Frederick Wiseman on DVD

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Oedipax
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:48 am
Location: Atlanta

#26 Post by Oedipax » Fri Dec 07, 2007 11:12 pm

you gotta be kidding me wrote:Everything I've read about Wiseman makes him sound like a total slime, and this latest nonsense cements my opinion.
Whaaaaaaat?!
you gotta be kidding me wrote:His films were unavailable to the general public for DECADES and now they're only available as outrageously overpriced DVD-Rs (not even advertised as such)... doesn't he want people to see his "socially conscious" work? I guess not.
Of course he wants people to see them. That's why ALL of them have aired on PBS channels across the country upon their release. And many libraries - public institutions, after all - did have VHS copies of his films on hand.
you gotta be kidding me wrote:Unless there are some weird rights issues or other legal reasons for all of this, there's no excuse. But, you know, this is fairly typical documentarian hypocrisy as far as I can tell.
The rights 'issue' is that Wiseman, being one of the only filmmakers around to own the rights to all of his films, also had as his only real source of income rentals and purchases of his back catalog. It's not as if the guy is some kind of greedy Scrooge character; he's spent four decades making films that have very little commercial potential and he's never compromised his artistic integrity in securing funding or distribution. If anything, he's a model of what more filmmakers should aspire to. If it means the films are on DVD-R rather than some more "official" form of distribution, then so be it. The films exist, that's the important thing.

I don't know what to say about your last comment about "typical documentarian hypocrisy." If there's any documentary filmmaker I'd attack for crass commercialism and apparent hypocrisy, it'd be Robert Drew for putting that ridiculous "RD" logo at the corner of the screen on the Primary DVD - which, because I can't stop being astonished by how terrible it looks and how stupid and unnecessary it is, makes trying to watch the film itself for me almost impossible.

yoshimori
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 2:03 am
Location: LA CA

#27 Post by yoshimori » Fri Dec 07, 2007 11:42 pm

Here are some random captures:

High School: hs1 a hs1 b hs1 c
Model: model a model b model c
High School 2: hs2 a hs2 b hs2 c
State Legislature: state a state b state c

The only disc that hasn't looked "acceptable" (given my sometimes low standards and the pleasure of having the films) so far is ...

Basic Training: basic a basic b basic c
Last edited by yoshimori on Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Faux Hulot
Jack Of All Tirades
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 11:57 am
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#28 Post by Faux Hulot » Sun Dec 09, 2007 2:15 pm

Jeff wrote:I really want to order Titicut Follies, Law and Order, and High School, but I'm not crazy about the idea of paying $35 for DVD-Rs that Wiseman is burning on the iMac in his garage.
As a filmmaker who believes in supporting independent work, this fact would entice me to buy them even more.

yoshimori
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 2:03 am
Location: LA CA

#29 Post by yoshimori » Sun Dec 09, 2007 9:56 pm

Just finished rewatching Zoo and the amazing movie about the Alabama School for Blind Children. The Zoo transfer looks great, and Blind's is fine giving its age and 16mm interior no-lighting origins. Captures:

Zoo: zoo 1 zoo 2 zoo 3
Blind: blind 1 blind 2 blind 3
Last edited by yoshimori on Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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life_boy
Joined: Fri Apr 14, 2006 11:51 pm
Location: Mississippi

#30 Post by life_boy » Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:35 pm

vertovfan wrote:Allan King's website offers something similar (DVD-Rs with nice, semi-professional packaging). I purchased Warrendale and am glad simply to have it available in a nice transfer.
As does Les Blank. I am agreed with Oedipax: I would much rather have the ability to buy even a DVD-R of his films (be it Blank or Wiseman) direct from his site than have to seek some other means of seeing work which is not that easy to come by currently.

Yoshimori: I'm excited by these stills I've been seeing. Thanks so much for posting. I'll be ordering "Missile" pretty soon.

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jsteffe
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2007 9:00 am
Location: Atlanta, GA

#31 Post by jsteffe » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:31 am

life_boy wrote:
vertovfan wrote:Allan King's website offers something similar (DVD-Rs with nice, semi-professional packaging). I purchased Warrendale and am glad simply to have it available in a nice transfer.
As does Les Blank. I am agreed with Oedipax: I would much rather have the ability to buy even a DVD-R of his films (be it Blank or Wiseman) direct from his site than have to seek some other means of seeing work which is not that easy to come by currently.

Yoshimori: I'm excited by these stills I've been seeing. Thanks so much for posting. I'll be ordering "Missile" pretty soon.
I purchased Les Blank's edition of Kidlat Tahimik's The Perfumed Nightmare (the ultimate masterpiece of low-budget cinema!) and was disappointed to discover that not only was it a DVD-R, but it didn't look as good as my old VHS! Good thing I kept the VHS.

I think DVD-Rs can be a perfectly legitimate way of getting your work out there. But are glass masters really so expensive that someone like Wiseman, who owns all the rights to his films and has a world-class reputation, wouldn't profit from having releasing his films that way?

