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General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 2
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Running Time	144 minutes	Commentary Tracks	Yes, 3 Jodie Foster (Lead Actress) Robert Zemeckis & Steve Starkey (Director & Producer) Ken Ralston & Stephen Rosenbaum (Senior Visual Effects Supervisor & Visual Effects Supervisor)
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (74:33)	Other Extras	Cast/Crew Biographies Production Notes Featurette - "The Special Effects" - 6 minutes
Region	4
Distributor	Warner Brothers
RRP	$29.95

    The opening shot is a magnificent pan backwards from planet Earth outwards into the universe accompanied by the sounds of radio and television broadcasts over the course of time. The shot ends on Ellie Arroway as a young girl (Jena Malone), already experimenting with radio. We cut to Ellie as an adult (Jodie Foster) who is searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life using the Arecibo radio telescope. We also get to meet Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) who is a religious man and provides quite a contrast in opinion to Ellie's much more scientific bent. As we get to see later, one of the levels this film functions on is the similarity between the scientific approach and the spiritual approach to life, and the interaction between Ellie and Joss is crucial to this theme.

    Ellie's funding is cut by David Drumlin (Tom Skerrick), an excessively practical man of science, forcing her to seek funding in the private sector, which she gets from the enigmatic S. R. Hadden (John Hurt). She continues her research at the Very Large Array in New Mexico.

    Several years later, Ellie detects a message from Vega. This causes an enormous world-wide reaction, ranging from the wildly ecstatic to the suicidal. Everyone, it seems, wants to be the owner of the message. It turns out that the message has the blueprints for a very large machine of unknown function embedded within its structure. It is decided to go ahead and build the machine, but the first one is sabotaged and David Drumlin is killed, having pinched the driver's seat out from under Ellie's nose. Fortunately, a second machine exists, and Ellie goes on the roller coaster ride of a lifetime.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The movie was razor sharp throughout, and shadow detail was excellent. A significant part of this movie is shot in the dark or with low key lighting, but the picture detail remains excellent all the way through.

    The colour was perfectly rendered throughout the transfer.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen.

    Film-to-video artefacts were the major source of problems with this transfer. A lot of this movie's story is moved forward by action on TV and computer monitors, and it is these areas that are problematic. Many of the shots of TV screens and computer monitors are significantly degraded with moiré effects which are extremely distracting. Listening to the visual effects commentary, I noted that all of the problem shots were ones in which actual footage was shot directly off the monitor screens. In scenes where the screen output was added in later on, there are no problems. The worst of the problems occur in the following areas of the disc;
 
 

    In addition to the moiré effects, some aliasing artefacts were also apparent. The two worst areas for this artefact were 79:31 - 80:27 (venetian blinds) and 89:58 - 90:07 (crowd).

    I would have to comment that a major reason for the amount of artefacting in this movie is Robert Zemeckis' style of direction, which often involves long diagonal pans which are extremely prone to aliasing and moiré artefacting. Having said that, however, Columbia Tristar transfers do not have this problem in similar shots.

    Film artefacts were also excessively present given the relative youth of this movie. I noticed a significant number of them, and many were in mid-field making them very noticeable.

    This DVD is formatted as an RSDL disc. The layer change occurs at 74:33, between Chapters 22 and 23. This is a very bad spot for a layer change as it occurs in the middle of a long pan shot towards the Machine, making it very noticeable. The Region 1 layer change is at 60:34, between Chapters 17 and 18, which is a much better place for a layer change.

Audio

    Dialogue was always completely clear and intelligible, even during scenes with high ambient noise.

    The music, composed by Alan Silvestri, is unremarkable, and in fact sounds like a composite of many other movie soundtracks. One soundtrack it sounds particularly similar to is the soundtrack from While You Were Sleeping. Of note is the message "sound", which is quite a remarkable and complex sound and which at times almost takes on a life of its own.

     The surround channels were used reasonably frequently during the movie to create an ambient soundfield, drawing you into the movie, though there were certainly times that the mix was up front and centre only. The effects sequences saw greater use of the surrounds, though I did not detect a great deal of split surround usage.

    The .1 channel was used with tremendous effect during the final Machine sequence, particularly when Ellie was entering the  Machine, but otherwise was used to enhance the music and the ambience. Overall, it was not worked particularly hard during this movie.

    There are 3 commentary tracks on this DVD; Jodie Foster (Lead Actress), Robert Zemeckis & Steve Starkey (Director & Producer) and Ken Ralston & Stephen Rosenbaum (Senior Visual Effects Supervisor & Visual Effects Supervisor). They are all good commentaries. My favourite is the visual effects commentary. I was staggered to realize just how many shots involve the visual effects team, even in seemingly ordinary looking shots. Surprisingly, my least favourite commentary was the Director & Producer's commentary track, which I found a little boring at times. All of the commentaries are near continuous commentaries, and all offer insights into the movie from differing perspectives. All of the commentaries are presented as Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks with the movie audio mixed softly behind them. In the dual commentaries, each commentator is mixed to either the left or the right, though it sounded as if Ken Ralston was mixed to the Right and Centre, probably because he spoke a great deal more than Stephen Rosenbaum.

    Two theatrical trailers are present on this DVD, both presented in a 1.78:1 16x9 enhanced format with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. They are both very similar.

    A short 6 minute featurette is present under the Special Effects menu. This discusses High Speed Compositing. When I first viewed this extra, the way it started without any fanfare or announcement of what it was about struck me as odd. Once I had checked the Region 1 DVD, the reason for this became clear. On the Region 1 DVD, the Special Effects menu choice leads to another menu with the following options;

• The Making Of The Opening Shot (20 minutes)
• The Making Of The NASA Machine Destruction (6 minutes)
• The Making Of The Harrier Landing (9 minutes)
• High Speed Compositing Reel (6 minutes)

    Three additional extras have also been left off the Region 4 DVD. The main menu of the Region 1 DVD lists "Computer Animated Concepts" which has the following short sequences;

• The Machine Fly By
• Hadden's Plane
• NASA Control Room

    The final extras on the DVD are still frames for the cast and crew biographies and still framed production notes. These are quite extensive.

    The video quality is generally good but is significantly marred by transfer artefacts at times. The RSDL break could have been chosen more judiciously, too.

    The audio quality is reasonable, but not particularly remarkable.

    The extras are a wonderful bonus, though tempering this is the fact that some of the extras are missing. The featurette on the making of the opening sequence is a highlight of the Region 1 DVD and is sadly lacking from the Region 4 DVD. It is hard to recommend the Region 4 DVD over the Region 1 DVD for this reason, though the picture quality is marginally better on the Region 4 version.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Michael Demtschyna
8th December 1998