Re: HTF Attendees Report: Twentieth Century Fox 10/23
The afternoon featured a visit to the Fox Studios. Fox provided us with a number of distinct discussions and presentations that dealt with not only their upcoming blur-ray offerings, but a glimpse into their long history in movie-making. Due to the size of our group, it was impractical to bring the group to the various spots on the studio lot, so they brought the stories and objects of interest to one of their screening rooms which hosted our group.
We first heard quite a bit about the troubled production of Cleopatra, and how the making-of the film might make an interesting film in and of itself. It's simply mind-boggling that a film budgeted for $3 million ended up taking over $40 million to finally finish, though its leading lady almost didn't finish the film due to illness, and the director was replaced early, and the replacement director was pushed to his limits to get the film completed.
We got to see a handful of props from past films. We were shown Wilson, the volleyball from "Cast Away". Then we saw a few items from Planet of the Apes (2003), like a Thade mask made for a stuntman that was based from Tim Roth's head, and a big menacing sword welded by Michael Duncan Clarke's character. The visor for Cyclops in X-Men 2 and 3 was brought in, as well as the conceptual art for the visor in X-Men. The Sai that was used by Jennifer Garner's Elektra character in Daredevil, and later in her own Elektra film was shown to us, and it was the collapsable model that allowed it to be used to stab people without hurting them (supposedly...).
We were shown the Oscar statuette that was awarded to Fox for their innovation of Cinemascope.
Then a discussion of the restoration effect for "The Robe" commenced by showing us some film elements and how they were integrated into the final restored product, though it was a tough assignment due to the lack of strong elements discovered for use in the restoration effort.
The bulk of the presentation dealt with the following Blu-ray titles (and a cursory glimpse into the Blu-ray-only extras):
Die Another Day - has featurettes in high-definition where possible, and ports over the extras from its previous DVD release, and included other goodies exclusive to the Blu-ray edition.
Planet of the Apes (original version with Charlton Heston) - adds a new 16-minute "documentary" created for the Blu-ray edition, and also provides other exclusive content, like games, and featurettes/commentaries.
Super Troopers - they brought in the original cast, who practically shadow the entire film with newly recorded video/audio commentary overlay. Also, games are present, as well as other features. This blu-ray edition represents a focus on providing another level of entertainment for fans of the film
that is only possible with Blu-ray.
Horton Hears a Who - There is a feature that provides an overlay of JoJo, the young male son of the mayor of Whoville, throughout the film, and his actions react to what's going on in the film at any given moment. There's a "Sid" (of Ice Age fame) animated short on the BD release too, and other extras.
Vanishing Point - has a number of factoids, and games, and dashboard overlay in order to provide more content for fans of this film's BD release.
X-Files: I Want to Believe - promises to provide some neat extras that takes advantage of BD Bonus view that allows the viewer to go through details of all the episodes of X-Files from the very beginning. Fox is also building BD-Live websites to provide more content and allow fans to do their own investigation based on the new details available from the websites. There is also new commentary that can be seen with BD, but might only be heard on the DVD counterpart. The BD release offers quite a bit for the fans of X-Files and this film.
The rest of the session in the screening room gave way to Q & A, and our group was up to the task of asking about titles from the past that still haven't made it to DVD, and more recent titles and their possible BD release date (like "Office Space" since they had mentioned its BD edition being worked on with another cast commentary overlay), but marketing wasn't represented, so nothing too specific was stated. The BD of Patton was a source for the question of how much DNR should be applied to the video transfer of older films now being prepped for BD release, and there was no easy answer, and would be dealt with on a a case-by-case manner. The last question dealt with no-frills BD titles getting released by Fox, and it comes down to budgeted resources and marketing decisions for a particular title's sell-through prospects. It almost always comes down to how much time/expense a studio is willing to earmark against projected sales of a title. That was just a small sampling of the questions hurled at the Fox representatives present for our visit with them.
Afterwards, Fox treated us a nice spread of food, as well as an open bar featuring beer, wine and soft drinks. Our group then made their way to the Fox store, and proceeded to make quite a dent in purchasing BD titles, DVDs, season sets, and other Fox-related merchandise. There were two new 3-title James Bond BD bundled sets which proved to be very popular and were scarfed up quickly. I managed to snap up a few t-shirts for my purchase from the Fox store.
All in all, a nice presentation of Fox's cinematic history and current upcoming BD releases was enjoyed by our group. Thanks to Fox for welcoming our group to their studio, providing a Q & A venue of possible upcoming titles and of current titles which have generated discussion amongst the online community, and the delicious refreshments for our members.
