Customer Reviews

ABC News: Tsunami - Wave of Destruction

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I was disappointed but I was only looking for footage of the wave, flooding and some of the after-damage. It is fine for someone who wants a copy of a tv special report of the Asian tsunami with some water footage but mostly field reports from the aftermath and lots of talking head. The water shots did not include much of the footage that I saw on tv at the time.

There isn't any 8 mm footage in this show. That is entirely inaccurate and irresponsible. There is consumer grade mini dv footage, and probably even some video phone footage, because that is what you get with natural disasters. There is professional mini DV and betacam footage. There is some studio stuff, but mostly field reports from Diane Saywer and others, as well as interviews with Colin Powell, Kofi Anan, aid workers, locals, tourists, etc.

Some of the reporters visted remote areas within a couple days of the disaster. The reports are raw and timely.

This feels like a made for TV broadcast that was never intended to be released on DVD. Then was. I think this would appeal to newscast buffs more than natural disaster buffs as this is a great exercise in newscasting, but offers little in the way of doing the tsunami justice. The DVD picture quality is low-medium (okay, but could be substantially better). Taking this DVD, as a whole, into consideration spending any more time than they did in order to achieve a better picture quality would not have been worth it. If you love newscasting for the sake of newscasting then this pretty good (not great), but if you're looking for a tsunami (or natural disaster) documentary look elsewhere.

If you were looking for any footage of the Indonesian Tsunami, you need to keep looking. This is not up to National Geographic standards. 99% of the footage is old 8mm stuff. I am surprised that my Farudja circuits didn't barf. Informative, especially if the projector is off.