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Release Date: October 1, 2013

In June 2013, Warner Home video announced their upcoming release of The Wizard of Oz in another boxed set celebrating the film’s 75th anniversary, which was was well over a year away (August 2014).  The hook this time was the premiere of the film newly formatted in 3D.  The 3D version was released in IMAX and regular theaters on September 20 for one week only. 

The new boxed set was released on October 1, 2013, and was a copy of the 2009 release in format (the big box, etc.). The physical extras were different but the digital contents were the same as the 2009 boxed set with the addition of the film in the 3D format and a new documentary, The Making of The Wonderful Wizzard of Oz.  The Blu-ray version was another new remaster.   Just as with the 2009 version, there were various single disc and multi-disc sets available and retailer exclusives.  There were also some events as noted in the press release below.  Click here to jump to that press release.

The new extras:

  • A new feature-length documentary The Making of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
  • 48-Page Hardcover Photo Book
  • Deluxe Award Pin Set from the Noble Collection
  • Ruby Slippers Sparkler Globe
  • Hardcover Journal
  • Frameable Map of Oz
  • Frameable Photo Card
  • In the Amazon Exclusive Edition: A Ruby Slippers Flash Drive
  • In the Costco Exclusive Edition: A copy of the soundtrack on CD.

The artwork for the set as originally announced and publicized in June 2013 was slightly different than what was released.

By August 2013, the artwork had changed to reflect the blue theme of Blu-ray discs.  Only the single disc DVD version remained the same, in red.  There were some slight variations in the Blu-ray packaging which reflected a different digital HD logo.  There was also a Costco exclusive edition which featured a CD copy of the soundtrack not available in any of the other sets.  Likewise, Amazon had its own set that featured an exclusive flash drive in the shape of the Wicked Witch of the East’s leg and Ruby Slipper as seen under Dorothy’s house.

Some of the contents of the boxed set.  Included here are the cover and cover sleeve of the clamshell case; the color photos sheet; the four discs; the cover, contents and back cover of the award pins; the flyer for the companion book; the map of Oz; the cover and back cover of the timeline book; the back cover of the journal.

The Wizard of Oz 75th Anniversary Logo w/Slippers

The soundtrack was re-released on green vinyl for “Record Store Day” on April 19, 2014.  It was available in participating record stores on that day only.  The big selling point for this release (aside from it being on green vinyl), was the producer’s lame attempt to get people to purchase the record by touting a “newly discovered” audio track of “If I Only Had A Brain” recorded by Ray Bolger and Judy Garland in early October 1938.  This recording was NOT “newly discovered” but had been available since the fall of 2009.  At the time the track could only be downloaded from the Watertower Music website with a code provided with this LP.  Check out The Judy Garland Online Discography for details about this release.  The real pleasure of the LP was the green vinyl and the fact that it’s the first time the remastered soundtrack has ever been available in a vinyl format (all other issues had been on CD).

It was given a general release on October 16, 2015, on vinyl but without the green color.  The contents of the LP were the same as the previous single CD versions released by Rhino Records beginning in 1995. 

The Costco exclusive version of the deluxe boxed set was the only edition that included a CD of selections from the soundtrack.  It was a copy of the single CD as originally released by Rhino Records in 1995 and re-released in several editions since.

Sepia Records released a wonderful compilation CD that presents the complete 1940 Decca album on CD for the first time.  Also included is the 1939 radio show “The Making of The Wizard of Oz” which sounds much better than the previous, and out of print, CD releases.  To top it all off we get a medley of songs from the 1956 M-G-M Records LP and Big Band versions of songs from the film, all recorded prior to the film’s release.  It’s accompanied by a 16-page booklet with great liner notes by Marcus Bagshaw.  

More editions:  The Target Exclusive with the lenticular cover and a lunch bag; the Best Buy Exclusive metal case packaging; the clamshell packaging edition; the “globe cover” edition; the UK edition (two covers); the UK “globe cover” editions; the Spanish gift set that used the 70th-anniversary cover art; the Japanese boxed set edition; the UK Blu-ray edition.

The film was re-released in theaters in a new 3D edition.  The 3D version was a big success.  The technical wizards did an excellent job, as shown in the video below.  It wasn’t gimmicky at all.  The 3D format only enhanced the magic.  It was a treat on the big screen.

Here is the video that explains the process of creating the 3D effect followed by an article first printed online by Studio Daily that goes into more detail.

