Prince Of Egypt Production Diary


	"The Prince Of Egypt" was Dreamworks first traditionally animated feature film and it is soon coming to DVD which gives us the chance to take you behind the scenes to see how this production comes together. We will keep this section updated as soon as new information and material comes in, so make sure to check back often.


	by Guido Henkel September 9, 1999


	With the rise of DVD, the overall presentation of home video product has become increasingly important, a factor that weighed heavily with the creation of “The Prince of Egypt”. With new releases showing up that continually push the envelope in terms of technology and presentation, there is a constant need to find new ways to be creative and make the most out of the format’s potential. “Ultimately it’s about creating the most solid piece of entertainment you can,” explains Steve Gustafson. “Well-rounded bonus programming, along with interesting menus only enhance the viewers overall experience of the film.”


	Since their launch into the open DVD format in December of ’98, DreamWorks has been in a league of it’s own when it came to menu design, especially with integration of film and EFX elements that create a coherent feel throughout. “Our menus are what I like to consider our signature,” Gustafson confides. “We put a lot of effort and time into their design because we believe it should be the first thing you see. That’s where you (the viewer) should be allowed to decide where you want to go and what you want to see. Every studio seems to have a slightly different take when it comes to menus and how they’re accessed, and for us it was always the starting point… allowing the viewers to decide for themselves where they wanted to navigate to.”

One of the reasons many of DreamWorks’ DVD releases have such elaborate menus has to do with the fact that they are able to enlist help from the various films’ collaborators. As was the case with ANTZ, PDI was willing to supply them with the needed isolated elements they used to create the elaborate main menu, scene index and transition images offered up on the disc.
“ILM did the same thing for us,” Gustafson states. “We definitely wanted to make the

transitions interesting and fun on that release, and ILM was able to supply us with isolated blue-screen images that we could use to make that happen. Rather than grabbing footage from video, which would have worked but would have looked very cut and pasted, we had dedicated

source material that integrated perfectly into the menus. In ANTZ for example, the wipe that takes you from the main menu page to special features uses the sneaker (with Bala screaming) cutting across the screen. In the film, you only see two thirds of sneaker before they cut away, so there was never a need to render out the rest of the image. With our needs in mind, they went back in and rendered out the rest of the sneaker just for the DVD. We are very, very fortunate to have that kind of support from our partners.” Gustafson gleams.

To create the menus for “The Prince of Egypt”, the DVD team actually had access to many of the original drawings and images from the film to use and the result is (once again) a seamlessly integrated menu system that is extremely well worked out. The main menu for example, uses animation as well as the background plate from the film’s opening. The special features page (of which there are 3) scrolls sideways with a great parallax effect that gives the pages a real sense of depth and


	you a 360 degree view of the Egyptian landscape as it scrolls across. “Originally we started out with one idea,” Gustafson recalls the process. “But when we actually saw it up on the screen, it just wasn’t working. So we scrapped it altogether and went in a completely different direction. It was that creative turn that made the total difference, ultimately surpassing our expectations.” Gustafson tells enthusiastically.


	“We have a tremendously gifted menu designer by the name of Matt Beekman over at WAMO. Mark and I refer to him as the MenuMaster, he is the man. He knows how to take our creative direction and deliver the goods. Because we have made menus so much our signature stamp, Matt tries to top himself with each new release we throw at him. He’s always finding new ways to make things interesting and unique. That makes it fun for us as well, because we are constantly

wondering what he’ll come up with. And darned if he doesn’t do it each and every time!”


	We will keep these pages updated with new information, as soon as we get it in, so check back frequently to see what happened on the production of the “Prince Of Egypt Signature Selection”


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	© 1999 by “DVD Review”. All rights reserved. Reprinting only with written permission by the publisher. All “Prince Of Egypt” images are copyrighted and used by permission from Dreamworks SKG.