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The best way to begin any story (with a few notable exceptions) is at the beginning. Here's the paragraph that appeared in TBP's review of BLADE:SE that got the attention of Leon Silverman, Executive VP at Laser Pacific:
"I wish that every DVD content provider would send a spy to Laser Pacific and steal the blueprints to the equipment they use and the procedures they follow to author a DVD. The world would be a better place."
What's more, after reading the rest of the review, Leon decided that he not only wanted to say "thank you" for our recognition of his company's efforts, but that he wanted me to be the spy -- to gain a better understanding of the work that goes on at Laser Pacific. Leon made it clear that this was not a "quid pro quo" invitation. He expected nothing in return, except the opportunity to say hello, introduce us to his staff and give us the opportunity to meet Mike Mulvihill and Matt Lasorsa from New Line Home Video. An opportunity that we of course, jumped at. But quid pro quo or not, what kind of boobs would we have to be to tour a place like Laser Pacific and not share the experience with our readers? Better pull up a chair and brew a pot of coffee. This is going to take some time. The goal of this special report is to make you feel as though you were there with us. And we hope you enjoy hearing about what we learned.
Friday, January 23, 1998, The BIG Picture rolled into Hollywood to meet and interview the men behind the magic at Laser Pacific and New Line Home Video. Laser Pacific's headquarters are near the corner of Cahuenga Blvd. and Melrose, just across the street from the former Desi-Lu studio building where I LOVE LUCY was filmed. Just around the corner, you'll find the world-famous "Pink's" hot dog stand-- home of the best chili-dog I ever ate in my life -- and that was 20 years ago, but I still remember it. The outside of Laser Pacific is misleading-- it's actually a series of separate buildings that have been connected over the years, sort of like the old Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA. It's actually much larger than it appears here, taking up a good portion of the block.
Okay, so it isn't much to look at from the street in the naked glare of day. But hey, they've got valet parking -- and don't let the humble exterior fool you, either. There's some incredible, high-tech equipment and work that's going on inside these walls, at this very moment. Employing about 200 people, Laser Pacific is a 24/7 company, working around the clock doing the "dailies" and post-production on about 30 television shows, not to mention countless movies and DVD production assignments. They're also involved in airline video production, going so far as to have a couple of first-class jet loungers mounted with video displays in a special screening room to check their wares. Wouldn't we love to have those chairs in our home theater!
Laser Pacific has garnered a solid reputation in Hollywood over the years for being able to tackle tough jobs that require the special tools and equipment not found anywhere else -- most of which we were able to take a glimpse at during our visit. This is why New Line chose Laser Pacific to handle their Platinum Edition DVDs.
Since Laser Pacific is literally active around the clock, they have their own commissary with a full-time chef and kitchen staff that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner to their employees. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the employees actually live there. Laser Pacific is also the land of free refills on their soda machine. Heavy on the syrup, too. Loved it.
Our first stop was the commissary itself (after our drive we were hungry -- JUST KIDDING), where Leon's assistant greeted us and invited us to relax and have a beverage while we waited for Leon to emerge from a meeting. We took this time to take additional notes, compiling questions for New Line and Laser Pacific that we received via e-mail from our readers. Don't worry, we asked -- and received answers to all of your questions -- and then some. A few moments later, we were joined by Mike Mulvihill, Executive Director, Home Video Production and DVD Development for New Line Home Video (pictured below on the right) and Matt Lasorsa, Vice President, Promotions and Publicity for New Line (pictured on the left). Mike's hair really isn't all that wild. The shadow created by the camera flash just makes him look like a mad scientist, that's all.
When I say "we" during this article, I'm referring to my 14-year old son, Alex, who I yanked out of high school for the day to help with notes, photography and to nudge my chin back into place after it kept dropping all the time with every room we stepped into during our tour of the huge Laser Pacific facility. Being a big DVD fan himself, particularly of New Line's titles, Alex's participation was essential to our field trip and I'm glad that he was able to join me.
A few moments after meeting Mike and Matt, our host arrived and our tour began. Leon Silverman is an affable, confident and engaging fellow, who appeared genuinely pleased to be taking us (and you) on a tour of the multimedia facility. I felt like we were Grandpa Joe and Charlie getting a tour of Willy Wonka's Techno-factory. Leon talks fast, uses gestures to get his point across and knows his craft. In other words, most of what he explained went over our neophyte heads, but the information that my Neanderthal brain could retain and process was very impressive, indeed. Our first stop was down the hall into the inner sanctum of Mike Sowa, who was in the process of overseeing the telecine process of a high definition transfer of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET IV. On one HDTV monitor, which Leon dryly referred to as "Sony's $40,000 piece of glass", the freeze-frame scene we saw was stunning in clarity and detail. The term "three-dimensional" comes to the fore, once again. Sowa also showed us a peek at what we can expect to see on PLEASANTVILLE on another monitor, in his large production room that includes the state-of-the-art Spirit Telecine suite. I asked Leon to explain what Laser Pacific is doing differently to create DVDs of such depth and sparkling clarity. In a nutshell, without giving away too much that might be considered proprietary, Laser Pacific uses a two-step telecine process whereas most other studios use a one-step method to determine bit rates and compression algorithms. Laser Pacific we're told, as been compressing MPEG video longer than anyone else -- since 1982, and their experience shows.
