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| 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 expected 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 experience 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 experience 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 |
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