Also, I hope Wiseman didn't stick paper labels on those DVD-Rs. They're very hard on the motors of DVD players, since they're usually off-center to some degree. Can anyone tell whether he used paper labels or direct printing?

BTW: thanks for the screen caps! We have the first High School on VHS at my university, and I call tell right off the bat that the DVD image has better detail and contrast.

yoshimori
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 2:03 am
Location: LA CA

#32 Post by yoshimori » Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:52 am

jsteffe wrote:I hope Wiseman didn't stick paper labels on those DVD-Rs.
No paper labels. Each disc has a nice printed label with an image from the film and a consistent and elegant set of titles & copyright info.

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Oedipax
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:48 am
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#33 Post by Oedipax » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:16 pm

Thanks for the information and screen caps, yoshimori. I plan on ordering a bunch of these soon.

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Person
Joined: Sat May 19, 2007 3:00 pm

#34 Post by Person » Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:49 pm

I have some pretty poor DVD-Rs of Fred's films. The captures of the "new" DVD-Rs blows my discs away. Amazing, painful films. Juvenile Court just drains my will - what a pathetic, fucked-up, but strangely amusing world this is at times.

kevyip1
Joined: Sat Nov 06, 2004 7:07 pm

#35 Post by kevyip1 » Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:30 pm

Any screen caps for Titicut Follies, the oldest film in the catalog?

yoshimori
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 2:03 am
Location: LA CA

#36 Post by yoshimori » Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:24 pm

kevyip1 wrote:Any screen caps for Titicut Follies, the oldest film in the catalog?
Two more from last night then - both early works: Titicut Follies (1967) and Meat (1976). Obviously not careful restorations, but both look much much better than I've seen them.

titi 01 titi 02 titi 03
meat 01 meat 02 meat 03
Last edited by yoshimori on Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

kevyip1
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#37 Post by kevyip1 » Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:27 pm

Thanks. I wonder how "Meat" compares to the disturbing French doc "Blood of the Beasts" on the "Eyes without a Face" DVD.

yoshimori
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#38 Post by yoshimori » Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:32 pm

kevyip1 wrote:Anyone saw "Meat", which shows how animals are slaughtered to become meat? Wonder how it compares to "Blood of the Beasts" on the "Eyes without a Face" DVD.
Meat is relatively tame. Though he does show it, Wiseman doesn't dwell on the killing. The animals are dispatched quickly. There is no twitching or screaming or anything like that, if that's what you mean. The movie focuses more on the day-to-day "business" of meat production.

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Person
Joined: Sat May 19, 2007 3:00 pm

#39 Post by Person » Wed Dec 12, 2007 9:31 pm

yoshimori wrote:
kevyip1 wrote:Anyone saw "Meat", which shows how animals are slaughtered to become meat? Wonder how it compares to "Blood of the Beasts" on the "Eyes without a Face" DVD.
Meat is relatively tame. Though he does show it, Wiseman doesn't dwell on the killing. The animals are dispatched quickly. There is no twitching or screaming or anything like that, if that's what you mean. The movie focuses more on the day-to-day "business" of meat production.
Yup - the "business" of it; the banality of it. I'm a meat-eater - I love meat. But it's wrong, wrong, wrong. It's one of my most knawking ethical dilemmas.

kevyip1
Joined: Sat Nov 06, 2004 7:07 pm

#40 Post by kevyip1 » Wed Dec 12, 2007 10:18 pm

yoshimori wrote:Received all 23 dvds in the mail this morning. Aspen, Domestic Violence, DV2, State Legislature, Central Park, Welfare, Juvenile Court, Public Housing, and High School 2 are 2-discers. Belfast ME is a 3-discer. The rest single discs. Interlaced. I checked High School, The Store, and State Legislature. The earliest film, not surprisingly, has a fair amount of dirt on it, but the transfer looks quite good to me. Color in The Store looks a bit faded. Still, overall, I'm very happy. What a pleasure to have them in hand. Can't wait for the rest to become available.
Are the discs single-layered? A 170-min film like "Ballet" on a single-layered disc is a little disconcerting...

yoshimori
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Location: LA CA

#41 Post by yoshimori » Wed Dec 12, 2007 10:51 pm

kevyip1 wrote:
yoshimori wrote:... Aspen, Domestic Violence, DV2, State Legislature, Central Park, Welfare, Juvenile Court, Public Housing, and High School 2 are 2-discers. Belfast ME is a 3-discer. ....
A 170-min film like "Ballet" on a single-layered disc is a little disconcerting...
Ballet is a two-discer too. Sorry I left it off the original list.

