The DVD release is presented in widescreen with a 5.1 audio track. The quality of the transfer doesn't blow you away, but doesn't distract either. Extras include a "theatrical" trailer, a nicely informative behind-the-scenes featurette, as well as one of the most verbose director's commentaries I've heard in quite a while. Andrew has a lot he wants to say, I'll give him that.
It's becoming more and more fashionable these days for grassroots media ventures to include two parts for public scrutiny: (1) the actual product, and (2) the gimmick used to make you more interested in the actual product. With video games there have been viral marketing campaigns, using everything from sites with bees or chickens, to planting stooges on message boards seeding "inside secrets" on upcoming products. With movies, the rules changed a bit when Blair Witch Project fooled enough people for long enough with carefully placed "is it real?" information to generate buzz and rake in a killing at the box office. Even if the movie hasn't withstood the test of time in other areas, it did prove one thing remarkably well: you don't need fancy special effects to hype up an audience. Or, at least you don't if you can offer them something else in return. Namely, a unique experience.
There have been a small parade of titles to follow along in the footsteps of this logic. Generally, they have been less than solid attempts trying to support a less than solid product. Plus, they're forgetting one critically important detail: that kind of trick really only works once. It would seem that Eavesdropper is the latest to give this guerrilla method of marketing a shot. If you visit the website for the movie, you will find that not only is the film "based on shocking true events," but the extra bit of information that supposedly the writer/director has been abducted and missing for the past year, and there is a link to another site, the Find Andrew Foundation, with slightly more information regarding this event.
The whole thing smells of conspiracy, as they attempt to tie his disappearance to the research presented in his film. The insinuation is that this is all data that the government doesn't want you to know about, and apparently Andrew dug a little too deep... Is Andrew actually missing? I honestly don't know, I'm not a private investigator.
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