Did I say NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET IV? Pssssssssst. Don't tell anyone else this, but New Line is preparing to launch the set of NIGHTMARE flicks sometime this year. The original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET has been remastered and is already "in the can". Every film in the series is being remastered and will also be anamorphic. Expect the series to be available at the same time. New Line's Mike Mulvihill went out of his way to assure us that "in this day and age, we don't want to put out a title that isn't anamorphic because we don't want to have to go back and do it again." That of course, is music to our ears. It appears clear that New Line learned an important lesson from the early release of SE7EN, which as you may recall, was a flipper, as well.
Another secret weapon in the Laser Pacific arsenal is a supercomputer designed jointly with IBM that no one else in the world has. It's application was thought to be too narrow for IBM, which discontinued the behemoth shortly after going into production. Laser Pacific thinks enough of this computer to have three in their possession. They recently traded UCLA some other equipment for their latest acquisition that dramatically aids in the compression of film to DVD with barely perceptible losses.
To really see the amazing detail, check out the animated thumbnails in BLADE: SE -- they were compressed using this special "black box". If you've ever tried to display an animated thumbnail on your desktop PC, you know how difficult (if not impossible) it is to obtain razor-sharp detail with out a lot of wavering lines. Now, take a look at the thumbnails in BLADE.
Silverman was quick to point out, however, that "if you look hard enough, you can find compression artifacts in just about any DVD". But Laser Pacific's philosophy is to target the high end market, rather than calibrate their efforts with a $300 television set. By refusing to dumb-down their authoring processes to appeal to the lowest common denominator, they're not only turning out product that wows 'em on the low end -- they're dazzling us on the high-end, too. See that big screen up there on the left? It's there for a reason.
We noted the active role in which Laser Pacific deliberately miscalibrates some monitors (by turning the brightness too high for example) to try and isolate and remove artifacts before the title makes it to DVD. During our tour, we noticed the Peter Sellers film A SHOT IN THE DARK being scrutinized for artifacts. Of course for us, the key to home video enjoyment is to acquire the best equipment we can afford and have it properly calibrated. This brought up an interesting dilemma to the folks at New Line and Laser Pacific regarding their upcoming release on PLEASANTVILLE. The director wants to include a "color guide" for home video users to adjust their monitors for the highest possible color accuracy. But the folks at New Line and Laser Pacific don't want the process to be overly burdensome or confusing for consumers that aren't necessarily videophiles. PLEASANTVILLE, we learned, posed some unique challenges from an authoring standpoint, but from what we saw and heard, this disc is going to be absolutely stunning. I can say with complete confidence that you have never seen black and white look as glorious as it's going to on this title. The BIG Picture has been promised the first look at the finished DVD and we'll be sure to post a full review -- but take it from me, this one looks like another winner from the combination of New Line and Laser Pacific.
Silverman explained that although everyone should certainly experience PLEASANTVILLE on the big screen (as an Oscar contender, it should still be available theatrically in some areas), the DVD is going to actually be "better" in the sense that there was some color bleeding that was present on the film theatrically. PLEASANTVILLE is the first all-digital movie. When it was transferred to film for theatrical release, it had to be on color stock -- and Silverman explained that you just can't get perfect black and white on color stock without some bleeding during the color sequences that are co-mingled throughout the film. Some have suggested that viewing PLEASANTVILLE at different theaters could yield a different viewing experience. The new Spirit telecine transfer for home video in the capable hands at Laser Pacific has corrected those theatrical presentation challenges, resulting an extremely vivid, yet confined color, surrounded by extraordinarily deep and crisp black and white elements that made me question whether a resurgence of black and white filmmaking might not be in order. One thing is certain, PLEASANTVILLE is going to be a film I greatly anticipate seeing on DVD -- and you should, too.
During our visit with Mike Sowa in the telecine transfer suite, I asked why an earlier New Line title, BOOGIE NIGHTS, lacked the clarity on our large display that newer titles like DAMAGE, LOST IN SPACE and BLADE:SE possess. His answer was candid and forthright -- when BOOGIE NIGHTS was authored, he had just taken delivery on the new Spirit telecine equipment and was still learning the intricacies of the newly available tools. To him, BOOGIE NIGHTS looked amazing -- and let's face it, on smaller displays, it still does. But Sowa explained that with each new release, they just keep pushing a bit "further and further" each time. Essentially, it all comes down to learning curves and experience, which is why some of the anamorphic transfers we've seen lately from some other studios are unpredictable. For instance, in addition to asking about BOOGIE NIGHTS compared to more recent titles, we mentioned the inconsistent quality of anamorphic transfers that we've been seeing from Universal. Some are great; others not so great. Sowa was quick to defend the studio, (where he once worked), by revealing that they "keep getting new equipment", which is of course, a good thing in the long run, but difficult for those that must continually address the challenges of a new learning curve on what seems like an ongoing basis. In other words, it's tough to maintain consistency when your tools are constantly changing -- even if they are being upgraded.
This leads us to the conclusion that Laser Pacific's seasoned staff, working in an extremely stable and unified environment with the best equipment, is another of their secret weapons. Besides having the know-how to develop their own software tools, a few key players at Laser Pacific can modify their tools, seemingly on-the-fly, to adjust to the changing demands of their creative staff and creative clientele like New Line that are continuously pushing the envelope.
There's something else we learned: The post-production community in Hollywood is a close-knit bunch. Even though they may be working for different studios and there might be some "unspoken competition", there is a lot of mutual respect, cooperation and information exchange going on that it our view, can only result in higher quality DVD product from the major studios as time goes on.
