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Post by Udvarnoky on May 8, 2021 16:28:05 GMT -5
No episode from MST3K’s original run will ever look particularly good. Them’s just the breaks of a 480i shoot format. However, even within the playing field of standard definition tape, the official releases bear some noticeable discrepancies in quality from episode to episode. Some just have the telltale look of being transferred from a source a generation removed from others. As an example of what I’m talking about, compare two Season 10 episodes on ShoutTV: HAMLET and BOGGY CREEK II. To my lights, HAMLET looks like it comes from a first generation source, or in any case a generation closer to the master than BOGGY CREEK II does. The latter seems a little bit less detailed, with a little bit inferior color definition, little bit muddier sound, and more frequent analog artifacts (examples include 4:06, and 1:05:17). In other words, it looks and sounds like a dub. Have a look for yourself. It's ultimately a comparison between not-great and less-than-not-great, but I think it's still obvious enough to the untrained eye what the difference is when you put them side by side. In fact, you could probably go through all of Shout!’s transfers and ID which are the dubs…or anyway the “Grade A” dubs versus the “Grade B” dubs. It gets a little confusing because I think there is the occasional episode that received a second transfer by Shout! over time. There’s also the Rhino transfers, which are inferior to Shout!’s in terms of compression artifacts but sometimes come across as being based on superior sources. (For example, the Rhino version of BOGGY CREEK II doesn’t seem to have all the tape hits, but it’s bit-starved to hell.) Nevertheless, one could probably go through each official release and assign a binary grade. Maybe a stubborn MSTie with a lot of free time could do so someday as a public service. I’m not entirely sure what accounts for this, but it would make sense if the BBI library contained multiple copies of each episode, including “safety” dubs. The genuine master tape would be the best source for a transfer, but it’s entirely possible Jim Mallon wasn’t mailing those Shout!’s way, and instead sending dubs copies for the DVD releases. Once Shout! acquired the assets, who knows what they found, and how organized it was? There’s been a lot of speculation about the cataloging of the tapes (or lack thereof), what with the K03 being outright missing and K01 and K02 apparently being discovered arbitrarily, in a box without proper labeling. There could be episodes where the master is missing and a dub was the best source available, or instances where a dub was what got digitized simply because the better tape was discovered after the fact. Shout! apparently has two versions of DELTA KNIGHTS, for example, though I wish their initial transfer was still available on ShoutTV so I could be sure. It seems they took it down, maybe due to the fact that they used the episode as a Kickstarter reward and didn’t want to keep offering it for free at the same time. Hopefully it’s restored eventually.
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Post by Udvarnoky on May 7, 2021 14:25:09 GMT -5
Where's the "fund the renewal rights for FINAL SACRIFICE and SOULTAKER" stretch goal?
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Post by Udvarnoky on May 7, 2021 12:17:22 GMT -5
That's a very diplomatic spin on what happened when you stack it up against the account Josh gave on a podcast several years back. Maybe the thing I read was him being diplomatic, I must confess I haven’t heard the podcast you’re speaking of! Sorry, I didn't have it off the top of my head when I alluded to it but have since dug it up. It is not the Funhouse interview being referenced (though he may well have given a similar version there), but this one from 2010. The most relevant stretch is 1:02:10 – 1:21:16.
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Post by Udvarnoky on May 7, 2021 10:43:24 GMT -5
Well Josh did say the reason he left is because at the time he was still only 18, and the move to Comedy Central sucked out the fun of making it for him. It’s likely a decision that he struggled with after seeing the kind of fame the show later achieved. That's a very diplomatic spin on what happened when you stack it up against the account Josh gave on a podcast several years back.
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Post by Udvarnoky on May 7, 2021 9:05:23 GMT -5
Just a comment on the possibility of S13 being filmed remotely, and compiled together. I think perhaps some people might think of this as some kind of Zoom meeting, but I truly doubt that. I expect a similar production quality as S11 + 12. The trouble is some of us found the riffing in S11 + 12 to be noticeably disconnected and "post-op". If you're someone who considers that to be a major issue with the Netflix episodes, then the production strategy proposed for Season 13 offers no hope it will be better and in fact guarantees it will be worse. Joel has doubled down on the approach he took to the riffing since the beginning of the revival and it's clear he's not going back. There's really no positive way to spin that for people who feel something important got broken by pre-recording the riffs. That said, I'm not here to stink up the room. I'll always root for MST3K and am thrilled to see how successful the Kickstarter has turned out. I'm also looking forward to checking in on the telethon. May it live up to the glorious disaster that was the 2015 antecedent. My hope would be that whatever amount they raise beyond the $5.5 million is stuffed into a piggy bank as a down payment for Season 14. I'm sure there are other cool things they can offer beyond more episodes to keep the hype going for the last 12 hours. More KTMA? Perhaps THE TV WHEEL? There's probably a fair amount of archival content from the BBI library Shout! has been sitting on for a rainy day. However dubious the quality, isn't it pretty clear that they have a recording of the entire 1994 convention riff of THIS ISLAND EARTH? Clips from it appear in the making-of doc for THE MOVIE.
