The Extras - Follow the White Rabbit: The Matrix 1999 DVD

Episode Date: December 19, 2021

Former Warner Bros Entertainment Senior Vice President of Creative Content Paul Hemstreet joins the podcast to talk about the 1999 film, The Matrix, and its historic DVD release and the impact that release had on the Home Entertainment market and the development of DVD extras.  One of the first Warner Home Video employees tasked with producing DVD extras, Paul has great insight into the nascent DVD market in the late 1990s and gives background on Warner Bros commitment to ensuring the new format was successful.  He also shares stories of working with the actors, directors, and Silver Pictures, the production company behind The Matrix, on the commentaries and amazing behind-the-scenes featurettes that showcased this mind-bending film.The Matrix was the first DVD to sell over a million copies, the first to sell 3 million and has gone on to sell over 30 million copies, and counting.  The DVD received rave reviews, in part due to its ground-breaking extras which showcased the potential of DVD branching in the “Follow the White Rabbit” extra. Otaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers.  Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals.  www.otakumedia.tvThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and they're released on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. Today I have a very special guest joining me on the podcast to talk about the 1999 film,

The Matrix, and its historic home video release and the impact that release had on the development of DVD extras. The Matrix was the first DVD to sell over a million copies, the first to sell 3 million, and has gone on to sell over 30 million copies and counting. My guest was one of the original employees of the Warner Home Video Extras team and ran the group for 23 years, ascending to the role of Senior Vice President. During his tenure at Warner Home Video, he oversaw the extras for numerous franchises, including the hugely successful Harry Potter films, the DC films, including Christopher Nolan's The Batman Trilogy, and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, just to name a few.

In 2007, he was responsible for hiring me as a temp manager for the Warner Home Video's extras team, before eventually hiring me on full time later that year. He has always been a great supporter and mentor and friend. Paul Hamstreet, welcome to the extras. Hi, Tim. Thank you so much. And it's so great to be here with you. We've been talking about this. We've been trying to find a time in your schedule, and I'm glad we're finally able to do this. As the fans know from what I just read and recounted of some of your bio, just a brief amount, you've had an amazing career during your time at Warner Brothers. But before we dive into a discussion of The Matrix, maybe you can

give our listeners a brief background on how you actually got into the film business. I got into the film business after going to CalArts. I went to California Institute of the Arts and I was part of the inner school program in theater and film. And in that program, I got to study with the great Alexander McKendrick, Sandy McKendrick, who came out of Ealing Studios and is best known for The Man in the White Suit and The Lady Killers and Sweet Smell of Success. And he was an incredible mentor. And I ended up focusing on the film side because of my program, you could choose to go either the theater directing route or the film route. And the thing I really loved while I was there was editing. So I directed, but I also edited and I learned the early software that

would lead to what was familiar and avid. So when I got out of CalArts, my first jobs were as an editor. And I worked for an entertainment advertising company that edited film trailers and TV spots. And we ended up doing a lot of Warner projects. One of our clients was Mike Finnegan, also another woman who headed up the creative services group named Danielle. And one of the big projects I got to work on was a promo that Warner wanted to do for DVD. And they called it the Buzz on DVD. And it was this new format they wanted to promote in what they called Warner House Salons in New York, LA. I think they did it in London where they'd invite members of the entertainment community and show them this promo. So I was the editor on that and that introduced me to all the aspects of it and also introduced me to working closely with Warner.

Before you go any further, Paul, what year was this roughly? So that would have been early in 1997. So the first special features were released in late 1997. And I believe the first DVD released in September. I think it was September of 1997. So we made the promo and then I found out that Mike Finnegan wanted to bring on a manager to help produce special features. So I went for it, got it, started in October of 97. And I inherited two projects that had special

features already in motion. One of them was the film Contact and the other was Little Shop of Horrors. And the special features producer on the project was Jonathan Gaines with his company, Acoustic Vision. So he introduced me to Jonathan, who is a great friend. And after working on many different projects as a special features producer, we had an opening for a director position and I hired Jonathan into the group. I've worked very closely with him. He's still at Warner and we'll get into this later, but Jonathan also worked with Beyond the Matrix. So Finnegan, Mike, he was also so, so gracious to me when I started working there. So he brings you on and you have those two projects, you're working with Jonathan, what kind of developed there? Were you kind of a one man band at that point in the studio?