Our next stop was into a studio where a HDTV display featured clips from the opening scene of a new, high definition master of BOOGIE NIGHTS, among other clips, which were astonishing in their clarity and detail. I recall someone likening the HDTV experience to looking out a window. Well, other than the fact that the image can't truly be 3-dimensional, I'd have to say that that description is fairly accurate. I've never seen anything on film or other recorded medium look as good. It was truly a revelation. Local television news anchors are going to abhor HDTV. We'll be able to see every wrinkle, blemish and even the individual pores on their faces. I could have sat transfixed in front of that monitor for hours. But, alas, there was a lot more to see.
Our next stop took us to the editing room where the menu elements for PLEASANTVILLE were being created. Don't expect animated thumbnails on this one, but from what we saw, the menu looks pretty cool. Did you know that there are companies that are hired to simply provide the menu backgrounds? We had no idea, assuming that menu design was a one shop affair. Not so. The menu editing bay, operated by an affable fellow named Jay Sherbon (one of those key players that can design and modify the tools utlized), was adjacent to the racks of equipment pictured below, which is really only scratching the surface of the enormous amount of hardware we saw. The floors are hollow to allow for easy cable and wiring access. At first glance, the guy on the left of the photo appears to be doing something quite important. In fact, it was very important. He was eating his lunch. The guy on the right thought it was funny that we were taking their picture at that moment.
Before breaking for lunch, we stopped by yet another editing suite where a technician was going frame by frame through PLEASANTVILLE, removing any specs of dirt or other anomalies present on the master. The techniques and tools employed were swift and impressive, but even so, working one frame at a time, as you can imagine, takes a tremendous amount of patience and effort. It's painstaking work no matter how you slice it. We also visited another area where the flowchart of DVD menu structure is plotted on a computer designed specifically for that purpose, showing the complex structure of the menus that most of us take for granted. Around this time, we had some very good, philosophical discussions with New Line and Laser Pacific regarding consumer frustration over a lack of software standards for DVD. In other words, wouldn't it be nice if you knew what to expect when you popped in a DVD? Some studios go straight into the feature when you press "play". Others, like New Line, send you to the menu, with the "play feature" button the default so you can easily start the feature. Still others begin with a copyright notice, while others default to the menu, only to display the copyright notice before the feature when you select "play movie". It's all willy-nilly at this point, but Mike Mulvihill suggested that The DVD Group is addressing these issues and might be a good place for consumers to make their preferences known.
Laser Pacific keeps track of the idiosyncrasies of different DVD players as well, when authoring discs. Unfortunately, as many of us have learned the hard way, discs don't always play the same way in all players. It's no easy task to rise to the challenge of authoring discs to address different hardware specifications, but Laser Pacific does their best to keep on top of this perplexing problem.
Another area that we brought up was the relative uselessness of the "parental control" feature on DVD, which is really nothing more than a lock-out, rather than editing device -- although with the advent of seamless branching, as evidenced in two New Line titles, CRASH and DAMAGE, we see that "editing on the fly" is a distinct possibility that New Line is currently exploring in order to bring "airline" versions of films onto DVD so that a wider family viewing audience can enjoy a wider variety of titles. Although we can't predict when New Line or other studios might bring this feature to DVD, we feel encouraged that New Line is seriously exploring the issue. In our conversations, it became quite clear that despite the dazzling special editions we're seeing so far, New Line and Laser Pacific have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible on DVD. When creativity and innovation merge, amazing things can happen. We look forward to seeing what the future holds with Laser Pacific and New Line.
The InterviewsAfter touring the key production facilities at Laser Pacific, we were invited to have lunch at a nearby Italian bistro, where we conducted our interview. Seated in this photo, from the left, are Mike Mulvihill (MM) from New Line, Larry Spangler (LSP), Director, Multimedia Services, Laser Pacific and Matt Lasorsa (ML), from New Line.
On the opposite side of the table, there was Leon Silverman (LS) and Andre Trejo, Account Services, from Laser Pacific. Although Andre remained silent during the interview, we learned a great deal from him about the process and importance of color correction in post production during our short walk from Laser Pacific to the restaurant.
TBP: In layman's terms, can you describe the process of transferring a film to DVD?
LS: Well, it starts with the transfer of the film itself as we saw today. It comes from the process of how a telecine device and creative meetings with the director and cinematographer and the colorist, yield a master for the product... that is usually 16x9 master which gets transferred in an anamorphic form and from there, there's a collaborative meeting with people doing art and people at the studio who have a creative concept about the title... the notion of how that title might be authored given the creative direction that happens in a collaborative round table or e-mail, or phone conversation between the studio, the menu design company, the authoring folks who work out issues who may not be apparent to artists who design the DVD menus.
TBP: There seems to be a lot of interest for a special edition of SE7EN, which was a flipper because it was an early one. Are there any plans in the works for a Platinum Edition or a (RSDL) reissue of some kind?
MM: Currently not. That's a 4x3 letterbox master, so that's going to have to be upgraded, you know, in the not-too-distant future... because of that alone. So what we'll have to do is go back and re-transfer it and start from scratch. That's going to take a lot of energy not just because of the talent and the process, but because to make a special edition out of that will take a lot of time and effort.
TBP: Let me ask you about a few different titles. People wrote and asked about some that they're interested in seeing. I'll just throw out some titles and you can tell me yeah, maybe, probably not, etc. TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, PUMP UP THE VOLUME, the original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, BLINK & TRIAL AND ERROR. People want to know where those are...
MM: Right. All of those are "on the list". What we concentrate on with Laser Pacific is creating cutting edge DVDs with day and date releases, because that's where the maximum impact is. Getting a film from the theater to DVD, day and date.
