Outback (Film Australia's) (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Featurette-Preview Gallery-Photo Featurette-Stories: Interviews With The Filmmakers (8) Web Links Credits Featurette-The Making Of Where Dead Men Lie
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	144:48 (Case: 190)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (5:25)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Dean Semler David Batty Lee Robinson Ian Dunlop
Studio Distributor	Film Australia Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Various
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$39.95	Music	Various

    The film camera, or at least the version that captures motion, has seen some interesting uses since its invention late in the nineteenth century, and those who used it at that time could have hardly imagined how sophisticated an art it would become early in the twenty-first century. Nowhere is the contrast between the early film camera and the modern film camera felt more than in remote areas such as outback Australia. A total of fourteen short films are contained on this DVD, ranging in age from one year to seventy-four years, some of them being quite rare and insightful pieces. In order, the films contained on this DVD are:

• The Heart Of Australia (5:51) 1928
  A brief primer about life in rural Australia, specifically an area of the Northern Territory. More of a curiosity piece than anything else.
• School In The Mailbox (7:30) 1946
  Before the advent of CB radios, and way before the advent of the Internet, education in the more isolated parts of this country had to be done by correspondence. This quick piece describes how this form of schooling worked, and why.
• Journey Of A Nation (7:15) 1947
  This film wouldn't look too out of place in a colonial version of Starship Troopers. Essentially, it is about the cumbersome rail system that used to link the States together, and how it needed to be standardised (the featurette makes a big deal out of this).
• Outback Patrol (10:51) 1952
  This is a simple piece about the life of a patrolman in the Northern Territory.
• Thylungra - Sports Day In The Outback (2:59) 1960
  This quick piece covers a sort of cowboy Olympics within rural Australia, and it is quite hilarious on the first viewing.
• Desert People (5:20) 1966
  This piece is about a nomadic group, or rather a small nomadic family, of Aborigines living in a large region where water has to be dug for.
• Where Dead Men Lie (14:00) 1972
  This featurette is based on what is considered to be the first ever screenplay, written by Henry Lawson. It is also distinguished by the fact that it is a very early piece in the career of a great cinematographer by the name of Dean Semler.
• Living Way Out (11:31) 1976
  This featurette examines the reasons why families up and move to remote areas, in this case a mining town.
• Outback Supply (12:30) 1977
  This is a simple piece about the trucks that supply remote parts of Australia with various things.
• Saturday (12:59) 1979
  This is Dean Semler's ode to life in a small rural town, particularly a Saturday during life in a small rural town.
• The Land Of The Lightning Brothers (12:36) 1987
  This is about another tribe of Aborigines and how they live their life more or less completely outside civilisation.
• The Last Great Cattle Drive (12:02) 1988
  This documentary is about a cattle drive from one area of rural Australia to another, nothing more, nothing less.
• The Story Of Rosy Dock (8:52) 1995
  This is where my attention began to waver, as apart from some claymation early on in the piece, I really can't remember much about it.
• Bush Mechanics - The Rainmakers (14:07)
  This, friends and neighbours, is the reason to indulge in this disc. It revolves around a group of young Aborigines driving from the middle of Nowhere out in the Northern Territory to trade a car for some pearl shells so that the local shaman can do a ritual to break the drought. This film leads me to believe that the majority of Sydney and Melbourne drivers should be deported to the Northern Territory - they'd fit right in with the road rule anarchy.

    There's a lot of rough to go through in this collection, but gems such as Where Dean Men Lie and Bush Mechanics make it very worthwhile. As the cover slick states, this is the Australian outback, both real and imagined, so anyone with an interest in documentary filmmaking should take to it.

Video

    As mentioned in the plot synopsis, this collection contains material ranging from seventy-four years in age to about a year in age. Given the age of the most archival material, it could have turned out very bad, and while it isn't perfect, it does look better than we have any right to expect. Naturally, the quality of the transfer improves as the age of the material lessens, so most of these comments cover the general quality of the overall package.

    All of the featurettes are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 without 16x9 Enhancement. In most cases, that is the original aspect ratio, but I remember the episodes of Bush Mechanics that I saw on television being slightly wider than this. Nonetheless, these pieces are all quite well represented in terms of framing.

