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Fantasia - 35mm Project (Help Needed) (a WIP) — Page 6

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Anytime. Glad I could help. =)

Probably should’ve brought this up sooner, but that extended humming at the end of the Ave Maria also exists on the Blu-ray’s DTS 7.1 mix. If you have access to the audio, skip to the very end and listen closely.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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Tony I went back to listen and no, it is a different mix. I also recently got a copy of the Laserdisc rip of the film and checked too. Oddly enough the LD mono track is different to the VHS mono track.

Yes, all version have a second chorus after the first crescendo, but only the Mono VHS (and LP) mixes have the second chorus as loud as the first. All other versions including the mono Laserdisc, have the second repeat much quieter and distant than the first.
Speculation: The mono mix is the original recorded volume of the chorus, i.e. the final crescendo and fade out are all the same volume as sung. The stereo discrepancies might be a lost notation for maybe a rear pan or fade out instruction that ended up getting baked into the stereo mix as a reduced volume fade out.

  • VHS Mono/ 1961 LP mono: no fade on the end of Ave Maria
  • LD Mono/VHS Stereo/all stereo mixes: fade on the second chorus repeat of Ave Maria

Listen to all the versions here. They are labeled for each source. Compare the waveforms if you have to and see.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1THIyYqYxkg7cgFokxu6HU2kvYvluHI3l?usp=sharing

It may not matter much in the grand idea of things however it is just one of the many peculiarities surrounding Fantasia that keeps me interested.

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There’s been a misunderstanding. The extended audio I was referring to was the humming still heard even after the fade to black on the DTS 7.1 mix.

In regards to the chorus, the only conclusion I can draw from the volume differences in the mono to stereo mix is that, again, when Disney prepared the downmix for wider distribution in 1941, the opportunity to play with the original elements to prioritize different elements of the score, once again presented itself, and they did just that. What’s heard in the stereo mix is essentially what was heard on opening night-- the mixing on the mono track was prepared after the fact, and its mixing is completely unique from the final stereo. Therefore, not originally what was heard on November 13th, 1940. Ave Maria isn’t the only segment in mono with striking mixing differences from its stereo counterpart. In The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a cymbal clash is placed right over Mickey’s second dive into the water after he wakes up from his dream. In A Night on Bald Mountain, an almost muted but sharp, sinister brassy note can be heard just as Chernabog begins to play with hellfire. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies from Nutcracker? Just try lining up the mono mix to the original stereo track. Two completely different takes. Those are the few that come to mind. There’s plenty of other mixing minutiae that point to the mono mix being a total reworking of the original stems and not just a simple fold-down of the final theatrical stereo track, and I’ll try to point them out in some way in the (hopefully near) future, but trust me, they’re all over the place. The finale’s chorus mixing is only one.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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Starbond9 has done an excellent job patching the Laserdisc release with audio to fill in the seconds of gaps due to censorship and reinserting Sunflower. These mono and stereo tracks would be perfect alternate audio tracks for this ambitious project.

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That bridge will certainly be crossed once there’s a clearer picture of how this preservation project will be cut together. There’s nothing I can just slap the LaserDisc tracks over at the moment, and odds are the video will not be in perfect sync with the audio to the 1990 release anyway, so I’ll have to do all of the patch work myself if I decide to include those audio tracks. All in due time.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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TonyWDA said:

That bridge will certainly be crossed once there’s a clearer picture of how this preservation project will be cut together. There’s nothing I can just slap the LaserDisc tracks over at the moment, and odds are the video will not be in perfect sync with the audio to the 1990 release anyway, so I’ll have to do all of the patch work myself if I decide to include those audio tracks. All in due time.

Yes I understand. Every step on its own.

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CourtlyHades296 said:

Are there plans to make an Uncensored Ultimate 1990 Edition?

That is the project’s objective, yes: an uncut “general release” version of the film using the best visual and auditory elements currently available— and I do mean the very best. I may or may not have some big news to share before the year wraps. For now, that’s all I can say. Hoping to update here very soon. 🙂

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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is this going to be the definitive version of fantasia ever?

Fate is best Anime/Visual Novel.

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Also curious about the progress.

Project creator and film enthusiast.

