I had the opportunity to talk to Jon Landau for a few minutes earlier this week about the new Collectors Edition and a bit about the 3D Blu-ray release:
HTF: WITH THIS LAST RELEASE OF AVATAR AND ESPECIALLY WITH THE UPCOMING COLLECTOR’S EDITION, IT LOOKS LIKE YOU AND JAMES HAVE REALLY EMBRACED Blu-ray --- WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT Blu-ray?
Jon Landau: By far, the picture quality. The picture quality you are able to get on a Blu-ray disc is phenomenal. I’ve had people who seen Avatar on Blu-ray and said, they have actually seen more than what they saw in the theater. And for filmmakers who put such an emphasis on the quality of our presentations, it lets us know that people in their homes are going to have the highest possible quality presentation, which is great.
HTF: THANKS FOR BEING UP FRONT PRIOR TO THE RELEASE OF THE FIRST DISK, FOR LETTING US KNOW IN ADVANCE THAT YOU WERE COMING OUT WITH THE COLLECTOR’S EDITION.
Jon Landau: That was very critical to us. I’ll be honest to you, when we first started talking to Fox about the home entertainment release, we were talking about doing something in the Fall. Fox came to us and said, look, there is a fan base out there that doesn’t want to wait, they want it now, and it’s a fan base that doesn’t necessarily care about all the things you want to have----because the reason we had to wait was because we couldn’t do what we’ve done on this Collector’s edition to the quality we wanted to and have it out anywhere near that original street date. So we came to the conclusion that, okay, we would do that and we mutually agreed that we’d be upfront about it---that we’re gonna let people know that if they want it now, great, but if not, then we’re gonna spend the time, and Fox committed the dollars to have Weta Digital complete an additional 16 minutes of the movie at full-theater quality in stereo [3D] for some point in the future, and that’s available now on this disk set.
HTF: I SAW A DEMO OF THE NEW FOOTAGE AT BLU-CON AND IT WAS VERY IMPRESSIVE
Jon Landau: That’s thanks to the people at Panasonic Hollywood Labs, Geoff Burdick at Lightstorm and a lot of people who really dedicated themselves to making sure the quality was there.
HTF: WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PIECE OF THE NEW COLLECTOR’S EDITION?
Jon Landau: My most favorite part personally is the documentary that chronicles the making of the movie because it touches on everything---it touches on performance capture, it touches on design, it deals with the editorial process and James Horner, it is sort of a structure of a documentary with a narrative flow. From there, we then have available 17 featurettes that go into more detail on many of those areas. So the documentary gives me that overview in how the movie was made that a lot of people are fascinated by and then you can go deeper.
HTF: HOW INVOLVED WERE YOU AND JAMES IN CREATING THIS AND WHAT THE OVERALL EXPERIENCE WAS LIKE WORKING WITH PANASONIC HOLLYWOOD LABS [PHL] ON THE AUTHORING TO GET THE FINAL PRODUCT?
Jon Landau: We were intimately involved – not on a daily basis, ourselves, but our technical go-to guy, Geoff Burdick, who has been with us for 20 years, was there with PHL practically every day working with them. And when we would raise something, never did we hear from PHL “Hey, this is the way it was done in the past”---they would say “Okay, let us figure out a solution to this”. There was one piece in particular where they told us, “You know what, it’s going to be 2 months to do this, it will cause us major problems”. We said, “Well, we think we really need it” and a week and a half later, they had solved it. They were really here for us all the time, and the hours they put in, and the team, it was GREAT, and even in terms of putting it up on their website how we think the TV should be set in people’s homes to watch this material---the light levels, black levels and all that-----and that came directly from Jim to them, and they embraced it.
[NOTE: Panasonic has a link that will be going live in December [COLOR= #0000ff]http://panasonic.net/avc/3dviera[/COLOR] where you can enter in the model number of the 3D Panasonic set you have to get the recommended picture settings to get the look that James Cameron prefers for Avatar.]
HTF: YOU HAVE MADE QUITE A BIT OF THE NEW COLLECTOR’S EDITION CONTENT AVAILABLE FOR EXISTING OWNERS OF THE Blu-ray VIA BDLIVE—HOW DID YOU SELECT WHAT WAS GOING TO BE AVAILABLE?
