Billy Elliot the Forum

Colour me baffled, but here's a fact... (N.B. All of this is about "ordinary" DVDs. I don't know how these things work with Blu-Ray) Bear with me... the first part is "obvious". But maybe the second isn't.

When DVDs were "invented", "they" incorporated a feature, region coding, which, in some cases, means that some DVDs can't be played on some players. The idea was if you live, say, in England, your DVD player is restricted to only certain versions of a given title. You could have, for example, a "UK" ("Western Europe"?) coded DVD which played FINE on YOUR player, but the same DVD would not play on your USA cousin's PLAYER. (Nor would his/ her fine-in-the-US DVD play on YOUR player.)

Not hard to see the motivation of "them".

BUT!

You can buy players, or at least you could a few years ago, at least in the USA, (Amazon), for not-silly prices, which were "multi-region", i.e. they didn't care about the region codes programmed into the discs. Sigh.

You might also find, if region-blocked by your player, that you can play a given DVD in your PC without too much hassle.

Sheepdog wrote:You might also find, if region-blocked by your player, that you can play a given DVD in your PC without too much hassle.

That's right. VLC is an open source (so free to download) application that opens any DVD or video format.

Looking at my blu-ray of the live show it makes no mention of being region locked on the packaging. Don't know if that is relevant...

Subtitles include Cantonese, Mandarin & Thai.

Looks great by the way (although a little dark in some scenes). Not watched it all yet but I suspect some of the scenes included are from Saturday as they seem different to the live broadcast (also more audience laughing which could be added during editing of course), particularly the boxing scene.

Pardon if this has been posted previously, but I hadn't seen it so I don't believe it has...

This is a review/behind the scenes look at the preparations for Billy Elliot Live, including some interviews with past Billys, as presented by a blog called The Fan Carpet:

http://www.thefancarpet.com/NewsPage.aspx?n_id=10348

porschesrule wrote:Pardon if this has been posted previously, but I hadn't seen it so I don't believe it has...

This is a review/behind the scenes look at the preparations for Billy Elliot Live, including some interviews with past Billys, as presented by a blog called The Fan Carpet:

http://www.thefancarpet.com/NewsPage.aspx?n_id=10348

Interesting interviews! Ollie's bit surprised me, I thought they went to ordinary schools during the show.

Thanks for that, Gary. It was very interesting but who is Rich? I wonder if it was Rhys and the interviewer just got his name wrongg.

Rich: Your mates don't really understand what you're doing, and then you have to explain it to everyone. When I finished all I wanted to do was go home and see my mates, and they didn't really understand. Still now I try to explain – its very weird. I think that's probably why a lot of us are so close, because only we know what we've done.

I wondered exactly the same thing.

Here's a video clip presented by Rachel Mullins of The Fan Carpet which contains an interview she did with Deka Walmsley prior to the streaming of Billy Ellioit Live. It's fascinating that while the interview is going on, in the background the past Billys are rehearsing for their mash-up at the end of the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aKoCKyuw1Y

Kaine Ward has posted some great behind-the-scenes pics on his public FB page of his week "with his BETM family" during rehearsals and after the show for BETM Live:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kaine-Wa ... fref=photo

Sorry for chiming in so late on the re-broadcast of the show, but better late than never, right?

I attended all three of the North American screenings of Billy Elliot Live and thoroughly enjoyed every minute!

This was despite the fact that each of the theaters I visited was nearly empty. On the first night, there were a whopping six people in attendance. I tried a different Cineplex for Saturday afternoon and counted 14 fans there. The final viewing was at yet another theater where 13 attended. Pretty dismal numbers considering the masses that live in my neck of the woods – the greater Los Angeles area.

The very low turnout was really disappointing, but I certainly don’t know why I (or the powers-that-be) would expect a better turnout. As a huge fan of the show, I frequent this Board and other Broadway Boards. If I didn’t, I’d never know BETM had ever been filmed live from London nor would I know it was being re-broadcast in movie theaters around the world - even in many theaters that are practically in my own backyard. Publicity of the event was non-existent. Even being aware of the event and going out of my way to find ads in newspapers and paying attention during commercial breaks on radio and television, I never saw or heard of a single advertisement. Okay, perhaps there was no budget for such advertising.

What amazed me the most is that even at each of the Cineplex’s I visited, there was no poster hanging anywhere to at least give patrons notice that this special Fathom Event was going to take place there. The marques outside each theater only showed “Billy Elliot – Rated R, 7:00 PM” (or 12:55 PM for the Saturday showing). Most people who are familiar with the original film and happened to see the marque on the day of the show would likely think the theater is just having a “throwback night”. Even those who are familiar with the stage show would have no hint that it’s BETM being shown here. A simple thing like hanging a poster around the Cineplex a few weeks before the event and keeping it there throughout the engagement seems like a no-brainer to me. Wouldn’t that at least draw the attention of a few more patrons who might then make plans to come see the show?

My best guess is that it’s the Fathom Event folks who control publicizing the event. I don’t imagine it’s the BETM producers or creatives who had anything to do with the lack of advertising. I think it’s a shame that there may be a lot of people who may have wanted to attend a screening but didn’t solely because they didn’t know it was occurring. It’s also very bizarre that Fathom Events would go to the trouble to put on this event but doesn’t appear to care whether or not anyone attends. I guess I should be grateful to them. At least us fans and a few friends and family got to experience this show in a spectacular new way. I’ll post some thoughts on the show itself in a separate post.