John, I agree with your concerns. It would appear that the PBS edit is what ultimately became the main concert file of the DVD/Blu-ray. It seems that this was originally edited so that, with pledge drive breaks, it worked out to be an hour and a half (55 min without breaks) which is why the credits rolled over one the songs - the alternative would be one less song, which we wouldn't want. So I think that they had to remove 3 songs on the PBS edit to make it fit into the appropriate TV slot, which is why three songs are a bonus on the disc.john45 wrote:More than a few oddities Jimmy. In fact, for those of us who were there the production is somewhat of a travesty. Why mess with the song order? Why relegate three of the best tracks to the bonus section and leave out “I vow to thee…†altogether? Why falsify the audience reaction? The standing ovation was not after Sanctus. Nor was Sanctus the final song. The applause for “Ave Maria†was the longest and loudest of the night. Why do they show only polite applause? On the practice night even the orchestra joined in. The camera work for “Morning has Broken†and “Wayfaring Stranger†totally fails to truly capture the dramatic staging and lighting effects. Credits shown over “Song of Life†is just plain rude. The sound is good, there were some nice close-ups and the boys’ performance could not be faulted. However, the production and editing could have been much better.JimmyRiddle wrote: There's a few bits of oddities with the editing of the video... for example rolling the end credits over 'Song of Life' and having the standing ovation at the end of 'Sanctus'. Maybe those who haven't read the reviews from last year will be none-the-wiser but I would have preferred for them to capture the reaction at the right moment. I think they cut some of the applause down too so we only catch it when it's winding down, and some of the audience are shown to be not as engaged as they obviously were.
Why those particular songs were removed from the PBS broadcast version or the song order changed, I have no idea; especially "Ave Maria". But it is fair to note that most live performance recordings of this nature do not leave the song order intact. This is an artistic decision by those editing this stuff so as to improve the "flow" of the concert; what works in a live performance may not work on DVD or TV broadcast when people are watching on their sofa in their slippers. When you or I watch this DVD we are reliving the live concert we so greatly enjoyed, but not everyone is. I'm not saying I know why they did it or even agree with the decision, but it's a common practice to do so.
As for the standing ovation, I think they wanted to show the standing ovation during the concert itself, not during rolling credits. I agree with you about that being a bad choice, but I guess I'm trying to understand the thinking of those who did this work.
While the above can be attributed to artistic decisions (good or bad), there was definitely some obvious sloppiness in details like spelling the boys names correctly in the rolling credits. Did you know that Lucas' last name is actually "Woo"?
Or that Bertie's name is actually "Mertramo" (poor Mertie 
) And apparently Alessandro's name has 2 l's and only one s. Sam Leggett's name was misspelled also. There may be other errors I didn't catch quite so readily. While mistakes like that are trivial in the grand scheme of things they do show some inattention to detail in the editing of the video. Though, everything seems correct in the physical paper insert in the sleeve.At the same time, the recording of the video and audio itself are excellent, as well as the camera work and lighting.
Considering that this isn't exactly a Hollywood blockbuster with a large team of editors and dedicated staff, I don't think they had the resources or time to do a separate edit for the DVD that differed from the PBS broadcast. Which is a shame for sure, but an understandable one.
