Animation Source Forums

Just the other day I was waching Aliens Special Edition Dvd, and a thought come to mind about the Balto Special Edition DVD.

In Aliens there are two versions,

the Theatrical Cut which is 137 min

And the Special Edition that is 154 min, because of deleted footage that was cut out because of time.

The Director, James Cameron prefers the Special Edition because the deleted footage addes more to the movie. And I would agree


So I was thinking when waching Aliens was "what if The Balto Special Edition DVD has an option where it too has deleted footage?"


But for me I would like to see a few things for The Special Edition DVD (Hope it is made) like:

A commentary by someone or a audio interview commentary.

Widescreen format

A real look behind the making of the movie, like how the script evolved, Look into the animation, How the actors got to be a part of the movie, Talk about the music score and how great it is & get James Horner to talk about it.

And have some fan-input in too, have a Looking back on Balto over the years to see what it has become & why is means so much. Call it somthing like...THE WOLF-DOG:14 years of Balto.


And I am expecting a lot from this Dvd (if it happens)
I have seen things like...Fern Gully the last rainforest DVD, and that has to be the best animated dvd when it comes to dvd bonus stuff. And Fern Gully really wasn't that big of a movie, but they made sure that when making a DVD, that they would put everything they could into it. Fern Gully even has Widescreen format!

So if they chould do that with Fern Gully..they can do it with Balto.

So tell what you are expecting from the Special Edition DVD & also tell what you might think will happen to the dvd (if) it comes.

PeaceOut



(Note: James Horner did the music for both Balto & Aliens)

That's exactly what I would want to see on a Special edition dvd too.
Unfortunately, even if they release one, I seriously doubt that they will make that effort. Universal has just never made any good dvd for their animated films (special edition or not) And as you said, Ferngully is the perfect example that they could if they wanted to. (Ferngully wasn't released by Universal but by 20th century fox, I believe)

I'm also afraid that they might not have the deleted scenes anymore. I heard there were a lot of deleted scenes in Land before time, and Don Bluth said that Universal just lost everything during the years... Balto is more recent, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the same case...

I allways thought it would be cool if they said how they came upon makeing the special edition. Anyway, I hope for the same.

Hear hear.

Please don't post if you have nothing to add.

Just to add to my first post.

I think it would be cool if they said how they came to make the special edition. Like, saying how a group of fans came together and created a petition, yadayada. Just one of my crazy thoughts.

Well, MightyMightybalto1925 (I like the name MightyMightybalto better)...that would be a must. Since it is

the fans themself who are trying to bring this dvd to life.

No way!, that would be too corny

The idea of balto hosting parts of the dvd would be great!!


The problem is that universal really does not seem to care about their animated films which is how balto became so un-heard of in the first place; so I doubt that they will make the effort to make a special edition dvd.

I really hope they do though.

I like the idea too and I signed the petition. Mostly what I would like in addition to some extra features like deleted scenes, storyboards, interviews, that sort of thing is to bring it up to modern TV standards. Widescreen, possibly HD. HBO has been running Balto recently on HBO HD, and I grabbed it on my DVR. It looks fantastic and it's in widescreen. I'd say if they were to do a special edition Balto DVD, it should probably be on Blu Ray.

From a marketing perspective it makes sense. Blu Ray is all the rage right now, and they're starting to release everything under the sun on Blu Ray, even movies less popular than Balto, even movies so old that there's no way they could actually look better on Blu Ray than on regular DVD. If we were to pitch it that way, it would be much more financially attractive for Universal, since they can charge more for Blu Ray.

Since Blu Ray is a much larger storage medium there might even be a way to get all three Balto movies on one Blu Ray disc without sacrificing quality. However, I'd gladly pay for just the first movie on Blu Ray if that's all they released.

Anyway, as far as other features I'd like to see, I'd love to see interviews with Kevin Bacon, Bridget Fonda and Bob Hoskins regarding Balto specifically. I do agree that Bacon and Fonda weren't the best choices for voice actors as their performances were a little flat at times. But I love the quality of their voices and I think it would be interesting to hear what they had to say about the process. Bob Hoskins was genius, and his performance was definitely the best in the entire movie.

I don't think this is true HD, but probably 'upscaled' one from the dvd version. I seriously doubt that Universal would have made that effort specifically for a TV airing. But well, I haven't seen it myself.


Err, you're serious? Because that's exactly the opposite, to me. Blu-ray adoption is really slow, most people don't see much interest into it. (well, most people don't even know what HD is, so go explain them what's the difference between a Bluray and a dvd...)
And children films are usually the slowest when it comes to new technology. (I can still find many VHS versions of animated films into stores, while I rarely see Blu-rays...) I don't think that more than 5% of the visitors here own a Blu-ray player.

So I believe it would be a big mistake to release it to Blu-ray FOR NOW. (unless they wish it to make poor sales) We'll see about that in a few years...
DVD seems the better choice, and it could get noticed by the fact that very few traditional animated films get released since a few years.

Of course, if they decided to release a Blu-ray version of Balto, I wouldn't hesitate one second and buy it (with a Blu-ray player...), but that's only because I have the money for.

But I really don't see that happening. Universal really show little care for their past animated films (there is only one DVD version for each film, they are all bad quality versions without any interesting extras), and they still didn't release "We're back" to DVD (except in one or two countries...)

Seriously...If only Universal could be bought by another major company (Disney, 20th century fox, Warner...), it could only be a good thing.