that point in the studio? At that point, yes, I was a team of one with support. And when I first started, as I came out of film school, I came out of a background of production and editing. I knew it all very well. I tried to do a lot of projects in-house. So I'd hire a producer, I'd hire an editor, I'd get a room on the lot and we'd edit it and do all of it in-house. And that lasted for maybe a few months before it became untenable. It just became so complicated to do all of it. At that time, the release schedule was much, much smaller. So only a few films were releasing. And back then, there was a greater lag between the theatrical release and the home entertainment release in the early days. I think it was around six months. And there was a lot of catch up on recent catalog.

And then that window kept on shrinking, of course, and pulling back, back, back, back. But a lot of it was slowed down because of technical limitations. Just the ability to replicate fast enough to replicate discs fast enough to author discs fast enough. So all of that dictated how long the window was. So we had a little more time to work on the films. But as I got deeper into it, working on more projects, I had to delegate more, had to hire outside producers and eventually were able to start to staff up. So back in, you know, you started in late 97. So 98, you're working on Contact and Little Shop of Horrors. Those are two titles that were already in progress. How

quickly did other titles kind of fall into your lap to create extras for? And were you creating the extras for Laserdisc as well while DVD was still kind of coming on, or were you just primarily focused on the DVD? I was primarily focused on the DVD. That's what Warner wanted to make stand out and really offer new things. So some of the content I made and produced might end up on the Laserdisc, but it really was more of an afterthought at that point. It was really a Laserdisc would include short featurettes and things like that. And they really wanted DVD to stand out.

So really in 1998, the first two projects that fell into my lap were Devil's Advocate and L.A. Confidential, the amazing film with Curtis Hanson. And both were amazing to work on. L.A. Confidential in particular, it was such a pleasure to work with Curtis Hanson and to be a part of that project as it won all the awards really was, I think, the most outspoken film of that year. So how many did you have on your slate then in 98? Was it still a fairly modest amount of titles? I think we had probably around 15 to 20 new releases over the course of the year and a handful of catalog titles later

in the year. So it was growing fairly quickly. There was good support from the management to push the DVD and the DVD extras and that format, even though the adoption of DVD was kind of still in its very nascent stages. Yes. The DVD group at that time was very important, but it was also its own little unit. So we had marketing people that were dedicated to DVD. We had the operations team circling on that. And then a lot of the marketing team was still working on VHS and the meat and potatoes of the home entertainment business at the time. And DVD, of course, just steadily grew and then was fully absorbed by all the team. It just became the central focus of everything. It took, I think, the greater part of that year to grow into a larger team.

Right. Of 1998, you mean? Yeah. Right. And then that of course is roughly when the matrix was being filmed. Right. And it was released then in March of 1999. Were you already starting to be involved with the matrix in 98 or was that coverage kind of set and stuff being done for just more of marketing for the film release? Back then, things were so separate between Warner Theatrical and Home Entertainment. We often said Home Entertainment was the bastard child of Warner. With all due respect, it constituted a huge amount of sales,

but it still was very separate from theatrical. Things are very different today. It's all working together and very closely knit. But back then, we were very separate groups, almost like different fiefdoms within Warner. And there wasn't a lot of communication or coordination between theatrical and home entertainment as far as developing content on set. So DVD was so new back then, it's hard to understand just how unknown it was. So a lot of my job was to be an evangelist for it, to explain to directors and producers what it was and explain how these things they were doing behind the scenes were of such great value and how we needed to capture as much of it as we could. And a lot of

it was chasing things that had already been done. Now, Matrix was different because Silver Pictures had the foresight to video all of it. They had a crew on set led by Eric Matthews as producer and Josh Oreck as director of the behind the scenes content. We can talk a little bit more about them later because I worked with them for years after that on several different projects. And, but I didn't know them before then. So Silver Pictures was busy making sure everything was shot, everything was covered. And I remember getting a call from one of the producers of The Matrix telling me that he had all this footage and wanting to know if we could use any of it. And at that time, we were still figuring out what we could do.

