DiG! (2004) |
|
DiG! (2004) |
|
|
| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Documentary |
Main Menu Audio & Animation Music Video-Dandy Warhols (4) Featurette-Courtney And Anton Jam Session Additional Footage Featurette-Matt Hollywood And Brent De Boer Interview In Melbourne Theatrical Trailer |
|
| Rating |
|
||
| Year Of Production | 2004 | ||
| Running Time | 107:02 (Case: 105) | ||
| RSDL / Flipper |
RSDL (60:48) Dual Disc Set |
Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 1,2,3,4,5,6 | Directed By | Ondi Timoner |
|
Studio
Distributor |
Interloper Films Madman Entertainment |
Starring |
Anton Newcombe Courtney Taylor-Taylor Joel Gion Matt Hollywood Peter Holmstrom Zia McCabe Brent DeBoer Eric Hedford Dean Taylor |
| Case | Amaray-Transparent-S/C-Dual | ||
| RPI | $34.95 | Music | None Given |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Full Frame |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) |
|
| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.29:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement | No | ||
| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.33:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles | None | Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
As a reviewer you sometimes come across a film or documentary that, while you can appreciate why other may enjoy it, simply leaves you cold and uninterested. That is the case for me with the fly-on-the-wall documentary Dig!. This documentary was 7 years in the making and follows the progress of two rock bands, The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre (BJM).
Narrated by Dandy Warhol lead singer Courtney Taylor, the main focus of the documentary is Anton Newcombe, the leader of BJM. While undoubtedly very talented, he is also (at least during the filming of the documentary) addicted to illicit drugs and seemingly mentally unstable. During the documentary for example we see him send a box of bullets as a death threat to the members of the Dandys, forgetting to let them in on the fact that it was really just a publicity stunt. They had a restraining order put out against him. In concert we see him literally kick in the head of an audience member from on stage and subsequently get carted off by police. According to the BJM website the band has been through over 60 members. Having seen his behaviour in this documentary it’s not hard to understand why people would have a hard time working with him.
The Dandys on the other hand are far more disciplined (at least compared to Anton Newcombe) and even seem to get more lucky breaks than BJM. While touring through the US BJM are pulled over and are discovered with marijuana which effectively ends the tour. The Dandys meanwhile are caught in France with marijuana and not only do they get away with only a small fine, they even get to keep their marijuana.
The style of Dig! is very much like that of a home movie. While this sometimes infuses Dig! with a sense of intimacy and energy I also found it rather tiring watching constantly moving and amateurish camera work. Dig! really does feel like somebody’s home movies edited together and this is not always a good thing. It does however seem to lead to much more frank discussion from the participants in the film than would have likely been achieved had a professional documentary crew followed the bands around.
While I'm sure fans of these groups will enjoy Dig! I suspect it will have more limited appeal to everybody else. This is a documentary you will probably either love or hate and while I can appreciate why fans will enjoy the intimacy of the film I fall firmly in the latter camp. I really did find this film very tedious.
This film was shot mostly on consumer grade camcorders. It is clear from the types of artefacts that the earlier period was shot on analogue equipment while the later material was shot on more up to date digital equipment. The overall quality of the transfer is severely restricted by the quality of the source material.
The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.29:1 which closely matches the original aspect ratio of the film. It is therefore not 16x9 enhanced.
The image was generally very soft and lacked definition. Shadow detail was very poor and segments shot on analogue camcorders exhibited an abundance of low level noise.
Colours were generally very poor and even worse than I would have expected from consumer grade camcorders. Colours were both rather muted and never very accurate.
In terms of artefacts it’s a little difficult to differentiate between artefacts introduced by the source material as opposed to those introduced by the transfer. Given the film is spread over a disc of its own I believe this transfer is probably a good representation of the source material. Earlier scenes shot on analogue tape are regularly affected by analogue tape artefacts such as tape dropouts and short horizontal lines that are usually the product of tape damage and wear. Later parts shot on digital equipment suffer from excessive amounts of aliasing and there are definitely digital compression artefacts like macroblocking present here.
There are no subtitles on this DVD.
The film is presented on a dual layered disc with RDSL encoding with the layer change occurring at 60:48. This is cut between scenes and is fairly well placed.
| Sharpness |   |
| Shadow Detail |  |
| Colour | |
| Grain/Pixelization | |
| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
| Film Artefacts |  |
| Overall | |
Most of the audio in this film has been captured by the low quality microphones attached to the camcorders. As a result the overall audio quality is very low. Concert scenes fare a bit better but actual audio quality is still only average.
The main soundtrack is Dolby Digital 5.1 encoded at 384 Kb/s. There is also a stereo version encoded at 224 Kb/s. The comments below relate specifically to the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.
While the dialogue from actual interviews and the voiceovers is easy to understand, most of the dialogue has been captured by the camcorders and is often very muffled and hard to understand.
Music in the concert scenes fares better than most other scenes but still lacked good definition, although this is often true of this sort of music in live venues.
The soundtrack is mostly front oriented with the surrounds only being used in the concert scenes. In these scenes I felt it was not used very well and really only seemed to mirror the front channels. While this does surround the listener in music it does not really add to the feeling of actually being there.
The subwoofer was really only used in the concert scenes and while it provided reasonable levels of bass it was never well defined and was actually quite muddy.
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
| Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
| Surround Channel Use | |
| Subwoofer | |
| Overall | |
A modest collection of extras that, while at first glance seem reasonable, ultimately don’t seem to add up to much. This is especially true when compared to the Region 1 release discussed further below.
The menus on both discs are presented at 1.33:1 and they are nicely animated with music in the background.
Black and white footage of Courtney and Anton playing guitars together in what appears to be someone’s lounge room.
These are basically deleted scenes. They are:
Matt Hollywood and Brent De Boer are musicians from the bands. I found the initial discussion where they discuss the film and its impact interesting. They then go on to more general discussion about the bands and their music which will probably be interesting to fans of these bands.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
There is a single disc version in the UK (region 2) which contains a trailer and an interview with the filmmaker. There has also been mention of a 2 disc version but this was delayed and I have been unable to find any definitive information about this. There is 2 disc Region 1 version which is much preferred to our version. The comparison is as follows:
Our Region 4 version misses out on:
The Region 1 version misses out on:
Clearly there is no real comparison. The Region 1 is far and way the version of choice.
This fly on the wall documentary about the bands The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre will no doubt be of great interest of fans of these bands. Whether it has more widespread appeal is less certain.
The video and audio transfers are both severely limited by the source material and when compared to the Region 1 release the extras are a bit of disappointment.
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Extras | |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Sony DVPNS575-S Progressive Scan, using Component output |
| Display | Panasonic PT-AE900E HD LCD Projector onto 90" 16x9 Screen. Calibrated with Video Essentials/Digital Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 720p. |
| Audio Decoder | Logitech 5500 THX. Calibrated with Video Essentials/Digital Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Logitech 5500 THX |
| Speakers | Logitech 5500 THX |