Legends Get Special Tech, Marketing Attention

Warner Home Video is doing everything it can to make an event out of the release of its Warner Legends trio of DVDs, "The Adventures of Robin Hood," "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

WHV is using theatrical, in-store and TV screenings in anticipation of the Sept. 30 releases ($26.99 double-disc, gift set $69.92).

"You have to be judicious in what becomes a special edition, let alone a double-disc set. I think the industry has abused the concept to where special editions aren't always that special," says George Feltenstein, VP of classic catalog at WHV. "These three films absolutely stand the test of time. It's not nostalgia—they are as powerful and entrancing as the day they came out."

Wendy Wu, product manager of DVD/VHS for Virgin North America's 23 stores, agrees that these are must-have titles.

"The films themselves are stellar, and the stars are classic Hollywood," she says. "They are ingrained in our collective movie-watching minds and hearts."

As examples of further support, Feltenstein points to the fact that these titles are among WHV's most-requested for DVD release and have sold consistently for decades on VHS. They were also rereleased frequently in theaters and earned high ratings on TV.

He adds that they have never been seen like this, as all three have been remastered. And "Robin Hood" has been treated with Warner's new technology called Ultra Resolution, which is software that was developed in restoring "Singin' in the Rain" for DVD.

ULTRA RESTORATION

Rob Hummel, who headed the "Robin Hood" clean-up, has a career that began in the Technicolor Film Lab and moved through Disney post-production and DreamWorks animation to his current position as WHV's VP of production technologies. Having just finished editing the eighth edition of "The American Cinematographer Manual," he knows about image quality.

"We did a showing with the traditional version of the film and then the one with Ultra Resolution, and everybody went, 'Ohmigod!' " Hummel reports.

"It is not subtle. You're seeing the fibers in the fabric of Olivia de Havilland's dress," Hummel says. "You're seeing the threads sewn into Errol Flynn's leather costume. There's just a purity of color."

Hummel goes on to note that Ultra Resolution doesn't affect film grain, as some have reported. In fact, the original dye transfer print used for reference is quite smooth. What the technology does is register the color more precisely.

"Ultra Resolution takes the three records of colors [Technicolor's red, blue and green negatives] and aligns them to a degree of precision that Technicolor could never achieve," Hummel explains.

"Taking the images into the digital domain, you can eliminate any color fringing. At the edge of green, for example, there would be some yellow. This software has dragged [the yellow] into the correct position."

The only change made to the new Ultra Resolution version was removing some saturation. "My religion is to be faithful to how the filmmaker wanted it," Hummel says. "They had the capability in 1938 to make it incredibly saturated, but they didn't. We went by the dye transfer print, which doesn't fade."

The extras on the double-disc sets range from the usual trailers and documentaries to photo galleries and audio tracks. Also added is a "Warner Night at the Movies" feature.

To put the films in historical—and entertaining—context, Leonard Maltin hosts these contemporaneous lead-ins. "Robin Hood," for example, has "Warner Night at the Movies 1938," with a vintage newsreel, cartoon, trailer and short. Parallel "Nights" run for 1942 for "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and 1948 for "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

Hummel's personal favorite extra is the home movie footage for "Robin Hood."

"It's totally unrehearsed; you're seeing people as they're working and there's no formality to it," he says. "You're looking back in time. I find that context exciting."

"People really like good extras," Feltenstein says. "They don't like recycled puff pieces from TV. They like extras created for the DVD, and they like commentaries. We've given them everything they like plus put them in good packaging."

Wu expects the Warner Legends titles to follow the success of double-disc sets for "Singin' in the Rain," "Giant" and "Casablanca."

"The packaging has been elegant in retaining classic artwork," she says. "It's evident a lot of care was put into these special editions." That care extends to offering a gift set of all three, including a bonus disc with the documentary "Here's Looking at You, Warner Bros."

Limited SCREENINGS

The Ultra Resolution version of "Robin Hood" will have a limited theatrical run—projected digitally in Los Angeles. Wu promises to showcase all three films on Virgin's in-store monitors.

Feltenstein will be turning to TV to expose the films to a new generation.

The night before street date, Warner sister cable channel Turner Classic Movies will have a Warner Legends night. "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" will air, along with the premiere of the new making-of documentaries on all three films.

"Younger people who may not know these movies—or not know them well—need to be educated," he says. "When they hear Robin Hood, they think Kevin Costner. But when we show them Errol Flynn, they're captivated."

What may seem counter-intuitive to DVD sales makes sense, Feltenstein says, because the broadcast versions are not the restored transfers on the DVD. In addition, he says, "TV exposure encourages desire for ownership."

Next up for WHV is "Meet Me in St. Louis" and, as Hummel puts it, "a movie about a little girl in a Midwestern state where they have a lot of tornadoes."