The Power to Bibble or Recording the DVD Director's Audio Commentary

Ben Bernstein, sound engineer, at the sound board and Paul Mariano, co-director of These Amazing Shadows at the mic.

Our executive producer, Suzanne Chapot, introduced me to the word, "bibble." The Urban Dictionary defines bibble in many ways, but Suzanne uses it to describe a conversation or person who talks/continues on and on without any purpose or direction. Bibble is in most cases a pejorative. However, when you are two directors recording a DVD Director's Audio Commentary - the power to bibble becomes a positive. Last Wednesday Paul and I ventured over to see Ben Bernstein at Spliggityfidge Studios in Emeryville, CA to record the audio commentary for These Amazing Shadows. Essentially, we watched the documentary and in real time told interesting/funny stories about the production or shared insights into our story. We quickly concluded that there were many moments that we had nothing interesting to say. Our inclination to bibble and fill up dead air with whatever came into our minds revealed itself to be something we should not subject our DVD audience to. We decided to take a non-traditional approach to doing an audio commentary by not using the entire 88-minute show. We will edit down to only those segments that we reasonably believe we have something interesting/funny/revealing to say. Which means it will be a 2-minute audio commentary. Just kidding - we expect to cut it down to 30-minutes or so. We will be adding "Easter eggs" to our commentary video by including shots and photos never before seen.

Looks like Paul is softly singing one of his trademark soulful love songs.

For those of you that are not familiar with what a director's audio commentary is - here is a Wikipedia definition: an audio commentary is an additional audio track consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with video. Commentaries can be serious or entertaining in nature, and can add information which otherwise would not be disclosed to audience members.

Ben Bernstein sets up the microphones.

The audio commentary will be part of the These Amazing Shadows DVD bonus features. Our DVD will be available sometime in November 2011 and will make a great holiday gift (let the merchandising begin!!).