Just when you thought the flow of new Fantasia stuff would be extinguished, CMGF of originaltrilogy.com just came through with another amazing contraption and did more incredible work on it. To sum up, he obtained a 1956 scan of Fantasia (which is uncensored by default), restored the aspect ratio back to 4:3, patched up the lens switch scenes with footage from Thunderbean’s 35mm release, and synched it all with the patched laserdisc tracks from previous releases! The result is a mind blowing 35mm release that I didn’t think we’d be getting anytime soon! Here is his write up, starting with a disclaimer:
–start–
DISCLAIMER:
The 35mm footage we used is not from our scan and was supposed to be in originaltrilogy.com’s poita’s Fantasia project. I was given this by a member of originaltrilogy.com who worked with him, and I didn’t plan to release anything, but learning that the project is no longer being worked on, I thought it was a shame if no one would ever be able to view this print. So I contacted Class316 and we decided to let you all see this. All credit for the scan goes to poita and his coworkers.
This is the 1956 release of Fantasia on 35mm, squeezed back to 4:3 and synced with the two patched laserdisc tracks: Fantasound and mono. A minor color correction has been done on it, mainly because of the need to fix some brightness/ contrast issues. Also, the 15-minute intermission was inserted back in, using the opening card from Thunderbean’s 35mm release (which is similar to the intermission card).
We used the 1956 print as the main source for the video, but most of it is stretched to widescreen, and in some scenes there’s a lens switch to move between 4:3 and 2:20. As a result, those scenes were not usable and were replaced with Thunderbean’s 35mm release and color corrected to match the rest of the video.
A scene from the opening is missing on the laserdisc version, so it didn’t sync with the 35mm footage. For the Fantasound mix, I had a stereo mag soundtrack of the opening. For the mono mix, I used Thunderbean’s optical mono to replace the partially missing audio from the Laserdisc mono track.
It took a lot of time to get this one done, so I hope you all enjoy it!
–end–