Post by Eric T. Jones on Aug 27, 2007 1:07:20 GMT -5
McLachlan, an artist whose popularity faded along with the 90s, had a few memorable hits on her hand. Notably, there is "Building a Mystery", but still playing on the radio frequently (and deservedly so) "Angel" and "I Will Remember You". In the case of the latter, it is the live recording from this very album that gets airplay.
"Mirrorball" also shows that her material can be hit-and-miss, but she has just as many more memorable songs, like "Fear", "Path of Thorns", and my personal favorite "Adia" (we are born innocent...).
Having sampled the studio versions of the same songs, I can conclude that both performance-wise and even in terms of recording quality, for once the live version beat the technically-cleaner studio sound every time. Listening to the CD with headphones is an audiophile's dream- placing you directly in the concert, this is stereophonic heaven.
Unfortunately, I was expecting too much out of the concert video. The 5.1 mix, for starters, is a disappointment- probably because giving the mixers three more channels than usual made them not want to have the various instruments bleed into each others' respective speakers. Thus, the sounds are discrete but the overall effect isn't nearly as warm. It also doesn't help that this disc was made in the early days of DVD; the Dolby Digital compression clearly takes its toll, and there are numerous instances where you can hear McLachlan's voice, but her lyrics are erased. I'm sure, if this were recompressed today, it wouldn't be a problem.
Contrary to the Phil Collins concert I viewed a couple days ago, the audience is placed in the front speakers, and they're a lot louder and more excited. Curiously, we only ever have one angle of them- the same wide shot which has the audience at the bottom and the full stage in the middle. With a specific pattern of cutting between musicians, McLachlan's music is never fast and thus we never have "MTV" problems. Which brings me to another observation- this is the first concert video I've viewed which only had straight cuts. There are no overlays or dissolves, save for some fade-outs and fade-ins to either cut a couple minutes of audience out, or to switch between performances (I doubt it's the latter).
Also bucking a current concert video trend, the producers of "Mirrorball" shot the concert on film, which has mixed results. There is a beautiful softness that it creates, as well as the medium's unfriendly nature with low-light showing only parts of our performers at times, but being that this wouldn't ever be shown in theaters, it was edited on video. ...and that brings us to the video transfer. "Serious Hits... Live" from Phil Collins had its share of video artifacting being shot on the medium, but every artifact was less distracting there than the ones in "Mirrorball", with some unexplainable jittery motion, pixellated reds and blues, and a very, very curious aspect ratio choice of 1.55:1. Judging by the framing, I would guess that "Mirrorball" was actually shot in 1.33:1 full-frame for an earlier VHS release, but given this very slight letterboxing to sell the point that DVD was, in fact, different. Due to TV overscan, the black bars are nearly invisible, but the framing does work to cram our performers at times.
Shooting on film does make possible a future HD transfer; I see this to be likely since last year they issued a CD version featuring the entire 2-hour concert as seen and heard on DVD, as opposed to the initial 66-minute disc. While I found the lack of audience shots to be disorienting, there should be little problems with the visuals. The stage lighting matches the music well, is colorful and appropriate to the mood, and McLachlan is beautiful in her gown.
Still with 40 minutes left, I do not doubt the rest of my review will be too different. Stacked with mediocre numbers in addition to the great ones, I so far give "Mirrorball" on DVD a **1/2, and like the CD, I would likely skip over some of the numbers.
"Mirrorball" also shows that her material can be hit-and-miss, but she has just as many more memorable songs, like "Fear", "Path of Thorns", and my personal favorite "Adia" (we are born innocent...).
Having sampled the studio versions of the same songs, I can conclude that both performance-wise and even in terms of recording quality, for once the live version beat the technically-cleaner studio sound every time. Listening to the CD with headphones is an audiophile's dream- placing you directly in the concert, this is stereophonic heaven.
Unfortunately, I was expecting too much out of the concert video. The 5.1 mix, for starters, is a disappointment- probably because giving the mixers three more channels than usual made them not want to have the various instruments bleed into each others' respective speakers. Thus, the sounds are discrete but the overall effect isn't nearly as warm. It also doesn't help that this disc was made in the early days of DVD; the Dolby Digital compression clearly takes its toll, and there are numerous instances where you can hear McLachlan's voice, but her lyrics are erased. I'm sure, if this were recompressed today, it wouldn't be a problem.
Contrary to the Phil Collins concert I viewed a couple days ago, the audience is placed in the front speakers, and they're a lot louder and more excited. Curiously, we only ever have one angle of them- the same wide shot which has the audience at the bottom and the full stage in the middle. With a specific pattern of cutting between musicians, McLachlan's music is never fast and thus we never have "MTV" problems. Which brings me to another observation- this is the first concert video I've viewed which only had straight cuts. There are no overlays or dissolves, save for some fade-outs and fade-ins to either cut a couple minutes of audience out, or to switch between performances (I doubt it's the latter).
Also bucking a current concert video trend, the producers of "Mirrorball" shot the concert on film, which has mixed results. There is a beautiful softness that it creates, as well as the medium's unfriendly nature with low-light showing only parts of our performers at times, but being that this wouldn't ever be shown in theaters, it was edited on video. ...and that brings us to the video transfer. "Serious Hits... Live" from Phil Collins had its share of video artifacting being shot on the medium, but every artifact was less distracting there than the ones in "Mirrorball", with some unexplainable jittery motion, pixellated reds and blues, and a very, very curious aspect ratio choice of 1.55:1. Judging by the framing, I would guess that "Mirrorball" was actually shot in 1.33:1 full-frame for an earlier VHS release, but given this very slight letterboxing to sell the point that DVD was, in fact, different. Due to TV overscan, the black bars are nearly invisible, but the framing does work to cram our performers at times.
Shooting on film does make possible a future HD transfer; I see this to be likely since last year they issued a CD version featuring the entire 2-hour concert as seen and heard on DVD, as opposed to the initial 66-minute disc. While I found the lack of audience shots to be disorienting, there should be little problems with the visuals. The stage lighting matches the music well, is colorful and appropriate to the mood, and McLachlan is beautiful in her gown.
Still with 40 minutes left, I do not doubt the rest of my review will be too different. Stacked with mediocre numbers in addition to the great ones, I so far give "Mirrorball" on DVD a **1/2, and like the CD, I would likely skip over some of the numbers.