Total Media Group Creative Director Toshi Onuki and Neil Young’s Shakey Pictures were invited to introduce the highlights of Neil Young’s “Archives Vol. 1 1963-1972” at the Blu-ray Disc Association annual meeting in Los Angeles in March.
Creative Director for the project, Toshi Onuki, and Ole Lütjens engineer for MX Entertainment presented on behalf of Shakey Pictures at the general assembly. Onuki shared why he and Mr. Young determined that Blu-ray is the perfect format for showcasing Neil’s archives. The 10-disc set spotlights such technology as 24bit/192kHz stereo PCM audio and the ability to browse photos and documents while listening to the music—arguably the most coveted feature. “We wanted to preserve the ambience of the analog era and designed visual imagery to compliment it. The music comes first and visuals should not distract listeners,” Onuki said. Lütjens explained the technical side of production, demonstrating BD-Live™, which enables users to download additional content to their players or to external drives. Lütjens shared how hundreds of encoding tests were performed in order to accommodate the super high quality audio along with 1920 x 1080 HD resolution videos.
Shakey Pictures and Total Media Group worked over three years sorting through the massive amount of archive material used to create the menu design and page structure under the guidance of Neil Young and his executive producer, L.A. Johnson. The team first revealed a preview of the project at the Sun Microsystems JavaOne Conference in May 2008. Sun Microsystems develops Java, Blu-ray’s programming language.
The 10-Blu-ray disc set includes 128 tracks, 43 unreleased recordings, three live concerts, the feature film Journey Through the Past, and a 236-page full-color hardcover book. The set is also available in DVD (24-bit/96kHz stereo PCM audio, 720×480 SD video) and in CD (16bit/44kHz stereo PCM audio). The album is scheduled to hit stores on June 2 nd, 2009. Pre-order price of Blu-ray is $299.99, standard DVD set is $199.99 and the CD set is $99.
BDA is the industry consortium that develops and licenses Blu-ray disc technology. The organization is responsible for establishing format standards and promoting business opportunities for Blu-ray development. Member companies include Apple, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, Sun Microsystems, Walt Disney and Warner Brothers.
More information about the Neil Young Archives is here.
Chicago Sun Times: SXSW 2009: Neil Young’s archives, finally here and absolutely amazing!
Rolling Stone: Neil Young’s “Archives Vol. 1″ Set for Release June 2nd 2009.
