DVwerks

Michael2damax said:

Hi, I read some of your Monkees alt soundtrack posts and I was wondering if these 8 tapes you needed to get transferred are from that? If so, what episodes are they and what era of rerun are they from?

I have 8 35mm pints from the CBS/ABC Saturday morning run featuring replaced songs:
The Spy Who Came In From The Cool
Don’t Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth
Your Friendly Neighborhood Kidnappers
Success Story
The Chaperone
The Case of The Missing Monkee
Monkees Marooned
The Frodis Caper

SilverWook said:

Have you looked into 16mm syndication prints? There must be some out there as with many other shows from era.

Sorry for the long delay in responding…

I’ve heard of 16mm prints of original, revised and syndicated episodes. I think the Monkees fan community traded some tapes years ago sourced from 16mm. I also picked up a Monkees Kool-Aid ad on 16mm which I had transferred.

I’m still hoping to get in contact with someone to transfer the 35mm prints I located, and I’m aware of a couple others out in collecting circles.

I do think VHS home recordings from around the world could be an unexplored resource, as we have seen alternate masters made it to the UK and Japan, but most of what I’ve been able to collect is from US broadcasts.

If the audio has the dialogue mixed equally in both left and right channels (centered in stereo image), you can use tools in some audio programs to isolate the “center.” In Audacity, there’s a Vocal Removal and Isolation filter for this. Developed to remove vocals from songs (usually mixed in the center of the stereo image), but they added the option to isolate the center instead of just removing it. There are probably expensive plugins that do a cleaner job, but the Audacity freebie isn’t bad.

SpacemanDoug said:

Don’t know how you could acquire these since I’ve never seen VHS rips of syndication airings

Sorry dude

I think it’s possible there are early 80s tapes out there to find if VHS heads who aren’t the biggest Monkees fans get tipped off to find them. At the very least, I have been in contact with fans who digitized the song excerpts from those episodes. Having copies of the full shows would be nice, because the end credits sometimes had spliced-in updates to the song info.

By spreading the word about this, I’m also hoping people in countries outside the US may dig up recordings of The Monkees episodes because there could be unique variations that went to other territories.

I just acquired some 35mm film prints I need to transfer as well.

Hello all, a passion project for me has been finding as many sources as possible for alternate versions of The Monkees episodes.

A very nice Blu-ray set was released a few years back which presented HD transfers of the original broadcast versions. Some bonus clips were included showing alternate songs inserted into repeats of the shows, but for various reasons (budget, licensing, time), only some of the known alternates were used. The opportunity to officially represent the show’s full alternate history was unfortunately lost.

For those not aware:
Of 32 episodes produced in the first season of The Monkees, 14 of them re-aired in the summer of 1967 with newer songs replacing the originals.

The second life of The Monkees was on Saturday mornings from 1969 to 1973, first on CBS, then ABC. Because home video recording hadn’t taken hold yet, this era is very difficult to document. Sources have indicated about 24 of the 58 episodes replaced songs for these airings, and it is likely some of the 1967 alterations carried over as well.

When the show went into syndication is 1975, 13 of the 1967 repeat versions were included, but only one of the 1969-1973 versions was included. This syndication package aired in many US markets up to around 1984/85, so there is potential of home recordings to be found in vintage tape collections.

The big Monkees revival in 1986 brought new film-to-tape transfers to MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1 and syndication. Four of the episodes carried over from summer 1967, two from 1969-1973, but the rest were in their original broadcast configuration. These are the most common home recordings available because of the huge spike in popularity and frequent reruns.

By the time the show came to VHS and DVD in the 90s, original broadcast prints were used for transfers and the alternate soundtrack versions faded further into obscurity.

So what is still out there to be found?

Tantalizingly, there is audio evidence of one second season episode of The Monkees with an altered song that aired in the U.K. but not in the US. A film print or home recording of this episode (Hillbilly Honeymoon) would be the holy grail of this project.

A small number of the 1969-73 episodes are in the hands of collectors in the form of 35mm prints. There is always a possibility more of them could be found in private collections. These are the most desirable because the rumored song replacements were quite unusual.

Some of the 1969-73 repeats were also known to be sent to foreign countries. A 1990s Japanese laserdisc box set of 40 episodes included three 1967 revisions and one 1969-73 revision. The Japanese language tracks here were edited to match the songs on the English tracks. It is sometimes evident that the Japanese dub tracks featured alternate songs before this editing, so there is a possibility more alternate song versions aired in Japan where they could have been recorded by home tapers.

I think there could be currently “lost” 1969-73 audio tracks floating around on international airings up through the 1980s which may be preserved on VHS or Beta. Because of this, I would love to hear from anyone with home recordings of Monkees episodes from around the world.

For this preservation, I have the eight 35mm prints on the way. If anyone could connect me with a way to transfer the prints, I would be quite grateful!

Thanks, DVwerks

I have an opportunity to acquire some 35mm prints of a television series. Eight 30 min. episodes. These versions are unique compared to any syndicated or home video versions, and audio is important. I would like to figure out a total cost to transfer the eight prints before I make an offer on them.

Any leads or referrals are welcome, thank you!

DVwerks

zeropc said:

are there any news regarding taxi driver?

while the blu-ray looks fantastic, it misses out on the original mono mix. heck, even the dvds never got it. so getting the mix from the good old criterion ld as a untouched .wav file would be awesome.

