[font=arial, helvetica, courier, *]The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy
2001-2003 (2010) - Wingnut Films/New Line (Warner Bros.)
Released on Blu-ray Disc on April 6th, 2010
Theatrical Editions released previously on DVD (1/2/3)

Film Ratings (Fellowship/Towers/King): A-/A-/A
Video (Fellowship/Towers/King - 1-20): 17.5/18.5/18.5
Audio (Fellowship/Towers/King - 1-20): 17.5/18/18
Extras (Overall): C+

The first thing you need to know about Warner's new Blu-ray box set of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, is that it contains the original Theatrical Editions of all three films in the series. Now... some fans have complained about this, saying that Warner SHOULD have included the better Extended Edition versions instead, or included BOTH versions. I am, however, am not one them.[/font]

[font=arial, helvetica, courier, *] Director Peter Jackson decided to hold the longer versions for now, because he wants to take the time to create a much more elaborate Blu-ray box set - with all new extras - and release it closer to forthcoming Hobbit films. Warner has, in fact, confirmed that they will be released at a later date. In the meantime, many Rings fans DO want these versions on Blu-ray too (myself included)... and the simple fact is that for most casual movie fans, the theatrical cuts are more than enough to satisfy. So this box set meets those needs perfectly. I'm also betting it'll help sell a LOT of Blu-ray players this year, thereby helping to drive the format's continued growth, and that can only be a good thing.

The second thing you need to know - though I shouldn't have to tell you - is that these films are terrific. No, they're not quite as good as the Extended Editions, but the Theatrical Editions are still wonderful in their own right. I'm not going to talk in more detail about each film individually, because I've reviewed the 2-disc versions of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King on DVD in exacting detail before (click the links for that). Suffice it to say that this is, without question, the best and most satisfying epic film trilogy in the history of the cinema. And while a few of you newbies might think I'm overstating the case, the rest of you have actually SEEN the films and know I'm correct. Unlike even the beloved Star Wars and Godfather sagas (each of which, though wonderful, has its weak installments), Rings is a trilogy that starts incredibly strong, only gets better and raises the stakes in the middle, and then saves its very best for last. That's a rare thing indeed.

The third thing you should know about this Blu-ray release, is that the A/V presentation quality is very, very good. The films are presented in full 1080p video (using the VC-1 codec), in the original 2.35:1 scope aspect ratio. To my eye, Fellowship isn't quite as crisp and detailed looking as the other two films, though I suspect this is less a BD mastering issue and has more to do with the film's actual post-production. Fellowship was completed first, on a tighter budget, and I recall from the theatres that there were shots here and there that looked a little more digital than the rest. The transfer is still very good - fear not. It's just that Two Towers and Return of the King are absolutely fantastic, with abundant detail and crisp, refined textures. Color and contrast is outstanding on all three. There's a little tiny bit of DNR applied here and there, as there is on almost every film these days, but I don't find it to be an issue quality-wise. Moving on to the sound, the new Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless mixes are big, spacious and natural sounding, with smooth imaging, lively surrounds and satisfying bass. A Dolby Surround track is also included, and subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French and Spanish. Upon comparison, these Blu-rays are a massive improvement over even the previously outstanding 4-disc DVD sets - so much in fact so that I now have a very hard time watching the standard-def discs. Lord of the Rings was meant for Blu-ray and doesn't disappoint in that score.

And finally, the last thing you need to know here, is that this set is essentially a direct port of the previous 2-disc DVDs, so virtually all of those extras have been carried over here. In fact, the special features DVD discs for each film here are almost identical to the special features discs from the original sets. The only difference is that the original videogame preview trailers (for EA's The Two Towers, The Return of the King and The Battle for Middle-earth Continues games) have been replaced by trailers for newer and future Lord of the Rings videogames from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. This new Blu-ray set also adds bonus Digital Copy versions of each film for those who want 'em portable. So unless you really cared about those original game featurettes, you can safely sell your 2-disc DVD versions to offset the Blu-ray upgrade cost. Here's a complete breakdown of the content in this 9-disc set:

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Disc One (Blu-ray) - the Theatrical Edition film (HD), both teaser trailers and the final theatrical trailer (HD), the Lord of the Rings Trilogy "supertrailer" (HD), The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest videogame trailer (SD) and The Lord of the Rings: War in the North videogame trailer (HD)

Disc Two (DVD) - 3 behind-the-scenes specials/documentaries (Welcome to Middle Earth, Quest for the Ring and A Passage to Middle Earth), 15 Lord of the Rings.net featurettes, 6 TV spots, Enya's May it Be music video, Special Extended DVD Edition preview and The Two Towers film preview

Disc Three (DVD) - Digital Copy version of the film

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Disc One (Blu-ray) - the Theatrical Edition film (HD), the teaser and theatrical trailer (HD), the Lord of the Rings Trilogy "supertrailer" (HD), The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest videogame trailer (SD) and The Lord of the Rings: War in the North videogame trailer (HD)