Back then, the discs were much more limited in capacity. So there was a big question of how much we could actually fit and include. When DVD first came out in 97, we had DVD fives in DVD speak that was the amount of space available on the disc. So when we had a movie longer than could fit on a DVD five, it had to be broken and you'd have to flip the disc. The old flippers. We had to find the place where the movie would break and we could flip it. Then we'd have to figure out how much extra space was on each half of the disc for content. And then DVD9s came out,

a dual layer disc, which had a little moment where it flipped on sort of a layer onto itself. And in those early discs, you could usually see a little, a place where that happened. Anyway, so, so that was a new technology and that was being worked out and we're trying to figure out how much space we could have, how much space the movie needed to look its absolute best and how much was left over for content. So we really didn't know how much we'd have to fit. Right. Well, you just covered a lot of territory there going back from the fact that Joel Silver and his production company had the foresight to get the behind the scenes footage, because I just rewatched the extras to remind myself after all these years

having seen them. And there's just a ton of great stuff that otherwise would have been missed for a film that was so important. So Joel obviously saw the groundbreaking elements within the movie, the script, the Kung Fu fighting, the action scenes, the sci-fi elements, you know, and everything. So that was of course, hugely important in a time when that really was pretty much not happening. It was pretty rare. Yeah. It is so great that he had that, that foresight and that the Wachowskis were willing and excited to have it covered. They are notoriously shy on camera and don't really like to be on camera giving interviews. So that was always a challenge.

But the camera team had full access to everything. And if you watch the Matrix special features, you can see how in-depth that was. It was really groundbreaking at the time. I don't think any film had ever been covered with that much detail in all the departments. Right. When did the Joel Silver team reach out to you about that footage? And then when did you kind of start to formulate the possibilities of what you could do? Like that was in 98, 99 leading up to the release or take us back to that. Yeah, that would have been in 98 and before the theatrical release. So we didn't know what it all was.

We weren't quite, you know, we didn't know what a phenomenon the film would be. But Silver Pictures was already very vocal and wanting this to be special and wanted to be treated in a special way. So as far as planning what we could do, it wouldn't have been until really, I think, until we saw the film and knew what it was. And I can still remember going to the Stephen J. Ross Theater. We finally got invited to an early screening. Jonathan Gaines was there as well. And the Stephen J. Ross is one of the best theaters in the world. This picture and sound are just phenomenal in that theater. And I remember watching the film and just being blown away. I couldn't get out of my seat for a few minutes afterwards because I just needed to

sit there and take it all in. It really was one of those films in my life that I remember seeing that really affected me. And I knew this was going to change everything in so many different ways. Right. Yeah. It obviously, that's why I wanted to talk about it today because of the impact it had on me as well. But more than just the impact it had, it really is such a key title in the development of the impact it had on me as well, but more than just the impact it had, it really is such a key title in the development of the home entertainment market. It was really obviously the melding of a blockbuster film that just, you know, made a huge amount of money for the studio and just really was a huge impact with a nascent technology DVD that was just growing,

hadn't fully been adapted by the consumer. I mean, I remember at the time that I was watching my DVDs more on a PC than a DVD player because of the cost. And you could get a computer where you could add on the DVD player for a cheaper price than going to buy a standalone unit. So I was watching, you know, early stuff from a rental perspective on my computer, which of course is not the ideal way, but that was just where I had the technology. And I told you when I first interviewed with you in 2007 and you brought me in and somehow it came up, I think that you had worked on the matrix or,

or something. And I said, that was the first DVD I bought. And it was the time and the right title. And then the reviews on that DVD basically made it pretty much, you got to own it. You know, it's got so many extras on that. So that's why I thought it was so good for us to talk about this today. So let's go back a little bit though, to talking about, you see the, and just for the fans, the Stephen J. Ross Theater is on the Warner Brothers lot. It is where you get employee screenings, you get special screenings and events. You don't get the early screenings in there. Those are done in the screening rooms. So you must have, the film must have been more of in its final form.

Oh, it was a finished film. It was finished. Okay. Yeah. So you see it, Jonathan's there. What did you guys do from that point to say, okay, we've got this footage from, from Silver Pictures. What do we do?

