I'll start the procedures!

Just one question: why was the Spione cover changed from Black And White to Color? Is the latter the original art or was it just a case of giving it some flair? I don't know but to me the color version seems too artificial...the colors seem a tad garish...

Colour version is the original poster. Black and white version was a retrospective monochrome version of it.

I'll tone down the colours a bit on the final thing for you, Annie.

The Pitfall cover is among my favorite DVD covers of all time. Simply beautiful! Too bad I have to wait another month to hold it in my hands (Wish I were in Gary's shoes...)

So I reckon that the original cover for The Holy Mountain is going to become a highly sought after collectible...

Any thoughts to selling prints or posters of the artwork?

It would be difficult. Firstly, we have the right to use certain posters when we're issuing the film on DVD, but we don't have the right to sell copies of "just a poster". We'd have to work out a merchandising deal, etc and we've got enough on really with bringing all these discs out each month.

Secondly, the artwork is prepared specifically for DVD size, and it wouldn't blow up well at all. So if we did make some posters they'd look shit unless we redid all the artwork again in 600dpi and prepared it with large posters in mind.

Sorry, that's a massive no, isn't it? -- I'm touched that you'd consider buying them though! Thanks!

Two questions: who's in charge of the artwork for the Moc discs? And: on the new covers I don't see the age classification logo - were you able to FINALLY get rid of those horrid little things that ruin any great cover to pieces?

The whole MoC crew are "in charge".

If there's no classification on, it's because it's not been classified by us yet. It's UK law to include those logos, so unless the bbfc are brought down, they will remain.

The bbfc are a farce as far as I'm concerned <--- personal opinion.

I've always wondered, as I believe that having a video/DVD classified costs a fair whack, if the BBFC system actually discourages smaller distributors from releasing certain films: ie in those cases where a DVD only has a slim chance of being profitable, it tips the financial balance from the black to the red.

Indeed it does. It costs between £900-£1000 for them to tell you that your silent film is a U (UNIVERSAL). That's about $2,000 in Bushdollars.

Complete farce.

Are you allowed to change the colour scheme of the BBFC certificates? I always thought not, but on the old Samurai films released over here by Warrior Video, they used to change the background colour on the '12' and '15' certificates to red, giving the appearance of an '18' at first glance. I guess they wanted to make the films look more hardcore than they were...

You're not allowed to mess with the bbfc logos at all. They do - irritatingly - keep redesigning them every few years though, so a PG from today looks quite a bit different from a PG from 2002, if you look at them side-by-side.

I spent an afternoon trying to get them to let me put b+w logos on a b+w cover. The whole organisation leaves me cold.

Could be worse. Its very political now, but it the government really got involved it could be even more of a bureaucratic nightmare. In fact needed to censor every little piece of a video only came about because of the video nasty furore, that was sort of forced onto the Board by 'public opinion' (and we know who's opinion that was!)

I think it is changing (at least it doesn't seem that you have to pay a separate fee for every single feature and menu screen on the disc to be classified anymore - even though it all needs to be viewed), but like all these organisations change is only going to occur very slowly. It didn't help that James Ferman was in charge for such a long time (there's a reason why American Presidents are only elected for a maximum of two terms!), but since then the Board seems to have been going through a transition period.

It is a shame that is costs so much, and I guess that must be the reason why so many of the films MoC are releasing now were barely released before - but hopefully we can all help out by buying them!

I've just seen MoC have put a new cover up for Asphalt on their site. Looks pretty good:

This is very nice, though I liked the other one too.
What I'm not thrilled about is the cover for #16...

It's still thumbnail, so it might not be final. I don't know what's not to like though...I think Setsuko Hara's face should be on the front of more DVD covers (even of films she isn't in).

I liked the old cover so much better.

Donald, I made the old cover by messing around in Photoshop.

The new cover is the original poster art so it means a lot more, I think, to have that represent the film, and be the cover. The green cover that I made will be the booklet cover so you'll still be able to see it.

I wonder why the Onibaba cover is taking so long. Peerpee, are you going for the original posters or will you (MoC team) be doing a new one. I must say that the original posters are a bit problematic for DVD cover art (at least IMHO):

How about a large cover for The Idiot? The nazis at dvdafficionado wont accept the entry without a cover.

What exactly determines if a cover can be viewed 'large'? Does the cover have to be definite, or does the title have to come out in the following month or something? I want that Vengeance is Mine-cover as wallpaper, Goddarn it.

#12, #14, #16, #17 are mock-ups.

For a cover to be completed, it has to be finished in hi-res with the best materials. They also have to go through a 2 or 3 month "can this be bettered?" phase.

The only cover, from #12 onwards, that is currently going to remain very similar to how it is now, is SCANDAL -- (oh, and possibly VENGEANCE)

Gotcha.

Great final art for Naked Island. When can we expect the cover art/specs for the other Shindo films? Can we safely sell our Criterion Onibabas?

Watch out who you call a nazi. Nazi yourself!