Play Video

Converting The Wizard of Oz to 3D

How Prime Focus Put New Depth in the Picture While Honoring the Original Work

 
Studio Daily Artice

We’re off to see the Wizard — and this time, he’s in 3D. Stereo conversions have become pretty common for new studio tentpole releases, but they’re relatively rare when it comes to older films, especially studio catalog jewels like The Wizard of Oz, originally released by MGM in 1939 and now part of the classic Warner Bros. library. What’s it like to tackle a stereo conversion job involving some of the most famous images ever committed to film? 

Well, Prime Focus would know. The company’s proprietary View-D 3D-conversion process was used on Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom MenaceTransformers; Dark of the MoonShrek 3D, and more. Now, it’s been put to the test on a new 3D release of The Wizard of Oz, which premieres September 15 and begins screening September 20 exclusively in IMAX theaters. We asked Chris Del Conte, Prime Focus’s VP of business development in Los Angeles, and Justin Jones, a View-D supervisor in Vancouver, how the company met the classic conversion challenge.

“Everybody was a little apprehensive about the idea of putting our hands on such a classic film,” Del Conte told StudioDaily. He remembered that Ned Price, the VP of mastering for Warner Technical Operations, was available to provide guidance on what existed on the actual physical stages where The Wizard of Oz was shot. 

For example, Price might note that, while the set for Dorothy’s room in Kansas was only 12 feet across, the depth-converted version looked bigger than that. In general, the 3D team would defer to that reality rather than transforming the environment. “If you had shot the film with a digital camera, standing on the set,” Del Conte said, “you would see what we were trying to interpret with our conversion process.” 

But once the team felt they had locked down the correct natural depth for all of the scenes in the film, it gave them the confidence to start using 3D a bit more aggressively. “Once you had control, you could make better creative decisions,” said Justin Jones, View-D Supervisor in Vancouver. “For example, you could make the witch more uncomfortable to viewers when she’s on screen. Once we had her in depth, we pulled her chin and nose out more than we would have normally. It’s subtle. It’s not about the conscious perception of the viewer. We didn’t want to pull it more and make it a gimmick. We’re not trying to make a ride film. It’s about respecting the material.”

Work began the way it always does on a 3D conversion job, with stereo conversion artists isolating every object in every shot in every sequence in the film. In the meantime, the View-D team worked closely with Price at Warner Brothers, who provided a 2K version of the studio’s recent restoration of the film, as well as with VFX supervisor Mike Fink, who was brought on to oversee the stereo conversion, to develop depth scripts laying out how the depth would flow, sequence by sequence.

“A lot of the design work happens at the very beginning of the process,” Jones said. “Once the elements are isolated, we have a stage where we place everything in depth, working out the overall environment – the set, basically – and then giving everything the proper volume and sculpting. We follow a lot of basic rules in the beginning, asking ourselves, ‘If the film were shot in stereo, how would the 3D look?’ And once that is established we can get creative and alter things a little bit to help tell the story. After the depth is placed and everyone is happy with the results, the final polish is put on. The only changes at that point are convergence changes and other minor adjustments.”


Before and Afte
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A disparity map is created that shows the frame in grayscale. Each shade represents depth, so nearer objects appear lighter, and farther objects appear darker. These shades then coordinate to values between 1 and 0 that help stereographers determine how much disparity will be between left and right eyes to create the depth effect. Images courtesy Prime Focus.
 

A 3D conversion is obviously a huge job, so being smart about scheduling is key. After a complete, shot by shot analysis of the film, the View-D team estimated how long each stage of the process would take based on the complexity of different scenes so that a schedule could be set. In all, the project ended up taking place on a 14-month schedule, for everything from development to final delivery, which Jones describes as “a good amount of time” for a conversion job.

It was especially helpful since work was complicated somewhat by the age of the film. Originally released in 1939, The Wizard of Oz doesn’t look much like a contemporary blockbuster. The film grain has a different quality, and the restored digital elements still exhibited some color shift and flicker that the team had to pay close attention to. But Jones said restoration is a very different task from 3D conversion. “[Warner Bros.] worked on the image before they gave it to us, and they did more work after we finished,” he said. “[Those imperfections] will be less of an issue in the final product. But while we were working on the files, the idea was to stay as close to the original [files] as possible.”

