I’m working on a fan restoration/preservation effort of “The Last Man on Earth” starring Vincent Price, I chose this movie for a few reasons:
The movie was never officially copyrighted and is therefore public domain
It’s got Vincent Price in it
It’s based on the Book by Richard Matheson, and the script was written partially by him
It’s based on the same book as “I am ledgend” and is better than it in my opinion
Numerous transfers to DVD and VHS were done badly by third party companies.
So, let’s get down to the details, I know someone who owns this on 16mm film, he used a digital workprinter an aquentience’s place of employment to get it into a file that he then supplied me with.
I then went to a local target store and bought this film on DVD to compare it to the telecine of the film my friend supplied me with. The DVD Release was done (badly I might add) by a third party company who did a terrible job. So that inspired me to do my fan restoration.
Here’s a shot from the DVD Release, it’s in a widescreen format I rarely see. Also, the lines in the shot below are noticeable throughout the whole DVD.
Here’s a screenshot of my telecine after some preliminary denoising and a little sharpening and resize to anamorphic widescreen, I’m not the best at editing, and I did what I could in avisynth, but it definitely looks better than the DVD release. Also, the screens aren’t the exact same frame, but the DVD doesn’t have the same scene as the telecine so I found a shot a couple seconds ahead where he’s in the same position.
I have little/some experience in video editing, and no experience in audio restoration, or making those cool DVD menus you guys are so good at. So if anyone wants to help me out let me know. I have an ftp server we can use as well.