Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 23:50:11 +0300 (EET DST)
From: spycke@freenet.hut.fi (Jyrki Vainio)
To: dcomics@strindberg.ling.uu.se
Subject: Barks video and Sweden

Since nobody has yet reviewed the Finnish Barks interview video,
I might as well get around to it.
The video was released by Finnish comic store Good Fellows around
Barks' birthday. There were two editions of it, a regular edition
of sixty minutes and a deluxe edition with thirty minutes of extra
material and including a signed print of a Barks self-caricature,
which can be seen in the logo of the Carl Barks Studio. The deluxe
edition was numbered and limited to 150 copies.
In the video Barks is interviewed in his home by Bill Grandey. As
the video tries to find as wide a following as possible, 
unfortunately most of the questions handle very "basic" kind of 
things - how he came to create all the characters he did, how he
understands their relationships and how certain story elements 
came to be. Ofcourse there are many questions concerning his life,
as well.
Although mostly concentrating on subjects that are already known
to many fans, here they at least are from the mouth of the man
himself. And I believe that at least on the level of details there
something new to be found every time these same things are gone
over again.
What I found most disturbing in the video was the technical 
quality. It seems that the guy recording the speech wasn't awake
all the time, for sound is not the best possible. Although Barks
speaks clearly and slowly so that his speech can be easily 
understood by foreigners also, the tape makes his voice blur so
that the listener has to be following real carefully (well, that's
ofcourse what all _real_ fans do anyways!)
Also the shooting could have been done better. Certainly, this is
an _interview_ and not a documentary, so the main focus is on the
man speaking, but at least I would've enjoyed seeing more of Barks'
house and studio - all the paintings seen only in the background,
etc. Now the camera literally sticks in it's place. Only variety
comes from few family photographs shown to the camera. In fact, in
the additional part of the video this comes even more irritating.
The location is switched from Barks' living room (?) to his studio.
In one point he reaches out of the picture to pick some drawing 
which he's talking about and - all but disappears from the scene!
Now, a slight turn of the camera wouldn't hurt too much, would it?
Also I thought maybe a bit too great deal of the extra material
was devoted to one subject, when Barks spoke quite a bit about one
particular painting of his (with a Wild West theme). This was
ofcourse interesting, but in a general approach like this it was
going a bit too much into detail with one thing. I would've much
rather had Barks showing his studio a bit more.
Also featured in the film are Barks' managers who discuss about
their work in the end of the extra material, and this guy-who-was-
the-first-fan-to-meet-Barks-and-who-owns-a-book-store-in-Hollywood
-but-whose-name-I-can't-remember in the main part of the video.
[ His name is Malcolm Willits. ]

So, in summing up, I don't want to make any comment whether or not
to buy this video. I personally enjoyed the Norwegian tv-
documentary more, but that's just my opinion. It has to be 
remembered that this is the first video made by Good Fellows and 
maybe if they have succes with this one they will make others,
which can be of better quality. 
For those who are interested, the deluxe edition has already sold
out (I heard that one guy from Germany bought 26 of them... just
makes me wonder whether he put them _all_ into plastic bags or did
he watch one of them), but the regular edition is still available
both in original English and with Finnish subtitles!


[...]

					--- Jyrki Vainio ---