BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Vertov

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Drucker
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BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Vertov

#1 Post by Drucker » Tue Aug 11, 2015 9:24 am

In the not-unexpected, and we kind of saw this coming department:
MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA to join The Masters of Cinema Series! We're absolutely thrilled to announce that we will be releasing what has been heralded as the best documentary of all time and not just that, one of the greatest films of all time – Dziga Vertov's fantastic Man with a Movie Camera. Taken from the stunning recent Lobster Films, EYE Film Institute, Cinémathèque de Toulouse, and the Centre National de la Cinématographie restoration and presented with a collection of Vertov's other works, this deluxe special edition set will be joining The Masters of Cinema Series very soon. More news on a release date and full specs when we have it, but this will be a release not to miss!
From Facebook.

rwaits
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Re: MoC Forthcoming, Wishlist and Random Speculation

#2 Post by rwaits » Tue Aug 11, 2015 9:26 am

Drucker wrote:In the not-unexpected, and we kind of saw this coming department:
MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA to join The Masters of Cinema Series! We're absolutely thrilled to announce that we will be releasing what has been heralded as the best documentary of all time and not just that, one of the greatest films of all time – Dziga Vertov's fantastic Man with a Movie Camera. Taken from the stunning recent Lobster Films, EYE Film Institute, Cinémathèque de Toulouse, and the Centre National de la Cinématographie restoration and presented with a collection of Vertov's other works, this deluxe special edition set will be joining The Masters of Cinema Series very soon. More news on a release date and full specs when we have it, but this will be a release not to miss!
From Facebook.
Was this not unexpected with the recent BFI?

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Re: MoC Forthcoming, Wishlist and Random Speculation

#3 Post by Calvin » Tue Aug 11, 2015 9:31 am

rwaits wrote:
Was this not unexpected with the recent BFI?
The fact that the BFI couldn't get the recent restoration implied that another label already had it - and MoC was the obvious candidate.

It's fantastic news, as the encoding on the Flicker Alley and Lobster releases can be improved upon. And I want the Cinematic Orchestra score, though I'll be (pleasantly) surprised if it's included.

rwaits
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Re: MoC Forthcoming, Wishlist and Random Speculation

#4 Post by rwaits » Tue Aug 11, 2015 9:36 am

Thanks. I didn't realize that BFI's was not the most recent restoration. Very exciting.

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Drucker
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Re: MoC Forthcoming, Wishlist and Random Speculation

#5 Post by Drucker » Tue Aug 11, 2015 9:43 am

Of course, with the combination of scores and bonus films, you could argue all three releases from English-friendly territories are necessary.

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Re: Forthcoming: Man with a Movie Camera

#6 Post by swo17 » Tue Aug 11, 2015 10:50 am

We don't know the score options and bonus films for this one yet. I'm guessing though that the MoC and BFI will collectively cover everything on the FA/Lobster releases (and then some).

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Tommaso
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Re: Forthcoming: Man with a Movie Camera

#7 Post by Tommaso » Tue Aug 11, 2015 3:12 pm

Very good news. And please, MoC, put on "Kino-Glaz" as an extra and make the whole package dual-format. Please.

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rapta
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Re: Forthcoming: Man with a Movie Camera

#8 Post by rapta » Tue Aug 11, 2015 6:29 pm

Was expected - after hearing the BFI didn't have the rights to the restored version - but glad to hear this will be their first 'deluxe' edition of a single title. Hoping for either a steelbook, or something special (like The Passion of Joan of Arc). They say 'very soon' so I'm guessing November as they don't often release much in December...though you never know, this could be one of the two special 'box sets' Kevin mentioned would be released before the end of the year (the other apparently coming out early 2016).

Was hoping Eureka had Out 1 but I'm sure they'll have something else just as special planned. Hopefully something like The Apu Trilogy, or another Japanese set (but this time more of a surprise)?

Also, hope they confirm Rocco and His Brothers as an upcoming released after they basically 'made' BFI cancel theirs (well, by reminding them they still had exclusive UK rights). They certainly have hinted that this will also be upcoming, I just want to hear them say it explicitly!