TBP: So that's the priority then.
MM: That is the priority, right. (Matt Lasorsa interjects)
ML: As far as reissues... one of the things we do is look for opportunities in our schedule to do that and to place what we call our 'tent-pole' titles with re-issues titles. So for example with RUSH HOUR which is coming out March 2nd, we're complimenting that with FIRST STRIKE and FRIDAY which share in common, you know, Chris Tucker or Jackie Chan and are both strong titles that have performed very well on VHS. So, as those opportunities come up with subsequent releases during the year, you'll see a lot of the titles that you just mentioned, complimenting those hit titles that we'll bring out at the same time so we can have some more momentum from a sales standpoint of selling those in and getting enough placement to make the volume stronger than just putting them out there and getting them lost because they don't have a strong title like RUSH HOUR to bring attention to them.
TBP: Now that you've brought up Jackie Chan is it possible to include the original Cantonese soundtrack in future Jackie Chan releases?
MM: Yeah, I think that it is. That's something we never really considered doing... POLICE STORY is a good example of that because it wasn't a New Line theatrical release and we haven't come to putting that on the DVD schedule yet but when you look at FIRST STRIKE and RUSH HOUR and MR. NICE GUY we sort of take those as... these are North American films, is really the way that we approached them when we put them out on DVD. We didn't do the homework, so to speak, in terms of going back to what they looked like (when they were filmed in Cantonese).
TBP: So is it a possible future option then?
MM: For title like POLICE STORY, yeah -- it is. But POLICE STORY isn't on the radar the way that all those titles you just listed -- they're all on the radar. And according to the strategy that Matt just outlined, you will see those within the next year to eighteen months.
TBP: Did LOST IN SPACE gross more theatrically or on home video?
ML: Oh, I don't know... I haven't seen the numbers. Good question. But I don't think we've reached the theatrical number yet. It is likely that we will eventually reach the theatrical gross because video will be available much longer.
TBP: The reason I asking is that I'm curious. Do you foresee any time in the future, day and date home video and theatrical releases?
ML: No, I can't imagine that.
TBP: What about narrowing the gap between theatrical release and home video.
ML: I think that's something we are seeing. We're seeing what used to be typically maybe six or seven months... we're looking more now four and a half -- (Leon Silverman intercedes)
LS: And it puts a tremendous burden on the technical creative process, because as you look at the process that you saw today -- movie mastering usually begins with the ability to have access to a printed movie, which sometimes doesn't become available until simultaneous or very soon before release. The creative process of taking that master and mastering it, which can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months - and then the process of trying to grab the assets necessary to create in the case a premium product we do -- like the Platinum Series -- those high end assets -- you don't want to hurry up and produce a gem. Certain things take time. So we're always fighting this window area, especially as it relates to foreign language tracks if they are included on a disc, because they sometimes are not yet recorded. And so this constant need to push up release on home video product and for earlier windows puts enormous burden on this technical creative process of manufacturing the asset for that window.
ML: Let me add one more thing to that, too. In video we have the luxury of learning a lot from theatrical releases. What consumers liked about it, what consumers didn't like about it, what the particular target market appeal was. Sometimes that's different than what the theatrical assumptions are going in. So we have an opportunity in video to plus a movie based on the learning we get from the theatrical launch. So that's the other reason you could probably not tighten it much more beyond what we currently are doing because to absorb all that learning and to include that in the marketing, plus it's already a challenge to keep DVD day and date with VHS -- it's not going to allows us to shorten the time much more than it already is.
TBP: Given the natural variations that are inherent in different film titles because of the different complexity or extras involved and so forth, can you give us a ballpark idea of how long it takes a title to go from concept to market., from film to DVD?
MM: In the case of BLADE, which is a great example -- the added value production on that began before the film was theatrically released and that'll be the case on a few of our bigger titles coming up next year. If you look at that, we got that thing out in four months, which is amazing...
LSP: Oh yeah, it was impressive. Man, we worked, really pushed up to our deadline, you know, because the value added material was being produced for the theatrical release, it all showed up on our doorstep and... I think we had two or three weeks before we had to deliver DLT's (Digital Linear Tape - the final step before DVD replication) . But it most cases, that's one of the biggest issues -- collecting all of the assets that are going to be on DVD.
MM: Once Larry gets a master that's approved and signed off on it goes very quickly. The team that they've got, you know, there's a lot of synergy there between not only themselves, but between us -- we've been doing this for quite a while together. And, that's one of the benefits of working together for so long... is that we only get better and better with each title and that's why this relationship is going to endure.
TBP: A well-oiled machine.
ML: In the other place I think we're well-oiled is in our relationship with theatrical, because to get the kind of added value we strive to put on our titles, it really does require being linked to the end of production phase of the actual movie, being intimately involved in that. People like Mike are working with the cast and crew during the production of the movie -- that's the only way we can get that kind of stuff. New Line is in a good position in that we're small -- where we work closely together and we can do things that I think other larger studios can't possibly put together in that kind of time.
TBP: What's Laser Pacific doing differently from other authoring facilities to achieve such high levels of resolution in your transfers?
