Fan Commentary. DOWNLOAD and INSTRUCTIONS.

[Dave]

Here we are at long last. What was once just a pipe-dream is now an MP3 file of some strangers talking!

I can't remember when I started this experiment, it was so long ago, but the idea was to create a 'patchwork commentary' made up of small sections from multiple contributors.

I divided the running time of This Is England into 5 minute sections, and members of the site recorded a 5 minute commentary for their chosen section of the film.
When I received all of the files, I compiled them into one long audio file and the "This Is England Fan Commentary" was born!

The end result has turned out better than I had expected.
I found the commentary to be extremely interesting and choc full of funny, interesting, intelligent, bewildering, and original comments!

Hopefully the very nature of this commentary makes it far less boring than a regular commentary can be.
The person commentating on the film changes every five minutes so it keeps you interested (well, it kept me interested)... and if you don't like a section for any reason, you can safely relax in the knowledge that it will change to someone else in less than five minutes! Brilliant!

Before you download the MP3 you should take a look at the instructions for use:


INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE

For the fan commentary to work, you need to play the MP3 file at the same time as you watch the This Is England DVD.
Play the DVD at a very low volume and the MP3 at a normal volume (listening to the commentary on an MP3 player using earphones or headphones is ideal). This should help recreate the usual sound levels of a DVD commentary.


SYNCHRONISING THE DVD WITH THE MP3

The MP3 file should be started at the 00:00:00 timecode of the DVD at the beginning of the film. This is the point at which Roland Rat appears, and after all of the company logos have ended.

First of all, play the DVD and let all of the company logos play through. The 00:00:00 timecode that you need occurs after all of the logos.
The clock resets just before Roland Rat appears at the beginning of the film. This is the point at which you should start playing the MP3 commentary.

You can cue up the DVD by letting the Roland Rat shot begin, then press the SKIP BACK button on your DVD remote, quickly followed by the pause button. This should pause your DVD on the 00:00:00 timecode!
It is a good idea to use this method to cue up your MP3 file too.

Once you have both the DVD and MP3 cued up, simply press play on both the DVD player remote and the MP3 playing device simultaneously and just sit back and enjoy!


I hope those instructions make sense. I think I may have over-explained things a bit. Please just leave a comment in this thread if you need clarification of how to use the commentary.


TECHNICAL ISSUES
Due to the very nature of this experiment, the sound quality varies tremendously throughout the commentary. Everyone recorded their bit on the recording equipment they had to hand. This ranged from professional quality microphones, through to mobile phones!

I have tried to make the volume level of all of the sections as similar as possible, but you may find some are still slightly louder or quieter than others.

There are a few brief sections of silence in the commentary, but don't panic, they are supposed to be there.

Big thanks to all the contributors to the fan commentary who made this 'crazy' experiment a reality:

TIMECODE - NAME

A 00:00:00 - Sammo
B 00:05:00 - ChewBaxter
C 00:10:00 - Chromebaby
D 00:15:00 - PatrickCoyle
E 00:20:00 - Sinbad1971
F 00:25:00 - Dave
G 00:30:00 - judecalverttoulmin
H 00:35:00 - GarethBowler
I 00:40:00 - MarkSherbert
J 00:45:00 - JamesRWoolley
K 00:50:00 - SarahWez
L 00:55:00 - Deadmansrockports
M 01:00:00 - Shindig
N 01:05:00 - PaulBlackpool
O 01:10:00 - RydCook
P 01:15:00 - Sir Eric Thribb KG
Q 01:20:00 - Jill
R 01:25:00 - Davros
S 01:30:00 - Salvador

DOWNLOAD THE FAN COMMENTARY!
You can right-click the link below and save it to your hard drive by using the Save As or Save Link As option. The MP3 is 45.6mb in size.
THIS IS ENGLAND FAN COMMENTARY MP3

or NEW...download from Google Drive, docs.google.com/open?id=0B801ROAvGWGqTDBIcHhJTXJqTG8

If you are using an iPod or similar MP3 player, then you may find it useful to know that the MP3 has the following tag information which will help you find it on your player:
TITLE: This Is England Fan Commentary
ARTIST: Meadows Maniacs
ALBUM: www.shanemeadows .co.uk
I have also embedded a nice little picture into the MP3 file which should appear on MP3 players as it plays!