I had a friend who purchased the Taxi Driver CAV LD and brought it to me to make a DVD out of it several years ago. I ripped the movie soundtrack, isolated music track and Scorsese commentary and then I split all the still frame bonus materials into separate images and recreated the galleries in DVD form. I don't have the original uncompressed files on the audio, just the AC3 audio muxed to the DVD. I would like to get the DVD into circulation.

none said:

Here's a preview of the 30 sec DVD intro, the 40 sec Main Menu and 15 sec Options Menu for the ESB disc.  (before they get VCR'd)

http://noneinc.com/SWUE/SWUE-ESB-065/SWUE-ESB-065-desktop.m4v

I think that clip looks great as-is! Great editing. It has enough of the old VHS look along with the channel changing to get the feeling I imagine you are going for.

iojabba said:

It is not surprising at all that there are frames missing at reel changes because it is common practice to cut off the first and last frame of each real while "building" a print for projection. It makes it easier for the projectionist to put the correct head and tail back on each reel. So, I would expect (at least at the theater in the US) to find 2 missing frames at each reel change. It is kind of interesting that sometimes these frames are mission when converted to video.

I think that it is interesting that there are versions out there that have the frames and versions that do not. I wonder which is intended? It is possible that an extra frame was left on each reel in order to account for this practice.

This can give some insight into which versions (on video) share comon ancestry (from the same print).

I also wonder if cutting these frames is not practiced at certain facilities, and is at others.

The materials that would be transferred to home video are not treated the same way, so the point is not really relevant. For telecine, each reel would be scanned independently, without cutting the head or tail.

What might be a factor with interlaced transfers is joining the reels together on a master where the first or last image from the reel is partially interlaced with a black frame.

Back to the print screening, however, some forward-thinking locations do NOT cut one frame in, because as the print travels from location to location, you lose more and more of the heads and tails. At each successive location, projectionists will often ignore the splice that already existed and move to the next frame.

I've read such great things about both ABC and Dark Jedi's projects, I'd love to see this one. I'm not on the spleen (I get most of my stuff from the green demon), so I'll need to look elsewhere.

I saw the Jedi scene in person at Celebration and it definitely had the appearance of workprint quality - much like the Biggs scenes from the CD-ROM.

Warbler said:

Were the audience members just a bunch of yes-people?  If the audience were comprised of real Star Wars fans,  I would think at least half the room would have booed when Lucas came out on stage.  I know if I had been there, I would have booed.

But would you have paid the money for a ticket and waited outside the convention center for up to eight hours just to boo Lucas?

No doubt the audience was biased - you really had to put in the bucks and the effort to get into the theater to begin with. I did it, pretty much just to have the experience of camping out for SOMETHING. But I also have loved Star Wars since I was a kid in the 80s, and I was still thrilled to be there, even though I would really like to see the original films released in their original form.

The promise of deleted scenes from the original trilogy was a nice surprise, though.

I have been a huge Kevin Smith fan from the beginning, and I know I have some gems in my collection here and there.

Primarily, I recorded lots of promotion for "Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back," including an E! special, an MTV2 special, a night of Kevin Smith material on FX, appearances on the Tonight Show, Politically Incorrect, and Regis & Kelly.

I have an MTV "Secret Stash" special done around the introduction of the MTV bumpers that were later recycled as bonus features (with the copyrighted music stripped out, natch).

I know I have a couple of Kevin's "Roadside Attractions" bits he did for The Tonight Show.

I hope I still have in my possession Kevin and Joey Lauren Adams on the MTV incarnation of Squirt TV.

Hey everybody,

New guy here, looking to take up a project or two to get into the Fan Edit/Preservation hobby.

The film that seemed a natural for me to begin with is “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.” First, because the film itself was released in two different incarnations and second, because the DVD was really weak compared to the packed editions done for the sequels.

If there are any materials out there I am not aware of, I’d be happy to hear about them. As it stands, I know of the following:

• Austin Powers Psychedelic Pussycat Swingers Club MTV special

• Comedy Central “Spyography” special

• Frau Farbisina wrap-arounds for TBS premiere of the film

• Ming Tea “BBC” music video

• Costume design and alternate poster galleries

I never taped the original Austin Powers “Spyograpy,” so that is the main item missing in my collection.

I have a first-generation VHS copy of the MTV special that looks pretty good, but it’s slightly marred by some noise and irregular brightness (damn cable company didn’t put out a clean signal). Would love to see if anyone else has a copy.

I also have the TBS version on tape, but I haven’t checked the quality in a long time.

The music video and image galleries were special features on the laserdisc that were NOT included on the DVD - the laser was licensed to Pioneer, but the DVD was done by New Line/Warner. I have these as well.

The film itself is ripe for some sort of custom DVD for a few reasons:

First, the original DVD had an altered aspect ratio of 2:1 where the theatrical version was 2.35 scope (filmed Super35).

Second, most people don’t seem to know that the international cut of the film contained a few scenes that weren’t in the US version - along with several extended and alternate sections. The aftermaths of the henchmen’s deaths are in this version, but a cameo by Christian Slater as a security guard wasn’t included as a deleted scene in the US.

For fans of Mike Myers, I also have plans to transfer my VHS copies of two MTV Wayne’s World specials that were done in conjunction with the two films. I have a couple different copies of these, hopefully not all in SLP. Any other Wayne’s World materials would be welcome for a preservation set.

The samples of artwork for this project are incredibly beautiful and professional looking. I love it when I see a homemade or fan project that is at first glance indistinguishable from a commercially released item. Kudos!