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I have a second print on loan and am currently in the queue at the scanning facility. At the moment, they’re swamped with an incredibly time-consuming commission so it may be several weeks (minimum) until I get the invoice— barring unforseen events. It should be well worth the wait; without giving away too much too soon, I will say that this new print is perhaps the only one of its kind left in near-mint condition, complete without a single disruptive splice in it whatsoever, in gobsmackingly-good IB Technicolor. It has something of a reputation in collector/projectionist circles, so you can imagine my surprise when the owner offered to loan it for the project.

I’ll update here as soon as I have the files and start any preliminary color grading. Things are moving, just very slowly.

But they are moving right along.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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Recently saw Fantasia presented digitally, off what looked to simply be the Blu-ray, theatrically at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. The film, of course, was excellent as ever, but visually it really did grate. Can’t wait to see how this project eventually progresses.

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coreyatad said:

Recently saw Fantasia presented digitally, off what looked to simply be the Blu-ray, theatrically at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. The film, of course, was excellent as ever, but visually it really did grate. Can’t wait to see how this project eventually progresses.

Well in the meantime consider the releases I brought out to the Internet. They are uncensored, not digitally retouched, and feature Fantasound.

Go on archive.org and type fantasia restored laserdisc

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I’ll update here as soon as I have the files and start any preliminary color grading.

Great work Tony! One thing, I’m wondering why color grading is needed. At least in the images and sample you sent, the colors are just great (as I see it, much better than the official Blu-Ray).

“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working”
-The wind in the willows

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Depending on what scanning unit your print goes through, a digitized print seldom looks exactly as it does over a light table (which is how the pictures were taken) or when it’s projected. At least, in my experience, it doesn’t. So grading is necessary to get the image closer to how the print looked before scanning. Sometimes the adjustments to color, brightness, and contrast are minor, other times they’re dramatic, but in any case, grading is still needed to some degree, especially if there are inconsistencies in hue/saturation, gamma, and shadow detail across individual shots. For instance, the sample video posted here a year or so back absolutely needed correction, as there was an inordinate green veil over the image that didn’t belong there.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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OK thanks for your reply. Got it. Hope when you get the rest of the scan it’d be as close as possible to the print itself. BTW, out of curiosity, how would you compare the print you have to the recent Thunderbean 35mm release? (I mean video-wise, audio-wise they have pretty much screwed it I think)

“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working”
-The wind in the willows

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Color-wise, it’s a lot more consistent. I don’t say that to slight Thunderbean, but because their release comprised more than one source, it looks stunning half the time but badly faded and marked with visible matting the other half— likely from going through the same projector aperture plate so many times. Thankfully, both the prints I’m working with for this project have none of these anomalies, and they’re brimming with strong color density. Things are still moving at a glacial pace over here, but I promise that this project is anything but shelved.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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TonyWDA said:

Color-wise, it’s a lot more consistent. I don’t say that to slight Thunderbean, but because their release comprised more than one source, it looks stunning half the time but badly faded and marked with visible matting the other half— likely from going through the same projector aperture plate so many times. Thankfully, both the prints I’m working with for this project have none of these anomalies, and they’re brimming with strong color density.

Glad to hear. I also noticed another weird thing about the Thunderbean release - during the suger plum fairy segment, the instruments are somehow different from the original. I can’t explain why, but notice for instance how different it sounds on Thunderbean where the fairy sheds her light on the flowers (note: I’m talking about the first, mono track, not the surround one).

“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working”
-The wind in the willows

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Oh, yeah, I wrote about this in a previous comment. The mono soundtrack is its own dedicated mix, not simply a downmix of the stereo soundtrack. It sourced the original score stems and, what sounds like, outtakes for that portion of The Nutcracker Suite. If you try lining up the stereo and mono mixes, both versions refuse to lock together without extensive editing.

“You missed! How could you miss-- he was THREE FEET in front of you!”
– Mushu

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Really hope your project becomes a reality for us all. We need that perfect edition of Disney’s Fantasia. And this may be it.

It is truly insane that more than 20 years after the Internet became a staple of life, the laserdisc restoration releases I spearheaded and Thunderbean’s 35mm release are the only true alternatives to Disney’s official releases. And even those only began to exist in the last couple of years.

For now, this would be the best way to watch Fantasia: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Fantasia-Special-Edition-Laserdisc-Restoration-with-Sunflower-v2-2/id/96261