LS: Part of it of it goes back to the fact that ...the basis of compression, which is something that we have now been doing maybe longer than any other facility certainly in this town, maybe in this part of the world, is not the issue anymore for us. Because the issue of creating the highest possible quality object has been so ingrained into the infrastructure for so long that the technical quality of making good looking pictures and high quality compression is the corporate culture -- and has been for quite some time. MPEG is a steep learning curve; compression is a steep learning curve. The notion that you are taking away a lot of that picture and throwing it out the door -- we've mastered that black and fine art. And so we've been able to concentrate in addition to achieving quality, on those issues of deeply understanding the DVD specification, it's features -- 
and limitations... Working together with customers who are really interested in creating very compelling content... coming up with ways to try to raise the bar with each title. And we joke about it because every title we finish, we go "Whoa, Boogie Nights, that was a rough one", or "Spawn, that was a rough one", they go "Ooh Blade! That was a rough one!" and we are constantly going to school and graduating, getting PhDs' in something, before we study for the next subject and this notion that that's our value added. That notion that we are not a DVD factory -- that even though we do basic titles. We do quite a few titles that are a template type DVD. The thing that we have used to differentiate us between other authoring houses, is this deep knowledge and actually goals to be associated with titles and to try to come up collectively with ideas for titles that absolutely push the state of the art. We're in the business of helping Hollywood across all our key businesses at the very high end. We cater to the high priests of the art form. And if in fact we don't do that, we're not living up to our own mission, so that in fact is what we constantly need to do and we have the ability to inspire these folks from New Line to test our mettle at all times. And it's this collaborative team effort where we meet these very creative people from graphic houses and art studios who may or may not know the implications of DVD. In fact, we've gone through a number of relationships with New Line and other studios where some of these titles we do in-house with menus and graphics; other times there's been out of house graphics firms brought in, especially graphics houses that are also involved with internet access where we have to go through a process teaching graphics artists and graphics houses how to apply some of the principles of DVD to their art as well. So there's sometimes a DVD undergraduate school of applying just some of this knowledge and Jay Sherbon as run DVD University for us all and Larry has run DVD University for us all... So part of what makes us different is the history of digital media management, of media management, compression, deep resources in terms of engineering -- not just from an "I can fix it" sort of way, but from an inventor sort of way. We write our own tools, we have access to tools that nobody else has; the compression engine that we have is part of a development relationship with a chip manufacturer, so we have a unique encoder that constantly give feedback to. The reason we're in this relationship is that this manufacturer recognizes we have this deep knowledge and they want us to figure out how to break it -- so we keep breaking it for them and they keep writing new code to refine this stuff. And so there's this combination of these tools that nobody else uses, the ability to write our own software... Unbelievable that the way we get involved with projects that not a lot of others get their hands on, so that allows us to further hone our skills. I made a joke to Jay yesterday that "raise the bar", again, this guy is doing chinups so fast that he's got the strongest muscles in film. (does wild gestures of rapid chin-ups)
TBP: I wish we had video to go with the audio in this interview (laughs). Have you authored DVDs for other studios?
LS: Sure. We work with Disney, we work with MGM, we work with HBO, we work with Artisan...
LSP: We've done Universal...
TBP: You didn't do MY FAIR LADY, did you?
LSP: No. But we did MADONNA TRUTH OR DARE and TERMINATOR 2 for Artisan, which were the actually first and second Region 1 DVDs we produced. We also did MERLIN and THE GRIFTERS for HBO, PI (which was very rough, low budget and very contrasty by design), MIMIC, ON GOLDEN POND, SOPHIES CHOICE, the latter of which were only available to us as D2 masters, which then had to be bumped up to D1. Anyway, these are a few of the titles we've done. In fairness to ourselves and even our competitors, if you're not handed a great source tape, you're not going to look like a hero in the end, but I'd put our work up against anyone elses when it comes down to the finished product.
TBP: I find myself waiting till the end of the credits to see who authored the disc, especially if it's a really good transfer.
LSP: The master has a lot to do with this. If you have a really grainy or noisy, older master that was transferred on older technology, you may have to purposely soften things a bit to avoid MPEG artifacts. If you look at THE LAST TANGO IN PARIS you will see what one of the independent QC guys said was one of the best looking pictures he'd ever seen, even though the master was in terrible shape -- and it doesn't look that good if you look at it out of context. But if you stand it next to the master, it looks just like the master. But it might not be the kind of image that somebody would look at and say "well, I don't know, it looks a little noisy". There's a lot that you can do, but there's also the limitation of a little over ten megabits per second coming out of the pipe, total including all the overhead; all the languages, all the video. There is a limitation to the DVD spec as far how high a bit rate. Like Leon said, you're throwing away most of the information and it's compressed by bit. There is a point where you can't... there will always be a point if you crank things where you can see fine -- where you can see behind the Potemkin village.
TBP: You can find fault if you look hard enough or don't have the settings correct on your monitor.
LSP: You can, and that's one of the issues that everyone's dealing with is where you draw the line on how you measure that stuff. If you do it in a perfect studio environment then does that adequately address the consumer who has a $300 TV, but you can't really fairly QC it on a $300 TV and then say "well, this doesn't look like the master." So there's somewhere in there... I think we went through similar issues with audio years ago, people were trying to decide, how do we mix our music audio and not so much feature films, but the idea that do you mix it for an average guy's speakers? Do you mix it to expensive studio monitors that when you play it on cheaper speakers may not bring out everything as much to the average consumer that doesn't have high-end equipment? There was debate about that for a long time.