After seeing it, we knew what an amazing project this could be on DVD and what better film on the new technology of DVD to really push the limits and explore different things than The Matrix. So in The Matrix, of course, there's layer upon layer of different levels and realities and hidden elements and sort of clues. And so we wanted to bring that into the DVD experience. So the obvious entry into that is the blue pill and the red pill. So we tried to build that in, which we did in the menus and through the DVD-ROM experience, which I'll explain a little bit about, which is the ability for more features to be on

the computer version. Or I should say, when you put the disk in your computer, you get a whole other set of special features. And this was a groundbreaking project in that area as well. So we figured out on best calculations that we had enough space for a commentary. And I didn't calculate the exact runtime, but I think it was about 35, 40 minutes of content total. So we have the what is bullet time featurette and the what is the concept featurette. So bullet time is a short piece that goes into the groundbreaking camera work with Keanu flying back when the bullet shoots over him and showing how all that works and how that breaks down.

And What is the Concept is a piece on really sort of progression reels from concept to finished picture and showing how that worked through all these incredible scenes. And it's cut together almost like a music video. So we have those two core pieces. And then another piece we were really excited about was the Follow the White Rabbit. So Follow the White Rabbit is an Easter egg feature. And Easter eggs were really big back in the early days of DVD.

It was a fun way for fans to explore every corner of the disc and find things and share that with the nascent online community. And also it got great press too. Reporters loved to write about it. What are the Easter eggs? What can you find? So when you choose the white rabbit feature, icons come up that you would click on a white rabbit to then take you to a little side featurette that related to what you're seeing.

And then it would put you right back in the movie where you were. So we had nine short pieces that illustrated things like Trinity Escape, the Kung Fu Dojo, the bathroom fight, helicopter scene, subway, government lobby. So those were spread throughout the whole film and really gave people an in-depth look into those scenes. So the White Rabbit is really an interesting extra, considering that extras on DVD and the format were still kind of developing. And yet that's a feature that even today would seem pretty cool. And you're doing it here back in 99, where you're watching the film and things pop up on screen. I mean, we were doing that, obviously, when I was working with you for years for other titles. How did you guys kind of come up with that original, very unique concept for DVD? that original, very unique concept for DVD. Like all of this, this is a team collaboration between myself and Jonathan and the authoring team, which was headed by Brad Collar, who's still,

to my knowledge, at Warner and was instrumental in the early development of DVD authoring. And back then we authored at a place called GDMX, which was by the airport. And we worked closely with the engineering team to try to develop these ways to do branching, basically seamless branching. So you could just go right to a feature and come right back out of it. So it was programmed. You didn't have to go to a menu, select it, come back and so on. So we came up with this idea of following the white rabbit and then worked with the technical team to bring it to life. So I was also curious then all of these extras that you had done, how did this compare to some of the work you had done on previous titles? Was there a concerted effort by the studio and the

marketing team to put more money behind this after seeing the movie and how groundbreaking it was going to be? And what was that internal support for these extras? Well, as far as how these extras compared to previously released DVDs, it definitely was the biggest thing we had done and the most technologically advanced as far as new things we were trying. We had worked on and I had worked on projects that were quite strong and I feel proud of to this day. LA Confidential, I thought was an amazing project that we had incredible access to Curtis Hansen on. And that also won a lot of awards.

And I think was a very prestigious early title as far as special features and DVD. But no title to this date had challenged the format in so many different ways. And as far as marketing support, there was tremendous support for The Matrix. We were in some ways more bound by technology and time than we were by money. With that said, budgets back then were much smaller than they are today. The amount put into it was significant, but modest in comparison. So the amount we had for a title on LA Confidential was more like a small title in today's standards. But part of that's inflation. Part of it's just the depth at which we're able to work today and the acceptance by the entire filmmaking community and television community retailer and online uses as well as the home entertainment and streaming. So it's really coordinated.

