 pm
Ken Russell also gives excellent value.
Though not on Lisztomania. He really needed a moderator on that one.

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#305 Post by domino harvey » Mon Feb 22, 2021 9:57 am

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:44 am
domino harvey wrote:
Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:57 pm
Martin’s rate is over three times what Ellinger et al accept from Kino Lorber.
I'm not sure where you're getting that from, but it doesn't chime with my experience of commissioning both several times for more than one label. Adrian's rate is slightly higher, as befits his extensive experience and bankable name, but it's certainly not "over three times" or anywhere even slightly close.
...I got it from Martin himself. This was several years ago, so perhaps he has followed the market and lowered his rate. But I didn’t pull it out of a hat

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#306 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:19 am

I imagine he probably was paid that much back in the pre-2010s golden era (as were quite a few others), but that's long over.

I read his article at the time but didn't preserve a copy, but it seems to me that it's not so much a case of people being willing to work for less so much as the fact that boutique labels genuinely can't afford to pay more than they currently do, especially given that they have fixed costs elsewhere (authoring, manufacturing, etc. - and this won't apply to KL, but a typical BBFC classification fee for a British label, which is legally compulsory, would easily cover the cost of a commentary.)

That said, it really doesn't help when people literally work for nothing. There was one guy who recently boasted that he could easily do a commentary to rival anyone else's, and he'd do it for nothing, so of course a label took him up on it and it was as dreadful as you were doubtless expecting. (Put it like this: if the IMDB didn't exist, he'd have been seriously stumped for material.)

User avatar
hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#307 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:07 am

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:19 am
That said, it really doesn't help when people literally work for nothing. There was one guy who recently boasted that he could easily do a commentary to rival anyone else's, and he'd do it for nothing, so of course a label took him up on it and it was as dreadful as you were doubtless expecting. (Put it like this: if the IMDB didn't exist, he'd have been seriously stumped for material.)
That's been a general problem across industries for 20 years now. I'm sure it's still bad, but it felt worse ten years ago when the Huffington Post and others were called out for hiring journalism students to file stories - ultimately most of the sites' content - for no pay, under the mendacious argument that they were helping them build a portfolio that would eventually make their efforts pay off. (Apparently the same boilerplate reasoning was attempted on Ellison going by the video I posted, although that's a writer with an agent popping up in a DVD extra, not a reporter fresh out of journalism school.)

User avatar
dustybooks
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:52 am
Location: Wilmington, NC

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#308 Post by dustybooks » Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:23 am

Tender Mercies is an example of a recent Kino release in which the commentator really did not have enough material to fill the running time of the feature, parrots information from other sources that's directly contradicted by primary sources elsewhere on the disc, and pads out much of the track reading from contemporary reviews of the film. I don't doubt the critic who recorded it, a major fan of the film, had enough to say about it to make a shorter interview or audio essay worthwhile, but a commentary was simply too much.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#309 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:43 am

Depending on speed of delivery, a typical 90-120 minute feature may well demand 15-20,000 words of commentary, which is a huge amount - potentially up to ten times the length of a typical booklet essay, and not far short of a typical 100-page BFI monograph (which I think is around 25,000 words). There's a terrific article reproduced in these very forums by Scott Eyman about the challenges he encountered when recording his first commentary, and this is an especially salient bit:
I know what you're thinking: He wrote a book about this guy - how tough could it be? My response: Do you have any idea how long 85 minutes is? In my book on Lubitsch, the section on Trouble in Paradise takes up five pages. Read it out loud - slooowwwlllyyy - and it might last 10 minutes. That left me 75 minutes to fill.
Hence the need for hours and hours of advance planning before you go anywhere near a microphone, not least working out the structure - because if you don't do that, you'll fall into the all too common trap of using up your best material too early and resorting either to blatant padding or, worse, long patches of silence.

Although to be fair to the Tender Mercies commentator, it's pretty rare that you get an advance sneak peek of what else is going on the disc.