LS: In many other disciplines there are reference tools. In television there are reference monitors in audio there are reference monitors and the notion is that you listen to a very high environment, every once in awhile checking on a 3-inch speaker to make sure that you're not losing the world in the quality. But in DVD and in the quality control step of DVD we don't have the reference tools and decoders. Everyone's encoder and decoder is a little bit different, every DVD player accesses DVD discs a little differently... So we're in the very early stages of trying to find out what these reference environments really are and we QC movies differently for different studios. Different studios have different methodologies that they use to look at movies in this environment and so our idea has always been we want to look at our work the highest quality environment that we possibly can. That for us has always served us best as a reference. As opposed to many authoring studios that actually do their work to consumer monitors. It's really important to pay attention to that.
TBP: Well, we have. We can see it.
LS: We don't want to do our work to the lowest common denominator, we want to do our work to the highest reference because that's what we all aspire to.
TBP: It looks like the marriage between New Line and Laser Pacific is made in heaven, which leads me to wonder: Are all New Line features being transferred to DVD by Laser Pacific?
MM: No.
TBP: Why not? (to Leon Silverman) Are you wondering the same thing?
LS: No, we can only do so much work. There are other relationships. I want as much of everybody's work as they possibly can give me. I want to do a good job. We've scheduled things, we are increasing our capacity. I want the right amount of work in relationship. If I could have it all and do it all, that'd be great. But at this point, I think that what we are doing for New Line is their absolute cream of the crop and they look at us... In fact, part of my issue -- sometimes even the challenge -- is that everyone want to give us the really tough titles. We never get the easy ones. Everyone wants to give us the shows that are impossible to do -- the director's were whackos -- because they know we can do a great job and work with them... Every once in awhile we get the easy ones too, but we are looked at as that place that can deal with the very challenging work, the challenging creative people, the challenging, innovative titles and it's our own fault because we went out specifically to establish our 'brand' if you will, as the one that caters to that sort of work.
TBP: From our perspective, it appears that you're really pushing the technology envelope of what the DVD medium is capable of sustaining. Have you reached the limits of what DVD can offer? And if not, what's on the horizon?
LS: I think we've just begun. I think LOST IN SPACE and BLADE are significant titles because of this notion that interconnectivity to online resourcesas well as what happens in these other environments that are interactive to add to DVD. DVD to me is the sandbox for digital television and I think we're going to learn some very valuable lessons, playing with digital package contents. Not only in how to optimize quality, but how to present it to a consumer in an increasingly networked, online world. One day soon, digital bits will be raining from the rooftops of transmitters on people's houses... bandwidth on the Internet will allow the image quality unlike the streaming video we are seeing today and I think that the lessons we are learning in trying to learn DVD, especially DVD that's web-enabled are really only in their infancy stages. I think we're going to see things as the result of collaboration of value added high-end content on DVD platforms coupled with interactive web connections. I think we are going to see things we've never even thought about as a result of that connection.
TBP: Are there any plans to do any DVD 18 packages?
LS: I don't even know anyone that makes them at this point.
LSP: Warner's announced a patent...
MM: There's been discussion on that level, but replicating the mass quantities of discs that we replicate to fulfill the consumer demand... It's still... It's not ready for that at this point.
LS: It's really difficult to make those Oreo cookies on two sides.
LSP: It's enough of a challenge even making DVD 9's. Cause I know your lead time on DVD 9 product is so much longer.
TBP: I know that New Line, along with MGM and HBO are distributed by Warner Brothers. What exactly does that mean? What's the relationship with Warner Brothers?
MM: Well, their our home video distributor so they get a distributions fee to do all the jobs that distributors do.
ML: I think it's more simply that we're just not big enough to support our own dedicated sales force. The rule of thumb of package goods companies is that unless you do a billion plus revenue, you probably couldn't sustain your own dedicated sales force and would therefore go through brokers and distributors. What we're finding is that they're able to get in all the doors we need them to get into and then we have a smaller dedicated sales force that works with them to provide them direction and make key account calls.
TBP: Is the distribution deal with Warner the reason that you're still using snapper cases? The vast majority of DVD owners seem to prefer the keepcases.
ML: I think probably the case technology is something that's still evolving quickly and there are a lot of manufacturers out there that are trying to create new cases, better cases. So I don't think the best case has been devised yet, so for us to change what we currently have to maybe in six months wanting to change again -- I think we're pretty happy with our arrangement right now and it would be something we would evaluate along with Warner Bros. as the technology changes and a significantly better package becomes developed.
TBP: As far as I can tell, with the feedback we've gotten, everybody seems real pleased with the keepcases --
LSP: Really?
TBP: Yeah, because they're durable, easy to replace if they break, you just take the artwork out and put it in a new case, whereas with snappers if they get damaged, you're done and you really can't reuse the artwork easily. And one of the things with the snappers that I found in my personal experience is that, if you have them stacked up side by side on the shelf the raised plastic always snags the one next to the one you're trying to pull out. So a lot of people for instance, when jewel cases were still being explored as an option, a lot of people were going out and buying blank keepcases and trying to somehow widget the artwork into the keepcase sleeves. One of the e-mail requests we received asked if you would consider putting DVD cover artwork somewhere on the Internet -- people could then print them out and place the artwork in their own keepcases. I thought that was kind of a neat idea.
ML: I didn't know that. That's something we could possibly explore.
TBP: That way you can still use your packaging but give consumers an alternate choice if they choose to incur the additional expense of buying blank keepcases. Personally, I don't have an issue with keepcases or snappers, but I think it gets back to the desire from a lot of people to have a standard. Not only from the operation of the disc itself, but even down to the packaging of it. But they're basically the same size and dimension...
LSP: Things could be worse. They're not using that thing that Polygram used that breaks the disc in half. (laughter)
TBP: Or scratches them.
