Severin Films: All the Haunts Be Ours - A Compendium of Folk Horror (All Volumes)

[MichaelB]

If it was just a case of replacing a single .m2ts file on one of the discs, and the process of creating the new file didn't run into any difficulties, "up to a month's delay" could well mean "only a few days".

[Robin Davies]

I've just played the analytical commentary on the fascinating film The Enchanted and

Spoiler

the two commentators seem puzzled as to why Twyla is scared of the kitten and faints when she sees a decapitated chicken. Surely it's just because she used to be a bird.
Also they comment on microphones and animal wranglers getting into the edge of the shot but (unless my TV settings have gone awry) I can't see these at all. They made no comment on the more obvious flaw that the "dead" calves were clearly still breathing!

[zedz]

One of the perils of recording the commentary before watching the movie?

[MichaelB]

More often than not, I record my commentaries to a different and usually inferior-quality version of the film than the one that ends up on the disc, usually for the practical reason that the restoration isn't ready. The most extreme example was Nightmare Alley, which Johnny Mains and I recorded to Eureka's old DVD back in 2018 and we didn't get to see it in HD until the disc finally came out in 2022.

This can be fiddly sometimes because I don't necessarily know for certain whether the same subtitle translation will be used, hence me using bet-hedging phrases like "this is usually subtitled as..."

[mhofmann]

The most extreme example was Nightmare Alley, which Johnny Mains and I recorded to Eureka's old DVD back in 2018 and we didn't get to see it in HD until the disc finally came out in 2022.

How did you/they correct for the PAL speedup?

[Peacock]

MoC’s Nightmare Alley was NTSC

[MichaelB]

...although this situation has come up on other projects, to which the answer is that I rip the video off the DVD, convert it into ProRes, slow it down to 23.976fps (or 24fps - always, always ask the client which framerate they're going to end up using, as you'll slip out of sync by a few seconds by the end if you use the wrong one) and use that as the basis for the commentary recording.

Mind you, with my producer hat on I've occasionally received commentaries recorded to a PAL version in all innocence, which of course don't match up to the high-def master. The easy solution is to slow it down and pitch-correct up 0.7 semitones to compensate, but in one case it wasn't an especially scene-specific commentary and had no sync points at all in the second half, so the commentator in question appreciated the opportunity to record another four minutes or so.

A major annoyance, though, was with Stanley Long's commentaries on his Adventures films, which were recorded for PAL DVD release. Unfortunately, either the original audio stems featuring just Long were destroyed/deleted or nobody had any idea where they ended up, because all I had to work with was the final mixed version - the problem being that either Long or the film audio would be 0.7 semitones out regardless of whether you listened to it at 24fps (correct theatrical) or 25fps (correct commentary). We ended up pitching Long correctly on the grounds that he was by far the most audible element of the track, but neither of our two options would have been entirely satisfactory.

(I also had to make a small cut to one of Long's commentaries because at one point he's startled by a visible boom mic, saying "I've seen this film loads of times but I never spotted that before!". But that's because he was recording to an open-matte 4:3 version, whereas the Indicator version was correctly framed for widescreen as per the theatrical release - and so the boom mic that he was commenting on was no longer visible.)

[colinr0380]

You were not tempted to move his comment to one of the more risque scenes?

Also to make this less of an empty post and add it to the thread here's the Mondo Digital review of Volume 2 (I ordered my copy from Severin but am leaving it in its package for now to act as a Christmas present, so I can't comment on it directly as yet)