Enjoy!

Don't forget to post your thoughts and reviews on this unique experiment!

All the best!

Dave
The man behind-the-scenes!

[judecalverttoulmin]

Thanks for doing this, Dave, it was really fun to contribute to. I'll have a listen when the house is finally quiet again!

Judex

[Bill Edwards]

Yep. Well done Dave! You the man.

DMS next? ;D

[paulblackpool]

T' was fun to do, well done Dave for getting the project going and seeing it through till the end.

cant wait to hear what the forum users think of it.

[Chewbaxter]

Corker!




Just downloading it - it'll be going on my iPod later all ready to be tried out a.s.a.p.

Cheers to all for putting the effort in - and of course to Dave for all the time and trouble!

What a Xmas present - I'm looking forward to it!

All the best.

Neil.

[judecalverttoulmin]

I've now watched the first half of this and what an extraordinary result, Dave! One could never have predicted this, it's a superb experiment!

I'm a huge fan of Creature Comforts (actually Nick Park and I were both at Psalter Lane Art College in Sheffield at the same time but we didn't know one another) and almost as soon as the fan commentary started, I was seeing the words voiced by Creature Comforts characters, and that carried on all the way through, it was quite an amusing and surreal experience.

I ended up going back and making some notes to share it with you and these are the Creature Comforts characters that attached themselves (in my head) to the fan commentary voiceovers:

(B) ChewBaxter - Creature Comforts donkey talking over a fence:

"Pineapple cubes, they were just as bad, I nearly choked on one of them, me.......they look like a bunch of Bookies, it's like a Bookies convention, what's that all about?.....the school I went to, the Special Needs had a disco, every dinner time...I used to be well jealous....they were always out videoing, filming..."

(C) Chromebaby - Creature Comforts worm with its head sticking out of a worm hole:

"It's great quality here, film. The look of the film. Very genuine 1980s look. All of this is helped by Jo Hartley's incredible perm. My mum had one just like that. No twenty first century hangovers there....if you send your kid out wearing flares like that, you cant expect him to come back. Not in 1983, anyway."

(D) PatrickCoyle - Creature Comforts male hyena sitting under a tree with female hyena asleep and baby hyenas playing round it.

"Where they all go hunting... this is where the film really kicks into life. He's got a fucking Samurai sword on his back! How often do you see that?....this bit in the house, it seems like a Health and Safety nightmare to me...were they really shooting each other with pellet guns? I've never ever been shot by one in me life....I would have been shot by one probably when I was at school but as chance would have it the day the naughty kids took pellet guns in, I had to have the day off coz my mum didn't have no bus fare for me. "

(Priceless, Patrick.)

(E) Sinbad 1971 - Creature Comforts spider in its web, pinging the strings of the web as flies fly into it.

"Kids on Bebo and MySpace, they're just not getting the sort of experiences in the main...it just seems to be a thing of the past for many kids of today...all contacting each other via messenger..Skype even."

(F) Dave - The Creature Comforts pig in its sty, talking over the wall of the pen.

"I was actually here on this location as well. When they enter the cafe you can see the back of my big head, that's me sat in the window there, reading a newspaper, constantly stirring a cup of tea. This actual scene where they cut to the scene starting, there was actually a shot before where the cafe actually delivered a cup of tea and a sausage roll to me at the table. I wasn't able to eat the sausage roll. They only had the one. So I had to leave that, read the papers, stir me tea."

(Actually this was a cross between the Creature Comforts pig and Stephen Merchant as Darren Lamb, Andy Millman's agent in Extras.)

(G) Jude (me) - I did nothing but cringe listening to this and kick myself for not doing another take considering the neighbour was drilling, but whatever, you live and learn...going back I can see me as the Creature Comforts cat dangling the mouse by its tail, in front of the mouse hole.

"An artist has to create art in order to validate his inner turmoil at being human. What distinguishes truly great artists writers or filmmakers or musicians from just your common or garden great ones is an empathy for the human condition and an understanding that everyone is a goody and everyone is a baddy. ..all of us are just as capable of committing an act of evil as we are an act of kindness."