Disc Two (DVD) - 2 behind-the-scenes specials/documentaries (On the Set - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Return to Middle Earth), Sean Astin's The Long and Short of It short film, The Making of The Long and Short of It featurette, 8 Lord of the Rings.net featurettes, 16 TV spots, Emiliana Torrini's Gollum's Song music video, Special Extended DVD Edition preview and The Return of the King film preview

Disc Three (DVD) - Digital Copy version of the film

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Disc One (Blu-ray) - the Theatrical Edition film (HD), both theatrical trailers (HD), the Lord of the Rings Trilogy "supertrailer" (HD), The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest videogame trailer (SD) and The Lord of the Rings: War in the North videogame trailer (HD)

Disc Two (DVD) - 3 documentaries (The Quest Fulfilled: A Director's Vision, A Filmmaker's Journey: Making The Return of the King and National Geographic Special - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), 6 Lord of the Rings.net featurettes, Special Extended DVD Edition preview (SD) and 13 TV spots

Disc Three (DVD) - Digital Copy version of the film

Note that the Blu-rays also feature Warner BD-Live connectivity. So all in all, that's not too bad in terms of value. I'm especially happy to see all the trailers in HD here. As far as packaging, you get a glossy, embossed slipcase containing 2 Blu-ray plastic cases. One of them is thicker, and contains 6 discs (the 3 film Blu-rays and the 3 extras DVDs). The second is a standard thickness case and contains the 3 Digital Copy discs and some promotional inserts.

Look... I'm not gonna lie to you. Would I have preferred the Extended Editions on Blu-ray? You bet your battle axe I would. And I get that some of you don't want to be double-dipped again. But for me, as a HUGE fan of these films, the chance to see even these Theatrical Editions on Blu-ray in 1080p with lossless audio is simply NOT something to be passed up. So I say find a really good sale price (Amazon has the set for 30-40% off as I write this and you can bet there will be LOTS of retail discounting on this title), bring 'em home and enjoy! For my money, there just isn't a better way to kill off a whole day's viewing on the Blu-ray format.
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[font=arial, helvetica, courier, *]Much is made online of the evils of DNR on Blu-ray. Sometimes that's absolutely justified (Patton, Pan's Labyrinth) and sometimes it's not. It's important to mention, however, that with the Digital Interpositive (D.I.) process used in the post production of so many films these days, DNR is just one more tool in the post toolbox, not unlike color timing. Just because there's DNR visible on a Blu-ray, you can't automatically assume it was done specifically in the BD mastering process. It's often done by the actual filmmakers in post production, prior to the film's appearance in theatres. Bottom line, the issue of DNR is far more complicated - particularly with regard to new and recent films - than you'd think based on some of the online discussions of the subject.

[and]


[/font][font=arial, helvetica, courier, *]Yes... I am aware of the many negative reviews of this set online. I stand 100% by this review. To put things in perspective (an all too rare thing online these days), much of the negativity about this set appeared LONG before anyone had actually seen the discs, and was based on the fact that Warner announced the theatrical cuts instead of the preferred extended editions, leading to claims in many quarters that fans were being ripped off. Never mind that director Peter Jackson himself made the decision to hold the longer versions on BD until he had time to do more with them. This fan anger has been perpetuated by early negative reviews of the video quality - particularly with regards to the Fellowship transfer - that I think are a little bit overblown and based to a degree on unreasonable e xp ectations. Many people simply e xp ect absolutely "perfect" every time with Blu-ray, and occasionally lose sight of the fact that certain films can only EVER look so good. Case in point: I can't wait for the howls of perceived injustice in some quarters online when The Phantom Menace finally gets released on BD! The bottom line is this: If you're a fan of these films, I STRONGLY encourage you to look at these discs for yourself and make up your own mind. Rent them first if you feel more comfortable, and/or look for the best sale price. But I suspect that when most of you get these discs home and watch them yourself, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about.[/font]

‘Lord of the Rings’ Blu-ray review

When “Fellowship of the Ring,” was first released on DVD and VHS (no seriously, VHS!) back in 2001, it changed the way many people watched movies at home. It was one of the films that convinced legions to finally jump into the digital age and buy a first DVD player. It was a converting tool to the masses who didn’t previously care enough about fidelity of sound and picture on the small screen to make the financial commitment to change.

And just a decade later, with VHS dead, the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is about to hit the market Tuesday in the Blu-Ray format. Will it similarly convince its still-potent LOTR fanbase of consumers to upgrade their home-viewing e xp eriences and leave DVD players behind? There are lots of converts already preaching the Blu-Ray gospel, but what about those content with technology and who just want to watch movies? Will Peter Jackson’s trilogy similarly change the landscape of how the masses watch movies?

