Brilliance in Blu: A Fresh Approach to Home Entertainment
Marrying technology with creativity can be tricky business, especially when the technology is one of the most exciting and talked about innovations to hit home video in a decade. The team at Blink Digital accepted the challenge when Lions Gate approached them to work on the new releases of the debut Rambo movie “First Blood” and “Young Guns” featuring the revolutionary Blu Ray formatting.
“Lions Gate came to us and asked what we could do to differentiate their Blu Ray releases from the other studios out there,” reports Blink’s General Manager Steven Chester. “We wanted to push the bounds and come up with something that would give fans of these films a reason to come back and see them again. That’s the Holy Grail of home entertainment — reinvigorating a catalog title and creating a new experience.”
Working on these two titles brought together the best of what Blink had to offer, explains Executive Producer Jeffrey Eagle. “We are constantly trying to push both creative ideas and technology. For this project, we had to figure out what had already been done and then come up with a host of new ideas. Then we collaborated with our graphics team for a stunning look and our technical team to make sure it would all work. It was one of those projects that everyone in our company touched.”
Indeed, Blink’s team of pros took great care to make sure that these two releases worked on the vast majority of players available today. That, reports Art Director Dan Post, meant that there were a handful of technical revisions during the life of the project. “We were on the phone with them all the time, sending them test after test,” he says. “After all of the back and forth, we ended up with something really pretty and dynamic.”
From a technical point of view, one of the things that make this project so unique is the fact that Blink used the Presentation Graphic (PG) stream as the graphic and information vehicle for dozens of fun trivia bits. “We all got in a room and agreed that we couldn’t wait for other companies to come up with something cool,” Eagle reports. “We needed to be the leader and we went out and did it with the new Out of the Blu: Advanced Trivia Track.”
The Out of the Blu: Advanced Trivia Track gave Blink’s creative team the ability to build five unique categories that added to the film’s entertainment. For instance, the Rambo title featured the categories Rambo Facts, Film Facts, Wound Count, Weapons and Survival Facts. All in all, fans learned 77 new facts while watching this Blu Ray release.
“Young Guns” angled more towards this historical with 128 new facts in the Weapons, Film Facts, Kill Count and Maps categories. The Blu Ray release also included Billy-isms, a tongue in cheek first person commentary from Billy the Kid.
The ability to lay these graphic elements directly on top of the action, along with a richer design palette made these two projects a success. “This changes the way you watch a film from top to bottom, says Steven. “ Blu Ray is just a terrific technology, but we keep thinking about what’s next. That’s the cool thing, we can continue to improve the experience for home entertainment.”
Blink Digital has offices in Santa Monica and New York. For more information, phone (310) 899-7200 or (212) 661-6900.
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