For Contractual Reasons Certain Edits Have Been Made

I am very sick of reading this on the back of DVD covers. Or, indeed, not reading it on the back of DVD covers, and then finding out that music substitutions have been made anyway. Yes, Life On Mars, I'm looking at you.

It's understandable, of course. The usual problem is music - stuff that's fine for broadcast use can be very expensive, or even impossible, to clear for DVD release. A lot of shows these days take this into account when preparing the show for broadcast - and only use music that they know they can clear for commercial release. But not every show does this, as they feel it impacts on the quality of the broadcast version - see Life On Mars, again - whilst with a lot of older shows, DVD or video release was never a consideration.

(There is, of course, a prime rant to be had here against various music companies, agents, and even bands themselves, about causing trouble with commercial releases - the main point being that getting their music out there can only increase sales. But I believe I will postpone.)

Of course, it all brings up questions about wanting things "as broadcast" for TV geeks - and there's no better way to make people download stuff illegally if they're getting a better version of the product by doing so. (Not that this is the DVD companies fault, of course - although it does mean that extras become ever more important. Indeed, they're the only reason I shelled out for Life On Mars.) It all gets into heated debates about treating TV as art - which is what it is - and wanting the original creators intentions.

On the other hand, there is the quite relevant issue that subsitutions or other edits take up very little actual screentime (or, rather, non-screentime), when the length of the entire feature is taken into account. How much do they actually matter? The answer, of course, depends on the individual edit.

I think for me, it's almost a matter of loss of confidence. Now, when I watched my Life On Mars DVD, I have no idea whether the song playing was the choice of the original creators or not. (And, more than most series, music is incredibly important to the show.) Or take an episode of Hi-Di-Hi I bought recently - A Matter of Conscience - where you've got a big, emotional (and very well done) speech by Peggy at the end. And then there's an appalling edit that brings you right out of the show. Was it simply badly-done at the time? Or was it an edit done for the DVD? I think it's the former, but I can't tell for sure. Did I miss anything important? Thus, I've got a loss of confidence in the all-important ending of the episode. And even I think I should have better things to worry about than that.

The answer is very simple. Whilst it would be nice to have the full, original episodes of things released, it's an impossible goal at the moment. (Give it 50 years.) But what we could have is DVD companies listing the edits they have made to their releases on their websites. If a piece of music has been replaced - tell us what the original was, and what you've replaced it with. If you've had to cut out some dialogue altogether because you couldn't replace the music, tell us what was snipped. If you've had to edit out something for legal reasons, at least tell us as much as you can about it without getting sued.

Sure, it's for a small minority of an audience. But frankly, so are some extras. Do you think many people sit there and watch the VT clocks that Network put on some of their releases? Do you think that many people care about the unrestored footage of the first scene of The Caves Of Androzani? And who really cares about the clean jingles on the I'm Alan Partridge DVDs? Answer: geeks. Part of DVDs appeal is to the geek market. And the geek market cares about programme integrity. And programme integrity is important to a show - it's just that most people don't know that editing goes on. Anything that encourages people to pay attention to a show properly has to be good. To use a wildly-overblown metaphor - if people started cutting bits off the edges of the Mona Lisa, people wouldn't like it, would they?

As it is, it's left to fansites to do their own lists. And it's such a tedious job - so tedious that it's really not been done for most releases. It'd be far easier for the DVD companies to compile the list during production of the DVD. It really wouldn't take that long to do - a couple of hours for each release? - and I'm sure it would get extra sales. I know I've not bought DVDs because of edits - if I knew exactly what was cut out, I'd be a lot more keen to buy. Or at the very least, judge whether a particular edit matters to a show, and decide accordingly.

And once you know what you've actually missed, a lot of edits don't seem nearly as important.

About this entry

By John Hoare
Posted on Sunday, June 18 2006 @ 7:35 pm
Categorised in TV, Comment
14 comments

Comments

What's the Life on Mars change?

By si
June 18, 2006 @ 9:47 pm

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Not got a full list of music changes for it, but some info here (scroll down a bit):

http://www.zetaminor.com/roobarb/showthread.php?t=8895&page=3

By John Hoare
June 18, 2006 @ 9:53 pm

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Don't postpone too long. It's an issue that sorely needs to be addressed.

By Philip J Reed, VSc
June 18, 2006 @ 10:03 pm

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Damn. That quotation should have been italic. I'm a bad friend.

By Philip J Reed, VSc
June 18, 2006 @ 10:07 pm

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To be honest, the main reason I chickened out of that bit is because I don't know the technicalities behind it.

