IDD 300 - American Idol: The Search for A Superstar

Last week I received a package from my mom with my new DVD I “won” on ebay American Idol: The Search for a Superstar had finally arrived. I got the “exclusive” 2 disc set which included a bonus disc, “The Making of American Idol.”

The first DVD opens with a short motion graphic of the AI icon with a verse of the theme song playing in the background. The main menu is then shown. It is a blue background with images of the top four contestants on the left side of the screen. The Idol model is shown on the right hand side with the American Idol logo on top. There are five menu options to choose from on this disc. They are; Play all, Scene selection, Extras which include American Idol Finalists, The Idol Makers, and Behind the Scenes. A yellow overlay appears over play all and scene selections and a blue overlay is highlighted when a bonus feature is selected.

When I clicked American Idol Finalists, it first brought me to Ryan Seacrest who was explaining that before Kelly Clarkson won, there were many other hopefuls who had tried out. When he was done with his monologue, a new menu appeared. It had a similar feel to the main menu in the sense that it was done in blue tones, however this page has a full color picture of winner Kelly Clarkson. This page a 3 menu options plus play all and return to main menu.

In fact, when ever an option is clicked from the main page Ryan is the first to show up and he says roughly the same speech (if not the same one) for each option before a new menu appears with new options and a full color picture of a contestant.

The bonus disc has the same menu lay out as the main disc. There are four options to choose from on the main menu this time; A day in the life of Justin, Judges Profiles, and The executive producers are options on the bonus disc.

Over all I enjoyed the layout of the DVDs. It was something different. All of the segments were ten minutes or less so there was a lot of time viewing the menu, unlike a normal two hour movie DVD where for the most part the movie viewing takes up the most time. The new AI DVD was just released so it will be interesting to see how it has changed if it has.