In a way, the real challenge wasn’t the film’s condition, but its style of filmmaking — specifically, the more leisurely editorial sensibility of Hollywood’s Golden Age means there are fewer edits, and viewers have more time to examine each shot. “On a film this old, the cuts are really long compared to newer films,” Jones said. “20 percent of the shots in this film were over 1000 frames long. That definitely created a challenge creatively, because viewers have more time to let their eyes go around the frame. And on a technical level, it creates data management issues as you transfer files within a location and worldwide because the shot files become heavier with so many frames and so much roto work. Think of the dancing Munchkins, with their costumes, and all the leaves on the trees, and the backgrounds of the sets. A lot of files have to be managed as one asset.”

“To give you some ballpark numbers, a 100-minute movie today is between 800 and 2,200 shots,” explained Del Conte. “Wizard was just about 650. It affected how our roto and paint teams would approach the work. We really adjusted our workflow to compensate for so many long shots.”

Before and After
Once disparity (what we see as depth) between objects is created, stereographers then assign a convergence point in the frame.  This point acts as your eye’s reference point for where the screen is, determining which objects look nearer than the screen, or farther. Images courtesy Prime Focus.

Among the biggest challenges on The Wizard of Oz were the shots with dancing Munchkins, which featured anywhere from 50 to 100 extras spinning around (with their limbs moving toward and away from the camera repeatedly) amongst the film’s detailed foliage and other set dressing. Accuracy was a requirement, especially in close-up sots depicting iconic characters like Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion. “We had to be very accurate with the sculpting,” Jones said. “We don’t do any automated processes. The more you automate 3D, the worse it looks. So we really put a lot of focus on character sculpting – making sure it’s accurate and that you’re getting the same detail you would if you shot it. And getting that in shots that are more than 1000 frames long, the accuracy has to go way up.”

Accuracy may be the best policy, but it’s not without its own dilemmas. What about those painted backgrounds, for instance, which only gave the illusion of depth on set? “We had to decide what to do with the painted backgrounds,” Jones said. “Do we keep those flat, or do we extend those in depth? We tried a lot of different looks, and we ended up putting some depth in the background. But we’re not trying to sell that it’s not a painted wall. It’s a really cool look.”

They also thought about the film’s famous transition from monochrome to color, wondering if it would be appropriate to keep the Kansas sequences flat, only opening up the stereo depth for the section of the film set in Oz. It didn’t work, in part because the film’s opening scenes just took up too much time. So the View-D team simply employed the stereo effects more subtly in the black-and-white segments. “As soon as we open the door [into Oz], it’s pretty much the maximum amount of stereo,” Jones said. “She steps into a big world. It’s not going from completely flat to stereo, but it’s the same effect the filmmakers were originally going for.”

As far as takeaways from the project, Jones and Del Conte both called it a lesson in how good the results of stereo conversion can be when the artists involved have the time to plan and execute it properly. “When Warner Bros. released Clash of the Titans, it was the first full-length conversion,” he said. “Designing the depth and trying out new looks for The Wizard of Oz, we spent about 10 weeks on that alone. That’s about the same amount of time we spent on the entire Clash of the Titans project. If you put more time into the design of the film, you’ll get a better product. That’s something we’ve seen clients start to appreciate more. It allows you to make decisions that support the story instead of just taking something in 2D and making it 3D.”

“We at Prime Focus knew that this show, a nostalgic library title, had to be our best quality work and something to be proud of,” Del Conte said. “Going into the theater and seeing this film in 3D, whether it’s your first time or your 50th time with The Wizard of Oz, it’s going to be a new experience. And in IMAX? It’s great. This is a chance for people to enter the world of Oz in a way that’s never happened before.”

The official website received another upgrade featuring the new sets and interactive content.  There were downloadable wallpapers, Facebook profile banner, main photo, and mobile device artwork.  Also included were some Twitter Skins.  All of these are shown below.

 

Warner Bros. Finalizes Massive Fall Initiative for “The Wizard of Oz”™

BURBANK, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Marking the 75th anniversary of one of its crown jewels, “The Wizard of Oz,” Warner Bros. has launched a comprehensive, cross-divisional campaign encompassing theatrical, home entertainment and consumer products.

The studio estimates that some $25 million will be spent on their marketing, advertising and promotional efforts.

McDonald’s, the world’s leading global foodservice retailer, tops the far-reaching national campaign encompassing a huge number of promotional partners and licensees that will support this historic release.

McDonald’s will feature limited edition “The Wizard of Oz” toys in Happy Meals in over 14,000 locations throughout the U.S. and Canada from Sept. 20 through Oct. 10 at participating restaurants while supplies last.