I set up a test on a Panasonic 50” plasma screen with both a DVD player and Blu-Ray player, remotes in hand to compare the two versions of the films as carefully as possible. This way I could watch a few seconds in one format and then watch a few seconds in the other on the same screen in the same room with the same lighting and the same distance. Are these movies really that much better than they are on DVD? Sure the technology is better but would it matter to these film? Would the difference be enough to make a real difference to a non-converted consumer? After all, I own several versions of these films already (most were gifts, as a rule I do not buy the same film twice).

So how long did it take to notice the difference?

NEW LINE CINEMA
presents

And then:

A
WINGNUT FILMS
production

Well, those letters seemed more vivid but that isn’t really the film is it? And who wants to rush to judgement? To be transparent, my sympathies are with consumers who already have bought this film, maybe twice, maybe three times.

Galadriel’s voice then speaks (in pretty famous lines now) from the blackness and then up comes the title:

The Lord of the Rings

I was sold.

It was hit-me-over-the-head obvious that Blu-Ray LOTR isn’t a step up in quality, it is a pole vault forward.

You remember the gold “The Lord of the Rings” lettering looking like forged metal right? With Blu-Ray it seems you can walk up to your screen and pluck the letters off of your moniter and put them in your pocket. They take on a whole new depth and richness. Understanding how absurd it sounds to rave about titles, I forged ahead with more comparisons – just to make sure.

These are of course the theatrical editions of the films and not the extended editions and that will be a critical point to many fans. But lets put the content aside for a minute and get to the quality of what was delivered first.

On Blu-Ray Cate Blanchette’s Galadriel is more etherial. The armies of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men retains its autumn palette but the gold is richer and the details more vivid. Elijah Wood’s eyes are more empathetic. The Mines of Moria are a revelation with deeper blacks and brighter highlights. When the leaves of Lothlorien fall they feel crisper. The plunge of Gandalf and the Balrog reveals more textures and rocky complexity in the dark. The Battle of the Hornburg is more heroic the lighting of the beacons – sigh- well I could go on an on. The sensation of comparing the two versions and seeing Blu-ray LOTR for the first time is akin to removing filthy, smeared sunglasses that you didn’t realize were dirty.

By comparison the DVD image is flat, lacking in contrast and clairty, which I couldn’t imagine as it was those exact extended editions I was using that I formerly used to show off my home theater system. I almost wish I didn’t know better.

I had some concerns that some of the CGI in the films might be more problematic when e xp osed to greater detail. I wondered if Legolas hopping on a cave troll’s head would seem more awkward. Nope. I almost wonder if Weta Digital hasn’t tinkered just a tad with that scene in fact, even though I know better.

The trilogy packaging delivers two plastic cases in an embossed slipcase. One case holds six discs, one for each of the three films and one disc with extras for each film. The extras are almost the same as the original release of these films except that the previewed video games have changed to the forthcoming “Aragorn’s Quest,” (which honestly looks woeful) and “The War In The North” (which looks promising).

The second case holds a digital copy of each of the three films that can be used to view the films on either PCs or on Macs which actually helps with overall value and brings the total to nine discs. I confess I haven’t used them yet, but I like the idea and it would make me feel better about the purchase.

I had a very difficult time getting the cases out of the slipcase box while trying not to damage it but overall the packaging is efficient and attractive. The three films are all presented in 1080p in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. In non technical terms, it means the high definition of the presentation in the original theatrical dimensions makes regular DVD definition look poor.

Like you, I read the Web and have read a few reviews complaining that the films aren’t top-notch. I can detect slightly less contrast and brilliance in FOTR when I looked for it and looked hard but I say with convinction: the video quality is very good. I wonder in fact if “Fellowship” didn’t look as good as the other two films in the finishing process because New Line was trying to save a buck when the whole crazy LOTR project wasn’t yet a known money maker.

The audio is also crazy good. It comes in DTS-HD MA 6.1. That means Dolby Theater System High Definition Master Audio in 6.1 channels (six surround speakers and a subwoofer). Why not 7.1? I don’t know but the sound upgrade is on par with the visuals. As all the kids are saying these days, the sound is sick!

I made some (re)discoveries while watching these films for the first time in several years:These are some really good films. I think people forget what was accomplished here and how engaging they are.
The DVD set that features both TE and EE are bad visually. Ick.
I want the Extended Editions on Blu-Ray.So now we come to it. Duel layered Blu-ray discs can hold at least 10 times more data than a DVD – 4.7 GB vs. 50 GB and up. Technically, I believe, it was entirely possible that both editions could have been released here on the same discs.

As it stands now, fans of the films, who have already spent a lot of money on these them, are being offered the privledge of buying it again and then later buying it yet again to get the EE on Blu-Ray. I know many fans agree that it seems greedy and that consumers are being fleeced or double (or quad or more) dipped. (And 3D is down the road too for that matter.) Of course we vote with our wallets and I bet pre-sales and over-the-counter sales on Tuesday will be excellent. Why would a studio sell this twice? Because we buy it twice. Frankly, I was determined not to, but the difference in quality is so monumental that it is really challenging not to want the best LOTR film audio and video e xp erience available.

