The River came out on DVD today, and since I’ve already shared some of my thoughts on the show, I’ll take this opportunity to walk you through some of the extras on the DVD.
First of all, the menus are pretty creepy, with dolls and blood-stained teddy bears hanging from trees. I don’t know why, but children’s toys can be some of the scariest things on film (and if you don’t believe me, go watch Poltergeist.)
You have your choice between deleted scenes, a brief behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the show, and audio commentary.
I’ve never been a huge fan of deleted scenes on DVDs because half the time you can’t tell why the scenes were deleted, and they’re usually so brief you feel like it wouldn’t have made a difference one way or the other if they’d been included. So it is with these clips, though they mostly seem to merely further characterize the various members of the boat The Magus. I would guess that in most places the characterization simply worked better in a different scene, and the eliminated clips therefore became redundant.
I really enjoyed the brief behind-the-scenes portion, though. I learned that they filmed the pilot in Puerto Rico and the rest of the series in Hawaii. And the river wasn’t actually a river at all; it was a small inlet where they pushed the boat back and forth (due to the shallow water).
The storyline came up in a Dreamworks meeting and famed director Steven Spielberg told the team to pursue it. Spielberg has shown an interest in the dark and creepy before (see above reference to Poltergeist), and he is credited as one of the executive producers of the show. The writers pulled stories from real Amazonian lore, helping to tie each episode to the Boiuna, the mysterious and magical section of the river.
Filming on location no doubt lessened the neat for special effects as far as scenery, though CGI was still an integral part of the show. One impressive example was the conversion of a small girl dressed in black into a monkey with a mask on its head. When I first saw that scene, I just assumed it was a real monkey, but perhaps a CGI mask.
The variety of camera angles and styles really gave the show its character. Scenes included quick cuts from one camera to another to enhance suspense, and lines were added in later to give certain scenes a degraded security camera appearance. They also used a radio-controlled heli-cam to get aerial establishing shots, conveying the wide expanse of the Amazon River and the dense jungle surrounding it.
I recommend viewing this show if you’re into things creepy, weird, documentary, nature-loving, or all your shows have ended for the season and you’re just looking for something to watch. Even if you don’t fall into any of the above categories, I still say at least watch the first episode. You might just realize “There’s magic out there.”