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Post by Udvarnoky on May 1, 2021 9:53:34 GMT -5
QUEST OF THE DELTA KNIGHTS is a personal favorite of mine, one of those episodes where I know the riffs to an embarrassing level of recall. Which is why I was so startled during a moment in the livestream, when I heard Mike deliver a different line than the one I'd heard countless times. The expected riff is this: Travis: Master...you're a spy! Mike: Well, I did some work for Billy Zane. You can hear this riff as broadcast here. I think the ShoutTV version of the episode is faithful, but that link is down at the moment for some reason, so I cannot confirm. Now watch that same moment in the archived stream of last night's watchalong. Travis: Master...you're a spy! Mike: You're drawn by Sergio Aragones. Mind blown. I wonder if the Billy Zane riff was a last second replacement (a TITANIC reference would have been pretty topical in 1998) and Shout! unknowingly possessed an alternate master with the original, more esoteric joke? Makes you wonder how many examples like this there were over the show's run that we'll never know about.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 30, 2021 12:59:44 GMT -5
That update is a painful read. "Well, like I said in our video, we're not going to make Mystery Science Zoom Meeting 3000." Joel proceeds to describe Mystery Science Zoom Meeting 3000.did you miss the part where he said when the script calls for it the performers will record together in the same shot... kinga max, host w/bots.. that isn't a zoom meeting. It's also not anything close to an incarnation of MST3K that I would like to see. I am happy for all the fans who can take this in stride, but I clearly don't see this show the same way they, or Joel, do.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 30, 2021 12:35:28 GMT -5
That update is a painful read.
"Well, like I said in our video, we're not going to make Mystery Science Zoom Meeting 3000."
Joel proceeds to describe Mystery Science Zoom Meeting 3000.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 29, 2021 17:39:25 GMT -5
We sure they're not going to consider the twenty Netflix episodes as classics to pad that count?
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 28, 2021 7:26:35 GMT -5
Yeah, I saw the HOBGOBLINS stream on YouTube. It was pretty enjoyable to watch Joel watching this classic episode for the first time. Not that I blame him due to personal feelings he may have about leaving the show he created, but I think Joel only slowly began catching up with the Mike episodes long after the fact, and there's a lot he still hasn't seen. It's a bit staggering to think Joel never had Road Rash in his life, but better late than never.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 28, 2021 7:12:12 GMT -5
Good god, I want this thing to be a success as much as anyone, but some of the fan entitlement has been nothing short of ridiculous! Not to mention: the campaign has been a success. So far 21,000 people have expressed a willingness to front $3.5 million to Joel and Shout! to produce what sure sounds to me like MST3K live conferencing. That should be appreciated for the remarkable result it is rather than something to be taken for granted. If MST3K has a problem, I'm pretty sure it's not that it shares too few things in common with Scientology.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 22, 2021 17:25:07 GMT -5
Yeah it's never going back to just the way it was in the 90's. That was a product of its time when they were limited by the talent that happened to be hanging around Hopkins, Minnesota. I reject that there is only a binary choice of extremes. Categories exists between making the show out of a warehouse in the Midwest with nobodies, and the method being pitched. I would love to know what the Netflix episodes might have been like had Jonah, Baron and Hampton shot "live to tape" at the expense of "perfect" mixing and the independent puppeteering effects that in the end are not elemental to MST3K. The live tours proved that the talent of this cast and writing team was far better showcased in the context of immediacy. Instead of modifying the production of the show accordingly, that potential is being surrendered altogether.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 22, 2021 17:10:03 GMT -5
Something can be "good" in an abstract sense and be a failure in terms of achieving the objective at hand. Though I don't count myself among them, a lot of people have dismissed Rifftrax essentially because "It's good, but just not the same because what makes MST3K special to me are the puppets and the universe."
Well, for me, what makes MST3K special is that sense of tangible intimacy that cannot be faked. It could not be faked the way they produced the Netflix seasons, and now we're going backwards, at high speed.
For me, MST3K is better off extending its hiatus until it can be made correctly. Luckily for Joel and Shout! I appear to be in the minority, but I personally find this to be a huge bummer.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 22, 2021 16:33:31 GMT -5
This is heartbreaking. The disconnect that came out of the production processes used for Season 11 and 12 completely handicapped the revival's potential. This will be the exact opposite of fixing the problem.
Movies and television shows that are exponentially more ambitious and complicated than MST3K are and have been filming. I've no doubt that observing the necessary protocols adds a significant amount to the budget, but let's hear those numbers. Personally, I'd rather get fewer episodes to cover the added costs, or not get new episodes at all, than proceed with making new MST3K on these terms. If a year would make a difference, then wait another year. But don't ask the fans for $5.5 million to make Skype MST3K.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 22, 2021 7:20:50 GMT -5
You’d have thought he’d have seen them all I get the impression that Joel has only gotten around to digging into Mike's tenure relatively recently. He's been complimentary about what he's seen, but it's not surprising to me to learn that he hasn't gotten around to every last episode yet.
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