As I type this I am watching Theoden confront the Witch King and it is absolutely eye popping. Each consumer will need to weigh the possible feeling of being taken advantage of against the satisfaction of seeing the most brilliant presentation of a brilliant film. The studio should have made both versions available either separately or together, giving consumers a choice instead of leaving them feeling trapped.

However, there is no denying the quality of the product.

[font=arial, helvetica, courier, *]Well... judging by the reader reaction e-mailed to me overnight, it seems to be much as we predicted: A lot of people out there today are wondering what all the fuss was about with regard to early reviewer complaints about The Lord of the Rings Blu-rays. To the extent that a few people are still disappointed over the discs, it's that they don't also include the Extended Editions of the films. But even those folks seem to be pleased with the video and audio quality, which is seen as a significant improvement over the previous DVDs regardless of display size. Readers are noting, as I did, that Fellowship looks a little softer than the other two, but that all three are as good or better than they e xp ected. I've since learned that Fellowship was about 70% Digital Intermediate (D.I.) in its post-production, while Two Towers and Return of the King were 100% D.I. in post. That means that in preparing the Blu-ray masters, while Warner could go to the original D.I. for Towers and King, they had to run a new print for Fellowship, and that alone could account for the discrepancy in image detail and crispness. In any case, most of you seem quite happy with these Blu-rays, and that's what counts. As I've said before, I'm certainly happy to have them available - something to tide me over until the Extended Editions are released in HD in a couple years. Theatrical Rings on Blu-ray is certainly better than NO Rings on Blu-ray. [/font]

‘The Lord of the Rings’ current and future Blu-ray releases

BY TODD GILCHRIST

Yesterday in conjunction with the release of Warner Brothers’ new Blu-rays, Hollywood News published an exclusive interview with Richard Taylor, one of the good folks at effects house Weta who was responsible for helping bring the Lord of the Rings film to the screen. While Taylor provided as much information as he could, he confessed outright that he actually had nothing to do with the high-definition upgrade, and further, hadn’t even seen the discs yet. Subsequently, however, we spoke with one of the DVD/BD project’s actual participants, longtime Peter Jackson collaborator Michael Pellerin, who provided some real insights into the process of bringing the films to Blu-ray for the first time.

In addition to his work with Jackson on documenting The Lord of the Rings films, the producer and director has worked on countless featurettes and bonus materials for other films as well, including Tron and Fantasia for Disney. But Pellerin offered some surprising revelations about the new Blu-rays, including some specific and une xp ected improvements that most audiences wouldn’t even know needed to be made. Additionally, he hinted at the reservoir of content that has yet to be released, but seems destined to appear on some sort of massive Lord of the Rings boxed set hopefully in the not-too-distant future – although much like the fate of The Hobbit, those specifics have yet to be fully ironed out.

Hollywood News: Thanks so much for reaching out. Maybe just to get started you can talk about your collaboration with Jackson throughout previous versions of these films being produced and released.

Michael Pellerin: I collaborated with Peter for the better part of a decade, documenting King Kong – both the original and Peter’s remake – and his films of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Because of this, I was consulting with the folks from Warner Home Video about the LOTR BDs, who took over everything from New Line. The Blu-rays still have the New Line logo on them, but there’s no one from New Line Home Entertainment left, so for the past year I was sort of helping make sure the translation from DVD to BD went smoothly. I told Peter I would try to lend a hand because Warner Brothers inherited The Lord of the Rings DVDs from New Line, so they can’t be e xp ected to know where all the elements are or the history of them. But it wasn’t just a direct portal, per se. There was actually quite a bit of work put into it.

Hollywood News: What work needed to be done to get these films ready for high-definition, since presumably they were originally copied from a digital intermediate?

Pellerin: There was a high-definition master done by New Line as the films were being made back in the early part of the decade; that was standard procedure started by a guy named Evan Edelist at New Line. Basically he had kicked off the procedure there of every time there is a movie, they were going to archive in HD. So all of the movies existed as HD masters, but HD technology has progressed since when they first started doing mastering in the late ‘90s. So before they closed up shop, Mike Mulvihill, who was in charge of DVD/BD production at New Line, created new examples – not the whole movie, but sections of each of the three films – as HD masters using newer technology. That got sent to Peter as a back-to-back comparison with the older HD masters, and Peter said yeah, we definitely want to redo it. In fact, there were some color-timing issues that he wanted to deal with in HD and so on and so forth, so he brought in Andrew Lesnie, the [director of photography] for the film, and they actually went in and created entirely new HD masters of these three films. So all three of them are new masters; even if you’ve seen them broadcast, the Blu-rays are actually newer masters that were approved by Peter and his director of photography.

