great opportunity for the production industry to see where many of the publishers stand regarding DVD content and what their plans are.

After a welcome note by Universal Home Video’s Senior Vice President Phil Pictaggi who provided a general overview how video, games, audio and interactive entertainment are converging in the minds of the most powerful entertainment executives, the convention kicked off. Columbia TriStar Home Video’s president Ben Feingold had some ideas to share how he sees DVD as a profitable business with real world needs and how it applies to Columbia’s business plan. Spending some time elaborating on how he could potentially see the window between theatrical release and home video release of a movie converging to a simultaneous release, he was certainly the only person in the room sharing this vision and nurturing this thought.

Emiel N. Petrone Chairman of the DVD Video Group then opened a panel that explored how DVD can be used as a marketing tool. Featuring Columbia’s Janet Wheeler, Artisan’s Jeff Fink, Warner’s John Powers, Sandy Friedman from Dreamworks and Buena Vista’s Robert Chapek, this panel featured some serious DVD players who openly discussed their feelings towards DVD.

If you have ever wondered why Buena Vista’s discs usually contain very little bells and whistles,

Robert Chapek had somewhat of an explanation for that. He feels that across the board, VHS owners are not really unhappy with the quality and the content VHS provides. Additional material and the improved video and audio quality is not necessarily appealing to the majority of mass market consumers he pointed out. People are used to that level of quality and they have their personal VHS libraries. It’s hard for them to part with it according to Chapek and as result there’s only so much potential in DVD.

Artisan’s Jeff Fink had a slightly different look on things as you’d expect and pointed out that for Artisan DVD has turned out to be a great marketing tool. It allows Artisan to specifically market their films with bonus features and supplements. Sometimes it is hard for a film to find an audience, especially in the independent area in which Artisan operates, and the supplements can sometimes become the deciding factor whether people buy a title or not. Fink related the additional content directly to additional incentive for people to buy a film.

Warner’s John Powers then made a small evaluation about the selling of catalog titles versus day & date releases. It is much harder to sell an older title than the current blockbuster and the biggest challenge is to find out what you can do to make a catalog title more interesting he pointed out. DVD is a collectible, he said, and Warner always tries to add content to catalog titles. In the first stage of DVD adoption it was very important to get the quality right in order to build the player base. Now that more consumer jump on the format, he feels the industry has to ask itself how to make it more interesting. Warner works a lot with archived material from their film vaults but Powers pointed out that the process takes a lot of time to find material that could be potentially added to a disc. It is much easier with a brand new film where all the material is readily available.

Janet Wheeler pointed out that special editions can gather a lot of momentum over standard releases. Taking “Ghostbusters” as an example she pointed out that the DVD special edition of the film has actually helped re-spawn VHS sales of the film as well. People heard about the advance buzz for the DVD with all the exciting features and the effect wore off so that people went out to buy the newly released VHS as well. Promoting a new VHS version of the same film could never have achieved that kind of media attention and sales.

Jeff Fink added that Artisan is starting to add DVD-ROM content to their releases in the near future. “The Blair Witch Project” will contain DVD-ROM content and web links which will in the long run help sell more product and get people interested in the entire catalog. Taking to Fink in private after the panel he actually revealed that there will be two versions of “The Blair Witch Project” on DVD. The first one will be a standard version that is released in order to make sure the film is released on DVD day & date with the VHS version. A more time-consuming special edition with a director’s cut is planned for release hopefully before Christmas. Fink also told us that “The Stand” is well on its way for an October 19 release. “DVD-18 is finally here!” he told us excited.

The discussion then touched upon the acceptance of family movies on DVD. Buena Vista’s Robert Chapek pointed out that their first releases like Mary Poppins sold very slow and were designed just for the company to put their toe in the water. It has changed recently however, indicating that more mainstram consumers have been attracted to the format. “A Bug’s Life” sold very well and so did “Mighty Joe Young”, he said. “Mighty Joe Young” actually outsold “Con Air” and is a great indication for Buena Vista that the market is coming around.

John Powers from Warner pointed out that DVD-ROM content is becoming increasingly important in order to appeal to a wider audience, because it allows to sell titles into more households, those with DVD Video capabilities and those with DVD-ROM capabilities. It offers another channel to promote titles and especially when laptop computers start to be DVD enabled, Powers sees a huge potential to sell a substantial number of titles apart from the traditional DVD Video market.

