I think there's benefits to having director's cuts and for upgrading content produced in a lower resolution. But there are problems with that as well. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a notorious upgrade to HD because it caused problems. Apparently the HD version meant that crew members appeared on screen like boom operators and stunt people become more visible because it wasn't shot for such a high resolution.
At a certain point too, you have to just let things go. I've thought of this when it comes to writing. I could endlessly revise things that I wrote or I could simply publish them and get them out there for people. If I'm constantly revising them, I never get to the publishing stage. So I just let things go.
I would say the Buffy situation has more to do with the fact that it was composed for a specific aspect ratio. So the problem wasn't so much with upgrading it to HD as the fact that they tried to reconfigure it for widescreen when it was never meant for that.
I do think it is a good idea to let things go at least for a little while. Films however tend to change regardless with the passage of time.
For sure, it was definitely because of it being shot for a 4:3 aspect ratio. But I still think it applies to what you're talking about regarding creating director's cuts and upgrading. There's a point where it could make things worse other than better.
I do wonder now with the ability of AI to do things, would that help with older content created in 4:3 like Buffy? Could they edit out the boom operators? Create a better version for the current 1080p or 4K UHD?
As someone who has been much more interested in TV over film, it took me a while to understand the idea of Director's Cuts of films. I didn't know that the voice considered to be the author of a movie is not necessarily the person writing the screenplay, unlike TV where we focus on showrunners if not a full writer's room. There are always people who blur lines in TV (who direct AND write, or who star AND write, which is happening more and more - though it's not like it's completely new, with works like Twin Peaks out there), but most of TV is much more about long-term writing than long-term directing. And so I see a lot of fan edit projects in TV, and have maybe never seen a TV director's cut?
Fans might re-edit the order of scenes or episodes or cut them together differently, use different music, do their own upscaling or re-colourization, or even throw in dubiously canonical deleted scenes. A lot of what I'm talking about here unsurprisingly immediately brings to mind LOST for me. There's the notoriously terrible (if popular) Chronologically LOST, which placed things in 'absolute timeline' order, with the date being what informs the choice of placement, and the more recent Circle cut which involves a lot more of those 'fan as auteur' choices described above (and the ordering of the plot is character-centred, based on their experiences, rather than based on a specific datestamp).
I'm just curious about if you have any more thoughts on those kinds of differences in what it means to 'reissue' content between TV vs movies.
Have never heard of the LOST fan edits, though I'm not surprised they exist. I am planning to tackle fan editing in the future - it was actually going to be one of my dissertation chapters in the early going - though it's a little far from now.
Regarding TV - I'd say it's more difficult to attribute authorship given the large variety of writers and directors that participate in the making of an episode. But I have seen what could be considered director's cuts of TV episodes. In fact, there are actually quite a few examples but their existence doesn't really come up much in the mainstream.
For one thing, there are multiple sitcoms that receive extended cuts of multiple episodes (though I can't say for certain where they are located). Some examples are 'Friends,' 'The Good Place,' and 'The Office.' Reportedly, almost every episode of Friends available on DVD has some extra footage, while The Office has super-fan episodes (some of which are considerably longer) on Peacock.
There are also some genre series that also get 'director's cut' releases that contain extra footage, and sometimes additional sex or violence. Starz's Spartacus has many such instances on BluRay. There is also Hannibal and possibly Van Helsing. These seem to follow the pattern set by unrated releases of R-rated movies.
Several Battlestar Galactica episodes have longer cuts on video as well. One S3 episode had, I believe, almost 30 minutes of extra footage.
Then, there are some extensive, full-blown re-edits, though these are rare. I know only two examples: Arrested Development S4 was given a 'remix' called 'Fateful Consequences,' which recut the original anthology-style episodes into a more chronological format. Then there is Starhunter Redux, a re-edit of a Canadian Scifi series that featured newly shot footage and special effects years after the fact.