With the audio, this is interesting – what people don’t know is that Mike Brunsmann at Warner called me and said, hey, we found a discrepancy in the audio of Fellowship, and Two Towers and Return of the King. Whereas Two Towers and Return of the King were EX encoded, Fellowship was just 5.1 with no EX encoding at all. That told me something was wrong, because all three films had been originally encoded in EX. It also made me remember that back in the DVD days the audio soundtrack to Fellowship was inconsistent with the audio soundtrack for Two Towers and Return of the King on the DVDs. The group that was doing the encoding for Fellowship actually remixed the film from original stems and created a new mix, but not a Peter Jackson-approved mix. The audio track was flattened out and it was kicked up a few [decibels] compared to the other two films, and there were some consumers who wrote in and said hey – what’s with this mix? What most people don’t know is that the audio track on the DVD of the theatrical edition of Fellowship was a very different than the mix Peter and his team originally created for the film in theaters. So when I got this call from Warner Brothers, I said I can guarantee you’ve still got that dodgy, inconsistent mix that was never corrected. So I put Amy White at Warner Brothers in touch with Wingnut Films, and Wingnut had copies of the original theatrical mixes, and what we were able to do was [get] Chris Boyes and Michael Semanick, two of the guys who mixed the original films to actually go back and supervise a new near-field mix of Fellowship to bring it in line with Two Towers and Return of the King.

This is something that has never been told to the public or anything and no one’s ever known about it, but they were able to go back and fix the mix and bring it in line so that it actually replicates the theatrical e xp erience and matches the two other films. That was a pretty cool thing that has been waiting to be addressed for a pretty long time now.

Hollywood News: How much can there possibly be left in terms of extras for future editions?

Pellerin: With as much stuff as we put out on Lord of the Rings, we purposefully held back some of the best stuff. Not the odds and ends and whatever, because I hate it and Peter hates it when they do iterative releases of films on video where they add only one or two cobbled-together little extras. So, in the case of The Lord of the Rings, thinking ahead, from the very beginning, we always saved the best for last. Now, people wouldn’t believe that because the Lord of the Rings extras were so extensive, but literally if you talk to the cast, they know what’s still to be seen, and they know how good it is. It’s very real, but right now the future of when these treasures will see the light of day is unknown.

Hollywood News: Can you give even a small example of the kind of stuff that fans might see, since I’m sure they’re curious about what it is that they haven’t seen?

Pellerin: I really shouldn’t give away the particulars, because that’s something I would have to ask Peter about, but [imagine] the idea of the guy who made these movies making a documentary that tells the whole process from his point of view – “here’s the journey I went on.” My documentaries on the Extended Edition Appendices –were specifically about the process of making the film, told by the hundreds of people who worked on it. The story of Lord of the Rings told by this very large group of people, as many people as we can get on camera as possible, so it was this collective voice because it was this group of people and if you got enough voices and enough flavor, you get this real feeling of what it was really like making the films. So I specifically had this very broad canvas of a lot of voices, but here in this case, you would now have the director himself telling his own story, what he was thinking and why he made decisions, and walk with him on that journey, chronologically from beginning to end – I know of very few things like that in film history that have ever been done like that. It’s literally the filmmaker’s journey told by himself, not somebody else, and that’s an incredibly compelling thing.

In addition, there’s also another approximately 20 hours of materials and ideas that we specifically saved for future use. The tone of these materials is not so much about filmmaking process – as we already covered that already – but instead about the e xp erience of living and making these films for 10 years, which goes way beyond the movies themselves, capturing what it was like to go through this e xp erience – the human side of it. The very lighter side of The Lord of the Rings, to be sure. Very funny, very off the wall – like the personality of the people making these films; these films took ten years, and ten years is part of people’s lives, and it’s not just, yeah we went out and made the movie, we pretty much lived it. There were more gags and bloopers shot on those films, and strange practical jokes and all sorts of shenanigans off-stage and on. Much of it was captured on tape, and we got everyone to sit down and tell those stories during the films, while they still remembered them. And if you have ten years of material to work with and you have to boil that down to several hours on a DVD or Blu-ray, you’re going to have some pretty intense stuff to work with, and we ended up with this big box of ideas, material, footage, that we hoped would be synthesized together to create this whole other e xp erience someday.

Peter Jackson on ‘The Lovely Bones’ and ‘LOTR’ Blu-rays, 3-D Conversions

It’s fairly common knowledge that director Peter Jackson is a fan of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Not only were his DVDs for the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy among the most ambitious sets ever produced, teeming with extras, commentary tracks and never-before-seen-footage, but Jackson made sure to include enough added value to appease even the most most hard-core enthusiast.


Since then, Jackson has taken care to begin filming extra material for the DVDs (and now Blu-rays) of his subsequent films, from “King Kong” to “The Lovely Bones,” which hits shelves April 20. Jackson recently talked to Speakeasy via phone from New Zealand, where he’s currently in pre-production on “The Hobbit,” for which he’s just delivered the latest draft of the script to the studio (”They seem to be happy with it&#8221 . And yes, has already begun shooting material for the eventual DVD and Blu-ray release. “We’ve been filming DVD material for about a year,” Jackson said of “The Hobbit,” which he’s executive-producing and co-scripting. “[Director] Guillermo [del Toro] has been doing location scouts and design work, with the DVD people following him around, so we’ve shot 20 or 30 hours of DVD material so far and we’re still a few months away from the first day of shooting.”


