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  Specs
  • Widescreen 1.78:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  • Full Frame
  • Dual Layer ( )
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • English: Dolby Digital Stereo
  Subtitles
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  Extras
  • Photo gallery
  • Animated menus
  • Music video
  • Documentaries

George - Polyserena in Bloom

Festival Mushroom Records/Festival Mushroom Records . R4 . COLOR . 180 mins . PG . PAL

  Feature
Contract

If the phenomenal success and seemingly sudden high profile of Brisbane band George comes as a surprise to many, it’s probably only because there’s been such a shortage of actual Australian music success stories lately. This was, after all, a time when the music actually getting commercial exposure had fed upon itself to the point where much of what was being released by major labels seemed devoid of emotion and resonance, a batch of carefully-calculated attempts to prise pocket money from the hands of hapless consumers who’d know better if only they were given the chance to. Success, it seemed, had a price tag, a business plan and a formula. The fact that it rarely worked seemed to matter little.

George, meanwhile, had been doing some of their growing up in public. The lead track (the attention-grabbing Spawn) from their second EP You Can Take What’s Mine drew the attention of the notoriously fussy Triple J, and the band took full advantage. With only a pressing and distribution arrangement with Oracle Records (and later - briefly - Shock) there was no promo budget and no publicist; band members simply got on the phone and made things happen. Frequent touring got people talking about how good this band was on the live stage; before long they were snapped up by a restructured Festival Mushroom Records and given the freedom to create a full-length album the way they wanted to. It paid off. Arriving at a time when the blandness of commercial music had bored fans searching for something more enriching, Polyserena went straight into the charts at number one, a remarkable achievement that was followed, more recently, by multiple ARIA Awards.

Some kind of DVD release was, of course, inevitable with that kind of success to back it up - though those who’d been hoping for a full-length record of one of the band’s live shows will have to wait a little longer. Polyserena in Bloom, the first release from Festival Mushroom’s newly-created DVD division, is more of a story-so-far collection, and a fine one at that. Those who’ve been entranced by the album’s musicality, emotion and craft will need no convincing when it comes to a companion DVD, but this disc also offers a fairly comprehensive slice of George history - songs and clips that many will never have heard or seen before.

The disc’s content is divided into two main sections. Firstly, there’s a documentary that provides a brief overview of the band’s history and a more extensive look at the recording of Polyserena, culminating in a much talked-about performance of Deep Purple’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra with the Queensland Symphony. Running for around half an hour when played straight through, the documentary is also equipped with several “branching” sections that provide some extra interview material related to that section. As these things go, it’s a fairly interesting proposition - though perhaps not as revealing or insightful as, say, Robert Hambling’s just-released Silverchair doco. Fans of the album will be fascinated, though, and for us the only minor disappointment was the lack of archival material - interview clips and the music itself - in the opening history section. Nevertheless, it’s well produced and never comes close to being dull.

The second section, that we’ll class as the disc’s main content (the line between feature and extras is a blurry one with this DVD), is the “Videography”. This is the real treat for George fans - all eight of the band’s music videos - yep, even the independent ones - are accessible here, and for each one there are an accompanying pair of live TV performances of the same song (Run and Breathe In Now only get a single live rendition, the latter also accompanied by a behind-the-scenes featurette that also appears as branching footage in the documentary). The videos, with their live counterparts listed below each one, are:

Breaking It Slowly
GMA with Bert Newton
Channel [V] - The Gig

Breathe In Now
Rove Live

Run
Channel [V] - The Gig

Special Ones
Channel [V] - The Gig
Pepsi Live

Holiday
Channel [V] - The Gig
Channel [V] - The Joint

Bastard Son
Channel [V] - Rings of Fire
Channel [V] - The Gig

Polyserena
Channel [V] - The Joint
Channel [V] - Rings of Fire

Spawn
Channel [V] - The Gig
Channel [V] - Rings of Fire

The large amount of Channel [V] supplied footage indicates how strong that cable music channel’s support of local music can be. Those who don’t have access to pay TV will probably appreciate these inclusions all the more, too, as they won’t have seen most of what’s here at all. And that’s not the only bonus; those who know the band’s music only from the album will get to hear the original recordings of Bastard Son and Spawn via their respective video clips.

  Video
Contract

While most music-oriented DVDs from the UK and Europe now embrace 16:9 widescreen as the format of choice, the situation’s been a bit more confused than that in Australia thus far. With Polyserena In Bloom, it appears to have been a case of using the master tapes that were at hand for each item on the disc, and consequently almost everything is in 4:3 format, either full frame (the doco, for one) or letterboxed as many of the music videos are. Ironically, much is made in the Breathe in Now featurette about that clip being shot using a Sony HDcam; what a pity a 16:9 downconversion of that master wasn’t available.

Nevertheless, everything here looks very good. Locally-produced music video DVDs have suffered from a lack of attention in the authoring department on occasion, but Sydney company Falselink Media - relatively new to full-scale DVD production - has used the dual-layered disc almost to capacity, and there are few encoding problems. A couple of moments do cause glitches that should have been spotted - the occasional spot of macro-blocking during fast cuts and, much more noticeably, a breakdown in detail on the brick-laden wide shots in the Breathe In Now clip - but most viewers won’t be the slightest bit bothered by such minor things.

