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A scene from "The Wizard of Oz."

Like Dorothy and her band of fanciful friends, technologists at the Warner Bros. studio went on an arduous journey down their own yellow brick road to make the classic "The Wizard of Oz" look as sparkling new to audiences today as when it came out 70 years ago.

A group of restoration experts spent a year cleaning up and recoloring the legendary 1939 MGM musical for its release on high-definition Blu-ray disc Sept. 29.

The multidisc release, its first on a high-definition home-video format, will also include audio commentary tracks, several other black-and-white adaptations of the L. Frank Baum story, sing-alongs, and documentaries on the making of the movie and its impact on audiences.

"There are these stunning

Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz."
moments in the film," said Brigham Young University film professor Dean Duncan, who specializes in children's media. "There's the move to Technicolor, the songs, that amazing Judy Garland persona."

And for the newest home video release, even fans of "Oz" might see detail in the new restoration they never saw before, said Ned Price, who was in charge of restoring and mastering the film for video.

While experts already restored the movie back in 2005 for its last DVD release, Price realized they had to go back again for the higher-definition Blu-ray release.

"In the last five years in the digital world, there have been huge advancements. We've learned so much," he said about the process.

First the team scans the movie's original negative (Technicolor uses three separate strips to create its vibrant colors) into a computer then cleans up the movie digitally, removing all scratches, specks of dirt and other anomalies.

They also use computers to align the images on the three strips of film perfectly, something that couldn't even be done in 1939 when the movie was first made.

Then a colorist adjusts the movie's colors through a computer after doing extensive research on the film through

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archived photos and original materials by the filmmakers. This is to make sure the scenes look exactly as producers intended.

"Technicolor films are like no other because it's not what our eyes see -- there's a pop, an enhancement," Duncan said about the famous color movie process that is no longer in use. "It's fantastic, it's like our world but better than our world."

After the restoration work was finished, a new master was created for the Blu-ray disc that is even better than the version for the 2005 DVD, Price said. The result is a rock-solid image for television that includes the movie's original imagery right down to each individual piece of film grain.

Finally, the team took the same restored soundtrack from the 2005 DVD and reproduced it in higher definition for Blu-ray, creating music and dialogue that are far superior to when audiences first heard them with tinny speakers in old movie houses, Price said.

"The Wizard of Oz" is the first of a batch of MGM classics that have undergone more restoration work for video release.

Warner Bros. also will be releasing Blu-rays of "Gone With the Wind" and "North by Northwest" later this year, and Disney will issue "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" next month.

vince@sltrib.com