The Wall Street Journal: The Blu-ray version of “The Lovely Bones” features a scene-by-scene video diary of the shoot. Why did you decide to do a diary as opposed to commentaries and other features?
Peter Jackson: ["The Lovely Bones"] didn’t have a lot of big spectacle like LOTR or “King Kong,” so when prepping the DVD, I tried to think of something new and interesting to do. I realized I’d never seen a documentary that really followed the filming of a movie in chronological order. Everyone now realizes that films are shot out of sequence, so I thought it might be fun for those enthusiastic fans who love behind-the-scenes shows to actually see what the raw day-to-day is like throughout the filmmaking process.


What do you hope audiences will take away from the film now that it’s available on DVD and Blu-ray?
I think the film is going to be easier to look at on DVD than in theaters, where I think people had a hard time going to see a film about the murder of a 14-year-old girl. We always knew it would be a tough sell in terms of the material and subject matter, but, obviously, we tried to make the movies entertaining and avoided putting in anything horrible that would turn people off the film. The film did do okay theatrically, but not fantastic, so we’re hopeful it will discover more of an audience on DVD.


What’s your take on the 3-D trend?
Personally, I think if it’s done well, it’s terrific. As a filmmaker, I believe in trying to make movies that invite the audience to be part of the film; in other words, there are some films where I’m just a spectator and am simply observing from the front seat. What I try to do is draw the audience into the film and have them participate in what’s happening onscreen. 3-D can help with that process. But it’s also open to abuse — such as people knocking off cheap conversions where they’re making 3-D films out of 2-D films. If they do it badly, people are going to get tired of that very quickly. It’s in a fragile position at the moment. Filmmakers have to commit to making 3-D films properly like Jim Cameron did and not do cheap conversions at the tail end of the process.


So we don’t have to worry about a bad 3-D conversion of LOTR anytime soon?
Conversions can be done too. About three years ago, we tried converting about 10 minutes of “King Kong” and it turned out okay. We were happy with the results, but it was e xp ensive at the time, certainly too e xp ensive to do the whole movie. But you can do conversions well if you take time. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is an example of one that was done really well. You just have to take the appropriate amount of time, and time is obviously money. So if you do it quickly, fast and cheap, and it’s not going to turn out well. If we were going to convert LOTR, I’d want to do it properly, which would be a very long, time-consuming, and e xp ensive process.


The theatrical cut of the “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy was just released on Blu-ray, and dedicated fans are purposefully giving the set one-star reviews on Amazonand other online marketplaces because they want the extended version on Blu-ray. How you do you navigate fans like that?
I agree with the fans. I was heavily involved in the DVD process when the films were being released through New Line, but now that Warner Brothers has taken control over the releasing of the films, they just tell me what they’re doing and don’t involve me in the process. [With New Line,] the one thing we never did with the fans was make them feel cheated. Back in the original release, we always put extra material in, extra documentaries — a lot of added value. I so totally understand why the fans would be upset; I don’t disagree with them.

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[font=arial, helvetica, courier, *]We've known DVD producer Michael Pellerin for many years here at The Bits, and you should all be familiar with his work, going all the way back to a series of fine Disney laserdisc special editions in the mid-1990s. Since that time, Michael has been involved in the creation of a number great DVD editions as well and, like many special edition producers, is now working on Blu-ray titles too. Arguably his best work - certainly his most well known - is New Line's trio of much-loved 4-Disc Special Extended DVD Editions of The Lord of the Rings films (see our reviews of Fellowship, Towers and King). Given Michael's extensive involvement in these previous LOTR DVD releases, it was only natural that we turned to him for additional information about Warner's recent Blu-ray Disc release of the theatrical editions. Online opinions with regard to these Blu-rays - and particularly the quality of their high-definition transfers - have been loud and widely varied. So in an effort to illuminate the discussion and provide some context, we asked Michael to write a few words for us on the specific work that was done for this Blu-ray release. We particularly wanted to know more about the films' current A/V presentation on Blu-ray, as well as POTENTIAL future plans for The Lord of the Rings on the format - the great, as-yet-unseen material that Michael, director Peter Jackson and others involved saved specifically for an eventual high-definition box set. Thankfully, Michael was happy to address these issues. So here he is, in his own words...

Bill Hunt, Editor
The Digital Bits
billhunt@thedigitalbits.com

DVD Producer Michael Pellerin, during the production of reconstructed stop-motion
sequences for the King Kong (1933) DVD Special Edition. (Photo by Susie Lee)


Michael Pellerin on The Lord of the Rings on Blu-ray

Because of my history with The Lord of the Rings, their DVDs and the documenting of the films, over the years, I've stayed in the loop regarding the films on home video. Most recently, I consulted with the folks from Warner Home Video about the theatrical LOTR BDs, trying to help make sure the translation from DVD to BD went smoothly.

