Extras

Audition tapes. Bloopers. Cut scenes. DVD extras make great web films...

By David McCandless
Thu 15 March 2007, 4:32pm

While film companies try to prevent their DVDs appearing online, they've really taken their eyes off the ball. The big thing isn't DVDs. It's the extras. All those juicy bite-sized clips sellotaped onto DVD releases make perfect entertainment for the trillions who choose to eat their lunch at their computer…

Audition tapes
There's something eerie about watching experienced actresses in average make-up emoting powerfully on camcorders. (Insert your own "insert your own" porn joke here.) But, watching Hollywood screen tests, you realise why movie-makers film them. Even on grainy handicams, the best performers shine.

Shannon from Lost (aka Maggie Grace), love her or hate her, does a good turn here. Ooo - perhaps they'll find a hatch in the next series and a reincarnated Shannon and Walt will step out unfazed..? Until then, check out actress Maggie Grace bag the role convincingly. Then watch Audrey Tautou, of Amelie fame, also proving she was born to play a beatific child-woman. Charmante.

Full Length
Not so many full-length self-contained movie-lets online but here's one worth watching a couple of times. The animated film Madagascar was average as kid flicks go, but one set of characters, the gung-ho secret agent Penguins, really stood out. Here they get their own 12-minute episode and it is funny. For a complete contrast, watch, or rather don't watch, the full Ring video.
(Warning: contains explicit scenes.)

Bloopers
Some great out-takes and wall headbutts in this crop. The straighter the show, it seems, the funnier the foul-ups. These season 7 ER bloopers really sing. And these Pirates of the Caribbean clips, filmed in sumptuous 35mm, are worth chuckling malevolently over.

The Making Of…
Behind-the-scenes stuff is always interesting, especially when you don't have to pay for it. Again, the more quixotic the movie, the more simultaneously gripping and disappointing the exposé is. It's never a good thing to see the puppeteer's hands, is it?

Take Mulholland Drive, for example; David Lynch's sexiest, dreamiest and best film to date. In this detailed unravelling, many of the esoteric elements of the film - and its stars - are laid bare. If you still haven't worked out the significance of the "silenzio", better not watch this.

Children of Men is not one of the cheeriest films of last year, but it was certainly one of the best. Almost as stunning as the one-take cinematography that defined the film are the lengths the camera crew went to produce those sequences. Who needs the A-Team, we ask, when you've got Alfonso Cuarón and a crack camera unit? (Warning: contains explicit scenes.)