Back then, we had to make do with the elements that we had from production and eventually build to try to get on set, get things happening during production. But at this time, we didn't have access while to get on set, get things happening during production. But at this time, we didn't have access while they were on set. So everything was done after the fact. So the marketing support was there. You had the budget there. The film came out in March, obviously was a huge hit, like 480 million worldwide box office. The studio obviously saw what they had when they were looking at the DVD release. I suppose you guys were kind of looking toward the Christmas holiday season. I mean, I don't recall exactly when the home entertainment came out, but it was what in the fall or so? It was December. I don't have the exact date, but yeah, it was to be the big

movie for the holiday. So they wanted this to be a big splash. And that also put us under extreme time constraints to get that done too, because of the amount of time it took, like I said, to replicate was longer and we had to make sure that the quality of the film looked as good as possible. Anyways, there's those elements. Another aspect where we had a lot of support was to develop things on the DVD-ROM side. So we had been teaming with a company called Interactual. Interactual Technologies, and they're based up in Silicon Valley. And we had released a few titles before The Matrix with DVD-ROM enabled features, including You've Got Mail. I can't remember the full list, but I remember

on You've Got Mail, we did a jukebox feature where you could listen to the songs on the disc. And the DVD-ROM would take you to different web links related to the film. It would enable different features with graphics, with script and things like that. So we knew a few things that we could work with. So we wanted The Matrix to be one of those places where we could really build a lot of things. And DVD-ROM also offered an escape hatch for content that couldn't quite be managed by the time of the release. So that's something that we explored for some time after that and many titles after that. So Paul, once it became clear just what an important title this was going to be for home video, what was kind of the internal workings of making sure your

content got in on time and then some of that schedule? Once we had a plan, we were deep into production and the different groups were all off doing their thing. The marketing group, of course, planning all their efforts. We have DVD production, dealing with the mastering of the film. We had my creative team editing all the features, getting things approved, recording, working with complex engineering as far as the White Rabbit feature and DVD-ROM and developing those features. It's a lot of different moving parts all coming together, of course, towards a delivery date. As they realized how successful The Matrix was theatrically, they got better predictions on

how many DVDs they could sell. And that led to production saying, well, if you're going to make that many, we need to deliver earlier. And then there becomes the battle, you know, it's the constant battle between delivery date and reality. Can you deliver this in time? And I remember one day, it would have been in the summer of 99, where we were insisting we needed more time. And we saw the potential. You know, we're developing all these things. This is before, of course, any of these features have been out in the world.

But we knew how great they would be to have this white rabbit. But marketing could possibly pull out their knives and just slice those things off because ultimately, they just want to get that title out there and they don't want to miss the prime release date. So I remember this one day where the head of marketing called all the different groups into one big conference room. So we're all sitting around there. all the different groups into one big conference room. So we're all sitting around there. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon. And he says, nobody's leaving this room until we have a solution. And that solution will be making our release date. So they have to figure, everyone had to figure out how can we streamline this? How can we make the date? How can we pull something up? How can another title be delayed in its replication? You know, another completely different title. Can they hire additional facilities to replicate? What can they do to trim? Do they have to ship everything on the first day? Can they deliver some after the fact? And by God, if we didn't walk out of that room with a plan and thank God we made it, we were able to keep the features. We could keep the white rabbit. We reviewed things

on the turn of a dime when they came in, test discs and samples of the compression, make sure everything was as good as it could be. And we made it. But I'll never forget that day when everything was on the line and it took several hours. We were there late into the night, they ordered pizzas and we sweated it out, but we did it. For The Matrix, one of the big challenges was just getting all the talent, all the actors, the directors on board to do interviews and get that done in the time we needed. Because when the film came out in March, of course, then it had all the release dates across the world. And back then, they weren't always so close together. So they had a silver team and the Wachowskis were traveling around the world, Keanu, Carrie-Anne Moss. So it was a big challenge to try to get them.

And then, of course, it gets into summer and people are wanting to take their vacations and everything, which was always a challenge. You know, somebody would disappear for a month. So our biggest challenge was just lining all these people up. a month. So our biggest challenge was just lining all these people up. And commentaries back then were a cornerstone of the special features and highly sought by fans. So getting the Wachowskis to try to do a commentary was one of the top priorities and one of the things that eluded us. We were never able to get that, unfortunately. They wrote an introduction for the release, which is in all the collections. You can still read that. So then we had to put all our efforts into trying to get the actors. The actors, of course, very hesitant. And we finally, after a few months of pursuing, finally got him to agree to do it. But he wanted to be with other people. So we had Carrie-Anne committed. And we had the editor, Zach, Academy Award-winning editor Zach Steinberg, as part of it, and John Gaeta, the award-winning effects producer, supervisor. So we had all that team lined up. And it got down to the day we were recording.

