A Few Words on Extras

I made a decision to stop investing in physical media a while ago, and I never made any attempt at transitioning from DVDs to Blu-Ray discs. I don't have any kind of Blu-Ray player, and when I rent movies, it's always the DVD versions. One of the major consequences of this decision, along with a greater switch to consuming digital media, has been that I've completely fallen out of the habit of watching the studio-produced extras.

I used to love DVD extras, and would spend hours listening to commentaries, studying the featurettes, and guffawing at the blooper reels. They often ran longer than the films themselves. However, at some point several studios decided to strip the extras from the rental versions of their discs, in order to encourage viewers to buy the full versions. This never made much sense to me, as it actually removed a major motivator for me to rent a film I'd already seen for another viewing. Soon after that, the bulk of the better extras became Blu-Ray only features to encourage the switch from DVDs to the more expensive Blu-Ray discs. For instance, I was irritated to learn that "Ratatouille," one of the last DVDs I purchased, had a standard version that was so light on extras compared to the one for the previous PIXAR feature, "The Incredibles." Meanwhile, there was a Blu-Ray edition with a directors' commentary, making-of featurettes, and extra deleted scenes. These days, I've simply stopped paying much attention to the differences in releases, having stopped watching extras almost completely.

This doesn't mean I've stopped consuming supplementary materials though. Far from it. While I don't have access to the most desired official extras like bloopers, deleted scenes, and commentary tracks, there's plenty of information about the production of a film available through interviews, press reports, and especially marketing materials. Marketing campaigns have massively expanded in recent years, to the point where they're overlapping with the kind of material you expect to see as extras. Since I'm so wary of spoilers, I often avoid the marketing completely, and only circle back to look at what they offer after seeing the film. "The Hobbit" has its production blog videos, and just released the entire soundtrack of the film online. "Life of Pi" released several short "making-of" featurettes as part of its awards campaign, in order to highlight its technical achievements. And then there's Rian Johnson, who released a free director's commentary track for "Looper," meant to be listened to in conjunction with a theatrical screening of the movie, in order to encourage repeat viewings. I didn't hear much difference between that track and any regular director's commentary, but I'm certainly not complaining.

Keep in mind that these are only the official, studio-produced supplements. Once you go looking for them, there's no end to the ancillary material you can find online for a popular film. Director Q&A's have been everywhere lately because of the awards race, Comic-Con always brings tons of panels, and general media coverage frequently provides behind-the-scenes footage. There's also the inescapable reality that if there's anything really of substance in a deleted scene, it's going to be reported on, blogged about, analyzed, and dissected to death. The home media releases of "Prometheus" ruffled feathers earlier this year because many of the hotly anticipated deleted scenes were only available on certain releases. The content stayed exclusive, but the discussion of them sure didn't. For a few weeks, it seemed like every film blog was devoting articles to those deleted scenes, arguing about which ones should have been kept in the film, and how they might have helped to improve the difficult narrative. Even without seeing the actual clips, there was no longer any mystery as to what they depicted.

I guess this has been a very roundabout way of saying that while the studios like hyping up extras as a reason to buy Blu-rays, and to stick with traditional media instead of streaming services, it's not really working. I know a couple of film geeks who do care passionately about having access to these extras and will plunk down a few more bucks for them, but they're a pretty niche bunch. While I like seeing how the sausage is made, and I'm still hoping to see digital versions of extras eventually, they've never been necessary to my enjoyment of any film. Therefore, the incentive they provide has always been pretty limited. I think that's why we've been seeing more of the overlap with the marketing materials lately, as home media sales have dropped and the studios are trying to make the best use of their resources.

I don't think we'll be seeing the end of the extras any time soon though, not as long as people still find blooper reels funny and fans are curious about deleted and alternate scenes. However, it's worth remembering that they're not much to talk about without the films they supplement. Extras, after all, are just extras.
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