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Floyd
Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2004 10:25 pm

#42 Post by Floyd » Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:05 pm

Faux Hulot wrote:
Jeff wrote:I really want to order Titicut Follies, Law and Order, and High School, but I'm not crazy about the idea of paying $35 for DVD-Rs that Wiseman is burning on the iMac in his garage.
As a filmmaker who believes in supporting independent work, this fact would entice me to buy them even more.
He still edits the thousands of feet of film he shoots on a 6-plate Steenbeck so I am surprised if he even knows how to turn a computer on.

kekid
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:55 pm

#43 Post by kekid » Thu Dec 13, 2007 3:49 pm

Based on the cencerns expressed in this forum regarding Wiseman documentaries being produced on DVD-R's, I wrote to Zipporah, and got the following response:

"Regarding your concerns and questions about the lifespan of the DVDs: the discs we are selling are DVD-Rs. DVD-R technology has improved considerably over the past few years and now is at almost 100% compatibility with most DVD players. As for the expected lifespan of the DVDs, no one really knows how long DVDs will last at all—since it is such a new technology all of the expectancies for DVD lifespan are really just estimates. However, our lab uses very high quality DVD-Rs, which according to the manufacturer have an archival lifespan of 30-50 years. Considering the way technology is changing these days, I imagine that in the next 30-50 years there will probably be some new technology to replace DVD by then (in the way that DVD replaced VHS), that we don't even know about yet.

I hope this answers your question. Thanks for your interest in the Frederick Wiseman films.

Best regards,
Anna Moore
Office Manager
Zipporah Films, Inc."

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Antoine Doinel
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#44 Post by Antoine Doinel » Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:02 pm

That's a bit of backwards answer. On one she says no one really knows the life expectancy of DVDs but then goes on to say the manufacturer claims a 30-50 year lifespan on DVD-Rs.

I can't justify spending "Criterion prices" for a burned DVD with no extras. As Wiseman owns his films, it's baffling to me that he didn't get a licensing deal in place with someone like Criterion (imagine what a kickass Eclipse set this would be) who could bring his films to much larger audience, at a much better price than his current sales method.

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Oedipax
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#45 Post by Oedipax » Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:11 pm

I mean, it would be a cool Eclipse set if they actually released all the films and didn't cherry pick and take forever to get them all out. I still have CD-R's from 10 years ago that work fine, and it's not like I tried hard to preserve them.

yoshimori
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Location: LA CA

#46 Post by yoshimori » Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:32 pm

Antoine Doinel wrote:I can't justify spending "Criterion prices" for a burned DVD with no extras.
That's cool. But I'd rather have a clean bare-bones copy of High School (or Belfast, Maine or High School 2 or ...) than a fully-loaded, pristine transfer of any film Criterion put out this year (well, except maybe the Fassbinder mini). To each his or her own.

And three from Welfare (1975) - great doc, and to my eye, the best looking transfer of the 60s and 70s Wisemans.

welfare 01 welfare 02 welfare 03

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Oedipax
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#47 Post by Oedipax » Thu Dec 13, 2007 10:51 pm

Glad to hear Welfare is in good shape - it's easily one of my favorite Wiseman films. In a recent interview, Wiseman mentioned that he's been doing some acting in Paris, and as it turns out, it was in a production of one of Beckett's plays, also directed by Wiseman (Happy Days). For those who haven't seen Welfare, Beckett is a big player, both in terms of what's said and the feeling of the film overall.

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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#48 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:42 am

Oedipax wrote:Glad to hear Welfare is in good shape - it's easily one of my favorite Wiseman films. In a recent interview, Wiseman mentioned that he's been doing some acting in Paris, and as it turns out, it was in a production of one of Beckett's plays, also directed by Wiseman (Happy Days). For those who haven't seen Welfare, Beckett is a big player, both in terms of what's said and the feeling of the film overall.
Agree about the Beckett. Don't you think the 'It's Xmas eve!' scene almost plays like a Beckett rewrite of It's a wonderful life??

kevyip1
Joined: Sat Nov 06, 2004 7:07 pm

#49 Post by kevyip1 » Fri Dec 14, 2007 3:22 pm

I've bought many DVD-Rs of films/TV shows from really small and non-commercial outfits and the prices were always $10+ higher than the usual rates. It's just simple economics - fewer potential sales means higher prices. Making them in DVD-Rs keep the cost low. Sure, every filmmaker wants to have his films released by Criterion and get PAID for doing commentaries and contributing supplements, etc. BE REALISTIC. Not every filmmaker is that lucky. Those who whine about this and that need some perspective, and it's this: quit whining like a BIATCH and be GRATEFUL that Mr. Wiseman is GOING OUT OF HIS WAY to make these films available to you at REASONABLE PRICES so you can see them AT ALL.

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domino harvey
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#50 Post by domino harvey » Fri Dec 14, 2007 3:32 pm

kevyip1 wrote:it whining like a BIATCH and be GRATEFUL that Mr. Wiseman is GOING OUT OF HIS WAY to make these films available to you at REASONABLE PRICES so you can see them AT ALL.
What a noble man, selling a single DVD-R for $30+ dollars. Truly he is the son of God.

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