Given that, I offer a bit of history about these new BD releases for those that may be interested.


The Original HD Masters

Back when The Lord of the Rings films were made in 2001, 2002 and 2003, as part of the archiving process, HD masters were created for each of the three films when they originally debuted in cinemas. Evan Edelist, in charge of HD mastering for New Line Post Production, had helped institute this policy of mastering all new NL releases to HD for archival purposes back in the 90's and it was pretty much industry standard procedure by the time of LOTR. These are the HD masters that would have been used for mastering the DVDs, and broadcast masters for HD channels, etc. This was well before HD-DVD and the ultimate industry standard, Blu-ray, even came into being.


New Line and LOTR in HD

Over the years since the original DVD release, New Line had long-contemplated the release of LOTR on HD. I have a string of emails regarding LOTR on HD that go all the way back to 2001! At the time, the plan was to release an Ultimate HD Box Set with entirely new materials - and we had begun planning for this with Peter as far back as when The Fellowship of the Ring was in post-production in 2001. Dialogue and planning about this continued off and on for years after the release of LOTR on DVD up until late 2007. New Line was waiting for the format war to end before moving forward with the project.


Warner Bros. and the New LOTR HD Masters

Then, in early 2008, New Line Cinema was absorbed into Warner Brothers, and Warner Home Video inherited New Line's catalogue of titles - including The Lord of the Rings.

Keep in mind, at this point, New Line's Home Entertainment Division was essentially folded, and none of the original personnel who worked on the LOTR DVDs were left. This left the LOTR legacy to a whole new home entertainment group to supervise. However, a few key folks from New Line Home Entertainment remained for a brief transition period. Among them was Mike Mulvihill, New Line's Senior VP of Content Development - who I worked hand-in-hand with in the trenches for many years and through many challenges on the LOTR DVDs.

When Warner Home Video took over the New Line catalogue of titles, they were very eager to put LOTR out on Blu-ray. However, the original HD masters of LOTR were nearly a decade old at this point, and HD mastering technology had improved over the past 10 years - so the question was whether to release the old HD masters on BD as is - or create new ones.

So, one of Mike Mulvihill's last goals while still in his position at New Line Home Entertainment was to create a test for Peter Jackson - comparing the old HD masters to new HD transfers for a clip from each of the three films - as a back-to-back comparison.

Peter concurred that new HD masters were in order - and also wanted to do some tweaks to the color correction of the films as well. Andrew Lesnie, the films' director of photography, was brought in to help make these corrections, and help approve the new HD masters for BD. Once Andrew approved the masters, WHV moved into production on the discs.


The Theatrical Editions in HD

When Warner Home Video took over the reigns from New Line Home Entertainment, they also inherited the plans for an HD Box Set. In June 2008, WHV contacted Peter, who, in turn, directed them to me, as I had been the architect of the original DVDs, had done the primary planning and footprint for the Ultimate Box Set, and had archived everything.

There were some discussions about a Box Set at that point, but as it is an ambitious project and as The Hobbit scripts were yet to be written and green-lit, which was the primary goal, it was decided, to table discussions regarding the Extended Editions and the Box Set for the time being. In the interim, the plan was to release the Theatrical Editions on HD with their existing supplemental materials as is.

That doesn't mean this was simply going to be a direct port over - nor that there wasn't a lot of work put into this release to make sure viewers were getting the best elements possible. This release also gave us the chance to correct several long-standing issues which had gone unaddressed since the original release of the DVDs.


Consulting on the Theatrical Blu-rays - What Got Fixed

I let Peter know I would try to lend a hand keeping an eye on the creation of the Theatrical BDs, because as no one from the original New Line DVD team was left, the team at Warner Home Video understandably couldn't be e xp ected to know where all the elements are, or their history - and a certain amount of information naturally had the potential of getting lost in translation between New Line and WHV.

I also advocated that the original menu developer for the LOTR DVDs, Company Wide Shut, be brought back in to provide the BD navigational interfaces, as they had all the original elements, and could create a design continuity between the original DVDs and the BDs.

In addition to creating the new HD masters and correcting the color issues, this new release allowed the opportunity to make a few other fixes and improvements as well. We located all the trailers to be able to present them in HD - which was a bit of a treasure hunt, believe it or not.

We were also finally able to include The Return of the King: Special Extended Edition preview for the very first time. Although the theatrical FOTR and TTT included previews of their Extended Editions - ROTK originally did not, because at the time the DVD was released, it was undecided whether there would be an extended version of ROTK or not. WB couldn't locate a master, but I had a copy in my vault which we were able to use. We had produced it back in 2004, but it just sat on the shelf for years unseen, so it was great to finally be able to have it see the light of day (albeit six years later!)


