Special Features
 

Do you watch DVD special features / cut scenes etc?

Or do you find them a waste?

i very rarely watch them, unless there is extra nudity in there :)

When I watch a DVD I watch every single extra thing they put on it, even if it includes more than one commentary

The only thing I watch is bloopers and deleted scenes. Once you've seen one "The Making Of..." bits, you've pretty much seen them all. Ultimately most special features are a waste because, unlike a good movie, they are usually ony good for a single viewing.

It depends. I usually enjoy the making-of stuff (I also enjoy those 'Building a Gigant Bridge' documentaries on the Discovery Channel) and early production set & costume designs, and cut scenes. Commentary tracks... nah.

The only movie I've watched the whole way through with the commentary on was This is Spinal Tap.

I watch all the making of stuff though. The LotR Extended DVD's have days of that stuff.

It depends on how much I enjoyed the movie. Movies I love or find really thought provoking I'll sometimes watch the commentaries. I'll often watch deleted scenes and bloopers too.

Usually I watch all the special features, I just love getting into the whole process of the making of the movie, probably because I've been involved in "backstages" in my own life. Before I buy a DVD I always look to see what the special features are, if there's a version of the movie with more features, I will always buy that one. Special feautres are my favorite part of DVDs! :)

Spoken like a true man.

Example: The Notebook has a nice extra love scene. No boobies, but it's a nice scene.

For the record, I love watching the extra's and deleted scenes...

I also love the "making of..." segments because all that behind the scenes stuff fascinates me for some reason. I guess I just like seeing all the work that goes into making a movie. I've never been on a movie set before, so the behind the scenes stuff allows me something close to that opportunity.

I like special features. To me, the process is just as important, if not more important than the finished product. Watching 'making of' and extra scenes and commentary really gives me insight in what was going on when the film was made. Now if they'd only do that with more video games.

Unless the movie sucked, I love to watch em. Lots of times you see what the director was trying to make happen and you get to judge how well that was conveyed.

I love all the extra stuff. A couple of the dvds I got for Christmas I haven't even watched the film yet, just the extra goodies.

When I'm bored I'll whip out a DVD and have a look at some of the extras and give them a chance. If it doens't seem intersting in the first minute/whatever I'll stop it.

As for commentary tracks...it depends. Some commentary tracks are really interesting and entertaining (I loved the 'Chopper' commentary done by the man himself - that was great), but some are excruciatingly boring (British DVD of Romero's Dawn Of The Dead featuring Tom Savini and some other guy talking on such rivetting topics as being out of cigarettes and being desperate to use the toilet...I can't believe I actually sat through the entire thing!)

I love special features. I watch every one. I hate DVDs without any special features, it's a bummer.

I almost never watch them no matter what movie it is....I really couldn't care less after the story is over; my mentality is I got my entertainment time to move on. I just don't find extras compelling to watch.

One more for lovin' the SF. I also usually watch the commentary tracks... This adds up in movies like LOTR Extended Editions where they have 3 or 4 different commentary tracks... They're good for train rides.

Whenever i get my lego out, extended extras are an absoloute godsend, as most of lego building is searching for one damned peice.
I learned so much from the commentaries, having watched the movies enough i knew exactly what was going on, was really very interesting.
The design teams ones are always the funniest, they've always got something to swear about.

Extras are one of the best bits of a DVD, providing they've been put together well. So many extras are just thrown in as seemingly an afterthought, when they could add to the quality of the whole movie experience so much more.

Couldn't have put it better myself. For some reason that escapes me, I love all the meaningless crap that tags along with the feature film on DVDs. I even made my way throught the whole second disc of Batman Begins (which is a hell of a chore).

It depends. Some have well made documentaries (occasionally better than the film itself). Some commentaries are insightful and fun. But, many are lame, tacked on, pieces of drivel not worth the space they take up on the disc, and since Hollywood has caught on that "Special Editions" usually sell more copies, we are getting a lot more of the drivel nowadays.

If I have access to them, I'll watch them.
I'm interested in the process and who the creative people ARE.

I love listening to the actors or directors comments scene by scene, especially in movies like donnie darko, very interesting to hear other peoples views on movies

Not to mention the comedy that is Robert Rodriguez showing you how to make tacos.

Well after the movie I'll usually just instinctively check out the Special Features, but I only watch the ones that intrigue me. I love some good Special Features, but I have found that I usually don't enjoy them in general all that much. I mean usually you'll see that the deleted scenes were deleted for a reason.

But hell, I watch em anyway, so what do I know?

One of my "projects" for my LOTR Extended Editions is to record all the commentary from Dom Monaghan and Billy Boyd into a single mp3 recording simply because it's so hilarious, I have to have it seperately! My other project that I've yet to start work on is building a single DVD of LOTR battle scenes.

I regularly watch the extra features on DVD and listen to the commentaries, though I think the biggest waste of my time regarding these is "deleted scenes." Usually those scenes were deleted for a reason.

I watch special features like a rabid beast. Love 'em. I've watched all the special features on all three LOTR extended edition multi-disk tomes.

The single best director's commentary I've ever heard, though, was on the film Primer, a brilliant indie film made on a budget of $7000, which totally swept Sundance a couple years ago. Guy had no idea the technical side of making a movie, and learned as he went along. This movie is 78 minutes long, and they shot a grand total of 80 minutes of film, because they had no money for extra film. He made all the special effects, music, etc on his home computer. Edited it on his home computer (sometimes cutting dubbed voices apart syllable by syllable to match on-film mouths, to compensate for his not knowing how to properly record audio). Amazing documentation of guerilla filmmaking.

Most of the time, I would agree with you.

But sometime they can be interesting. For instance one set of deleted scenes that I found very interesting were from the TV series Spaced (by the same people as Shaun Of The Dead). The scenes were indeed deleted for a reason, but having seen them, it made me appreciate just how well put together the whole show was - what they didn't say being just as important as waht they did.

But yeah, usually deleted scenes are just extra unentertaining crap - made even more so by the fact that you are seeing them completely in isolation and out of any kind of context.

I only ever watch the bloopers, and the odd deleted scene. I couldn't be bother with most of the rest of whats on DVD's these days.

The ones of "Love Actually" are actually very entertaining - they cut them cause they wanted to keep the movie to a certain length - the one where Emma Thompson's son has an interview with the school headmaster is very funny...

Some commentaries are interesting - I find the actor's ones most interesting - "wasn't it cool when we had to do XYZ...".