Revisions can also depend on copyright. I know that some shows were released on DVD with alternate music choices due to rights/clearance issues.
All these instances suggest that television texts are indeed are quite fluid, perhaps just as much as films are. Though it's hard to say who can claim authorship through these recuts other than the exec producers.
These are such cool examples! Will have more thoughts later, but now the two that come to mind are blruay remasters of varying quality (David Simon's essay on the Blu-ray release of The Wire and how some shots are made better and some shots made worse by the new aspect ratio is particularly interesting), and great point about the music. Quantum Leap was particularly affected if I remember correctly.
Right now in the US all movies are copyrighted for 95 years. Which means that only films that were released before 1928 are now in public domain. But that means that in the next 15-20 years a lot of amazing movies will move there.
So I'm thinking, we might get a new popular genre of videos: re-edits of classical movies? Not just "Home Alone as a Thriller", but legitimate artistic re-edits. We might see something like Casablanca in the style of Edgar Wright, or Citizen Kane in the style of David Fincher. Not clips or trailers - full movies.
What do you think? Will there be a market for these?
Oh, there will be a market for sure! Consider 'Night of the Living Dead,' which went into public domain almost immediately, allowing for it to keep getting revised, customized and reissued in numerous legal editions.
The problem though is whether or not those titles will be fully free. Even for works that do go into public domain, it might be possible to still hold the reins over individual elements, such as the music, which can restrict its appropriation. And Hollywood studios are going to do all they can to prevent others from using them.
I find it's much easier for public domain novels to be appropriated nowadays, which was why we got all those 'Pride and Prejudice' reworkings a few years back. Now that I think about it, I might write a column on this topic in the future.
Yeah, you're right. Also, for a proper edit, one would need access to the material that was cut from the original filming, and that might not exist anymore, let alone be locked forever in Big H's vaults.
Novels are definitely more straightforward. But I was thinking specifically about movie editing, which is often overlooked and underappreciated but is, of course, an art in itself.
I think there's benefits to having director's cuts and for upgrading content produced in a lower resolution. But there are problems with that as well. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a notorious upgrade to HD because it caused problems. Apparently the HD version meant that crew members appeared on screen like boom operators and stunt people become more visible because it wasn't shot for such a high resolution.
At a certain point too, you have to just let things go. I've thought of this when it comes to writing. I could endlessly revise things that I wrote or I could simply publish them and get them out there for people. If I'm constantly revising them, I never get to the publishing stage. So I just let things go.
I would say the Buffy situation has more to do with the fact that it was composed for a specific aspect ratio. So the problem wasn't so much with upgrading it to HD as the fact that they tried to reconfigure it for widescreen when it was never meant for that.
I do think it is a good idea to let things go at least for a little while. Films however tend to change regardless with the passage of time.
For sure, it was definitely because of it being shot for a 4:3 aspect ratio. But I still think it applies to what you're talking about regarding creating director's cuts and upgrading. There's a point where it could make things worse other than better.
I do wonder now with the ability of AI to do things, would that help with older content created in 4:3 like Buffy? Could they edit out the boom operators? Create a better version for the current 1080p or 4K UHD?
As someone who has been much more interested in TV over film, it took me a while to understand the idea of Director's Cuts of films. I didn't know that the voice considered to be the author of a movie is not necessarily the person writing the screenplay, unlike TV where we focus on showrunners if not a full writer's room. There are always people who blur lines in TV (who direct AND write, or who star AND write, which is happening more and more - though it's not like it's completely new, with works like Twin Peaks out there), but most of TV is much more about long-term writing than long-term directing. And so I see a lot of fan edit projects in TV, and have maybe never seen a TV director's cut?
