Hellboy II BD-Live director's chat event recap

Blu-ray's Internet capabilities got a brand new push this weekend, with the first director's chat featuring Hellboy II: The Golden Army's Guillermo del Toro live from New Zealand. Didn't get home in time to access the event (scattered forum posts reported problems logging in at all, or people who were logged in but unable to access the comments), or might not have the movie? No problem, here's a quick look at things after the break, and hopefully a preview of what to expect from future director / fan chats.

Hellboy II BD-Live director chat w/ Guillermo del Toro

Accessing Hellboy's BD-Live menu and logging in to our UniversalHiDef.com account wasn't too troublesome thanks to a USB keyboard plugged into a PlayStation 3, but until we took the extra step of viewing and and acknowledging both the privacy policy and Terms of Service agreements we couldn't get any further, which seemed a bit unnecessary and could've been more easily handled on the website itself. Once in, selecting the community tab and director's chat icon dropped us on the next screen, patiently viewing looped Universal trailers and canned Hellboy-related trivia before the move started promptly at 6:00PM PST.

If you didn't like the chat window appearing the whole time, too bad, as there was no way to get rid of it entirely. Thankfully, we were able to select from two different views, with a choice of full screen video or a smaller window with more text to read and the ability to input questions. According to the director, his responses were mixed between live commentary and 50 questions sent in earlier via the website, but with no indication of how many people, or who, were logged in, the "live" feeling just wasn't there. For his part, del Toro kept things going, with new Q&A's updating every few minutes throughout the movie, but they usually weren't as relevant to specific scenes as we had hoped, so the level of interest probably varied on how big a fan of the movie or director you are.

Towards the end he made his feelings towards Blu-ray disc releases and extras known, calling it an opportunity for the "perfect home theater experience" and a way to serve film lovers who want to know everything about a particular picture -- or nothing if they hate his work.

Overall, the experience left us with mixed feelings. While we didn't experience the login problems others noted, our feed stopped updating around halfway through without any indication, so we had to log out of and back into the session to see further updates. Serious fans could get a similar experience with the existing commentary, or possibly a BD-Live download from the website (the chat log is available on UniversalHiDef.com). Having a "live interactive" event so devoid of life and interactivity was disappointing, but it was somewhat balanced by such an enthusiastic presentation by the mind behind the movie. Moviemakers and studios should certainly take a look at this and see how to improve these events going forward. Check out our gallery for a few more pics and let us know how interested you are in the future of Blu-ray and BD-Live.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 25th 2008 1:54PM]

I turned it off and watched the regular commentary after about twenty minutes.
It was a nice try and cudos to del Toro for paving the way, but it was pretty boring as far as commentary goes. I might have left it on, but I had invited some friends who love commentary, and the one question every five minutes was annoyingly slow, so we watched the regular commentary, which was quite good.

For some reason, even though I kept restarting the BD-live from the menu, I didn't get the update until right at time, by the time it got started, it was five minutes into the movie. Why did they wait until the last possible second to send out the update? That was kinda dumb. Also, the whole register/login process was a pain, they should try to streamline that a bit.

Perhaps more can be done in the future, but I agree, it didn't feel "live". It felt scripted. Perhaps if they had screened some good fan comments and put them on the screen, that would have been better. Still, it's hard to complain about free extra content.

Better luck next time; we'll see how Chris Nolan does with TDK.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 26th 2008 4:47AM]

We signed up on the website, logged in with our ps3, sat there, nothing happened, reset, logged in again, but we never could connect to the chat. We'd enter the "director's chat" room but there'd be nothing in the comments, and we had control of the movie, so we were obviously not really 'connected' to anything. Oh well, maybe next time!