I recently mentioned on Twitter how I had started to get back into horror films. As I watched these films, I wanted to know more about the stories behind them. I ended up deciding to do my daily exercises (consisting of an exercise bike and weights) while watching and listening to horror movie audio commentaries. I have enjoyed these workout sessions far more than I did in the past and they inspired me to have this discussion of commentaries in general.
An audio commentary is an audio track where one or multiple people discuss the media in question while the media plays in the background. The first audio commentary was recorded for the Criterion release of the original King Kong on Laserdisc in December, 1984. As Laserdisc declined, DVDs (and eventually Blu-Rays) became the ideal mediums for releasing audio commentaries. Since then, we have also seen the appearance of video commentaries which feature footage of the commentators and may include footage of concept art, production etc.
While certainly not dead, DVD and Blu-Ray have recently become superseded by online streaming services as the mainstream choice. It seemed that commentaries were to be relegated to the footnotes of history. While perusing Netflix (or pretty much any other streaming service), you will notice that the TV shows and films on offer have no extras of any kind (which includes commentaries). However, with the release of Disney+, we are now seeing a streaming service offer extras and, notably, commentaries.
It is worth mentioning that there are many different types of commentaries, depending on who the commentators are. Some commentaries feature a director, writer, producer etc and tend to be more focused on the process of making the film. Some commentaries feature the cast of the film and tend to share more about their experiences during the film and how they approached certain scenes. More rarely, some films and TV shows will have commentaries recorded by experts in the field who may not have contributed to the production of it but who have a wealth of knowledge to share (a good example would be the Blu-Ray release of Suspiria).
Of course, presenting information purely through audio takes talent with conversation and the communication of ideas. There have been plenty of commentaries that I have experienced where the people involved are clearly struggling to come up with interesting information. Quite often, this will result in dead air where the media continues to play with no contribution from the commentators (these moments are often indistinguishable from just watching the TV show/film normally).
With regards to anime, it is rare in the west to see an anime release with commentaries from the director/crew/actors. Instead, we are far more likely to receive a commentary from the English voice actors. These commentaries usually feature the cast goofing around and, unless one of them worked on the ADR script, it is unlikely to provide any interesting information. On occasion, an anime might see a commentary from an expert in the field such as Helen McCarthy, Jonathan Clements and Daryl Surat which prove highly informative.
I find commentaries to be highly entertaining and it surprises me how few people I speak to have ever even watched a commentary, let alone commentaries. Let me know if you ever watch/listen to commentaries and what some of your favourite ones are.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!