Aside from that, it’s all up to the source material, and naturally that varies. The doco footage is all done with consumer cameras, while the early video clips didn’t have the advantage of the high-end post-production gear that the later ones got to play with. A good indicator of what’s possible is the material included in the “Videography” that’s sourced from Channel 10 shows - Rove Live, GMA with Bert Newton and Pepsi Live. All three of those are supplied in pristine 16:9 widescreen, exactly as they were seen by the 20 or 30 people that actually have access to digital TV. And they look stunning, even on a 4:3 screen; when music video production companies fully switch to 16:9 and deliver their masters in that format, DVD viewers are in for a treat. Pedants with a mortal fear of digital video processing, meanwhile, should be well aware by now that all bets are off when it comes to music video...!

The right hand side of the frame in the documentary, by the way, is obscured by a collection of semi-transparent shapes which play host to the “branching bit happens now” spinning-flower thing that appears from time to time. It’s not as annoying as you might think...!

  Audio
Contract

Audio’s pretty straightforward throughout - everything’s in stereo, encoded as Dolby Digital 2.0, with the exception of the eight music videos, which are in 5.1 surround.

The stereo material is once again as good as its source allows - which, in the case of the live clips, is pretty good. Audio during the doco tends to be a little bit up and down in level (particularly noticeable on transitions between the branching sections and the main documentary) but that’s not surprising given the nature of the material.

The idea of getting all the video clips with 5.1 surround sound might seem appealing, but what you’re actually getting is an “extrapolated” simulation of 5.1 - in other words, the standard stereo tracks have been fed through a processor which has synthesised 5.1 surround out of a stereo source. It’s becoming a common tactic on music video DVDs of late, but to us it seems a little pointless. If the source material is stereo, it should be supplied in stereo (and in the case of these clips there’s no alternative - it’s the 5.1 simulation or nothing, as no stereo track has been provided). We’re all for the use of 5.1 surround sound on music DVDs where an actual 5.1 surround mix exists (Orbital’s superb disc from last year is a good example) but the use of fake 5.1 on this and other recent releases seems more like a marketing ploy than a sensible creative decision.

Particularly odd is the fact that the audio on Bastard Son and Polyserena is in mono, as it presumably was on the video masters. A re-dub from the CD masters would have been a trivial solution.

The 5.1 re-processing does sound reasonably good, and there’s no denying there’s some clever technology at work in whatever box was used to do the deed. It also downmixes back to stereo reasonably (though not completely) transparently.

  Extras
Contract

As we mentioned earlier, it’s hard to figure out where the main feature stops and the extras begin on many music DVDs, and this is no exception. For this disc, we’re calling the doco and music clips the “main attraction”, and everything else is a bonus. Accessible via superbly-designed animated menus with audio and some really nice transitions, there’s a few bonuses here for fans as well as some not-too-carefully hidden features (which are advertised on the back cover!)

Gallery: A collection of pictures of the band, 44 in all covering everything from official promo shots to live pics and behind-the-scenes images.

Discography: The track listings for all George’s releases except the debut EP (the reason for this omission will become clear shortly!) complete with audio samples of tracks from each, the total audio time here being around ten minutes. If left alone, the disc takes you on an automated tour of each of the releases in turn.

Credits: Scrolling credits for the DVD and the songs, featuring THX and Dolby logos aplenty, but curiously leaving out the credits for the music videos and the people that made them.

Stages of Bloom: This is actually just a section-selection menu for the documentary.

Easter Eggs: There are three hidden items available from the main menu, all of which are very easy to find (see this site’s Easter Eggs section if you get stuck). And for a change, the hidden content is actually interesting (take note, Hollywood studios!) Firstly, there’s a second picture gallery, featuring various tour posters and press ads from the last few years. Then there’s the Japanese version of the video clip for Special Ones (and no, we’re not quite sure what they were trying to convey here either!) once again with reprocessed 5.1 sound. And last, but certainly not least, there’s a very nice surprise for those who never got to hear the band’s self-titled debut EP - it’s included here in its entirety, all 18 minutes of it, encoded in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. All three Easter Eggs are introduced by the band, who instantly win our inaugural Split Enz on Countdown Wacky Delivery Award for their trouble.

  Overall  
Contract

A must-have for fans of the band, Polyserena in Bloom provides a neat summing-up of George’s career to date, with a comprehensive collection of music videos and live clips the star attraction. It’s also a fascinating chronicle of the many, many hairstyles of Tyrone Noonan, though we’re pretty sure that’s not one of the hidden features mentioned on the back...!

Video and audio quality is good, subject of course to the vagaries of low-budget production and the occasional problem from video compression; audio-wise, the 5.1 reworking might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but the attention would perhaps have been better spent remastering the audio in good old-fashioned stereo from the CDs.


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      And I quote...
    "A must-have for fans of the band... a neat summing-up of George’s career to date, with a comprehensive collection of music videos and live clips the star attraction"
    - Anthony Horan
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Sony DVP-NS300
    • TV:
          Panasonic - The One
    • Receiver:
          Sony STR-DB870
    • Speakers:
          Klipsch Tangent 500
    • Centre Speaker:
          Panasonic
    • Surrounds:
          Jamo
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard Optical
    • Video Cables:
          Monster s-video
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