7 ms·
Too many classic films remain buried in studios' vaults
- devindotcom 11y agoThis reminds me of a very good read on film restoration focused on the Star Wars films. Lots of interesting info about how film degrades, what can and can't be done to save it, and so on. http://fd.noneinc.com/secrethistoryofstarwarscom/secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html http://fd.noneinc.com/secrethistoryofstarwarscom/secrethisto...
- ZenoArrow 11y agoI would love to spend time watching these old films, it's a shame the restoration costs are so high. Is there any way they could be digitised in their current form, released without restoration on a streaming service, and then allow the relative popularity of the films amongst modern audiences influence the priority in which films are restored? I'd rather have that than to let these films be lost forever. I enjoy the charm of films from the first half of the 20th century, I don't mind if I have to watch them at a lower quality.
- indlebe 11y agoIMHO direct digitization is the way to go. I'm sure one could find grant funding and train an army of volunteers to perform this over time in a relatively inexpensive manner.
- devindotcom 11y agoCheap equipment and volunteers is no way to go about restoring 80-year-old celluloid. It's not an easy task, though I think you're right that many would love to help.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoDo you need to restore the celluloid version though? Can't you just digitise the images (and sound, if available) from the celluloid and restore the film based on the digital source? If we have high quality digital photographs and high-bitrate lossless digital audio of every frame in the film, what extra detail are you going to add to that by performing physical restoration on the celluloid version?
- devindotcom 11y agoNot all the film would have to be carefully washed/restored of course, but the chances of a reel of film that's been in a can for 75 years just coming out and rolling like it came off the reel yesterday are slim to none. Even under the best of circumstances there's going to need to be special care taken and it ends up (AFAIK) being quite labor intensive.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoFair point.
- serge2k 11y agoWouldn't a lot of it be damaged to the point where you have to do a lot of restoration in order to get anything usable off it?
- ZenoArrow 11y agoPossibly. I don't know. Just thinking about how to increase the chances of the films being saved. Guess they could start with the films that require the least amount of work, though then the oldest of the films may be restored last, which wouldn't necessarily be the best idea.
- shalmanese 11y agoParamount just released a big chunk of their back catalog for free on YouTube: http://nofilmschool.com/2015/10/paramount-vault-free-movies-youtube-channel http://nofilmschool.com/2015/10/paramount-vault-free-movies-...
- swimfar 11y agoMosfilm, the Soviet/Russian film studio also uploaded a lot of their old films to youtube[1] including Stalker, Solaris, and Battleship Potemkin. Many of them also have English subtitles. Here's a small list of more examples: http://366weirdmovies.com/your-guide-to-mosfilm-in-english-on-youtube/ http://366weirdmovies.com/your-guide-to-mosfilm-in-english-o... [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/mosfilm https://www.youtube.com/user/mosfilm
- jbaiter 11y agoI did not read the article, so I don't know if it was mentioned, but Warner actually has such a program: http://instant.warnerarchive.com/ http://instant.warnerarchive.com/ Lots of non-restored films (mostly from VHS/TV captures) are also circulating on BitTorrent, there are a few invite-only places that specialize in that kind of thing.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoThanks. Yes, the Warner program is mentioned in the article. Looks like the content has been restored though. I'm trying to find a way of accessing the content that is unlikely to be restored without demonstrating the demand.
- acqq 11y agoBrowsing from Europe, I can see the first page but whatever I click I get the empty result? Does it work in the US?
- devindotcom 11y agoUnfortunately even basic handling and inspection of film this old is costly and time consuming. The machinery is old, the people who do it have specialized skills, and if you do it wrong in any way you can easily destroy what might be the only copy of a film. I certainly agree they should put this stuff out there, and it sounds like it is happening, but I doubt it's a profitable endeavor so probably not particularly high priority.
- erikpukinskis 11y agoI doubt it's a profitable endeavor so probably not particularly high priority. Did you read the article? > To Allied Artists and Lorimar, their producers, "these films were worthless and they said it's OK to let them rot," Feltenstein says. Instead, Warner Archives packaged them into DVD collections, "and they've all been nicely profitable." > Feltenstein says Warners is releasing 30 more titles to its manufacturing-on-demand library every month. "It's growing precipitously and there's no end in sight."
- eevilspock 11y agoAs for the great film that has been restored, I'll repost what @sotojuan posted a few days ago: "About film: If you have Hulu, watch the Criterion Collection films on it. Criterion is a company that releases and remasters some of the best films of all time (from all countries!), and about 600 of them are on Hulu." https://www.criterion.com/library/expanded_view?m=hulu&p=1 https://www.criterion.com/library/expanded_view?m=hulu&p=1
- walterbell 11y agoDo the Hulu Criterion streams include extras like commentary and making-of interviews?
- cedporter 11y agoNo, they don't. It's just the film and subtitles, if applicable.
- intopieces 11y agoNo, these are restricted to the discs. Don't want to give too much away :)
- devindotcom 11y agoThough one should always include the caveat that HD streams aren't going to look as good as a high-bitrate copy like a Blu-Ray, usually at any rate. It's gotten better, and you can still enjoy the movie of course but people who really care about stuff like film grain and color fidelity (and Criterion's clientele is often this type of person) should seek out a non-streaming version.
- cooper12 11y agoI highly second the recommendation of the Criterion Collection. Nothing that they selected has disappointed me and their passion for film shines through their restorations, interviews, and essays.
- slg 11y agoThere are technical angles to this that weren't mentioned in the article. For example, we are constantly getting better at restoring and digitizing film. If we digitized a lot of these films 20 years ago, they wouldn't look nearly as good as today (and those digitized today will probably look like crap on our 8k TVs of the future). Countering that is the fragile nature of film. Not only do they degrade over time, but they are also highly flammable. When you store thousands of them in vaults, it isn't unheard of for the entire thing to literally explode. We have gotten better at preventing that over the last few decades, but that was a consistent problem for much of the 20th century. If we don't digitize some of these soon, we are running the risks that they will be lost to time.
- MichaelGG 11y agoScanning 35mm at 4K is likely to be as good as it's gonna get, right? This link seems to indicate so: http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/pixels.html http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/pixels.html - So it seems like the technical capacity is there to get nearly all the info out of 35mm film, today. I do appreciate even 720p copies of film, as the quality just looks so, so, much better than stuff from the 80s/90s targeted at VHS/DVD. The biggest sin being the idiotic producers' idea to record Pink Floyd PULSE at Earl's Court for live transmission, and thus use low quality recording equipment. It's one of the best visually-amazing concerts, and there will never be a high-quality version, ever. (After a long time to restore it, they released a DVD version, but it's not even really DVD quality.)
- devindotcom 11y agoFrom what I understand, 4K is about the right size for getting most of the detail out of the film. It's sort of 35mm's native resolution. But because it's an analog medium, it essentially has unlimited detail - doing it at a higher rez just means better detail on grain and so on, and also allows more latitude for future digital work. In the same way, you could adequately document a painting with a 30-megapixel photo, but if you want to completely document it, you'll be working with x-rays, depth maps, restorers, color technicians etc. It depends a lot on your goal. For a great-looking copy of a movie you'll watch happily, 4K is great. But there may be other uses or applications out there that require or benefit from more.
- RUG3Y 11y agoMy grandfather works for one of the studios. He's cleaning up and digitizing films that have never been released other than in theaters. They're slowly releasing these old films one at a time, I'm not sure where you can buy them though.
- yitchelle 11y agoCan you elaborate what happens to the films after it has been digitized?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- beloch 11y agoThere's a fabulous amount of information in a single 35 mm frame of film. Do we have the technology to capture it all yet? What resolution is sufficient? It's not easy to answer this. Perhaps the first complication worthy of notice is that not all film is alike. During the first half of the twentieth century, film evolved rapidly. First, there was the struggle to make B&W film more sensitive to light without massively increasing the size of grain. Early film required a lot of light to capture a high quality image. It was costly and difficult (not to mention unpleasant for workers/actors) to use the amount of light necessary to get a high quality B&W image with fine-grained film stock. Color film initially amplified these problems as well as introducing it's own, which is why B&W film lived on for lower budget productions long past the broad adoption of color film. Color film was there from the very start of cinema but, at first, it took the form of tinted stock, hand-colored film, and a variety of other labor intensive processes. Technicolor had a 2-strip color process by the 20's that captured flesh tones to a certain degree (e.g. "The Black Pirate" (1926)), but the three strip process of the late 30's and 40's is what most of us think of as the first real color film, and it heaped even more demands on film makers. Technicolor 3-strip film only produced good results on certain limited ranges of colors, and Technicolor provided consultants to help film makers meet the stringent requirements of using this film. There was a scene in "The adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) where the grass was, famously, not the right shade of green to come out well and was therefore spray-painted the right shade of green! Finally, it's worth noting that editing, special effects, etc. and copying from this era were all done optically, typically resulting in significant image quality degradation by the final product. Theatrical prints typically had substantially less detail than the camera negatives. Today, we often go back to camera negatives, interpositives, answer prints, internegatives, etc. when transferring a film to digital to get the extra quality. This obviously makes life more difficult for film restorers than if they simply dumped a theatrical print to digital. There are occasionally unintended side-effects of this practice too. For example, "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940) features scenes with a flying carpet suspended by wires. In the theatrical prints, the grain size was large enough to hide their presence. However, standard definition DVD transfers from the internegative made them show up easily. As surprising as it may seem if you're used to the fabulous detail in well-projected modern 35 mm film, sometimes DVD video quality surpassed the 35 mm theatrical prints of the classic era! Given how videophiles now view standard definition DVD's, it really is surprising that, for some titles at least, DVD's showed more detail than audiences would have seen when the film debuted in theaters. Digital technology has come a long way since then, but how much higher do resolutions need to climb if we're already past the point of revealing some flaws that film-makers never intended us to see? An interesting parallel to this is the recent trend towards hidef remasters of TV shows. A great example is Star Trek: The Next Generation. The detail in 1080p bluray is far beyond what anyone could have had in mind when creating this series for TV in the 80's and 90's. It's a fascinating show to watch in hidef. Many of the costumes and sets are fantastically detailed and finely textured. Others clearly relied on the limited resolution of broadcast video to hide their short-comings. Film deteriorates with time, so it makes sense to use the best technology available to create digital backups. Perhaps we're at the point where films, once scanned, will never need to be scanned again. Perhaps we're not. However, it seems we've passed the point where some judgement needs to be used when deciding how much detail to present to audiences. Perhaps sometimes, less can be more.
- fallous 11y agoMore disturbing is the refusal to make available movies that were incredibly significant culturally at the time of release but are now considered "offensive" to modern sensibilities. Disney's Song of the South is a prime example, despite the fact that James Baskett was awarded an Oscar for his portrayal of Uncle Remus... the first black man to receive an Oscar and only the second black person to do so (Hattie McDaniel won in 1939 for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone With the Wind.) Try and encounter someone who doesn't know the song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", then ask them the origin. Most people under 30 have never seen the movie, and those that have did so using unauthorized sources.
- vijayr 11y agoSomewhat similar is the behavior of families of famous personalities after their demise - MLK's famous speech is still private property a full 50 years later. Same with George Orwell's family aggressively going after people using the number "1984" and so on
- jmspring 11y agoWhile not significant in any particular way, we've seen a number of cartoons and television shows taken out of circulation/no longer available because of differing degrees of offense -- Duke of Hazard being a recent one; the old WW2 Bugs Bunny cartoons being another.
- fallous 11y agoYes, the Warner Bros WW2 cartoons (as well as some others deemed offensive) as well as some Disney shorts have been sent down the memory hole. Additionally, I remember when Cartoon Network, amongst others, began editing Coyote/Roadrunner cartoons to remove guns, explosives, etc. Also, Spielberg's re-edit of E.T. to remove the guns from all the government agents, replacing them with cellphones.
- jmspring 11y agoI understand not publicly showing things on broadcast media, but taking them completely out of circulation or revisionist edits without making the originals available is problematic. For me it is the same as the wanton edits Lucas has made on the Star Wars movies, etc.
- dbcooper 11y agoEqually frustrating is when well regarded modern films are unavailable due to rights issues. The Big Fix[1] and Joshua Then and Now[2] are two examples. [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077233/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077233/ [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089383/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089383/
- Cymen 11y agoIs there a summary of the rights issues? I did some basic googling but didn't come up with anything.
- bsder 11y agoThis is the problem when copyright doesn't expire. If the copyrights expired, the studios would have to release the films before that point in order to get any money.
- danieltillett 11y agoActually while I agree that copyright length is an issue, in this case copyright should actually encourage the studios to release these films. If they have the only copy of these films and they were out of copyright then they would have no incentive to ever release them. If you own the only copy of something then making it public domain does not allow the public to view it.
- jerrysievert 11y agoin that regard, i think that the copyright actually makes things worse. at this point, the films are likely a liability (being so flammable); releasing them to the public domain is unlikely, due to costs and potential costs. spending the time and money to get a good transfer likely won't mean much money before the copyright expires, thus making it economically a worse proposition. i feel this is a case where law/finance and technology don't intersect.
- CookieMon 11y agothe transfer would be a "work" in its own right, and have its own copyright.
- nitrogen 11y agoAFAIK US copyright law does not provide a "sweat of the brow" copyright[0]. For example, a faithful restoration/reproduction of a public domain image was still public domain in [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#US_copyright_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#US_copyright... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel....
- ohthehugemanate 11y agoThe description of these films and their value reads like a word for word explanation of why we have the public domain. The author described Warner Bros as the "Gold standard" - making re-releases on protected media one at a time, just in time to extend their copyright. No, the gold standard is the Library of Congress, digitizing thousands of Edison wax cylinders and putting them online for researchers, artists and curious people to use for free. The gold standard is allowing people to see and hear and reuse what these great artists created, because it's undeniably a part of our cultural heritage. Almost a hundred years later, and the third party inheritor of the rights is drip feeding paid access to the world. "Gold standard" indeed.
- rwmj 11y agoHere's a film that I'd like to see released properly: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087817/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087817/ Nothing Lasts Forever (1984). It even has many major stars in it, notably Bill Murray.
- vertis 11y agoSeems like a great opportunity to set up a crowdfunding model. Put proposed film up on Kickstarter, if it gets the necessary backing out it comes, otherwise it sits in the vault for a while longer.