("Common or garden great ones"?! What on earth was I on! And I don't take even take drugs!)

(H) Gareth Bowler - Creature Comforts bluebottle on some meat.

"I must have watched this film 30 or 40 times now, with different groups of mates, and I watched this film with one group of mates and they were sitting there laughing at what Gadget's doing and that just says something for Shane's films, that you can sit with a group of your mates and a scene that makes you sick to your stomach, they're laughing at it. It really does show reality, it holds up a mirror to how this country is, how small towns are."

(I) Mark Sherbert - Creature Comforts polar bear walking alongside a giant crevasse and nearly slipping into it every now and then.

"Really wary of the gaps...but there probably not as
bad as I think they are..I was tempted to play a guitar to fill in the gaps but it's probably better to have the gaps and talk bollocks really...."


(J) JamesRWollley - Creature Comforts peacock putting its fan tail down and up again.

"That part of the film is a lot more entertaining...there's a lot less anguish...or frightening stuff. This second part of the film is far less enjoyable to watch...far less entertaining for obvious reasons...due to the presence of Combo."

(K) (This was my favourite so far) SarahWez - Creature Comforts female snake fluttering big eyelashes

"What we've got playing in the background here, the track is by a band called UK Subs, a punk band that were around at the time, and the track is Warhead, great stuff. When I was young, a youth, growing up, I too was a Rudegirl who'd have fitted well in with Woody's gang...it was all about the music, Ska music and rocking against racism and skanking on the school disco floor...but what also came about were people like Combo who dressed like Rudeboys and the original skinheads of the 60s but they were predominantly about being racist and holding fascist views which was totally contradictory to what Ska was all about."

You go, girl! Loved that one

I'll watch the rest and make some more notes next time I get some free time. Writing this has made me late for the office, yarrrrr!

[Dave]

I was wondering whether anyone had actually listened to this commentary yet!

Great to see such an enthusiastic post there Jude. You reminded me of all the banter in the commentary there and how great it all is (well, nearly all ).

Hooray... I get to be a pig in muck!

You shouldn't worry about the drilling in your bit, it's probably the only section that has a distinctive aural ambience! haha. I gives it a sense of place, and a live feel too.

Oh yeah, the original reason for starting this whole message board for the commentary was that I thought I might make a thread for every section of the commentary. That way people can discuss each section and read about each section, without comments regarding other sections cluttering it all up.
Is that a good idea?

[paulblackpool]

Haha yeah good post jude, would love to know what animal you picture me as lol

[jill]

Jan 4, 2009 14:06:58 GMT paulblackpool said:

would love to know what animal you picture me as lol

Dinosaur judging my your Dr Who post

[paulblackpool]

Jan 4, 2009 16:26:34 GMT jill said:

Jan 4, 2009 14:06:58 GMT paulblackpool said:

would love to know what animal you picture me as lol

Dinosaur judging my your Dr Who post

Ohh Touche

[judecalverttoulmin]

Jan 4, 2009 14:06:58 GMT paulblackpool said:

Haha yeah good post jude, would love to know what animal you picture me as lol

Thanks paulblackpool. I haven't listened to the rest yet, I've had a pretty much nightmare couple of weeks of computer problems, both PC and laptop down and a stack of work to do with deadlines to meet, so I've been a bit tearing my hair out! Back on track now and I will listen to the rest next week

[Dave]

There's not really been a lot of action on the fan commentary front has there!

Has anyone actually listened to it? After all our effort!
But then again, nobody asked for one did they!

[RichK]

Give it time, Dave. I've downloaded the commentary but haven't got a copy of TIE to hand, nor do I have the requisite 90 mins or so spare to do this, yet. Others are probably in the same boat. I think once it gets out there some more, it'll start to receive more attention.

[jill]

Come on folks.....we stayed up all night doing it you know.

[paulblackpool]

Well i thought it was worth listening to, even if im blowing my own trumpet with being on it, stammering my lines at times haha

There loss, they get to miss the special mystery guest commentater on it too ;D