A Charlie Brown Christmas: The 1965 Recreation (Complete!)

On December 9, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted on CBS, quickly becoming a beloved holiday tradition for millions.

However, during its creation, the production faced a tight deadline and skepticism from network executives, forcing the team to rush the special to completion.

A year later, the creators revisited the project to fine-tune details they felt could be improved, and that updated version went on to air/be released as the final, definitive version of the special.

Quoted from the book A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Making of a Tradition:

“When we saw the finished show, we thought we had killed it. It had so many warts and bumps and lumps and things. A year later we fixed up a few things, but we never completely recreated the show. The inconsistencies and little problems seem to make it even more endearing to a lot of people, and Sparky never wanted to change it.”

Due to this, there has never been a proper restoration of this 1965 version of the special, which includes things such as:

• The Coca-Cola sponsorships.
• Non-revised scenes.
• Animation errors.

I have taken upon the opportunity to restore this version of the special using multiple sources, along with adding additional content to the special, such as:

• Special features (Includes A Christmas Miracle: The Making of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the original promotional ad, and my own personal restoration of *My Charlie Brown Christmas, an edit to A Charlie Brown Christmas made by the cast of Scrubs for their 2003 Christmas party.)
• A brand new color correction to the 4K Blu Ray’s, using publicly released animation cels as color reference, and color corrections and restorations of the 16mm film scan for removed scenes.
• Brand new custom subtitles using the Peanuts font and typography, cross referenced by Schultz’s comics to better reflect character personality and delivery.

The video sources include:

• 2 seperate 4K Blu-Ray uploads.
• 16mm scan by Thunderbean (for all other removed scenes)
• Garrett Gilchrist’s restoration’s of the removed Coca-Cola opening and credits (provided on his Patreon)

For audio, the only track that will be provided with this release is the 16mm optical audio (from Thunderbean’s release.)

If anyone has any more A Charlie Brown Christmas-related material that they want to provide for this release, please PM me!

* This is a different restoration than the other Scrubs restoration that has been posted before by goofydylan8.

Love it, I can’t wait to see the finished product!

UPDATE 1

Color correction is finished for the 4K Blu-Ray’s.

Subtitle work is done, but not synced just yet.

The DVD extra has been ripped from my own collection and will be added at a later date.

There is one DVD extra that I am looking for though: The Making of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the special that aired on ABC in 2001 with Whoopi Goldburg. The special was a special feature on the DVD for I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown, but I cannot seem to find a proper remux of it anywhere. If anyone has this special, please PM me with a copy!

(Yes, there is a copy on Youtube, though it seems to be in very low quality, which is why I ask for the remux.)

UPDATE 2

Color correction has begun on the 16mm reels. Researching into how to remove the prominent blue line seen on the scan.

The Making of A Charlie Brown Christmas has been found thanks to @sharkboy!

Will post progress as soon as I find a method to remove the blue line in the scan.

UPDATE 3

Sadly, I could not find a proper method to remove the blue lines 100%, so the 16mm footage will remain as is. Color corrections will still be applied though.

Subtitles are finished!

Work has begun on the Scrubs edit.

Will hopefully release the project in its entirety soon before the holiday’s end.

Thank you all for your patience!

WXM said:

orion6464 said:

Sadly, I could not find a proper method to remove the blue lines 100%

I thought one of the first things AI would be great for with movie restoration stuff was doing 95%-100% greatness removing scratches, emulsion lines, etc. from footage (and almost or fully-perfectly removing burned-in subtitles), but alas :sad face:

Most software that I tried did do a really good job, but sadly due to the quality of the footage the blue lines are nearly impossible to fully 100% remove.

Everything else is finished, though, besides the Scrubs restoration. Gonna hopefully see if I can release it before the end of the holidays, but if not I’ll see if I can release it sometime in January.

Thank you all for your patience. 😃

FINAL UPDATE

Sadly, due to technical issues, the Scrubs restoration is cancelled.

However, as a consultation, I have included:

• New footage from the Thunderbean Blu-Ray and color corrected by me.
• New CBS in color intro added by me.
• New content added to the special features such as DVD specials and promos.
• Soundtrack added to the special features, which is a rip of the UHQR vinyl, of which only 2,500 copies were ever made. The vinyls are made with master tapes and secondary material, meaning it is the highest quality version of the soundtrack ever made.

Apologies for the cancellation. Hopefully the rest will make up for it.

And with that, the project is FINISHED!

PM me for a link!