Genesis – The Way We Walk – Live in concert was the first Genesis DVD, this was actually the Earls Court shows from the We Cant Dance tour of 1992 which was cleaned up and released on DVD.
This concert had been previously released on VHS (Video) but with the DVD release you have surround sound (Dolby Digital) and extra camera angles as well as never seen before footage that wasnt on the original Video release.
There are extra’s but looking back now over 10 years since its release these are limited to interview footage filmed at the time and a photo gallery as well as some audio commentary.
On Two DVD’s! as follows:
Songs
- Land Of Confusion
- No Son Of Mine
- Driving The Last Spike
Old Medley
- Dance On A Volcano
- The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
- The Musical box (end section)
- Firth Of Fifth (without piano intro)
- I Know What I Like
- That’s All (a tiny fraction)
- Illegal Alien (a tiny fraction)
- Follow You Follow Me (a tiny fraction)
- (Not listed on DVD but Stagnation – a tiny fraction)
- Fading Lights
- Jesus He Knows Me
- Dreaming While You Sleep
- Home By The Sea (includes – Second Home By The Sea)
- Domino
- (The Domino Principle (Phil’s intro) In The Glow Of The Night, The Last Domino)
- The Drum Thing
- I Can’t Dance
- Tonight, Tonight, Tonight (shortened and combined with)
- Invisible Touch
- Turn It On Again (No 1960’s rock/motown medley which I think was a sensible idea)
Personnel
Phil Collins – Vocals, Acoustic and Simmons – Electric Drums, Percussion
Tony Banks – Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Mike Rutherford – Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, Moog Taurus Bass Pedals, Backing Vocals
Chester Thompson – Acoustic Drums, Percussion
Daryl Stuermer – Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, Moog Taurus Bass Pedals
Production
Camera’s were set up on the 5th November at Earls Court, Filming took place on the concerts of the 6th November, 7th November, 8th November 1992.
DVD Production Info
Taken from an archive of the Official Genesis website this item dated Friday 7th December 2001
Nick Davis explains the processes and problems of turning 200 video tapes into the Way We Walk DVD. Many thanks to Nick for taking the time to write up his comments.
The process started with the finding of about 200 video tapes. These were on 2 formats: NTSC Beta SP and 3/4 inch Umatic (for the techies amongst you). The tapes corresponded to 3 nights worth of recorded concert at the Earl’s Court gig. Because we needed to remix the sound in Surround 5.1 and we needed to use the original ‘Way We Walk’ video for one of the picture streams, we needed to find out which song was used from which night. Once this was done I then had the ‘pleasure’ of looking at the different camera angles for each song, making notes about what was on each reel and whether the footage was usable.
I have noticed some people saying why couldn’t we have one picture stream for each player all through the concert? Unfortunately, when the concert was shot, no-one envisaged this would ever be done. So, there just isn’t continuous filming of each musician. You must remember that the director is telling each camera man what to film throughout the song and sometimes there is so much moving of a camera that it is just not possible to use what they recorded. Also, there are tape changes on each camera every so often.
For a single ‘show’ video this is all edited out, but when you try to get 4 usable streams the choice does become limited. Another limitation is that it wasn’t shot in widescreen format. As before, no-one realised it would be used in the future (don’t forget this was 92 and widescreen didn’t exist as a firm video format at the time).
Once I had done the preliminary notes, the band came in and looked at the ‘short list’ of camera angles and the choice was made. We all felt that it was quite good to have a distant camera angle on each song if possible (either one of the fixed distant camera’s or the moving skycam) as well as the best of the close up camera’s which were left. Having said this, there were no ‘hard and fast’ rules – we did try to give you the best footage that was available for each song. As I mentioned before, a lot of footage was unusable because it was out of focus or moving around too much to be left on as a continuous picture. You will notice on some songs there are 2 camera angles on one picture stream, this is because there was no single good continuous camera.
The next stage involved the surround mixing. This was definitely the highlight of the project for me. I tried to recreate the sound of the concert by putting audience microphones and effects mainly to the rear speakers, along with some subtle instrumentation occasionally. The sub is used mainly for bass pedals and a little bit of bass guitar and low drums. The problem with the sub for music is if used too much the sound can get very ‘muddy’ on some systems. The vocal is mixed into all 3 front speakers. I think the 5.1 Surround Sound is much better than the original stereo mix so this made it worthwhile doing for me. I think with the live surround sound and picture you can create the feeling of ‘being there’.
The next stage was authoring. I have noticed many comments about the layer break ‘glitch’ and I will try to explain how this has to be. As we are using the absolute maximum amount of information that can be put on a single sided DVD disk and because all the picture and audio streams run ‘in sync’ (i.e. you can switch from one to another with continuous audio) the ‘window’ for where the DVD is told to change from one layer to another is very small (a matter of seconds).
The layer change has to be after approximately 2 hours of video to split the information evenly between the 2 layers (this 2 hours includes all the simultaneous streams as well as the main video). On disk one, the layer change is in a small guitar pause and is not so noticeable as on disk two. If you watch a movie on a DVD you will still see the layer break pause but because the picture stream is one long stream (rather than our four simutaneous streams) the layer break can be hidden more easily between a change of scenes, (you may have a ‘window’ for the layer change of 20 minutes or so!).
I noticed one comment that we could have put all the extra’s on one disk and the concert on one disk. As you can only have 4 hours of information per disk this would have meant losing 2 hours of concert footage and not being able to switch simultaneously between the main video and the alternate angles. It would be great to have all the concert on just one disk but at the present time the technology is not ‘up to speed!!
The commentary track was just as it sounds – the band watching the main video and ‘chatting’ to each other. There are no edits on this and it is just the guys talking to each other rather than giving a blow by blow account of each song. Admittedly they take a while to get going but there are some good moments on it!
All the other extra’s were found by sorting through the boxes of tapes and finding filmed interviews with the band, as well as photo’s from the programme.
I hope this answers some of the technical questions people may have had regarding the DVD. I can tell you that a lot of work went into it. I think the alternate camera angles and surround mixes make it an exciting DVD, I hope you all do too.
Nick Davis
DVD Commentary Track production info
Wednesday 22nd August 2001
Genesis that is Phil Collins (who flew in from Geneva), Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks all met up at Fisher Lane Farm (Surrey) to review the Genesis – The Way We Walk Live DVD production whilst watching the live concert on the big screen at the Farm Phil, Mike and Tony were recorded reminiscing about the show whilst watching it – This audio was added to the Live DVD as an option/bonus to select in the menu. Sadly much of what is said is intangible and its bizzare that Phil Collins thinks Los Endos is going to follow The Drum Thing.
Present were Tony Smith (Manager), Geoff Callingham (Fisher Lane Farm Technical Manager), Nick Davis (Producer and Archivist), Phil and then wife (Orianne), Tony and Mike.