LSP: That is like the worst idea...
LS: Yeah, it's like a guillotine
LSP: Everybody I know who has those titles has broken or damaged one of their discs.
TBP: I immediately tossed the cases and bought keepers to keep them in.
ML: As we get more Internet suppliers that are selling software I understand that the discs pop loose off the thing in transport and can get scratched going through the mail...
TBP: Sure, sure sure. You don't think we've found the perfect case yet, huh?
ML: No I really don't. The current choices aren't significantly enough better right now for us to switch. I'm confident that there will be something much better in the future. I think that's why we're going to stay the course for now.
TBP: Has the Internet made much of an impact in terms of sales?
MM: I think that we as a studio have only scratched the surface on the opportunities that that provides us. That's something that we're working on -- sales and marketing together -- as a priority, to get that up to the level that it should be. But I think we've only scratched the surface.
ML: Right. I think as more and more online retailers are emerging and sites such as yours that provide information that people are finding - that's definitely spurring sales of software. It's something that Mike's saying we can probably try to leverage more from a communications standpoint also in working with web sites. The growth of Internet holiday sales is more like 4 or 5 times larger than the year before, it's just going to become more and more important.
LS: Obviously you can track your sales.
ML: We really can't because most of the Internet retailers get their product from distributors who also distribute to regular stores so we have to rely on independent sources such as Videoscan. They measure brick and mortar store sales and then they put a caveat that says this maybe covers 70 or 75% of totals -- they project maybe 70 or 75% of the total universe. So I would anticipate unless they start figuring out ways to capture the Internet, that projection number will continue to go down as we all believe that Internet sales will continue to go up.
TBP: I know the competition between the studios has always been intense in terms of marketing their theatrical releases. Is there also any kind of competition between the studios in terms of putting out high quality DVD content?
MM: It's silent. I think the community of people making DVDs is pretty tight. We swap secrets. One of the things that led us to Laser Pacific was sharing secrets with one of their clients. That's something that happens on lots of different levels you know, it could happen on the menu design level, it could happen on the added value level. I talk with people at other studios about who's producing their commentary, who made their menu... It's pretty open, you know? Which is nice. It's a nice, tight community. Everyone respects one another. they're all excited about the work that the other people are putting out and encouraging it.
ML: Yeah, I think that's due to the commitment to the format and recognizing that to grow the format, we all have to put out the best product..
TBP: But not all studios are, that's the thing.
ML: No, but I think the ones that Mike's alluding to and sharing information with do have that commitment.
LS: Absolutely -- and at our level as well there are certain high-end authoring houses that are absolutely our competitors that we sit with quite openly and talk about issues where we know that there might be problems with technology or player issues or authoring tricks that if we share with each other it's for the benefit of the format and that by holding this information tight, even from a competitive point of view it doesn't benefit the industry. We're at a place in this industry where there's a real community understanding that we're involved in something very special... and something different. There's this very tight-knit group and it's not about marketing and it's not driven by the high-end business people at the studios, it's really a grass roots effort at the level of commitment to quality of content that has a bunch of people who shouldn't... who really don't converse at these levels open up to each other in the interest of making it better for everybody.
TBP: There are some rumors going around about maybe some studios introducing a rental window on DVD like there is on VHS. Any plans of that nature for New Line?
ML: Not internally, no.
MM: Yeah, no we haven't discussed that.
ML: I mean it's a nice thing to think about ways to make more money, particularly in DVD where we want to recoup investment and we want to help amortize that added value a little bit better, but that just doesn't really come up at all in our meetings at this point.
TBP: I'm not sure if you want to discuss these figures, but how much does DVD authoring, at the level you're doing it, add to the cost of the production of the film overall?
MM: Well, we do P&L's on all of our releases and based on the quantity of units that we're selling, it makes good business sense to invest in the overhead.
TBP: Good news gets around quick, in terms of content quality.
ML: Some of the synergy we talked about earlier between theatrical and us makes that added value somewhat more affordable than it would appear otherwise, or more affordable for us than it would be for another studio that doesn't have the lines of communication or camaraderie that we do to be able afford it. So we're in a good position because of our closeness in these areas.
TBP: One of the things we try to educate our new readers about on The BIG Picture is that there are always exceptions to the rule when it comes to image quality. 16x9 enhancement doesn't always guarantee crystal clear image quality and conversely, a few non-enhanced titles like THE ROCK and ARMAGEDDON look terific and it's really hard to find anything wrong with them. What does that mean? I mean, it's a little confusing from a consumer standpoint, even though it's an exception.
LS: It's a title by title issue based on how the title was shot, how long it is...
LSP: What kind of title it is...
LS: Yeah.
LSP: Leon was mentioning that the downside to starting to make a name of being able to handle the hard jobs is that people tend to give you the hard jobs and we've had that experience where one of our titles, PEACEMAKER gets compared to PAULIE. (laughter)
TBP: You didn't do Peacemaker...
LSP: Not for open DVD, but we have done some work with them. I just threw it out as an example for a long, dark movie and a short 'you can throw all the bits you want at it', it's mostly shot out in the sunshine, you know what I mean? It's comparing apples and oranges in a way.