Fans might re-edit the order of scenes or episodes or cut them together differently, use different music, do their own upscaling or re-colourization, or even throw in dubiously canonical deleted scenes. A lot of what I'm talking about here unsurprisingly immediately brings to mind LOST for me. There's the notoriously terrible (if popular) Chronologically LOST, which placed things in 'absolute timeline' order, with the date being what informs the choice of placement, and the more recent Circle cut which involves a lot more of those 'fan as auteur' choices described above (and the ordering of the plot is character-centred, based on their experiences, rather than based on a specific datestamp).
I'm just curious about if you have any more thoughts on those kinds of differences in what it means to 'reissue' content between TV vs movies.
Have never heard of the LOST fan edits, though I'm not surprised they exist. I am planning to tackle fan editing in the future - it was actually going to be one of my dissertation chapters in the early going - though it's a little far from now.
Regarding TV - I'd say it's more difficult to attribute authorship given the large variety of writers and directors that participate in the making of an episode. But I have seen what could be considered director's cuts of TV episodes. In fact, there are actually quite a few examples but their existence doesn't really come up much in the mainstream.
For one thing, there are multiple sitcoms that receive extended cuts of multiple episodes (though I can't say for certain where they are located). Some examples are 'Friends,' 'The Good Place,' and 'The Office.' Reportedly, almost every episode of Friends available on DVD has some extra footage, while The Office has super-fan episodes (some of which are considerably longer) on Peacock.
There are also some genre series that also get 'director's cut' releases that contain extra footage, and sometimes additional sex or violence. Starz's Spartacus has many such instances on BluRay. There is also Hannibal and possibly Van Helsing. These seem to follow the pattern set by unrated releases of R-rated movies.
Several Battlestar Galactica episodes have longer cuts on video as well. One S3 episode had, I believe, almost 30 minutes of extra footage.
Then, there are some extensive, full-blown re-edits, though these are rare. I know only two examples: Arrested Development S4 was given a 'remix' called 'Fateful Consequences,' which recut the original anthology-style episodes into a more chronological format. Then there is Starhunter Redux, a re-edit of a Canadian Scifi series that featured newly shot footage and special effects years after the fact.
Revisions can also depend on copyright. I know that some shows were released on DVD with alternate music choices due to rights/clearance issues.
All these instances suggest that television texts are indeed are quite fluid, perhaps just as much as films are. Though it's hard to say who can claim authorship through these recuts other than the exec producers.
These are such cool examples! Will have more thoughts later, but now the two that come to mind are blruay remasters of varying quality (David Simon's essay on the Blu-ray release of The Wire and how some shots are made better and some shots made worse by the new aspect ratio is particularly interesting), and great point about the music. Quantum Leap was particularly affected if I remember correctly.
Here's something that I wonder.
Right now in the US all movies are copyrighted for 95 years. Which means that only films that were released before 1928 are now in public domain. But that means that in the next 15-20 years a lot of amazing movies will move there.
So I'm thinking, we might get a new popular genre of videos: re-edits of classical movies? Not just "Home Alone as a Thriller", but legitimate artistic re-edits. We might see something like Casablanca in the style of Edgar Wright, or Citizen Kane in the style of David Fincher. Not clips or trailers - full movies.
What do you think? Will there be a market for these?
Oh, there will be a market for sure! Consider 'Night of the Living Dead,' which went into public domain almost immediately, allowing for it to keep getting revised, customized and reissued in numerous legal editions.
The problem though is whether or not those titles will be fully free. Even for works that do go into public domain, it might be possible to still hold the reins over individual elements, such as the music, which can restrict its appropriation. And Hollywood studios are going to do all they can to prevent others from using them.
I find it's much easier for public domain novels to be appropriated nowadays, which was why we got all those 'Pride and Prejudice' reworkings a few years back. Now that I think about it, I might write a column on this topic in the future.
Yeah, you're right. Also, for a proper edit, one would need access to the material that was cut from the original filming, and that might not exist anymore, let alone be locked forever in Big H's vaults.
Novels are definitely more straightforward. But I was thinking specifically about movie editing, which is often overlooked and underappreciated but is, of course, an art in itself.