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MaximRecoil's Replies
"That's like saying a dime is less than a nickel because there's not as much metal in it."
No, it's nothing like that, since you didn't include what that would be in reply to.
"Black-and-white is not less than color, artistically."
Again, "artistically" is irrelevant in this context, and I already explained why.
"It doesn't matter whether it was an artistic or budgetary choice."
Yes, it does.
"Once the choice was made, it was shot as artistically as possible."
No, it absolutely wasn't. It was strictly a technical process. We're talking about a sitcom shot primarily in a studio under blazing lights, not some artsy movie that experiments with light, shadow, angles, etc.
"And I don't think they were actually "immortal" even though they called humans mortals. True, their aging process took centuries. But I don't think they lived forever."
It's indicated that they turn themselves into some useful object when they get too old to be useful. In the form of an object they certainly aren't going to age anymore, because they are no longer biological. They seem to be fundamentally incorporeal beings who can take on any physical form they want. Since they hang out on Earth a lot (but also other planets/moons), and humans are the only intelligent species known to inhabit Earth, human-like makes sense as their default form.
"I hold to the belief that although they have special powers, they are still human. Or as in the world of Star Trek, humanoid. How else could Sam and Darrin have had children? Humans can't reproduce outside their own species."
In fiction, humans often reproduce outside their own species. Spock from Star Trek is a famous example (human mother, Vulcan father). It also happened in the Bible (the giants, AKA: "Nephilim," were the offspring of human mothers and angel fathers). In happens a lot in the animal kingdom as well; a mule being a well-known example. There's no reason that humans couldn't reproduce with a species that's similar enough to humans. It's never been tried (not that anyone can prove, anyway) because there are no such species on Earth.
As a side note, Maurice once mentioned attending an "intergalactic conference," and also going to Mount Olympus to visit the "gods."
"How much bigger would the file be if I added a second track and how long would it take to add?"
It varies drastically; anywhere from a couple hundred MB to around 1 GB. It depends on the bitrate that you encode it at after you make your changes. If you encode it with a lossless codec (e.g., FLAC), and it's not very compressible, and it's 24-bit, it will probably be around 1 GB. If you encode it with something like Opus or AAC at say, 64 kbps per channel (384 kbps total for a 5.1 audio stream), it will be about 260 MB for a 90-minute movie.
It doesn't take long to mux/demux the audio stream on a relatively modern PC; a minute or two. I usually use MKVToolNixGUI, though sometimes I use FFmpeg (which is command-line; you need to write a script in order for it to do anything). I use FFmpeg if I need to do the same operation to multiple files, since it can easily be automated with a batch file.
"I'm concerned if I do <b>that</b>, the audio might be worse depending on if I play it on different devices. If I have a movie I want to keep, I'm scared that in the future any program I might play it from could cause the issue to be worse."
By "that," you mean if you change the volume of an individual track or tracks in an audio editing program? If so, you can keep the original unaltered audio stream as well, though it makes the file bigger of course. Modern containers such as .MKV and .MP4 can have up to 16 audio streams.
I have The Terminator (1984) on Blu-ray and it didn't include the original mono audio stream. It only had a remixed 5.1 version, which I like in some ways (it actually has bass, which the original mono audio is sorely lacking), but I don't like that they outright changed some of the sound effects, most notably, the gunfire sound effects, and not for the better. The best source for the mono audio is the LaserDisc release (uncompressed ~44.1 Khz LPCM), so I muxed that in. But I also kept the remixed 5.1 audio stream that it came with:
https://i.imgur.com/ModcePx.png
I just turn the volume up so the dialog is loud enough, and as for music and certain sound effects, they are supposed to be loud. An explosion, for example, should be louder than someone talking, like in real life. And music should be loud, which is why concerts are loud. If you have decent speakers and sufficient amplification, loud sounds good, otherwise, it sounds terrible (like if you're using the built-in TV speaker[s]), because it's distorted and missing some of the frequencies that are supposed to be there.
If the mixing is way off to the point that it bothers me, I see if I can fix it myself, by demuxing the audio track, opening it in Audacity, adjusting the volume of the relevant tracks, saving my changes, then muxing it back in with the video stream. You can only do that if you have the video file on your hard drive, which I always do, because I have no use whatsoever for "streaming" when it comes to movies. In some cases you can easily download a movie from a streaming site (like if it's on YouTube), but in most cases you can't do that without specialized tools/knowledge.
"Secondly, Sargent's first year (the show's sixth) is actually stronger than York's last."
Nonsense. Boring is way better than boring + annoying, any day of the week. With season 6 you get that no-talent, no-charisma, non-actor, pathetic-voice, fake Darrin buffoon thrown in as an annoyance factor. No Darrin at all (like many episodes of season 5) is far better than that jackass.
"DS may not have possessed York's overall talent,"
That's a major understatement, since he possessed no talent at all, unless you count being annoying as a talent.
"but he was more than adequate in the show and never terrible."
Every second of his screen time on the show was terrible. There is not a single instance of him not being terrible on the show.
"Dick Sargent was more than competent in the role"
"More" is a strange way to spell the word "less."
"and physically, he was perfectly cast."
Why, because he resembled Dick York? He looked like a caricature of Dick York, what with his giant forehead plastered on the front of his wedge-shaped head.
"There are more than a few stand-out episodes when he was on the series, including such offerings as "The Phrase is Familiar" and "You are So Agreeable.""
Any season 6-8 episodes that were okay were in spite of Sargent, not because of him.
"They show more on the left and right, but cut off image from the the top and bottom."
They show <i>slightly</i> more on the left and right (stuff that was never meant to be seen in the first place), but cut off a <i>lot</i> of image from the top and bottom (stuff that <i>was</i> meant to be seen).