“The Wizard of Oz” Happy Meal® program features one of six adorable stylized figures, including the most popular and beloved characters of the film. As part of their Happy Meal purchase, kids can receive Dorothy, Scarecrow, Wicked Witch of the West, Tin Man, Glinda the Good Witch or Cowardly Lion. Each figure comes with a Yellow Brick Road™ base to stand on. All of the bases in the line-up can connect together, allowing kids to recreate their own version of “The Wizard of Oz” friends walking down the Yellow Brick Road. For added fun, kids can fill in the blanks to their favorite “The Wizard of Oz” movie quotes right on the Happy Meal box.

The three Warner Bros. divisions, IMAX® Corporation and the TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX will host the September 15th world premiere of the film’s first-ever IMAX® 3D release at the grand opening of the new TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX, the largest IMAX auditorium in the world and the first IMAX theatre in Hollywood. When it was known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the facility was the site of the film’s original Hollywood premiere in 1939. An exclusive one-week IMAX® engagement at the new theatre and in more than 300 IMAX theatres across North America follows, beginning Sept. 20. Finally, the Toronto International Film Festival will show “The Wizard of Oz” in IMAX® 3D on September 15 (the closing day of the festival), at the Scotiabank IMAX Theatre in Toronto.

Following the IMAX® theatrical release from Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will debut on October 1 a limited and numbered “The Wizard of Oz” 75th Anniversary Collector’s Edition, which will consist of a five-disc set including Blu-ray™, Blu-ray 3D™, DVD and UltraViolet™ versions of the film. It will be packed with extras, including documentaries, memorabilia and collectibles. For complete information, visit www.thewizardofoz.com.

Below details the programs of some of the other national corporate marketing partners:

* Amtrak will participate by displaying in-station and on-train signage, from November through December 2013, along with an adventure sweepstakes supported by online and social media.

* Cupcake baker contestants on Food Network’s show “Cupcake Wars” will be transforming their personal visions of “The Wizard of Oz” into gorgeously decorated sweet confections with an Oz-themed competition, to be aired Saturday, September 28, at 8 pm ET/PT.

* Gourmet Trading Company, the leading distributor of fresh asparagus in North America, will promote “The Wizard of Oz” for six months on 2.5 million bunches of asparagus with call outs about the release on hang tags, as well as guidance for consumers on how to connect via Gourmet’s Facebook page for a chance to win special prizes.

* Langer Juice Company, Inc. will place a premium on-pack commemorative offer on their juices, found in major retailers across the country. Interactive media support will accompany the promotion.

* The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Ad Council are partnering with “The Wizard of Oz” on a variety of TV, outdoor, radio and digital Public Service Announcements (PSAs) featuring iconic elements from the beloved film and focusing on child passenger safety. The PSAs will direct consumers to safercar.gov/therightseat and safercar.gov/protegidos and will run in donated media nationally.

* One Kings Lane, known for providing distinctive, one-of-a-kind items for the home, will be celebrating the anniversary with cinema memorabilia and other important objects of the era on September 20th at OneKingsLane.com.

* QVC® will celebrate “The Wizard of Oz” anniversary release with special programming and product. “’The Wizard of Oz’ 75th Anniversary Celebration” is scheduled to debut on QVC® September 26 at 9 pm (ET), for commemorative collections of jewelry, toys, collectibles, books, DVD and beauty products that celebrate the classic film.

* Simon Malls® will host themed Simon Kidgits Club® events in 100 Simon® malls across the country during the month of September.

* Finally, “The Wizard of Oz” will be delighting millions of spectators and viewers across the country, as part of the iconic 87th Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade®, a world-famous holiday event, with a giant hot-air balloon and balloonheads of “The Wizard of Oz” characters.

Warner Bros. Consumer Products will also support the milestone anniversary with a robust licensing program consisting of more than 80 top-tier licensees.

Master toy partner Jazwares leads the way, followed by new licensees including Dylan’s Candy Bar, philosophy, PaperStyle, Julep, The Noble Collection and NECA. Other prominent partners supporting the film include Mattel, Madame Tussauds, Rubie’s Costume Company, Steiff and many more. Commemorative anniversary products will be available across a wide range of categories including apparel, jewelry, fine art, collectibles, stationery and paper goods, toys and games and personal care.

In September 2015, Warner Bros. promoted the 76th anniversary of the film by featuring the boxed set as well as several other Ozzy products.

Judy Garland 1935
The Wizard of Oz green vinyl release for Record Store Day on April 19, 2014