User avatar
dustybooks
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:52 am
Location: Wilmington, NC

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#310 Post by dustybooks » Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:50 am

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:43 am
Although to be fair to the Tender Mercies commentator, it's pretty rare that you get an advance sneak peek of what else is going on the disc.
Absolutely! In this case, though, it was an extra ported from the old DVD in which -- just for one of a few examples I remember spotting -- the now-grown child actor in the film clarified that it was falsely reported at the time of the movie's release that his own father had died in Vietnam, as was the case with his character. But the commentary reproduces the incorrect claim -- I'm sure earnestly gathered from contemporaneous press reports, which brings up another question: how typical is it that a commentator seeks out for research supplements that were prepared for previous releases of a film?

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#311 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:02 pm

An excellent question that's pretty much impossible to answer without doing a survey of people who've recorded commentaries! But yes, relying on contemporaneous press reports can be fraught with peril, not least because the content will probably have been filtered through (or generated outright) by the original production company/studio's PR machine.

And not just in a Western major studio context - the original Polish press coverage of Man of Marble is hilariously useless because it all had to be pre-approved by the Ministry of Culture (which was extremely nervous about greenlighting the film) and consequently it was mostly ultra-critical in a way that wasn't remotely matched by the far more enthusiastic opinions of ordinary audiences. (Although of course that's a good story in itself.)
hearthesilence wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:07 am
That's been a general problem across industries for 20 years now. I'm sure it's still bad, but it felt worse ten years ago when the Huffington Post and others were called out for hiring journalism students to file stories - ultimately most of the sites' content - for no pay, under the mendacious argument that they were helping them build a portfolio that would eventually make their efforts pay off. (Apparently the same boilerplate reasoning was attempted on Ellison going by the video I posted, although that's a writer with an agent popping up in a DVD extra, not a reporter fresh out of journalism school.)
It's next to impossible to make it as a writer without working for nothing at an early stage of your career, because nobody's going to hire somebody with no track record. But it's one thing to blog or write for an amateur outfit like DVD Times (as was) where nobody was getting paid, and quite another to be exploited by the Huffington Post, which could presumably easily afford to pay its contributors but chooses not to.

And at some point you have to firmly decide that you won't work for nothing going forward. In my case this was in 2002, when my then fiancée insisted that I put "office administrator" as my job when we first registered our impending marriage with the local registry office, on the reasonable grounds that while I was writing and publishing tons of stuff, it wasn't actually generating any income. But she agreed that if I was bringing in a measurable amount of money from writing by the time of the actual wedding, I could put "writer" on the marriage certificate - which was just the kick up the arse that I needed. And since then I won't work for nothing except in exceptional circumstances, which invariably have to involve a tangible and quantifiable benefit that's an acceptable substitute for cash (which a vague promise of "exposure" isn't).

User avatar
Maltic
Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:36 am

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#312 Post by Maltic » Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:37 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:43 am

Hence the need for hours and hours of advance planning before you go anywhere near a microphone, not least working out the structure - because if you don't do that, you'll fall into the all too common trap of using up your best material too early and resorting either to blatant padding or, worse, long patches of silence.

I actually don't mind patches of silence (within limits). I'll either just be rewatching that part of the film or I'll fast-forward until the commentator voice comes back on. I prefer that to having to sit through the padding wondering when (if ever) the good stuff comes. But I'm well aware that many people hate these pauses.

I wonder what the record length is btw... Andrei Rublev (Vlada Petric), The 47 Ronin (Adrian Martin), and A Brighter Summer Day (Tony Rayns) come to mind. Seven Samurai has one, but shared among 4 or 5 commentators (edit: Michael Jeck did one solo).
Last edited by Maltic on Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
dustybooks
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:52 am
Location: Wilmington, NC

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#313 Post by dustybooks » Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:42 pm

Rudy Behlmer covered the entirety of Gone with the Wind very engagingly as I recall, though it was almost two decades ago (!) that I listened.