LS: Because of the complexity of this notion of throwing away all these bits to leave yourself a picture is highly dependent upon the movie -- the film itself, the content being shot, the length of the movie given -- if it's a DVD 5 disc and has a lot of complex scenes where you have less bits to throw at it, then if it's a lot of movie it's on a DVD 9. So there are issues of quality that relate to some of the compression, technical constraints. The other issue is how a movie was mastered, what era a movie was mastered -- even the last few years the type of technology to master the films has been defined and redefined and new technology has literally made these not just incremental leaps but momentous leaps. Garrett Smith shows demonstrations of films that he mastered three, four years ago with films he remastered recently that... it's like lifting a veil.
LSP: Oh yes.
TBP: That's what impressed me about DAMAGE. That film was shot in '91 but the transfer was breathtaking.
MM: It was remastered.
LSP: We re-transferred it.
MM: You mentioned ARMAGEDDON and THE ROCK. Both those are Michael Bay films. Michael Bay comes from music video and commercial background, where all that content is always telecined before it's seen, so he's savvy about shooting material for ultimatley end used, home video that's tape based. So he knows how to expose film for telecine. And someone like Robert Altman may not.
LS: Or may not care, because he's making it for the big screen. And film has grain. And film looks a certain way and grain is not the devil.
TBP: I agree with you there. It don't have an issue with grain unless it gets in the way.
LS: Look at McCane and Mrs. Miller. That's a wonderful, unbelievable film lit in a way that is breakthrough and it's chock-full of it. Part of the problem however, is that that gives us in MPEG-land an extra special challenge because those random bits of grain eat up bits and we either can have enough bandwidth on the disc to achieve a favorable rendition or we need to do tricks in MPEG to either reduce the grain, to reduce the resolution in order to technically render thos things appropriately without tell-tale artifacts because the result of this system showing the fact it's out of bits are these very crude, coarse things that result in visible artifacts that we try to avoid.
LS: That was a Spirit (telecine) transfer.
TBP: Why do you think that some studios opt to go with enhancement for widescreen and others don't. Sometimes it varies from title to title within a studio. For example, not all of MGM's are widescreen enhanced but more often than not, they are.
MM: My theory is that there's some titles they simply want to put out without remastering and there's titles I have seen that there is no way they could have remastered.
TBP: So it's a cost savings, device, basically?
MM: It's cost savings and time savings in terms of getting that thing out.
LS: By the way, 16x9 mastering is a phenomenon of probably only the last two at the most years. The first distribution for 16x9 product was actually in Europe and not here.
TBP: Not only from a quality standpoint with the increased vertical resolution, but from a consumer standpoint, we would fervently like to see a consistent standard of anamorphic enhancement for all widescreen material.
LS: As opposed to letterbox.
TBP: Yeah.
LSP: A lot of people don't care about widescreen - they don't understand the concept.
LS: There are studios who are concerned. I have a collegue who is technically very well respected in the industry, who is concerned about the way the players recreate the anamorphic squeeze and that his preference at this point is to release titles that are letterbox titles even knowing that they have less resolution in favor of the concern that the squeeze may not accurately represent the aspect ratio on the set. So there are concerns like that in the industry.
TBP: Yeah, but DVD players can decode anamorphic transfers, so...
MM: That's a problem -- it's a subjective thing. It's like putting a stereo track with a 5.1 track because if you don't have a 5.1 decoder and you're going to depend open the player to fold that down to stereo, then that player is going to make decisions that may not be sound based on the particular title. That's the same sort of rationale.
TBP: As a consumer, it would seem to me that one cancels out the other. You have an anamorphic title that's not being unsqueezed to the satisfaction of the director, I don't know if that's any worse than just going with a straight letterbox of that title. The flip side of that is, as more consumers become aware and hopefully upgrade their equipment and go HDTV or 16x9 or whatever it is, they'll immediately notice the quality difference between the letterbox and an anamorphic widescreen transfer-- and why have to reinvest, why have to buy the same title again -- it's great from the studio's standpoint, cause you're reselling the same product. But from a consumer standpoint, I don't want to have to buy the same title again in a few years...
LS: There's technical issues and there's availability of content issues. I think that the next generation of players will all have learned a lot of lessons from the earlier generation of players and I think there's no doubt that the trend will be towards a widescreen presentation in general. Because unlike standard definition television, as we begin to master for all markets in high definition, one of the trends that will be apparent in the next one year period of time will be a new mastering methodology which involves the emergence of a new hi-def format called 24 P and it has a screen resolution of 1920 pixels by 1080 lines at 24 frames per second progressive and not interlaced, and the idea's going to be that the studio's will to begin to master, instead of the way they do now -- we create seven masters on a New Line project - other studios create up to twelve masters -- instead of creating seven individual masters, we create maybe one or two that are high definition at 24 frames. The other markets, the widescreen market will all be derived not from an anamorphic squeeze title, but from a true widescreen transfer in high definition that gets folded down to that high resolution.
TBP: I've just got one more question and then I can turn this thing (recorder) off and look forward to hours and hours of transcribing this conversation (laughter). Another Warner-distributed studio, MGM, really shocked the early adopters by licensing their content to Divx. Can the DVD crowd expect any similar surprises from New Line?
MM & ML (in unison): No, no, no (laughter).
MM: It's not even on the agenda (more laughter).
TBP: So how do you feel about Divx? what are your thoughts on it.
MM: Well, we're committed to open DVD. I don't think there's any...
ML: I think, you know, Warren Lieberfarb voices our opinions very well. Anything we might say would simply echo his comments.
TBP: That's good to hear. Thank you for your time, gentlemen.
Standing next to three Emmy Awards won by Laser Pacific for their post production
innovation and excellence, are, from left to right, Larry Spangler,
TBP editor Jeff McNeal and Leon Silverman.
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