thumb|An audio commentary by [[Cary and Michael Huang|Michael Huang for an episode of Battle for Dream Island]]

An audio commentary is an additional audio track, usually digital, consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with a video. Commentaries are most often spoken by the production team. They can be serious or entertaining in nature, and can add information which otherwise would not be disclosed to audience members.

History

The Criterion Collection introduced audio commentary on the LaserDisc format, which was able to accommodate multiple audio tracks. The first commentary track, for the 1984 LaserDisc release of the 1933 film King Kong, was recorded by Ronald Haver, a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and was inspired by the stories Haver told while supervising the film-to-video transfer process. Criterion expected that the commentary would only be of interest to serious film students. It received a favorable reaction, and his commentary on King Kong is considered to ultimately have started the trend. Other select video games with commentary include: Portal, Grim Fandango Remastered, Day of the Tentacle Remastered, BioShock: The Collection, Firewatch, Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour,

James Bond commentary

Controversy surrounded the audio commentary on Criterion's 1991 laserdisc release of the first three James Bond films, Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Goldfinger.

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Sources

Further reading

  • Rate That Commentary – website featuring reviews of DVD audio commentary tracks
  • Commentary Tracks of the Damned at The A.V. Club
  • Dr. No - Criterion laserdisc commentary track at the Internet Archive
  • Goldfinger - Criterion laserdisc commentary track at the Internet Archive