I remember we were recording at Pacific Ocean Post. And we were on pins and needles because Keanu was so hard to get. But we got him. We heard he's on his way. He was coming on his motorcycle. We had a room set up for them to record with a, a big container of beers on ice. So party atmosphere. Johnson Gaines was there with me. And finally,

Keanu comes in with his big motorcycle helmet. So a motorcycle outfit. So we're on, we, we got, we got everybody there. But as we got into it, Keanu was reticent to speak. And I totally respect his decision. Some actors just don't feel comfortable talking about the process. And so we had Keanu there, but we don't have him on the commentary because he did not feel comfortable with that. So we ended up with Kerianne, John Gaeta, Zach Steinberg for that initial commentary. I did not know that story. And of course, some people have in reviews said, why didn't they have more of the actors or things of that nature? I went back and looked

at the reviews from 1999 just to see what some people said. And of course, that's one of the actors or things of that nature. I went back and looked at the reviews from 1999 just to see what some people said. And of course, that's one of the things that is mentioned. And that's one of those kind of stories where at the time you probably had to keep that under the helmet, you know, and not really share that because it's not something you want out there. But you can't really say against the reviews. Oh, it's so frustrating. No, it's so frustrating because, you know, it was right there in front of us and Keanu and it just didn't work out. It wasn't the time for that. Right. Well, Keanu was becoming a huge star at the time. And of course the Matrix just pushed him to the next level, but DVD was still early. I think a lot of the directors and

actors and others were still very uncertain what a lot of the extras were and how they work and why they would be important. They promoted the movie, but the home entertainment promotion was still very new. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Yes, there are a lot of unknowns and um when when we put out a dvd where i'd where i developed more complex hidden features different menu navigation maps where you go to things and

i get a call from somebody and have to walk them through on the phone how to find it different producers and executives confused on how to find it. Different producers and executives are confused on how to find it. And back in those days, they used to just route consumer complaint calls to our phone lines. And I didn't have an assistant back then. And I'd just pick up the phone and it'd be somebody from Ohio with a problem with the disc. There was somebody that was dedicated to answering those calls, but when they'd step out or whatever, they just forward them to my phone and I'd get afraid to pick up the phone, you know? That is so crazy. But in the early days, you know, you put in a disc

and something wouldn't work or it would just be issues sometime. Yeah. And players were not all the same. We'd get reports on which players a disc wouldn't work on because the players kept on evolving and new generations would be coming out. We moved up to more advanced discs, DVD nines, dual layers, and then the old players wouldn't work anymore. So it would always have to be a decision made by the marketing team. Okay, there's 20,000 of these players out there and this disc isn't going to work good on it or work at all. So they'd have to make the decision, you know, 3 million work, 50,000 don't and decide to go forward or not. Well, the last thing I kind of wanted to talk about is the impact that the Matrix DVD had on the home entertainment industry. And also I think the,

it raised the bar for studio releases and the extras that were now kind of expected, I think from the fans, if not expected for every title, at least it raised and set a standard that others were now going to try to meet. What's your thoughts about the impact of that release? It changed everything. And I have a few statistics here from the day. It's the first title to have an initial shipment of 1.5 million units. It shipped almost a million in the first week. It was the top renting title in 1999. It generated $25 million alone in its initial release and the special edition in the first week. And it also drove player sales, which fueled the industry and increased sales across the board on other titles.

