september 2024 media

nerd out home
zines
archive

contact
instagram

DVD Menus 08.10.2024

As I've been building and enjoying my physical media collection, I've been reminded of the beauty that can be found in the DVD menu. Sure, there are some flops, aka a menu that's basically a screengrab from the movie with like two buttons for 'play movie' and ' scene selection'. but omg when some thoughtfulness and creativity are put into the menu screens, it's an art in its own right. i will be sharing some of my personal faves here

Juno (2007)

starting off very strong with the movie that inpsired this blog post. i had been wanting to rewatch juno for a while and i think its only streaming on hulu, which i canceled back october because disney own hulu and im boycotting disney. no problemo for me tho bc i own juno on dvd. hell yeah. the title menu is just perfect. it mimics the opening credits to the film which are also perfect.

i actually went down a lil bit of a rabbit hole re: the opening credits. here is a fantastic article i found about the making of the title sequence but it seems like the videos on that page are behind a paywall now smh so thank you once again wayback machine<3 for preserving free access to the article and videos. i highly recommend checking it out, but basically, it's a combo of photos n hand-drawn animation. the designers Gareth Smith and Jenny Lee printed out the frames, xeroxed them a couple times, colored them with colored pencils, cut them out, and then scanned them into after effects. u should really check out the video at the end of the article that shows the original full frame version of the sequence. so freaking cool. here's some of my fave wip photos shared in the article :

going a lil deeper in the rabbit hole, i also learned this beloved aesthetic is apparently referred to as “hipness purgatory”. according to this aesthetic's wiki page, this style is also known as twee hipsterdom (not as good). and, uh, yeah, needless to say, im bouta to spend a lot of time lookin thru aesthetics wiki. as silly as it can feel sometimes that like every style has a name (or -core) attached to it now, its also really nice to have a name for referring to this style that has influenced me so heavily over the years. some other notable examples of this aesthetic include napoleon dynamite (which we’ll be discussing in a moment), the music video for young folks (and maybe just peter bjorn and john in general? idk i honestly didn’t get into them beyond that song really), little big planet, and even bob’s burgers and the regular show which honestly didn’t come to mind at first for me but totally do fit. and shout out to my biracial king, pete wentz<3333 . The cover art for fall out boy’s infinity on high is also type hipness purg. ah so much media near and dear to my lil heart. anyway Juno has held up super well and if u haven’t seen it in a while u should totally watch. and yeah u should prob just listen to some fall out boy too.

Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

another film i could yap about endlessly. but here we’re gonna be focusing on the DVD menu specifically. unless, of course, I get sidetracked again. anyway you can watch a video of the dvd menu or browse some screenshots here:

this menu also heavily draws from the movie’s opening credits. and, of course, it does because this title sequence is also perfect and has been burned into my brain since i was in 4th or 5th grade when i first saw it. i did some more reading (this) on that very awesome website i found (this 1) and learned that the initial cut of napoleon dynamite didn’t even have a title sequence at all. it just cold opened on napoleon waiting for the school bus! and then once it got picked up by fox searchlight and they were doing test screenings people were confused about what year it was supposed to be. so within the title sequence they included napoleon’s school ID which very clearly has the years 2004-2005 on it. in addition to clarifying the year tho, i think the title sequence adds so much context for the film. the sad looking food, the chapstick, the hands bringing the items in and out of frame, the boyish drawings on notebook paper, just really sets the scene for what we’re bouta get into.

also just wanted to add that in 5th grade i had a birthday party where i invited some girls in my class over and made everyone watch napoleon dynamite with me. the only girl who was also a napoleon fan is the only girl im still friends with today. one of the other girls got me an ugly doll (icebat) as a bday present tho and i still have it on my bed. no idea where that girl is at now tho but icebat rocks.

Shrek (2001)

uh yeah im freaking talking about shrek ok. i simply must talk about the shrek dvd menu. there is just so much. like they rly dont make em like this anymore fr. first of all, the main menu opens with a clip of Shrek doing his signature “WHAT. ARE YOU DOING. IN MY SWAMP??!!” cool, cool. then it's a group photo of the whole extended cast of fairy tale characters, im talkin 3 lil pigs, wolf in granny’s dress, pinocchio, u know the guys. and then there’s an animation of Donkey (donkæ) jumping up and down behind the group yelling “pick me, pick me” over and over and it just plays on a loop. the way i can hear it so vividly in my mind’s ear rn... and then the clunkiness of when it would stop to loop back to play the animation again.

anyway, the menu is not super impressive in terms of creativity or anything, but it is extremely impressive in the number of features they freakin crammed onto this thing like holy crap dude. interactive games, music videos, storyboard pitch, deleted scenes, technical “goofs” (i remember from watching this when i was little they talked about how shrek was like a modern marvel of cgi or something which is so funny and awesome to think about now), there’s also walk-throughs of how they progressed thru the character design n stuff. like wowie they did not have to do all that but they did and i appreciate it. i remember sitting with my brother, entertained for literal hours by just the special features on the shrek dvd. so yeah here’s a FORTY-FOUR minute video showing everything. and here’s some screenshots:

also side-note the shrek soundtracks fuckin slap (speaking for 1&2, i dont rly remember 3&4 tbh) omg they go hard like ur joking. also the first time i heard the song hallelujah was when i watched shrek for the first time. so what im syain is hallelujah is a shrek song. <3 also while we’re chatting about shrek.. shrek super party on ps2. right right right

whatchu know bout uh oh shrek, off to the evil bog

a few more honorable mentions that i don’t rly feel like writing paragraphs about at the moment:
treasure planet
fight club
night is short, walk on girl

ok bye