Re: [dvd-discuss] DVD Editing

[Joshua Stratton <cpt(at)gryphon.auspice.net>]

> I remain convinced that such editing is (for lack of  a more 
> appropriate term) blasphemous.
> 
> Here's a little snippet from  Altman's commentary on the "Gosford Park" 
> DVD that describes how the MPAA rating system distorts film---

(fucking example clipped)

Well, I must disagree. Provided that the original work remains available, 
editing remains valuable. Firstly, just as an economic concern -- 
sometimes people are only interested in one particular aspect of some 
content. Legal casebooks are heavily edited since there's a lot of 
extraneous materia in them that would not help teach the particular isuse 
the case was included for.

But also secondly, as a valid art form in its own right. It is not 
unreasonable to say that The Phantom Edit was a somewhat different work 
than The Phantom Menace. And we might learn something from comparing those 
works, and frankly one might prefer one over the other. I'm sure that 
there are people who liked the as-released forms of Brazil and Blade 
Runner better than the directors' cuts. Play the different scenes from 
Momento in a different order and it would have quite an impact on the 
story, I think.

I've seen some movies where I routinely like to skip certain scenes
because I don't really care about them. Is that wrong?

Taken to an extreme, editing reminds me a lot of collage or sampling. The 
selection of what works and even what parts of the same work, and what 
order is itself expressive.

If it's clearly labeled as being different from the original, and doesn't 
jeopardize the original, then I'm not all that worried about it.

Then again, you should see the amount of stuff I do to web pages with my 
proxy filter. Mostly I just get rid of the ads, because I find most 
advertising to be personally offensive. Some pages I have rebuilt from the 
ground up, keeping only that content which pleases me.

As this doesn't alter what other people have the opportunity of seeing, 
this too seems okay.