So it really sort of blew the door open. And it was a title everybody wanted to talk about and the must have title. It was voted DVD of the Year and Special Edition DVD of the Year by VSDA. It was voted the best DVD of all time by different online groups, and it performed well across the board, even on Laserdisc and VHS. So it was just a juggernaut. And as the first Matrix film came out, then it was announced that there's going to be two more. So then it introduces the idea of a collection and a multi-disc release. So going into the next film, we had all of our learnings from this. And one thing that's

important to talk about is after that initial release, we were approached by Silver Pictures again. They had all this amazing content. We really only used a very small portion on that first release because of the constraints we had. But they really opened the way for The Matrix Revisited, which was the incredible full-length documentary that was produced by Eric Matthews and directed by Josh Orrick that used all that footage and really interwove the interviews with the behind the scenes footage and told this incredible in-depth story, which was included on the later Ultimate Collection and later collections of The Matrix. And that was a huge game changer as well, because we planned for that on Matrix Reloaded and the

third film as well. So on Revolutions. And that idea just became expected for the bigger films as we went into Harry Potter, as we went into the DC Universe, the Middle Earth and The Hobbit and everything. So it really caught everybody's eye, all of this release. And as those films went in production, remember, Harry Potter was then going into production shortly after that. Lord of the Rings is going into production. So you have those filmmakers looking at the gold standard of the Matrix and wanting to do even better.

Wow. gold standard of the matrix and wanting to do even better. Wow. So it impacted the directors, obviously, of these film franchises. What was the impact in terms of the actual Warner Home video internally? I mean, there must have been a huge amount of excitement that Christmas, obviously. Did your group grow? Did home entertainment grow? It did. Oh, yeah. I mean, home entertainment, DVD was growing exponentially. We'd hear things from the corner office, like, you have an open checkbook, you know, to work on this project, which of course, wasn't quite open infinitely. But we were able to have resources we never had before. And we were able to staff up. I can't remember exactly how soon, but I went from myself as the primary producer overseeing

the content to a team of 12 a few years later and working with probably 15 to 20 outside vendors to produce all the content across the different projects. So it really opened up and my position split off into different positions. In other words, and the person who was in charge of the DVD production, Jessica Friedman, she got a big team in DVD production. And then the marketing team, which our first dedicated marketing person was Diana Chu. And then it grew into a larger team. And eventually every team was given the mission. Another thing, and I can't remember the exact timing of it, but there were format wars going on at the same time. DVD wasn't the only format trying to win over the space.

Laserdisc was falling by the wayside, but then there was the big DivX battle. Without going into that too much, but there was competing formats and Warner was committed on winning this battle. And it's projects like Matrix and releases like Matrix that helped, I think, drive the nail in Divock's coffin. So your team is growing in expectations of the EC in terms of getting budgets for marketing and everybody else, the legal teams, everything. It was really a time where the movie studios saw saw the potential for the income that could come from DVD sales, correct? And it led over the next five years to huge profit margins for the studios. Yes, absolutely. It really showed how much more could be gained by having the DVD with special features that brought notoriety, that brought attention, that differentiated the disc. It provided a lot of additional value

over a VHS. And then of course, I mean, primary to that was this infinitely superior picture quality and audio quality, but it gave so much more to talk about too, as far as making a release newsworthy. And I think propelling sales in the holiday season, gift-giving opportunities, really aligning home entertainment sales with different holidays. And as I said, really getting a collector's editions, because I think it was the Matrix collector's editions that really showed what these box sets could do. Of course, there had been some Laserdisc, wonderful Laserdisc collections before then, and Criterion Collection had been putting out Laserdiscs in advance of that. But it just was, you could fit so much more. It was so much easier to hold,

to gift. Now, The Matrix was just the first film in the trilogy of films. What did that lead to in terms of when you did the final, you know, the special editions or deluxe editions and everything, how did that develop over the years? So the Matrix has come out in several subsequent releases. We had the Ultimate Collection, and that came out, I think, in 2004. And it was later released in a box set with a collectible Keanu Neo figure. And later in 4K. And things had to be reinterpreted along the way. Certain features, we learned things over the years.

The White Rabbit features, we didn't want to make people always have to go through the whole film to see the White Rabbit. So they were just listed on a menu. And later, I think that feature is entirely dropped when it got to 4K and things like that. I don't think it is out there as, as it was. And the DVD ROM features obviously became obsolete, but it was reinterpreted with,

you know, going back into assets and trying to make things new and take advantage of the growing technology to constantly make the Matrix collection cutting edge. Because it deserves to be. It has to be looked at again and with fresh eyes. What new things can be there? But the legacy pieces may not look best HD quality. They're formatted and they're not 16 by 9.

