"Jurassic Park RiffTrax" by Troy H. Cheek on Feb 11, 2008
RiffTrax is the brainchild of Michael J. Nelson, head writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000 during most of its run. He decided that he missed heckling (or "riffing" as it were) bad movies and decided to create a website where he could sell DVDs with his own new custom comic commentary. Unfortunately, his lawyers explained to him that he would quickly be sued out of business, so instead he sells just the commentaries.
Just made available as I write this is the commentary for Jurassic Park. Now, Jurassic Park isn't necessarily a bad movie, but it definitely takes itself too seriously sometimes. Add some overly dragged out scenes and some plot-driven stupidity and there are plenty of opportunities for a comedic genius to liven up the script. Fortunately, Mike Nelson is just that kind of comedic genius.
Starting out, Mike riffed most movies on his own, but "guest riffers" quickly became a staple. Most often, these will be fellow MST3K retirees Kevin Murphy (aka Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (aka Crow T. Robot). They still mesh just like old times. In fact, when the three of them get together, you have to stare long and hard at the bottom of the screen before you realize that you're not watching a new episode of MST3K.
In the case of Jurassic Park, however, Mike teamed up with "Weird Al" Yankovic. I'm a big fan and close personal friend of Al's from way back, so I finally decided to bite the bullet and make an official RiffTrax purchase for the low low price of $4. Only $4 to make an old movie watchable again? A bargain!
After forking over a credit card number, I was able to immediately download a DRM-free MP3 file containing the new audio commentary. I was instructed to load the commentary into any handy MP3 player, load up the movie, start the commentary, and follow directions. The commentary had me pause the commentary, start the movie, wait until a certain point, then restart the commentary.
All that sounds horribly complicated, but it's actually much simpler than I make it out to be. My main problem was that I didn't seem to own a copy of Jurassic Park on DVD. Oh, two VHS commercial copies and one I recorded myself from broadcast television, but no DVD. Not sure how that happened. And, of course, the VCR was nowhere near my computer, which was the only MP3 player I had on hand.
Once I solved that minor problem, I sat down to watch, carefully followed the instructions, and immediately realized that I was out of sync. The jokes were coming a second or two too slow. And then DisembAudio, a synthesized voice which occasionally recites lines of dialog along with the characters so you can judge how far out of sync you are, recited a line of dialog along with a character and showed me how far out of sync I was. No problem, as the included README file instructed me to simply pause the playback that was ahead for a second or two and let the slower one catch up. Problem solved.
Until DisembAudio recited his next line, showing that I was again out of sync. And the next line. And the next line. I found myself printing out the README so I would have a list of DisembAudio's lines handy. That's when I stopped playback and decided I'd have to take another road to comedy gold.
Admittedly, I probably wasn't watching the exact same version of the movie that Mike and Al were commenting on, but all the scenes and dialog seemed to be there. It was just that the commentary seemed to be lagging farther and farther behind as the movie progressed. A quick check with a sound file editor showed that even after I hacked off the instructions and copyright info and other junk from the RiffTrax commentary, it was still a few minutes longer than the movie. I was under the impression that since Mike seldom riffs on the closing credits, the commentary should be a few minutes shorter than the movie.
While I might be willing to pause a movie repeatedly to manually sync up a commentary track, I couldn't expect my friends and family to be willing or even able to do so. When it comes to A/V, I'm the most gifted person in my immediate circle. I decided that if I was going to have anybody watch this with me, I'd somehow have to combine my copy of the movie with the commentary and create a homebrew DVD that I could just throw into the player when Family Movie Night came around.
I loaded up both the original audio track and the new commentary track and started editing. After lining up DisembAudio's first line, I went looking for the second one. RiffTrax makes this easy by including timing information in the README file. Actually, they made it hard by including the timing information, because the information was wrong. At least, nothing was where I looked for it. Sure, my movie might have been the wrong version, but I was using the RiffTrax commentary track that came in the same ZIP file as the README.
I started the long and tedious process of tracking down every one of DisembAudio's lines and recording where they were in both the original soundtrack and the commentary. Then I started the even longer and even tediouser process of clipping out little bits of silence here and there to bring the commentary track down to the proper length and sync up the lines. After three cases of having to scrap the entire project and start over from scratch, I rethought the problem.
One of my audio editing tools lets me change the tempo of a sound file without changing the pitch. Producers of commercials use this all the time to get more disclaimers into a smaller soundbite. I didn't need anything that drastic. I just wanted the commentary track to be a few minutes shorter. I synced up DisembAudio's first line, told the editor that I wanted that track to be a few minutes shorter, then went to see where DisembAudio's last line had ended up.
It wasn't perfect. It wasn't even close. But I could see the line of dialog in both soundtracks on the same screen view, so I was at least in the general ball park. I'd simply Undo and try again. How hard could it be to get it perfect?
Three hours later, I discovered that the commentary track needed speeding up by exactly 4.269%. Actually, it needed just a tad more than that, but 4.270% was too much, so I got it close and then shifted the timeline just a bit, so the commentary was a few milliseconds too fast at the beginning and a few milliseconds too slow at the end. A few hacks later and I was combining audio and video in a way never before seen by man.
Well, by this man, anyway.
The results? It's like "Weird Al" is watching a movie with me! I mean, seriously, this is freaking cool! The jokes are funny, the observations witty, and the riffs are fast and furious. And it's got "Weird Al" Yankovic! Oh, and Mike's in full form, too.
The concept is a sound one. Provide high quality movie commentary at a decent price. And the execution is spot on in terms of comedy. The only problem I have is with the ease of use. 4.269%. I mean, how the heck did I manage to mangle audio file formats so that I needed to speed up the commentary track by 4.269%? Or was the movie I was using somehow slowed by that amount? I mean, I can't figure it out. And if I can't figure it out, that means that there are tons of potential customers out there who can't figure it out. I spent several hours finally creating a movie I could sit back and enjoy. I don't think you can count on a lot of customers doing that.
So, as entertaining as the whole thing is, if you're not a techno-geek, I'd steer clear of RiffTrax.
In all fairness, I'll point out that RiffTrax is working on some software that automates the process to a certain extent. However, the software only runs on your computer, not your entertainment center's DVD player. And it only works on DVDs, not VHS copies or video iPod copies or Divx copies or whatever else you might have. And it only really works if you have the exact same version of DVD that Mike and friends used when recording the commentary. And furthermore, you can only use the software to watch the DVD with the new commentary on your computer and not to create a new version that you can watch in your DVD player hooked to the huge TV on your family room.
I would certainly never suggest that you simply download new DVDs with the RiffTrax commentaries already added, although RiffTrax.com does have a page where you can donate money if you accidentally do that.
