Josh Becker's Super-8 Shorts DVD Boxset
Completion Date:
Production Time:
Number Of Discs:
May 2, 2010
2 Weeks
3
Subtitle(s):
Source(s):
Language(s):
English
None
Pre-existing DVD MPEG-2 files
Please Note: this DVD set has been surpassed by a newer DVD project, and is not usually duplicated. Please see the release below, which has the same or better content, in higher quality, with additional material.
DVD cover artwork - 14mm spine (click to enlarge)
In March 2010, Josh Becker made a number of Super-8 shorts directed during the early days of his filmmaking, available direct to the public through his own website; Beckerfilms.com. There were five discs available; disc one has Stryker's War, disc two has The Blind Waiter & Oedipus Rex, disc three has Holding It, disc four has Acting And Reacting & The Final Round, and disc five has Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter, The Case of the Topanga Pearl, Super Student, and Public Enemy Revisited, which came to a total of $65 including postage.

Being a fan, I immediately placed an order for all five discs, and also offered my services in designing artwork for the releases. This offer was not taken up, as Josh already had his own artwork. In April I received the set, which consisted of five discs in blank paper slipcases, with printed disc surface labels. All five original discs were single layer, and even then only around half full. I thought I would just go ahead and re-author the shorts onto three single layer DVD discs as the 'Josh Becker Super-8 Shorts', create my own DVD cover, along with matching disc art & DVD menus, which allowed me to store the original discs safely away.

I used GIMP 2.6.7 to design all the artwork & menus. The DVD cover was based on a Kodak Kodachrome 40 Super-8 film magazine, assembled from scratch using layered stock textures and bump mapping to give a perception of depth. A fake sticker is used for the spine label. As I kept everything quite generic and nondescript, the cover would have pretty much worked with all of the shorts discs singly or in any combination depending on orders placed through Josh's website. The disc labels were based on Super-8 film reels with typed paper sticker labels denoting the contents.

The original DVD menus used were generic templates, and quite unrelated to the subject matter. Recycling an idea from one of my previous releases 'The Evil Dead - The Treasures Collection DVD', I assembled film cans themselves from scratch using layered stock textures & bump mapping to achieve light/shadow & depth, with various freehand fonts used on each label, all with a wooden background, to look like one complete photo of cans on a table.
Josh Becker's own original DVD disc artwork, all five personally autographed
I also took the chance to fix some issues related to authoring and production of the DVDs themselves. Holding It had about 20 minutes of black video which played after it, which I edited out, and some of the silent shorts had a whirring 8mm projector sample dubbed on in place of what would have been a silent audio track. While this was a good idea, the sample used only last a few minutes before looping, and over its length changed pitch making the looping point quite obvious. I re-dubbed this using a longer clip with an even pitch to hide the looping point. All of this was achieved without re-encoding the shorts themselves, so the quality was bit for bit identical to the original discs. The original set of five discs had no overall chronological order, with various shorts mis-matched together. I re-ordered the shorts placing them into the order in which they were made; disc one - 1972 to 1976 with Public Enemy Revisited, Oedipus Rex, Super Student & The Case of the Topanga Pearl, disc two - 1977 to 1978 with The Final Round, Acting And Reacting & Holding It, and disc three - 1979 to 1982 with The Blind Waiter, Stryker's War & Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter. DVD-Flick 1.3.0.7 was used to author and assemble the final 3-disc DVD set.

Once complete, I sent my work over to Josh to get his opinion. While enthusiastic about it, he wasn't keen to dump the artwork he had designed and was already selling, and my own personal re-authored copy was as far as this project went. Josh, however, did mention a possible Early Bruce Campbell Collection in the future. Unfortunately in 2016, Josh decided to discontinue selling DVDs though his website, and it's unknown if Josh will re-start or make additional titles available in the future, so currently they are unavailable to buy.
If you're interested in any of my fanmade projects, you can contact me via email at , or through the Rob's Nostalgia Projects Facebook page. Check out & 'like' that Facebook page to see the latest in-progress updates to any current projects, and check out my Wants List to see if you can assist me with any future projects or upgrades.
Disc 1 of 3 - Disc Artwork & Menus
Total Running Time:
ISO Image Size:
Region:
00h 30m 57s
1.69GB
0 (Worldwide)
Disc Format:
Video Format:
Audio Format:
NTSC DVD5
MPEG-2 / 720x480 / 4:3
AC3 2ch Stereo
Disc 1 - Disc artwork
Disc 1 - Main menu
Disc 2 of 3 - Disc Artwork & Menus
Total Running Time:
ISO Image Size:
Region:
01h 07m 17s
3.55GB
0 (Worldwide)
Disc Format:
Video Format:
Audio Format:
NTSC DVD5
MPEG-2 / 720x480 / 4:3
AC3 2ch Stereo
Disc 2 - Disc artwork
Disc 2 - Main menu
Disc 3 of 3 - Disc Artwork & Menus
Total Running Time:
ISO Image Size:
Region:
01h 14m 52s
4.01GB
0 (Worldwide)
Disc Format:
Video Format:
Audio Format:
NTSC DVD5
MPEG-2 / 720x480 / 4:3
AC3 2ch Stereo
Disc 3 - Disc artwork
Disc 3 - Main menu
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