The original aspect ratio, the behind the scenes, but they still offer an incredible eyewitness window. And the work done, I think, stands to this day. I think it still tells an amazing story of that time. But I'm excited to see how people bring new interpretations of this, how the matrix collection evolves in our culture, how its meaning changes over time and how it's influenced people over time. So I think there's exciting stories to still jump into, and I look forward to seeing what those are. Interestingly enough, while you were having that great success in 1999, I had been working at Microsoft Studios in Redmond, Washington, trying to develop what we were calling interactive television or web TV, where we were trying to marry some of the behind the scenes or information or things with the video. But when I saw the matrix and I saw what you did with white rabbit, where you had a rabbit pop on screen, you could click it and watch the feature at right there,

then go right back to the movie, pick it up. And the melding of commentary, I said to myself, wow, this is what we've kind of been working on, but from a PC kind of standpoint, and you, you did it with the matrix. Like you prove the concept that people want a little bit of interactivity, but only after they've seen the film once, twice, they want to see, and then watch the extras or interact with, with the white rabbit or the commentary. Those are there, but DVD really won that battle and showed how people want to interact with their movies. They want to see it first in the theater,

then they want to see it at home, then they want to see the extras. And it all was just a great melding of getting that content to the fans in an affordable way and teaching everybody. I actually think that that filmmaking in a box element is also part of why we see so many content creators out there right now shooting with cameras and, and obviously with the price of, of the cameras and the availability of the iPhone and all that plays into it. But to learn filmmaking just by watching some of the extras from the masters,

are you kidding me? That was a great opportunity. So the Matrix DVD has been a huge impact on the industry and brings us right up to today, even, as the fourth installment of The Matrix is about to be released by the studio. It was a good time to kind of revisit this, I think, and talk about the importance to the Matrix in the industry. Yeah, it's Matrix fever is going to be on us.

It is already. I think, yes, the ability to have it and hold it, to own it, was such a big thing that the Matrix release did initially. And to be able to go back to those features time and again is something I think fans of the film really appreciated. And it's a combination of, you say, filmmaking in a box, bringing the whole world of this film into your home, really being able to have this window in on all of these aspects of the

filmmaking that is so incredible and so appreciated by people. And for filmmakers, it becomes about the legacy of the film because they have the, you know, they lived it. They had the window right into all the incredible things that happen and they want to share it and let other people in on that. And I've met several filmmakers who have said how influenced they were by special features, by being able to find out how something was done to get that first Superman special edition and learn about what Dick Donner did and watching all the Harry Potter collection and things like that was very instrumental in where they went with their career. Well, Paul, you've been really right there in the

forefront of the growth of extras in the home entertainment market. And it was a privilege when I was hired by you to work under you, obviously, to learn from you and to have seen the great work that was done on The Matrix and all of the other releases that you were a part of over those years. So thank you for coming on the podcast today and sharing it with the fans. I think it was a lot of fun. Thank you, Tim. It was such a pleasure talking with you. It was so wonderful working with you and collaborating with you over the years. And I'm so glad we got to have this discussion. with you and collaborating with you over the years. And I'm so glad we got to have this discussion. Thanks again to my former boss, Paul Hemstreet, for coming on the podcast today.

Many of you may know of Paul from his tenure at Warner Brothers. So I hope you enjoyed hearing from him directly about his involvement in the industry shaping 1999 release of The Matrix. Since leaving Warner Brothers, Paul has co-launched the multimedia company Home and Yonder, and he recently made his publishing debut with a chapter in the Amazon bestselling book, Creativity Is Whatever You Want It To Be. I will have links to the book and to Paul's social media sites on our website at www.theextras.tv. Also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at The Extras TV or Instagram at TheExtras.TV to stay up to date on the latest episodes and for exclusive images and behind the scenes information

about the episodes and upcoming guests. And if you're enjoying the guests we have on the show, please subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to The Extras with Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind the scenes extras, and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals

at www.otakumedia.tv or look for the link in the show notes.