Jon Landau: You know, we tried to take examples of the greater breadth of what is available on the Extended Collector’s Edition and give those existing owners a sampling of each of those different areas. We wanted to give them a little bit of the documentary, the scene breakdown and the featurettes so that they could understand why this material wasn’t available initially (because we needed extra time to work it out), but also to understand how exciting and interesting this material is that’s available. And then we’ll continue to utilize BD Live after the release and make it available to the newer owners with a mockumentary that was created by one of our crew members that included Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, [garbled]--- they worked on it for 4 years and it’s a great, funny piece, and we’ll continue to update it even as we make our sequels and how do we use BD live as another way to access people who are fans of the film and give them additional content that they can access but other people can’t.
HTF: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE EXPERIENCE OF WATCHING AVATAR IN 3D Blu-ray AT HOME vs. 3D IN THE THEATER?
Jon Landau: You know what, size is relative. In a theater I am sitting 30-40 feet away from a large screen. At home I am sitting 5-6 feet away from a screen that is smaller. I think that 3D is, in that environment, becomes just as immersive, just as engaging as it is on the big screen.
[NOTE: I also asked about this at Blu-Con and Jon mentioned that with the increase in brightness you get watching Avatar 3D BD on some home displays that you might be able to see an increase in detail over the theatrical 3D experience.]
HTF: YOU HAD TO MAKE A LOT OF DECISIONS IN THE MAKING OF THE 3D, EVEN THINGS LIKE HOW DO SUBTITLES LOOK, WHERE DO THEY GO….?
Jon Landau: To be clear, we made those decisions for the theatrical release and they translated right over. We didn’t realize how poorly done subtitles were for international releases until we got involved in Avatar. For example, if I have a character on the left side of the screen in profile, and they are speaking, you don’t want the subtitles starting to the left of their neck because it takes you away from the dramatics of their performance. So we painstakingly took the time to position every subtitle in 2D first, sliding them over, putting them on two lines, up a little higher so I can see his face…and then we said, okay, in 3D where do we want to position it? We did not want the subtitles penetrating anything in the image so that it looked like we were vendetted, so we always placed it slightly in front of the nearest object that it was in front of, and we did that on a shot-by-shot, frame-by-frame basis, and that translated right over to the Blu-ray.
HTF: WITH THIS LAST RELEASE OF AVATAR AND ESPECIALLY WITH THE UPCOMING COLLECTOR’S EDITION, IT LOOKS LIKE YOU AND JAMES HAVE REALLY EMBRACED Blu-ray --- WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT Blu-ray?
Jon Landau: By far, the picture quality. The picture quality you are able to get on a Blu-ray disc is phenomenal. I’ve had people who seen Avatar on Blu-ray and said, they have actually seen more than what they saw in the theater. And for filmmakers who put such an emphasis on the quality of our presentations, it lets us know that people in their homes are going to have the highest possible quality presentation, which is great.
HTF: THANKS FOR BEING UP FRONT PRIOR TO THE RELEASE OF THE FIRST DISK, FOR LETTING US KNOW IN ADVANCE THAT YOU WERE COMING OUT WITH THE COLLECTOR’S EDITION.
Jon Landau: That was very critical to us. I’ll be honest to you, when we first started talking to Fox about the home entertainment release, we were talking about doing something in the Fall. Fox came to us and said, look, there is a fan base out there that doesn’t want to wait, they want it now, and it’s a fan base that doesn’t necessarily care about all the things you want to have----because the reason we had to wait was because we couldn’t do what we’ve done on this Collector’s edition to the quality we wanted to and have it out anywhere near that original street date. So we came to the conclusion that, okay, we would do that and we mutually agreed that we’d be upfront about it---that we’re gonna let people know that if they want it now, great, but if not, then we’re gonna spend the time, and Fox committed the dollars to have Weta Digital complete an additional 16 minutes of the movie at full-theater quality in stereo [3D] for some point in the future, and that’s available now on this disk set.
HTF: I SAW A DEMO OF THE NEW FOOTAGE AT BLU-CON AND IT WAS VERY IMPRESSIVE
Jon Landau: That’s thanks to the people at Panasonic Hollywood Labs, Geoff Burdick at Lightstorm and a lot of people who really dedicated themselves to making sure the quality was there.
HTF: WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PIECE OF THE NEW COLLECTOR’S EDITION?