User avatar
knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#314 Post by knives » Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:45 pm

There’s also that great one for Soderbergh’s Che. I really would adore more extras in that mode.

User avatar
Maltic
Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:36 am

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#315 Post by Maltic » Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:56 pm

In that infamous article, I believe Martin put Behlmer and Drew Casper in a 3rd category, that of Nostalgia Commentators, who wallow in the glamour of Old Hollywood.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#316 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:58 pm

Maltic wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:37 pm
I wonder what the record length is btw... Andrei Rublev (Vlada Petric), The 47 Ronin (Adrian Martin), and A Brighter Summer Day (Tony Rayns) come to mind. Seven Samurai has one, but shared among 4 or 5 commentators (edit: Michael Jeck did one solo).
I reckon Robert Cuff on the BFI's Napoléon - I haven't listened to it yet (although I fully intend to), but I understand it spans the entire five and a half hours.

User avatar
ianthemovie
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 10:51 am
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#317 Post by ianthemovie » Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:59 pm

Maltic wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:37 pm
I wonder what the record length is btw... Andrei Rublev (Vlada Petric), The 47 Ronin (Adrian Martin), and A Brighter Summer Day (Tony Rayns) come to mind. Seven Samurai has one, but shared among 4 or 5 commentators (edit: Michael Jeck did one solo).
Petric's commentary for Andrei Rublev is limited to a handful of key scenes and only adds up to about fifty minutes of audio.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#318 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:08 pm

I can well imagine that with a film like Napoléon there's a huge amount to talk about, but Christ knows how you'd approach a commentary over something like Sátántangó, which would seem to epitomise the kind of film that Scott Eyman characterised as:
lots of quality films I wouldn't want to get near for purposes of commentary - where the quality is in the intangible interaction between actors with chemistry, where there's nothing obvious going on with the camera or the story. Once you point that out, what do you say?
Granted, in that particular case you might well have time to read out the novel in its entirety, but it would be unlikely to sync especially well.

User avatar
Maltic
Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:36 am

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#319 Post by Maltic » Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:17 pm

ianthemovie wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:59 pm

Petric's commentary for Andrei Rublev is limited to a handful of key scenes and only adds up to about fifty minutes of audio.
OK, I thought it was feature-length on the original DVD-release.

I haven't actually sat through the entirety of any of these 4-hour'ish commentaries, though I fully intend to. :)

User avatar
hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#320 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:22 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:02 pm
It's next to impossible to make it as a writer without working for nothing at an early stage of your career, because nobody's going to hire somebody with no track record. But it's one thing to blog or write for an amateur outfit like DVD Times (as was) where nobody was getting paid, and quite another to be exploited by the Huffington Post, which could presumably easily afford to pay its contributors but chooses not to.
True but that also depends on the writing - criticism and literary work certainly, but at least with journalism, a recent graduate isn't necessarily someone with no track record. Graduates of the top journalism programs in the U.S. typically have already done professional work for real news outlets - it's usually arranged through the program, and most likely they don't get paid for it while paying their school a hefty tuition.

With the Huffington Post, I should add that I'm sure they could have made (and probably did make) the argument that they didn't have the funds to pay their contributors, but it was also sold for an enormous amount of money. (I guess indie art films used to have a model where people worked for deferred payment, and then when the film sold they'd get a check, but that's rarely done elsewhere.)

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#321 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:32 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:22 pm
(I guess indie art films used to have a model where people worked for deferred payment, and then when the film sold they'd get a check, but that's rarely done elsewhere.)
I'd love to know what percentage of productions actually paid out. When I worked on an indie feature two decades ago we decided to go non-Equity (the British equivalent of SAG) because we felt very strongly that everyone bar the producers should get paid something upfront, but we couldn't afford Equity minimum rate on the budget that we managed to raise, and Equity's position was that in such situations you don't pay actors upfront but pay them minimum rate when the film turns a profit. So we talked to the actors and aside from one who had to resign (perfectly reasonably) because she was quite high up in Equity, every single one said "smaller fee upfront, please" - because they'd all been in situations when they'd been promised later payment but never got it.