Fixing Fellowship's Audio

One of the biggest fixes was to the audio for The Fellowship of the Ring. Mike Brunsmann at Warner Brothers DVD/BD Production contacted me that they had found a discrepancy in the audio for The Fellowship of the Ring. Whereas The Two Towers and The Return of the King were EX encoded, Fellowship was just 5.1 with no EX encoding at all. That told me something was wrong, because all three films had been originally encoded in EX. That needed to be corrected. It also made me recall that the mix itself for the DVD of FOTR was problematic and inconsistent with the audio for the DVDs of TTT and ROTK.

What had happened was, back in 2002, the group that was doing the encoding for Fellowship actually remixed the film from its original stems and created a new near-field mix, but not a Peter Jackson-approved mix. The audio track was also flattened out and it was kicked up a few decibels compared to the other two films. This accounts for the excessive bass that some consumers noted on the original, release of FOTR. Chris Boyes, one of the original mixers from the film itself, was brought in at the 11th hour to try and fix it, but at that point, he had to pick his battles and there was only so much he could correct. Because of this, the films mixing team was placed in charge of TTT and ROTK on DVD, so this issue did not recur on those discs, nor on any of the Extended Editions.

So, what most people don't know is that the audio track on the DVD of the theatrical edition of Fellowship was very different than the mix Peter and his team originally created for the film in theaters. New Line had planned to correct this on the HD releases, but that got lost in the shuffle of the transition to WB.

So I put Amy White at Warner Brothers DVD/BD Production in touch with Peter's Wingnut Films, and Park Road Post in New Zealand, who retained copies of the original theatrical mixes. And Chris Boyes and Michael Semanick, two of the guys who mixed the original films were brought in to supervise a new near-field mix of Fellowship to bring it in line with The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Chris and Michael had wanted to fix this for years, so I know that made them happy to finally be able to address this issue. It may have made a few consumers happy as well.


Extended Editions, the Ultimate Box Set and the Future

Peter and I began talking about LOTR on HD as far back as 2001 - during the making of the films. As we knew the film would eventually be released in some yet-to-be-determined HD format, we began planning The Lord of the Rings HD Box Set from the very beginning, nearly a decade ago.

Our idea was to think and plan ahead, and actually set aside some of our best ideas and materials specifically for those future releases. In other words, studios are going to probably release a film on video iteratively anyway. Given that's an immutable fact, if you're going to ask the consumers to buy the title again - why not plan ahead to make it a real event with brand new, compelling content? As opposed to being left with having to scrape together meager bonus materials on a future re-release of a title.

Besides, we didn't even have the room to fit everything on the original releases anyway. Truth be told, even with the six Appendices discs on the original Extended Edition DVDs, which we packed to capacity with content, we knew there would be a lot of material we just could not fit onto the original DVDs. So we purposefully held back some of the best stuff for later use. Every idea we had, Peter vetted and was placed into one of two categories: 1) Stuff to put it on the Extended Edition DVDs - or 2) Stuff saved for the HD Box Set.

We had made a very conscious decision to make everything on the original Appendices Supplemental discs very specifically about the technical process of making the three films, as told by the many, many voices of the people who made them. Therefore, anything that was not specific to that goal, or approach, we saved for the Box Set.

What kind of stuff?

One of the crown jewels was to be Peter's documentary. Peter had always talked about creating his own feature-length documentary, that tells the whole process of creating LOTR chronologically, from his - the filmmaker's - point of view: what he was thinking and why he made decisions, and inviting us to walk with him on that journey, from beginning to end.

We also wanted to present the lighter side of LOTR as well - the e xp erience of living, working and breathing The Lord of the Rings for the better part of 10 years. Very funny, very off the wall stuff, to be sure: Lots of anecdotes; shenanigans on and off screen; practical jokes, the gag and outtakes reels (which are myriad), and the stories only people who were there know about. Much of it was captured on tape and film, and we got everyone to sit down and tell those stories during the making of the films, while they still remembered them.

We wanted to finally get around to telling the incredible story of the long road how these films got off the ground in the first place. That and other stories that were too politically sensitive at the time to tell.

We had planned actual new narrative content, with new production, which I can't comment too much on at this point - but it presents exciting possibilities, to be sure.

We had also designed a few things you could only really do given some distance from the film over the years.

These are just a few examples, but eventually, this amassed into about 20 hours of ideas, and material we set aside for the Box Set to create this whole other e xp erience someday. Over the years, Peter has mentioned the Box Set in various interviews, on the DVDs, in the media and to the fans - but as of yet, it still remains in the "to do" list, until the studio decides it's time.

There has been a lot of interest in the release of the Extended Editions on BD, but right now, there honestly isn't anything to discuss. WHV is just concentrating on the theatrical releases at this point. What I do hope is that fans will eventually get to see the rest of the story on the Box Set - as it would be nice for it to see the light of day, to see it done and finally out in the world and on the shelf.

Michael Pellerin
Los Angeles - April 2010 [/font]