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What A Disgrace
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Re: Forthcoming: Man with a Movie Camera

#9 Post by What A Disgrace » Tue Aug 11, 2015 11:58 pm

Put The Eleventh Hour on there and all three of these discs will be eseential.

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rapta
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Re: Forthcoming: Man with a Movie Camera

#10 Post by rapta » Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:14 am

Image

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Caligula
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Re: Forthcoming: Man with a Movie Camera

#11 Post by Caligula » Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:45 am

Gonna be a 4-disc dual format set, according to the Amazon listing

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rapta
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Re: Forthcoming: Man with a Movie Camera

#12 Post by rapta » Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:49 am

Yeah, most likely 2xBD and 2xDVD. It seems it will be similar to The Passion of Joan of Arc and feature a hard outer box because the booklet will be 100 pages! Sounds like a very classy release, and I'm glad I waited for this one (though may still pick up the BFI disc at a later date...same goes for their Nosferatu and The Birth of a Nation releases).

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swo17
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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#13 Post by swo17 » Wed Feb 03, 2016 12:59 pm

The "other works" are:

Kino-Eye (1924)
Kino-Pravda #21 (1925)
Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass (1931)
Three Songs About Lenin (1934)

So the same as the Flicker Alley release.

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Feego
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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#14 Post by Feego » Wed Feb 03, 2016 3:49 pm

It must be pretty definite that MoC will include the Alloy Orchestra score. I wonder if it will be better synched to the film than it was on the Flicker Alley disc. When I watched the FA Blu, I noticed that the audio appeared to be the same recording that was used on the older Image Entertainment DVD, so it did not quite fit with the slightly longer cut of the film.

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Drucker
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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#15 Post by Drucker » Sun Apr 17, 2016 7:40 pm

Beaver. PQ wise for the main feature, this unexpectedly seems to be definitive.

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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#16 Post by stevewhamola » Sun Apr 17, 2016 8:31 pm

I was fully expecting MoC to deliver the definitive package. Glad I waited nearly a year before buying this despite the existence of two competing Blus already on the market.

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Ashirg
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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#17 Post by Ashirg » Sun Apr 17, 2016 8:38 pm

Feego wrote:It must be pretty definite that MoC will include the Alloy Orchestra score. I wonder if it will be better synched to the film than it was on the Flicker Alley disc. When I watched the FA Blu, I noticed that the audio appeared to be the same recording that was used on the older Image Entertainment DVD, so it did not quite fit with the slightly longer cut of the film.
Per Michael B. in facebook comments to DVD Beaver review, Jon Robertson and David Mackenzie synced up the Alloy Orchestra soundtrack so it matches the intended frames of the new restorations.

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MichaelB
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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#18 Post by MichaelB » Mon Apr 18, 2016 3:20 am

As to how it was done, David Mackenzie has posted this on another forum:
Resyncing the score was quite delicate. The biggest problem is that the new restoration usually has more footage than what the score was originally recorded to, as you pointed out.

Jon Robertson of MoC identified the key parts where the sync was not right. I then had to find points where the sync could be adjusted without it becoming obvious. There are a limited number of points you can cut at to shift things around (small gaps of silence are the ideal case). Another "cheat" was whenever there's cymbal crashes at the end of a sequence. You can digitally time-stretch those parts of the audio without creating audible artefacts, to make up differences in duration, in a way that would sound weird with almost any other type of instrument.
I did the QC on this title, which included double-checking that everything matched the new sync points, so I can confirm first hand just how much work went into this. But it was spectacularly worth the effort.

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TMDaines
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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#19 Post by TMDaines » Mon Apr 18, 2016 5:09 am

That sounds awesome. It's much appreciated when people go the extra mile in fine-tuning releases.

This is going to be one of the first things I project in my new house once we're up and running.