    All of these transfers are sharp to one degree or another, although Saturday is one piece that could do with a little cleaning up in this department, as age is starting to make it look slightly washed out. The shadow detail, when called for, is pretty poor - most of these featurettes were lit with whatever happened to be handy at the time, including bits of wood from a fire in the case of Bush Mechanics, and it shows. Thankfully, low-level noise is not an issue in any of these featurettes. Film grain is another story, however.

    The featurettes from Where Dead Men Lie onwards are presented in colour, and the colours are generally well-represented, although only the last two can be said to be in any kind of natural state as far as colour goes. While the colours in such featurettes as Saturday are almost totally washed out, there are no composite artefacts to make the situation worse.

    MPEG artefacts are occasionally visible in the earliest featurettes - I don't think it is possible to encode source material with this many scratches and marks without introducing mild blocking in the backgrounds. Having said that, the rest of the featurettes look more or less transparent where the compression is concerned, so this is about as good as it will get. Film-to-video artefacts are present throughout the early featurettes in the form of aliasing and wobble. Journey Of A Nation has quite a surprising amount of aliasing in it, given the age of the source material. Bush Mechanics has a conspicuous moiré effect in a car grille at 7:30. Film artefacts are rife throughout all of the featurettes - they were all shot under extreme conditions, and some of them are ancient by film standards, so this is no big surprise. The Heart Of Australia in particular has numerous black marks throughout its running time.

    No subtitle streams are available on this DVD, which is truly a pity. Burned-in subtitles are present during Bush Mechanics to translate what the Aborigines are saying, but those are the only subtitles present on the disc.

    This disc is RSDL formatted, with the layer change taking place at 5:25 during Where Dead Men Lie. It is quite a noticeable layer change, and I would have preferred to have the layer change between featurettes.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is only one soundtrack on this DVD: the original English dialogue or narration, with some Aboriginal mixed in during such featurettes as Bush Mechanics, in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo at 224 kilobits per second.

    The dialogue was generally quite clear and easy to understand, although the thick accents of the titular characters in Bush Mechanics occasionally posed a problem. There were no discernable problems with audio sync.

    The music in these featurettes is credited to a lot of people, and most of it merely does the job of providing an accompaniment without being too distracting.

    The surround channels were not used by this soundtrack.

    The subwoofer was also uninvolved with this soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu features extensive between-choices animation, but it is silent. It is also not 16x9 Enhanced. I found the menus annoying to navigate because of all the options that could only be accessed from certain screens - I want access to all of the special features from a dedicated menu.

Featurette - Preview

    This five minute and eleven second featurette is presented in an approximate 1.78:1 aspect ratio with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. It is not 16x9 Enhanced.

Featurette - Stories: Interviews With The Filmmakers

    Interviews with Lee Robinson (4:33), Ian Dunlop (5:04), Gil Brealey and Dean Semler (4:50), David Haythornthwaite and Dean Semler (5:08), Dean Semler (5:52), David Roberts (4:20), Jeannie Baker (3:44), and David Batty (6:00) are presented in a separate menu or within the menu for their respective featurettes. All of them are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with occasional 1.66:1 letterboxing and a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. By far the most interesting pieces are those with Dean Semler or David Batty, because they delve more into certain technical aspects of the filmmaking process.

Featurette - The Making Of Where Dead Men Lie

    This featurette can only be accessed from the Where Dead Men Lie menu. Running for just under nine minutes, it is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. It makes an interesting adjunct to the interview with Gil Brealey and Dean Semler.

Web Links

    No comment.

DVD Credits

    A listing of everyone who researched or compiled the content of this DVD, and those who put it together.

    Like most Australian esoterica, it is hard, if not impossible, to find mention of the programme at all on overseas web sites, leave alone anything about a DVD release.

    Film Australia's Outback is like any compilation, in that it is a mixed bag of the great and the truly ordinary, although curiosity value often saves the bad parts of this collection from being a total write-off. The disc itself is especially recommended to anyone with the slightest interest in filmmaking or history.

    The video transfer varies, but it is generally a good representation of poor source materials.

    The audio transfer is flat stereo.

    The extras are extensive.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall