In 1964 Les Perkins was so excited about “Mary Poppins” that he recorded all the trailers and television promo spots — with a tape deck. “It was just the audio,” he says. “I knew most of the songs before the film was even released.”

Forty years later, Perkins and his video production company — Les is More Productions — were hired to make some bonus materials for the 40th Anniversary “Mary Poppins” DVD. There was only one monstrous word for the occasion and Perkins almost let it sluice out of his mouth when he heard the news. “To be part of ‘Mary Poppins’ is truly a dream come true,” he says. “The movie has had such an influence. I felt everything I’ve ever felt about working on a classic movie, but I felt it tenfold.”

He got friend and Final Cut Pro guru Philip Hodgetts to help with color keying and compositing. Hodgetts was positively ecstatic. “It’s like meeting the people who have been writing the soundtrack to your life. I can lip-sync every song in the movie, including the ones that I didn’t work on for this project,” he says.

“To be part of ‘Mary Poppins’ is truly a dream come true. The movie has had such an influence. I felt everything I’ve ever felt about working on a classic movie, but I felt it tenfold.”

Perkins and Hodgetts got to work. The two used Final Cut Pro to produce “A Musical Journey with Richard Sherman,” a 21-minute film about songs that were written for the movie but not used. Sherman and his brother, Robert, are Disney legends. The two wrote all the music for “Mary Poppins” and countless Disney tunes, including “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” “It’s A Small World,” “Charlotte’s Web”, “A Step in the Right Direction” and “Makin’ Memories.”

Perkins also used Final Cut Pro to add audio commentary and “Poppins Pop-Up Fun Facts” to the original film. He and Hodgetts are responsible for more than four hours’ worth of footage on the DVD. “It’s the best work I’ve done to date and I wouldn’t have been able to do it with any other system,” he says.

Magic Bag

Perkins is no stranger to Disney. He has worked there for more than 20 years as an editor and producer. When he decided to start his own company, Disney became one of his biggest clients. He made shorts and bonus footage for the DVD releases of “Sleeping Beauty,” “Snow White,” “Bed Knobs and Broomsticks,” “Parent Trap,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “Pollyanna.” When he got the Poppins project, he knew just what to do. He dove into Disney’s magic carpetbag of film footage, photographs and artwork.

”I went digging into the Disney vault looking for those TV spots,” he says. “That digging led me to discover a whole lot of other film. I was looking at all this great material, these gorgeous backgrounds and stills. I kept thinking, ’there has got to be a way to use this stuff.’” Perkins knew Sherman through his years at Disney and knew the songwriter would want to do something special for Poppins. The movie was the first the Sherman brothers worked on as full-time Disney employees.

The idea hit him harder than one of Admiral Boom’s cannon blasts. “I could put Sherman into the film, put him into the role of Mary Poppins.” Perkins would use a green screen and Final Cut Pro compositing tools to merge digital video footage of Sherman with film footage and mattes from the original movie. Sherman would get to be in “Mary Poppins.” “I just had to do it,” he says.

Measure Up

Before Perkins could do any filming or editing, he had to make a storyboard. “I took a photograph I had of Richard from a magazine and scanned it in. I laid him on top of a still image of the set and did a composite in Final Cut Pro,” he says. “I exported still images and printed out 8x10s that I took to the set with me. That gave the director of photography everything he needed to know, the size and location of the actor and the lighting.”

With storyboard in hand, Perkins set Sherman before a digital betacam in a studio at Disney Imagineering. Hodgetts was there with his 12-inch PowerBook and a DV converter. He took a direct feed from the betacam and composited the digital footage with the old Disney footage and mattes on the set. The lighting and camera crews were able to make adjustments as they went. “We made sure Richard had the same skin tones and lighting as the actors who were shot in 1964, says Perkins. “It looked like the new images that were shot last year lived in the same film world that we were putting them into.”

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