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MichaelB
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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#20 Post by MichaelB » Mon Apr 18, 2016 6:08 am

I examined several other versions during QC, and they all ticked at least two of these boxes:

• unrestored version
• visibly cropped picture (and not just in comparison with the restoration)
• visible encoding artefacts
• out-of-sync score
• incomplete subtitles

...and my brief was to make sure that all the above were thoroughly addressed.

For the subtitles, we decided to go for broke and translate/transliterate everything, at least on its first appearance, including the labels on the editing shelves, admonitions to library users, etc. You can of course appreciate the film with no subtitles at all, so in some respects all this extra effort wasn't strictly necessary, but it was immensely satisfying seeing everything getting so comprehensively fleshed out. I'm really really pleased with how it turned out, and I hope everyone agrees.

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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#21 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Apr 18, 2016 6:40 am

This is a bit off topic, but it has always interested me to see how subtitlers deal with the issue of on-screen text. It might not be too much of a problem in many films but especially in something in Man With A Movie Camera where the names of buildings or information on posters are occasionally providing the context and the narrative drive to a scene (because the text is another image itself, often as vibrant and full of energy and meaning as the location photography), or at least orientating a scene spatially in a film that is constantly jumping from situation to situation (or even just providing a jokey commentary!), how much or little is translated becomes crucial to the audience's experience.

In a different film I found it an interesting experiment, though not an entirely successful one, to see the way that one release of Akira on DVD (the Pioneer disc from the early 2000s) featured a kind of 'pop-up' subtitle track that flashed up a clickable prompt every time a bit of onscreen text featured in order to overlay a translation of it. That greatly enhanced my comprehension and enjoyment of the film (that is another film full of context-adding signs, from the Olympic Stadium advert early in the film that becomes the crucial setting for the final climax, to the various banners and graffiti scrawls that appear as the rioting increases, to all the computer terminals!), but unfortunately clicking the prompt every time to pause the film and read the translation was extremely jarring and immersion-breaking, so it wouldn't have been the best way to watch any film for the first time!

I guess, as with subtitling in general, there is a fine balance to be drawn between translating for clarity and comprehension, and getting the point across in general, and a (perhaps always unattainable without producing something dry and lifeless) goal of being utterly thorough in capturing every detail. It (as with dubbing) sounds like it is quite an art in itself!

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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#22 Post by MichaelB » Mon Apr 18, 2016 7:22 am

As you say, it's a balancing act. Had there been loads of onscreen text in The Man with the Movie Camera, we'd have been a lot more selective - but in practice it's only very occasional, so we thought "why not?"

And it is interesting to know that, for instance, the industrial-looking building is the office of Izvestia, one of the main Soviet newspapers, or the names of the precise categories into which the various clips are being filed in the editing-room sequence. You certainly don't need to know any of this, but by the same token there's no particularly good reason not to offer a thorough translation. Not least because the subtitles are optional, so if anyone finds them annoying (although it's hard to imagine why they would - entire minutes go by with no subtitles at all), they can easily switch them off.

With other films, my main question is "is this narratively relevant or psychologically interesting?" It's always a judgement call, but a lot of the time the answers are pretty straightforward.

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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#23 Post by TMDaines » Thu Apr 21, 2016 4:11 am

If you're expecting a typical MoC, sturdy slipcase with this release you might want to temper expectations; it's thin, Criterion-style card.

The front cover looks great though and there are no BBFC logos strangely. Either they are considering this to be exempt or someone has messed up.

ImageImageImageImage

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MichaelB
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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#24 Post by MichaelB » Thu Apr 21, 2016 4:45 am

TMDaines wrote:The front cover looks great though and there are no BBFC logos strangely. Either they are considering this to be exempt or someone has messed up.
They're unarguably documentaries, and there's nothing in them that would get anything stronger than a PG. So even under the new, tougher rules they're clearly exempt from classification, and so there was absolutely no reason for Eureka to submit them.

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TMDaines
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Re: BD 134 Man with a Movie Camera & Other Works by Dziga Ve

#25 Post by TMDaines » Thu Apr 21, 2016 4:56 am

Interesting that the BFI chose to submit the film in the pas.

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