Paramount, which is known for skimping on the extras and offfering no more than a theatrical trailer at times, has really pulled a 180 with their two-disc release of Forrest Gump.
Available from Paramount's Widescreen Collection this two-disc set features a widescreen transfer enhanced for 16X9 televisions with a Dolby Digital 5.1 english audio track and a 2 channel Dolby Digital french audio track as well as two audio commentary tracks on disc one.
Disc two features the best selling making-of documentary of all time entitled Through The Eyes Of Forrest Gump, five production featurettes(screen tests, Building The World Of Forrest Gump:Production Design, Seeing Is Believing:The Visual Effects Of Forrest Gump, Through The Ears Of Forrest Gump:Sound Design and The Magic Of Makeup), a photo gallery and two theatrical trailers for the film.
Through The Eyes Of Forrest Gump runs for 30:03 and is your standard on-set interviews with the cast and crew mixed in with behind-the-scenes footage.
A nice addition, and something rarely included, are the screen tests. There's a total of seven screen tests in all including three for Michael Conner Humphrey and Hanna R. Hall who played the young Forrest and the young Jenny, two for Robin Wright who played Jenny and two for Haley Joel Osment who played Forrest Gump Jr. The screen tests for Robin Wright and Haley Joel Osment also feature Tom Hanks.
Next up is Building The World Of Forrest Gump:Production Design(7:17) in which production designer Rick Carter lets us in on what a production designer's job is and how some of the sets were created.
Ken Ralston, the visual effects supervisor on the film, along with George Murphy and Stephen Rosenbaum, both computer graphics supervisors on the film, reveal how 11 of the film's visual effects[Birth Of A Nation (2:27), Run Forrest, Run(2:00), Martin Luther King, Jr.(3:04), George Wallace(2:21), Vietnam(7:34), Ping Pong With George Bush(1:24), Lyndon B. Johnson(2:23), Enhancing Reality(7:20), John Lennon With Dick Cavett(2:13), Lt. Dan's Legs(5:52) and Richard Nixon(1:53)] including two deleted sequences(Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ping Pong With George Bush) were created in Seeing Is Believing:The Visual Effects Of Forrest Gump.
Through The Ears Of Forrest Gump:Sound Design has Randy Thom, the film's sound designer, revealing in The Bike(2:28), Crowds(1:42), Vietnam(7:57), Rain(1:59) and Ping Pong(1:22) how certain sounds were achieved and used to enhance certain scenes in the film.
Finally The Magic Of Makeup(7:59) is a look at the film's makeup effects as told by Dan Striepeke who was one of the film's makeup artists.
Rounding off the extras are two audio commentary tracks(one with director Robert Zemeckis, producer Steve Starkey and production designer Rick Carter and the other with producer Wendy Finerman), two theatrical trailers for the film and a photo gallery.
While Through The Eyes Of Forrest Gump is nothing really special the rest of the special features are definetely worth checking out. This is a wonderful film that everyone should see at least once and I really recommend getting this two-disc set. This film would be worth getting even if it didn't contain a single special feature.