Jon Landau: My most favorite part personally is the documentary that chronicles the making of the movie because it touches on everything---it touches on performance capture, it touches on design, it deals with the editorial process and James Horner, it is sort of a structure of a documentary with a narrative flow. From there, we then have available 17 featurettes that go into more detail on many of those areas. So the documentary gives me that overview in how the movie was made that a lot of people are fascinated by and then you can go deeper.
HTF: HOW INVOLVED WERE YOU AND JAMES IN CREATING THIS AND WHAT THE OVERALL EXPERIENCE WAS LIKE WORKING WITH PANASONIC HOLLYWOOD LABS [PHL] ON THE AUTHORING TO GET THE FINAL PRODUCT?
Jon Landau: We were intimately involved – not on a daily basis, ourselves, but our technical go-to guy, Geoff Burdick, who has been with us for 20 years, was there with PHL practically every day working with them. And when we would raise something, never did we hear from PHL “Hey, this is the way it was done in the past”---they would say “Okay, let us figure out a solution to this”. There was one piece in particular where they told us, “You know what, it’s going to be 2 months to do this, it will cause us major problems”. We said, “Well, we think we really need it” and a week and a half later, they had solved it. They were really here for us all the time, and the hours they put in, and the team, it was GREAT, and even in terms of putting it up on their website how we think the TV should be set in people’s homes to watch this material---the light levels, black levels and all that-----and that came directly from Jim to them, and they embraced it.
[NOTE: Panasonic has a link that will be going live in December [COLOR= #0000ff]http://panasonic.net/avc/3dviera[/COLOR] where you can enter in the model number of the 3D Panasonic set you have to get the recommended picture settings to get the look that James Cameron prefers for Avatar.]
HTF: YOU HAVE MADE QUITE A BIT OF THE NEW COLLECTOR’S EDITION CONTENT AVAILABLE FOR EXISTING OWNERS OF THE Blu-ray VIA BDLIVE—HOW DID YOU SELECT WHAT WAS GOING TO BE AVAILABLE?
Jon Landau: You know, we tried to take examples of the greater breadth of what is available on the Extended Collector’s Edition and give those existing owners a sampling of each of those different areas. We wanted to give them a little bit of the documentary, the scene breakdown and the featurettes so that they could understand why this material wasn’t available initially (because we needed extra time to work it out), but also to understand how exciting and interesting this material is that’s available. And then we’ll continue to utilize BD Live after the release and make it available to the newer owners with a mockumentary that was created by one of our crew members that included Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, [garbled]--- they worked on it for 4 years and it’s a great, funny piece, and we’ll continue to update it even as we make our sequels and how do we use BD live as another way to access people who are fans of the film and give them additional content that they can access but other people can’t.
HTF: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE EXPERIENCE OF WATCHING AVATAR IN 3D Blu-ray AT HOME vs. 3D IN THE THEATER?
Jon Landau: You know what, size is relative. In a theater I am sitting 30-40 feet away from a large screen. At home I am sitting 5-6 feet away from a screen that is smaller. I think that 3D is, in that environment, becomes just as immersive, just as engaging as it is on the big screen.
[NOTE: I also asked about this at Blu-Con and Jon mentioned that with the increase in brightness you get watching Avatar 3D BD on some home displays that you might be able to see an increase in detail over the theatrical 3D experience.]
HTF: YOU HAD TO MAKE A LOT OF DECISIONS IN THE MAKING OF THE 3D, EVEN THINGS LIKE HOW DO SUBTITLES LOOK, WHERE DO THEY GO….?
Jon Landau: To be clear, we made those decisions for the theatrical release and they translated right over. We didn’t realize how poorly done subtitles were for international releases until we got involved in Avatar. For example, if I have a character on the left side of the screen in profile, and they are speaking, you don’t want the subtitles starting to the left of their neck because it takes you away from the dramatics of their performance. So we painstakingly took the time to position every subtitle in 2D first, sliding them over, putting them on two lines, up a little higher so I can see his face…and then we said, okay, in 3D where do we want to position it? We did not want the subtitles penetrating anything in the image so that it looked like we were vendetted, so we always placed it slightly in front of the nearest object that it was in front of, and we did that on a shot-by-shot, frame-by-frame basis, and that translated right over to the Blu-ray.
