|
|
In addition to the various retail & bootleg DVDs available, there are also a number of fanmade DVD projects made over the years. This page details one such project assembled by myself, the webmaster. It's worth pointing out that fanmade DVDs are not meant as a pirated replacement for legally bought discs, but a companion to them, produced as a labour of love by die hard fans to offer other fans something more which isn't commercially available.
|
|
Completion Date:
|
May 2, 2010
|
|
Production Time:
|
2 Weeks
|
|
Number Of Discs:
|
3
|
|
|
Language(s):
|
English
|
|
Subtitle(s):
|
None
|
|
Source(s):
|
Pre-existing DVD MPEG-2 files
|
|
|
|
|
In March 2010, Josh Becker made a number of Super-8 shorts directed during the early days of his filmmaking, available direct to the public through his own website; Beckerfilms.com. There were five discs available; disc one has Stryker's War, disc two has The Blind Waiter & Oedipus Rex, disc three has Holding It, disc four has Acting And Reacting & The Final Round, and disc five has Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter, The Case of the Topanga Pearl, Super Student, and Public Enemy Revisited, which came to a total of $65 including postage.
|
|
DVD cover artwork - 14mm spine (click to enlarge)
|
Being a fan, I immediately placed an order for all five discs, and also offered my services in designing artwork for the releases. This offer was not taken up, as Josh already had his own artwork. In April I received the set, which consisted of five discs in blank paper slipcases, with printed disc surface labels. All five original discs were single layer, and even then only around half full.
I thought I would just go ahead and re-author the shorts onto three single layer DVD discs as the 'Josh Becker Super-8 Shorts', create my own DVD cover, along with matching disc art & DVD menus, which allowed me to store the original discs safely away.
I used GIMP 2.6.7 to design all the artwork & menus. The DVD cover was based on a Kodak Kodachrome 40 Super-8 film magazine, assembled from scratch using layered stock textures and bump mapping to give a perception of depth. A fake sticker is used for the spine label. As I kept everything quite generic and nondescript, the cover would have pretty much worked with all of the shorts discs singly or in any combination depending on orders placed through Josh's website. The disc labels were based on Super-8 film reels with typed paper sticker labels denoting the contents.
The original DVD menus used were generic templates, and quite unrelated to the subject matter. Recycling an idea from one of my previous releases 'The Evil Dead - The Treasures Collection DVD', I assembled film cans themselves from scratch using layered stock textures & bump mapping to achieve light/shadow & depth, with various freehand fonts used on each label, all with a wooden background, to look like one complete photo of cans on a table.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Josh Becker's own original DVD disc artwork, all five personally autographed
|
I also took the chance to fix some issues related to authoring and production of the DVDs themselves. Holding It had about 20 minutes of black video which played after it, which I edited out, and some of the silent shorts had a whirring 8mm projector sample dubbed on in place of what would have been a silent audio track. While this was a good idea, the sample used only last a few minutes before looping, and over its length changed pitch making the looping point quite obvious. I re-dubbed this using a longer clip with an even pitch to hide the looping point. All of this was achieved without re-encoding the shorts themselves, so the quality was bit for bit identical to the original discs. The original set of five discs had no overall chronological order, with various shorts mis-matched together. I re-ordered the shorts placing them into the order in which they were made; disc one - 1972 to 1976 with Public Enemy Revisited, Oedipus Rex, Super Student & The Case of the Topanga Pearl, disc two - 1977 to 1978 with The Final Round, Acting And Reacting & Holding It, and disc three - 1979 to 1982 with The Blind Waiter, Stryker's War & Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter. DVD-Flick 1.3.0.7 was used to author and assemble the final 3-disc DVD set.
Once complete, I sent my work over to Josh to get his opinion. While enthusiastic about it, he wasn't keen to dump the artwork he had designed and was already selling, and my own personal re-authored copy was as far as this project went. Josh, however, did mention a possible Early Bruce Campbell Collection in the future.
|
|
Disc 1 of 3 - Disc Artwork & Menus
|
|
|
Total DVD Running Time:
|
00:30:57
|
|
ISO Image Size:
|
1.69GB
|
|
Region:
|
0 (Worldwide)
|
|
|
Disc Format:
|
NTSC DVD5
|
|
Video Format:
|
MPEG-2 / 720x480 / 4:3
|
|
Audio Format:
|
AC3 2ch Stereo
|
|
|
|
|
|
Disc 1 - Disc artwork
|
Disc 1 - Main menu
|
|
|
|
|
Disc 2 of 3 - Disc Artwork & Menus
|
|
|
Total DVD Running Time:
|
01:07:17
|
|
ISO Image Size:
|
3.55GB
|
|
Region:
|
0 (Worldwide)
|
|
|
Disc Format:
|
NTSC DVD5
|
|
Video Format:
|
MPEG-2 / 720x480 / 4:3
|
|
Audio Format:
|
AC3 2ch Stereo
|
|
|
|
|
|
Disc 2 - Disc artwork
|
Disc 2 - Main menu
|
|
|
|
|
Disc 3 of 3 - Disc Artwork & Menus
|
|
|
Total DVD Running Time:
|
01:14:52
|
|
ISO Image Size:
|
4.01GB
|
|
Region:
|
0 (Worldwide)
|
|
|
Disc Format:
|
NTSC DVD5
|
|
Video Format:
|
MPEG-2 / 720x480 / 4:3
|
|
Audio Format:
|
AC3 2ch Stereo
|
|
|
|
|
|
Disc 3 - Disc artwork
|
Disc 3 - Main menu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