Columbia’s title selection has also changed as a response to the changing market. At first, Columbia was mostly concerned to get titles out to help build the player base, but now the focus is on added value. Janet Wheeler pointed out that this added value is not only for serious film buffs but also includes games for children in order to make DVD more appealing to the masses. She is also actually attempting to standardize packaging to make sure DVD features are clearly and correctly labeled on all releases, independently of the publisher.

The next panels showed the attendees the usage of DVD-ROM content on a number of titles and what to keep in mind when designing DVD Video titles with DVD-ROM content to assure acceptance and compatibility.

Another great panel came up in the afternoon featuring New Line’s Mike Mulvihill, Columbia’s Michael Stratford and Cinram’s Morgan Holly. The panel focussed mostly on how New Line and Columbia integrate interactive elements and content on their releases to create an atmosphere that matches and enhances the actual film. Morgan Holly who was responsible for much of the implementation of the supplements for “Ghostbusters” took the attendees through a tour-de-force of how many of the features came together and why they were presented the way there are. It was a truly interesting panel to see the ambition that is put behind many of these releases. The menus from “The Corrupter” shown by Mulvihill completely reflected the mood of the film, using certain New York locations for navigation, creating a completely edgy, urban feel.

The next panel turned out to be very interesting with a very special treat courtesy of Dreamworks Home Video. Universal’s Mark Halperin, Fox’s Francis Gyermek and Dreamworks’ Mark Atkinson took the audience behind the scenes and discussed many of the creative decisions made during a DVD production. Explaining how hard it can be to obtain clearance for certain material, how problematic it can be to find appropriate prints and material for releases all the way to the involvement of the film’s directors, they shared many of their day-to-day experiences in a very open manner. One interesting little snippet came from Francis Gyermek who stated that work is under way to bring the X-Files TV-episodes to DVD on DVD-9s (Single sided, dual layered), possibly even DVD-18s (Double sided, dual layered) if technology so allows. To close this panel Mark Atkinson then pulled out some material from the upcoming “Prince Of Egypt” DVD and showed the audience some fascinating clips from this forthcoming release.

A panel discussing alternative approaches to DVD featuring yours truly, Adrenaline Interactive’s Jay Smith and Bill Rehbok from VM Labs closed the seminars and managed to give the audience an outlook of what to expect from DVD in the future from outside the DVD Video field. Especially the computer and video gaming community was highlighted in this discussion as well as VM Labs’ upcoming “Noun” DVD extension that will turn standard DVD players into powerful gaming consoles.

The DiVi Awards were presented after the seminars, awarding New Line’s “Blade” and “Lost In Space”, as well as Sterling Home Video “Murder Of Crows” and Columbia’s “Taxi Driver” for their achievements in the field.

Later that night we then had the chance to share some thoughts with some of the executives from various studios during a party hosted by Maxell, and were also able to shed some light on one of the great mysteries of recent times - the THX certification process. Discussing a number of issues we wanted to find out what’s true about a rumor that spread around the Internet like a wildfire a few weeks ago. Following “Titanic’s” DVD announcement being non-anamorphic the rumor started, indicating that THX would not certify 16x9 enhanced transfer any longer because of down conversion quality issues found in all DVD players at this point. Although the rumor has died down since, I would like to point out that this rumor was once again not true, and because it was a rumor was not covered on our pages. As expected it was completely fabricated and could not be further from reality. The rumor was readily picked up by many sources across the Internet and blown out of proportion without ever checking the facts despite obviously being a contradiction in terms. THX indeed still certifies anamorphic DVD transfers, as they ever did, and even leaves it open to the producer of the respective disc which type of transfer they want to chose for their release. Making sure only that the given transfer is of the highest possible quality, THX allows publishers to submit anamorphic, non-anamorphic and pan & scan transfers for certification. The intention behind this is that only the filmmakers and the studio should have the right to determine how they want people to see their films, a decision we can only support whole-heartedly.

That was DVD ’99 for us, an exciting place and opportunity for us to share our thoughts with industry people, as well as hear and see their take on the current DVD market. The panel made it clear that publishers start focussing on new ways to present content on DVD and from what has been said and indicated some great titles with some truly inspired programming is coming our way!

 August 9, 1999

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