If I ruled the world, companies would be fined for releasing movies or TV shows in the wrong aspect ratio; a big enough fine to negate any possible profits they could make off buffoons who think it's better because it fits their glorified calculator screens.
"Black-and-white isn't "less than" color"
Yes, it definitely is less than color. A B&W TV only has one "color" (white, generated by white phosphors), which, by varying the intensity, can create an infinite number of shades of gray, as well as white and the illusion of black (especially in a dark room). A color TV has three colors (red, green, and blue), which, when combined, and by varying the intensity, can create the illusion of an infinite number of colors, including everything a B&W TV can produce. B&W is factually, and demonstrably, less than color.
"it is merely a different art form."
That's irrelevant in this context, since the decision to shoot the first two seasons of Bewitched in B&W wasn't even remotely artistically motivated. They did it because it was cheaper than shooting in color and it was the norm for TV shows at the time.
"I definitely think the witches were earthly in origin."
How do you figure? They aren't human (Endora takes being called human or compared to a human as an insult), they aren't mortal (they call humans "mortals" as a term of distinguishment from themselves), they are very old (Endora is at least 1,000 years old according to Serena), and they live in some place that doesn't exist on Earth as we know it (it has a ground/floor that can be walked on but is among the clouds; some sort of "ethereal realm"). They are more like Greek/Roman gods than the usual concept of a witch, which is just a regular person who practices "witchcraft." There's nothing to indicate that the Witch of Endor from the Bible is anything other than a woman, for example.
"Also somewhere along the line someone for reasons unknown to me decided the word "Oriental" was offensive"
That started in the 1990s, or at least, that's when I first heard of it. People started saying things like, "Objects are oriental, like an oriental rug, not people." Like all instances of irrational, whiny, moving target, "political correctness," it's utterly absurd. "Oriental" simply means, "from the Orient," which itself means, "from the East" (from the Latin word <i>oriens</i>, which means "east").
There's no rational reason why "Asian" is "politically correct" while "Oriental" is not, since they are both geographical terms.
<blockquote>I saw that episode recently and I had the idea that Endora *could* have reproduced an exact copy of the car (maybe with some more effort?) but simply zapped the car from the lab to Darrin's driveway.</blockquote>
Yes, she could have, if the writers felt like having her do that. The show was inconsistent, so it all comes down to the whims of the writers on any given day.
For example, in "Hippie, Hippie, Hooray" where Serena was on the front page of the newspaper and Larry Tate didn't believe that it wasn't Samantha (even though his wife had already met Serena in "That Was No Chick, That Was My Wife" and knew she was identical to Samantha; she conveniently forgot about that in this episode), Samantha had to keep transforming back and forth between herself and the appearance and mannerisms of Serena, saying to Darrin, "I can't be both of us at the same time."
On the other hand, when she was at a castle in a previous episode ("I Get Your Nannie, You Get My Goat") she made a copy of herself to be a tour guide. Aunt Clara made a copy of the Tates' kid too in "Accidental Twins," and Endora made a copy of Darrin in "Divided He Falls."
This show wasn't anywhere near consistent enough to provide a basis for arguing about what any of the witches/warlocks could or couldn't do.
When I was in 4th grade, my older brother and I used to catch yellow perch by the boxful down at the trestle using a bobber, a sinker, a single-pronged hook, and a worm.
https://www.maine.gov/ifw/fish-wildlife/fisheries/species-information/yellow-perch.html
In the early spring they were good to eat, but we were told they got wormy in the summer. The ones we caught close to shore were mostly in the 6 to 8" range and we would come home with like 20 or more (there was no limit on that particular species).
Wouldn't nearly everyone, if not everyone, who is considered a legend fall into that category? I can't think of any legend, nor anyone at all, who did better work when they were senior citizens than when they were young to middle-age. Aging deteriorates the mind and body, and the older someone gets, the less likely they are to be in touch with / appeal to the most lucrative (younger) audience.
Not that I know of.
I was on TV once:
https://youtu.be/pvmCB2OyzH4
White T-shirt, back to the camera, starting at 0:32.
I went with my mechanic friend Dave on that particular wrecker call (he's the one forcing the door closed on the wrecked S-10 at 0:42).
This is the first time I've ever seen a noticeable effect from one, just several minutes ago. The eclipse wasn't even on my mind (I never bothered to look up when exactly it was supposed to happen) but as I walked past my door to go upstairs, the light outside looked weird, different than I've ever seen before. It was dim, but there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. There were hard shadows on the ground from direct sunlight, unlike on a cloudy day, and it was only about 3:30 PM. The street lights were even on. Then it dawned on me: "Oh yeah, that eclipse people have been talking about must be going on."
There's a thing called memory. And again:
"But either way, now you know."
I've never encountered anything that can truly mask a bad smell. Instead, the smells just combine, which can be worse than the original bad smell alone.
Adorably-Obnoxious (from the old IMDb forums) said she soaks them in bleach before throwing them away, and I can see that working, because the bleach would kill the bacteria that cause the bad smell, but I hate the smell of bleach.
I suppose isopropyl alcohol would work too, but I don't like the idea of using up my IPA on chicken Maxi Pads (those would soak up quite a bit of it) and having to buy it more frequently (I normally use it for cleaning stuff I'm working on, such as electronics). One time I tried boiling one in water, which would also sterilize it, but that caused the plastic bag to burst open and the gelatin stuff to come out, which made a mess.
I don't have a septic tank, and they don't clog up anything. I've been flushing them down the toilet for at least 20 years.
Broccoli can sit out at room temperature for far longer than chicken can before it starts to spoil. They don't even keep fresh broccoli refrigerated at grocery stores. Raw chicken will start to stink from spoilage within a day at room temperature.
"No way I'd put that crap down my toilet"
Why? What are you imagining that it's going to do to your toilet?