Archive for April, 2010

Wilson’s time travelling note: So I wrote this post waaaay back in december 2009, and as such, today, things have changed. Comsol, in a strange caterpillar-to-butterfly move, have started releasing only dvd quality movies. Or dvd like quality movies. Or dvd screener (which are basically dvd quality) movies. Or just plain dvd copied movies. Which has sorta made this post useless. However, considering the fact that Comsol isn’t the only dvd shop in town, and with other dvd stores (albit less well known) still going strong, the pirate movie pool is should be still swimming with them shaky-cam movie copies. And thus, it is for those versions, that I post this post.

The modern pirate arr

Welcome to the land of all that isn’t original or bought from the bargin bin! Piracy is a way of life here in paradise, it permeates every aspect of our entertainment needs, from video games to the standard of slow evenings at home – dvds. Countless entrepreneurs hawk pirate dvds anywhere and everywhere, from the quickest corner set up in town, to the most seemingly legit of businesses i.e. Comsol. Actually, I take that back. Comsol as a company is legit. As for their now defunct (well, publicly anyways) dvd section, I have my doubts. While Comsol wasn’t the only pirate dvd seller in Fiji, they were the most prolific, and at times, worthy of rockstar status, thanks in part to their features on the national news due to bootlegging local content, which always gets the media and police attention.

Comsol as a pirate dvd shop (they actually sell heaps of other stuff as well such as computers and homeware) had an unusual naming convention when it comes to the quality of their dvds. This naming policy is prevalent amongst other dvd sellers, and seems to be almost standard fare. Basically, pirate dvds are classed into 3 categories: Original, Cinema Copy (or its short form as CC) and Clear Cinema Copy (CCC). Quality varies widely between these 3 sections, and in this post, to celebrate the crapiness that we’ve all had to put up with for the past few hundred eons, Failed Paradise is going to explore the wonderful world of oft misleadingly titled pirate dvds, examining various versions and seeing how much of a difference cinema copies actually are to the real deal.

Each category is going to be tested and given a score out of five on several criterias including: picture clarity, sound quality, and lastly how close to an actual dvd original it is. While it would be nice to compare the pirate movie to its original original counterpart, obtaining an original original for a movie thats say still in the cinema is next to impossible, so we’ll just go by general quality. Arrrightey let’s get down to fighting.

Cinema Copy

Denoted by the two letters CC, cinema copied dvds are the bane of pirate quality versions. As its name suggests, the copy of the movie was made guerilla style with a hand held camera brought into a cinema and used to film the screened film. This is the first and oldest form of piracy, and doesn’t seem to be in decline, although these days movie houses are upping the ante with regular patrols, night vision goggles, bag checks and high security. Cinema copies are almost always of movies that are just released, having had its premier filmed/stolen somewhere else and distributed before you can say “Holy Handheldcam batman!”

Movie: The Haunting in Connecticut

Image Quality: Fact. You can tell straight away if what you’re watching is a cinema copy, and that’s right at the beginning when the titles show. First off, the camera swings wildly as it attempts to get a good frame of the projector. Also, almost always, the text gets cropped as shown in this example:

Cropped movie is cropped

The camcorder, by virtue of piracy law, must always move up and down to try and get a good picture and fail. Badly. Like, on a boat in the middle of the Perfect Storm badly, all the while struggling to focus on the picture. Speaking of  focus, pirate cameras are your average hand held camcorders, with auto-focus turned on. And because auto-focus can only work if there’s a picture, at times when everything goes dark then comes back, it takes a short while to focus. And therein lies the most annoying factor. That and unstable cameras. And people walking across the view. And crowd noise.

Yeah.

But the camera’s failure to focus is the most annoying.

Here’s an example in the movie where the main character is spazzing out on the bed with the mother trying to hold him down/comfort him. The light flickers on and off, and each time it comes on, there’s a spooky guy approaching the camera. Except that you can’t really make out said spooky character when lame handicam takes a bit to focus…and then the lights go out again:

Before the lights go out

After the lights come back on

This happens, I kid you not, about six times. Usually (I use the term ‘usually’ with much familiarity, since I was basically brought up on pirate movies >.>) the handicam loses focus now and then, but the scene wasn’t that all too important i.e. during dialouge scenes etc. However, in this movie, the whole moment was built on freaky undead guy approaching the main character/you only when the lights would come back on. Having the auto-focus spazz out in this crucial part basically spoilt the whole ‘scare’ factor for me.

Score: 2/5

If the image quality were any worse, it would strain your eyes to the point of near blindness. Not to mention the insane amount of trying to figure out what’s on the screen when it blurs out.

Sound Quality: Take a handicam with a built in mike. Stick it in a cinema. Play the movie, and listen to how the camera struggles to take in the audio richness that you inadvariadly miss out on. The dialogue at times (and usually at crucial moments) struggles to keep up if there are sound effects galore. Or loud music. Or sound effects and loud music. Also, if the crowd is very verbal i.e. many lols, many cheers, you’d better hope you paid attention in lip reading class.

Score: 2/5

If this movie was shot in a bus that was driving through the Andes mountains during an earthquake with volcanoes sprouting in the distance and dinosaurs beating on the roof of the bus, I’d have given it a 1. For effort.

Overall: 1/5

Cinema copies are good for two things only: if you want to watch movies that have just opened in the cinema but are too cheap to pay for the real thing, and for torturing prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Or in hell. Bottom line: Watch CC’s at your own peril.

Oh and on another note, don’t bother asking the seller if a cinema copy is good. It’s not like they’ll tell the truth and risk failing the monthly sales quota.

Next: The Clear Cinema Copy!