But it does infuriate me. We're talking the use of incidental music here, not *clean* versions of tracks - and *all* it can do is make people think "That's nice - I'll have to hunt that out". Unless it's a documentary saying how great dog porn is, I can't see the problem. Why put barriers in the way of people who will increase your awareness and sales?

By John Hoare
June 18, 2006 @ 10:13 pm

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I had no idea this sort of thing happened until I bought the 'Rock Profiles' DVD and was hugely disappointed to find that (presumably for legal reasons) none of the video clips were included. By not being able to include them the whole balance of each show was thrown right out of kilter, plus in my opinion the text that scrolled across the videos, plus the pop-up talking head pieces, made for some of the funniest parts of the programme. If I'd known beforehand I most certainly wouldn't have bought the DVD.

See also: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation which still doesn't seem quite the same without The Who blasting in at the start and out at the end.

By Pook
June 18, 2006 @ 10:27 pm

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Going back to the LoM DVD - I've heard that there are two easter eggs, and even after all this time, I can only find the one (the mini CG feature). Anyone any ideas?

By si
June 18, 2006 @ 11:42 pm

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I've often bought a piece of music after hearing it on TV.

By Kirk
June 19, 2006 @ 12:49 am

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This is one of the most annoying but unavoidable issues with DVD releases. Off the top of my head, Subterranean Homesick Blues being cut from Cash in series 2 of The Young Ones. I mean, for fuck's sake, it's like raping a perfect piece of television history. The songs are part of what makes The Young Ones so unique a show. I think it actually says on the case 'for contractual reasons certain cunting yadda yadda arsecheeses have been made'.

Dwarf is very lucky in this regard due to the nature of the show.

By performingmonkey
June 19, 2006 @ 3:50 am

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Yeah, Dwarf is lucky that it had Howard Goodall doing all the music - and when they wanted something that sounded like something well-known (e.g. the Top Gun theme for Ace Rimmer), he wrote perfect, Rutles-esque pastiche instead.

The Life on Mars thing really pisses me off. I went and hunted down "Wild Horses" by the Rolling Stones specifically because of that scene, a scene that for me was the best moment in the entire series (it was an incredibly significant turning point for Sam, for Gene and for their relationship and understanding of one-another). Admittedly I haven't seen the DVD edit yet, but I just can't imagine it being anywhere near as powerful with a generic piece of library music slotted in. Is the Toxic bit still in, does anyone know?

I wonder if Who ever has problems like this? There's been a lot of use of contemporary music in the RTD era, and it'd be a shame to see some of it go - for example, will they get clearance for the ELO stuff when L&M comes out (it'd be patently ridiculous if they didn't)?

By Seb
June 19, 2006 @ 10:25 am

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>I went and hunted down "Wild Horses" by the Rolling Stones

I hope you at least hunted down the entire Sticky Fingers album. The whole thing's fantastic.

By Philip J Reed, VSc
June 19, 2006 @ 12:17 pm

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I reckon with new Who they are using tracks which they already know will be available for the DVD. It's funny when RTD mentions on the Christmas Invasion commentary that the rights for Jingle Bells had just come up (I mean, for the love of god...who actually earns anything from it's use?) so that's why they could use it for the Christmas tree flat scene.

By performingmonkey
June 19, 2006 @ 10:00 pm

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The Wallace and Gromit DVDs have always had replacement music for certain parts of The Wrong Trousers and it actually ruins the experience. Interestingly, though, the commentary features the original soundtrack in the background, with "Happy Birthday" coming from Gromit's card, and organ music like "How much is that Doggy in the Window?" (and Wallace's humming of it the next morning) still in place.

I'd like to think that this is the BBC, or Aardman or whoever, doing what they can with loop-holes in DVD release laws. They've done this without telling anyone, and I like it.

By Simon
June 21, 2006 @ 2:20 pm

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Here is a reference list of cuts made during the BBC’s notorious hatchet job on the ‘Only Fools and Horses’ DVD releases:

http://www.ofahcuts.talkspot.com/

It is baffling that most of these episodes were previously released virtually unscathed on VHS during the mid-to-late 90s. Being one of the most popular BBC shows of all time, you’d think it would get the in-depth, exhaustive, bonus-laden treatment that much lesser shows have received… alas, instead we get a chopped up, extras barren collection with up to 20 mins removed in some cases. Poor effort.

By Carl
June 21, 2009 @ 7:22 am

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