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Hollywood Reporter Get what you want with Stones DVD LOS ANGELES - The Rolling Stones' new music DVD is chock-full of cutting-edge technologies and features, making it a showcase for what's possible in this medium. The superstar release is the latest example in a sector that is growing in importance. The Recording Industry Association of America, an industry lobby group, reports music DVDs are one of the fastest-growing segments of their business, with shipments having grown by 23.9% in value in 2002 over the previous year. And Dave Alder, senior vice president product and marketing for the Virgin Megastore, told Billboard that music DVDs represent about 10% of sales but only 3% of total releases. Special features are a key part of this development because they add ammunition to marketing and promotional campaigns. Additionally, discs with these underlying technologies are nearly impossible to send over the Internet into the hands of pirates. No wonder music DVDs are attractive to the labels.,/p> The Metropolis DVD design and production studio worked with the Stones' production company, TGA Entertainment, to make "Four Flicks" a spectacular example of the genre. "The Stones have done nothing less than set a new standard in music on DVD," Metropolis DVD president David Anthony says. "We've made a lot of music DVDs at Metropolis, but what happened with this was at the very beginning the artist said, 'We want to do something really big.' The amazing thing was, they gave us the latitude to make something that we'd always hoped we could make." "Four Flicks" ended up being a boxed set of four discs encompassing more than five hours of music, two additional hours of extras, and 50 songs. Each of the Rolling Stones' three stage productions from their 2002/2003 world tour gets its own disc. The fourth includes two previously unreleased documentaries -- "Tip of the Tongue" and "Licks Around the World" -- along with seven bonus tracks, four of which have never before been released by the band. The most notable special feature is "Select-A-Stone," which uses MX Entertainment's proprietary MX Multiangle technology. It lets viewers be their own director by choosing from the four cameras shown as picture-in-picture windows, or they can opt to sit back and just let the show unfold in the traditional manner. It's not a new idea, but MX Entertainment makes it an intuitive and integrated option with overlays, fades, transparencies and other factors that production companies can build on to suit their needs. "People find music directors' cuts to be arbitrary sometimes," says Zane Vella, co-founder and executive producer of MX Entertainment. "This concept works very well for a band with four such strong personalities. This isn't for every band, but there may not be a band that this is better for. Charisma oozes from each of them." Another unusual feature of the Stones project is "Custom Set List," which allows fans to select and sequence the songs however they like. It appears on all three concert discs. The two remaining major features Metropolis came up with can be toggled on and off according to the viewer's preference. "Backstage Pass" reveals supplemental views of what's going on behind the scenes of each show. "Video and Audio Commentary" causes hot links to appear, which when clicked show a mini-interview, with band members discussing the song. The innovation, creativity and technological savvy such as shown on the Stones package can only help the music industry. Music DVDs like "Four Flicks" provide a positive incentive for fans to buy physical product, and they deliver the entertainment fans want on the fans' own terms. With the resources and expertise they can command, the major labels should be able to excel often at just this sort of thing. |
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