Audience will only be allowed to consume PopKorn™ and ApatowBrau® from 34:45 to 49:15. Should the viewer leave before the fourth page of credits, said user will incur a 35% early departure surcharge. Terms and Conditions apply.
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Apatow is mentioned:
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Instead, “I’ve never seen Citizen Kane” is the default
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That is hardly a mark against it. More people alive today have seen Citizen Kane then any almost other movie released in the 1940s.
What leads you to believe that significantly more people in 2020 would have seen Citizen Kane if Ted Turner had been allowed to colorize it in the 1980s?
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I bet fewer people would watch it if it were colorized. After all, when most people happen to see something in color on TV, they keep changing the channel until they find something black and white.
David Lynch has a lot of opinions on how his films should be watched.
As with most of Lynch’s films on DVD, there are no chapter stops on the disc. Lynch feels that the film should be viewed in one setting, without interruptions. This seems to really bother a lot of people, though I can’t figure out why. First, he is correct about viewing the film. It’s not a 30 minute sitcom after all. You don’t go to the theater to see a film, then get up half way through and come back the next day to see the other half. Further, most DVD players have an automatic memory, so if you shut the player off in a spot they will go right to that point when you later turn them back on. I know some are concerned because they like to “study” the film, and can’t jump around as easily. Besides the fact that Lynch doesn’t make films to teach film studies, it’s really not all that hard to fast forward to a certain point on the disc. One of the times I was viewing the disc I had to stop and take it out to check something on another one. When I put it back in, it took me all of 18 seconds to fast scan back to where I was. I realize that’s longer than the 7 seconds it might take with chapter stops, but hey, 11 extra seconds won’t kill you.
http://www.lynchnet.com/mdrive/dvdreview.html
though frankly I’d go for the bluray, which might well have chapter stops.
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Do YOU watch colorized versions of classic films?
I don’t think I’ve watched one in decades, but I remember colorization as little more than a passing fad in the film distribution industry that had already gone out of style by the late 80s. It’s hard for me to imagine someone who would choose to watch a silver-screen classic like Kane but balk at the idea of watching it as the filmmaker intended.
Occasionally this kind of thing appears on the market.
I suppose that there are people who sneer at colorizations because they are done badly, and there are people who want to see how the original directors explored the artistic medium. I am of the latter persuasion.
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You might not be the target audience.
If you’re blind, it can be desirable to speed up audio to higher speeds. (I know whenever I use a screen reader I have the speed slider cranked all the way to max.)
On the flip side, there’s conditions where slowing down voiced dialog can be desirable as well.
It’s not just about maintaining the original vision of the creator, it’s about making the content more accessible.
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I’ve known blind people who read information from web sites and informational apps this way, but not who listened to music or movies or other art forms that way. Is that a common thing?
I’m definitely not an expert here, I was just providing some examples of why this could be desirable. Others have noted plenty of other perfectly reasonable justifications for wanting to speed up or slow down media.
Software accessibility happens to be a pet competency of mine so topics like this tend to pique my interest.
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Yes, which is why the Visual Artists Rights Act, and “artistic moral rights” as recognized in Europe are an abomination.
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I mean, the things modern TVs do to the signal by default is terrible. I just want them to put what’s there on the screen.
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This may be distasteful (like, say, colorization), but the fact is the horse has already left the barn; you can already speed up/slow down playback on a computer.
It may kill Kubrick (and Judd Apatow), but at home, I don’t watch Sparticus in 70mm Super Technirama, either.
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On a similar note, web designers protest against browsers letting users apply their own CSS and lobby for removal of the app preference.
Really, all the director has to understand is that the person watching on Netflix can speed up or slow down if the person wants to. And really? Most won’t, unless they are watching something like 2001: A Space Odyssey for the 23rd time, and want to skim past one of the more boring parts. Netflix isn’t recommending it, merely offering its customers a feature the customers themselves have requested.
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I love when I learn that something turns out to have a very practical accessibility purpose that I foolishly overlooked. So thank you for sharing!
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I was being selfish, much like Apatow, Lynch, and others who prefer their works to be seen a certain way. I live with someone with tinnitus, so just about everything we watch together is watched with subtitles. If it’s cinematic, I watch it by myself, so I can enjoy it the way I want to enjoy it.
I’m not saying other people shouldn’t consume things the way they want or need to; just that for me, I won’t.
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Film makers, it’s not about you. It’s about the audience members. The audience as individuals, not a mythical average viewer either, but each of us individuals.
I’ve used a plugin for years to speed up html5 video. Most of movies, tv, youtube, etc wouldn’t be watchable for me without – even action thrillers just plod along and put me to sleep. Occasionally I’ll backtrack and slow down because of an important mumble that the captioning didn’t catch, or too many people talking at once, or background noise louder than talk, but otherwise I watch in the 1.3x to 1.5x range. Captioning required because hearing deficit, yes even with the hearing aids.
I watched DVDs at >1x too, even with chipmunktalkpitchskew. Then netflix’s DVDs got all scratched and useless and I gave up on video for a few years. Eventually, netflix streaming got captions then html5 video (enabling the speed plugin), then I could stand to watch again.
I wish people came with captioning. Augmented reality will be nice even if only for that.
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Honestly, that’s the part of this that gets me genuinely upset at Apatow’s position, where I would otherwise be largely indifferent and(if watching something myself probably inclined to take his word for it on optimal presentation).
You can only control playback speed if you have software that allows it. For the vast majority of people that means “if the software allows it” because implementing it yourself is nontrivial, harder if you are also dealing with a DRM system intended to be tamper resistant; and, again if DRM is involved, illegal to have someone else do for you in many jurisdictions.
He isn’t just expressing his opinion on correct presentation here; he’s demanding that a great many computers in fact not be capable of adjusting playback speed. He’s also advancing the theory, with all sorts of potential to be pernicious, that adding a feature in playback software is forbidden because “distributors don’t get to change the way the content is presented”.
That’s a pretty bold claim, and one that would give the copyright holder more or less complete control over every aspect of the playback system in any case where the distributor is involved in providing it, whether it be an app or a cable box or whatever. Anyone trying to pull that sort of coup deserves as much pushback as is available.
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If anyone suggested this to Criterion Channel they’d be shot on the spot and it’d be recorded in one long take.
Can’t Netflix finally offer DVD style chapters to jump to?
Maybe this fast forward function is meant to preface their upcoming Netflix Adult Entertainment section?