And I'm very glad we did that as the film didn't turn a profit.

Someone told me the other day that he knew someone who'd earned £90K from his investment in an independent British film, which sounded so wildly unlikely that I asked what it was - and it was The Full Monty, a totally freak word-of-mouth hit that for one brief period was the single biggest moneymaker in British cinema history, beating Jurassic Park at the UK box office a few weeks before Titanic swept all before it. So not an especially representative example.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Who Gives Good Commentary?

#322 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:34 pm

(Huge thanks to whoever moved this discussion - I was hoping something like this would happen.)

User avatar
hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#323 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:40 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:32 pm
hearthesilence wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:22 pm
(I guess indie art films used to have a model where people worked for deferred payment, and then when the film sold they'd get a check, but that's rarely done elsewhere.)
I'd love to know what percentage of productions actually paid out. When I worked on an indie feature two decades ago we decided to go non-Equity (the British equivalent of SAG) because we felt very strongly that everyone bar the producers should get paid something upfront, but we couldn't afford Equity minimum rate on the budget that we managed to raise, and Equity's position was that in such situations you don't pay actors upfront but pay them minimum rate when the film turns a profit. So we talked to the actors and aside from one who had to resign (perfectly reasonably) because she was quite high up in Equity, every single one said "smaller fee upfront, please" - because they'd all been in situations when they'd been promised later payment but never got it.

And I'm very glad we did that as the film didn't turn a profit.

Someone told me the other day that he knew someone who'd earned £90K from his investment in an independent British film, which sounded so wildly unlikely that I asked what it was - and it was The Full Monty, a totally freak word-of-mouth hit that for one brief period was the single biggest moneymaker in British cinema history, beating Jurassic Park at the UK box office a few weeks before Titanic swept all before it. So not an especially representative example.
I'm guessing the percentage is very low. The analogy came to mind because I recently went through the extras for Badlands which apparently was the type of film where a lot of payments were deferred. Of course they wound up selling it to WB after premiering it at the NYFF, and I think they said everyone got paid after that. They don't hammer this point home, but one had to wonder, "what if it didn't sell, or what if it sold for peanuts to a smaller distributor?" which is the likely fate of most films.

User avatar
dustybooks
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:52 am
Location: Wilmington, NC

Re: Kino Lorber Studio Classics Acquisitions

#324 Post by dustybooks » Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:42 pm

Maltic wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:56 pm
In that infamous article, I believe Martin put Behlmer and Drew Casper in a 3rd category, that of Nostalgia Commentators, who wallow in the glamour of Old Hollywood.
Probably fair. I've only heard maybe one Casper commentary and I did find him quite irritating, as I believe is his generalized reputation. I admit that Behlmer does basically play the Robert Osborne game but I have to admit I somewhat enjoy that kind of chatter, even if it isn't especially scholarly. (And in the case of GWTW, I think it fits well -- while I love the film for all of its schlock, I don't know that any of its deeper themes are especially interesting, whereas its chaotic production most certainly is.)

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Who Gives Good Commentary?

#325 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:58 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:40 pm
I'm guessing the percentage is very low. The analogy came to mind because I recently went through the extras for Badlands which apparently was the type of film where a lot of payments were deferred. Of course they wound up selling it to WB after premiering it at the NYFF, and I think they said everyone got paid after that. They don't hammer this point home, but one had to wonder, "what if it didn't sell, or what if it sold for peanuts to a smaller distributor?" which is the likely fate of most films.
Working on the Blu-ray of Spring Night Summer Night last year really underscored that - it was supposed to play at the New York Film Festival, but was dropped at a late stage to make way for John Cassavetes' Faces. Had that not happened, its fate and reputation might have been very different.

(And I seem to recall that Reservoir Dogs was the Faces of its day at Sundance - but it just as easily might not have been.)

Post Reply