SB is scanned, Fantasia Kostal has some delays but is mostly done. Anyone can still donate to these, donations haven’t come close to paying for these ones. 😃
Yes, that print had a Buena Vista logo not a RKO logo (I think it’s a 70’s re-print).
Just a reminder to everyone this is a VERY long way to being paid for right now, any help will be very much appreciated!
Charles Threepio said:
Apparently, Fanres.com is too damn bigoted against people like me with brains so big they don’t know what to do with them, so I’ve given up on them.Oh no, please don’t bring this nonsense here. Your threads were removed for good reason. 2 Years of spamming vaporware projects with nothing to show for it.
These KTP collections are so absurdly broad and ambitions but with zero details of what you plan to do or how to do it. We don’t need these here.
+1 to that.
Some previews are now available to donors, I think I’ve contacted everyone - but if I haven’t shoot me a message.
Thanks!
I’ve gone over our scan, for the most part it looks good. We need to do some re-scans, but it’s only 1 reel that is problematic. Overall the print is very clean, and also very good condition with little damage. I’ll be sending out some previews to donors shortly.
Thanks all!
I am excited to announce that this project will be utilising two prints. Here is a sample from the other print with some rough colour correction:
And here’s the above screenshot with a very quick regrade to match:
Both prints are very badly faded. But we have quite a bit of latitude with the colour as you see, and the aim is to recover the original colour grading.
I’m not suggesting the above scene is supposed to look blue like the grading above. I don’t know myself yet whether it is supposed to be green or blue. Grading the film accurately without any un-faded film to compare against is nearly impossible - but good news! We have scanned some unfaded footage of Alien too, and it has been graded to projection accurate, so we should be able to fully recover the correct grading of the entire film without having to “guess” whether certain scenes should look “more blue” or “more green”.
All in all a lot of work is going into this project. But right now we need to pay for our scan, so if anyone would like to help with donations please get in contact. We’ll be working out some samples to share with donors soon as well.
Thanks everyone!
Scan (at 4K):
Graded to projection:
A picture of our glorious scan:
Here it is projection-accurate:
And here it is corrected for fade:
I trust they look the same, they’re just scanned very differently. Notice the colour of the soundtrack - that’s always exactly the same colour on Technicolor because it’s a silver-applicated track that is printed separately to the picture.
I got an extra donation, THANKS!
Here’s a screenshot from the existing Cinderella scan (download at full size ~2.5K). Hmmm… interesting!
One of the existing donors sent through a contribution. THANKS! You’re a legend. Anyone else who’s interested in helping please get in contact with me ASAP!
I now have a video preview of Reel 1 available to all donors. I haven’t been able to contact everyone just yet, but don’t worry. I’ll be sending a group message on OT with the link to a few people and individually contacting others. If anyone doesn’t get the link but they think they should feel free to message me. Please do not share the preview - it’s a low quality encode that isn’t intended to show the full quality of the scan.
I will work to get previews of the other reels to donors as well, you just may have to give me a bit of time as I don’t even have the scan myself yet. I’m getting them at the goodwill of an intermediary.
Anyone who didn’t get a chance to donate but is interested in getting access to the preview files can donate towards ALIEN. I won’t be able to give out full-reel previews for Alien, but don’t worry I will work out some previews for donors at some point of the scan as well.
Thanks everyone!
Yes and it was a deliberate directorial choice because BATB is quite a dark film overall - it’s much darker than Aladdin, Lion King, or The Little Mermaid. Yet there are other dark scenes like this:
With the beast fully visible. It’s the early scenes where he is obscured in shadow so he can be revealed properly later.
As I’ve always said, no home release of this film has ever looked right:
It is possibly the most modified of all the Disney animations on home release. Every home release going back to VHS and Laserdisc has made the beast visible way earlier than he is in the actual film. It changes the entire mood of these scenes where the beast is but a silhouette.
Alien has been scanned, but we haven’t paid for the scan yet. We need to pay 720€, if anyone is able to donate to this please get in contact ASAP! This won’t slow down Cinderella and Pinocchio because those are with other scanners. BatB has already been paid in full and delivered to us.
Although it took a very long time (18 months!) I can say that we got a bargain with this one. The scanner has done a lot of extra work for us, even fade-correcting the scan and doing multiple re-scans for free to make sure that the colour was fully recoverable. If you can help please get in contact!
Anyone who donates will get early access to BatB previews.
No unfortunately not. I’d suggest physically cleaning the film instead of digital cleaning, it’s a lot less work. You can get the demo version of PF Clean here:
https://www.toolfarm.com/demo_downloads
It’s in the “standalone” category.
I’ve sent you a message, click the speech bubble at the top-right of the page to the left of your avatar.
BATB has been scanned. I’ll have some previews in about a week or so, we’re sending the hard drive to one of my friends.
I use DaVinci Resolve, it’s powerful and free.
Whatever you can transfer. I’ll have the audio transferred off two prints as it is (well 2/3rds of the second print or so), so it’s only to provide an alternate audio option for people wanting “higher quality”. I’ll put up a short video sample shortly (not here in my thread) so you can see and hear the quality of the transfer. I won’t be including any tracks from DVD/Bluray so the only tracks I’m interested in are Laserdisc or other older home video formats or 16mm or 35mm tracks obviously (they can be recorded straight from a projector’s audio out).
Have you seen the Amazon Prime version? Is it any good? It’s in the correct aspect ratio at least…
I’m interested in the audio from Pinocchio if you rip it. Don’t need the video, obviously, as I’m getting a scan done.
I hope to have a release from the borrowed print ready by the end of the month - but that is for donors only. A release from my print is probably a year or more away at this point. But FYI, if the old Cindy scan is blowing your mind - just wait until you see Pinocchio. I have one of the best prints in private hands.
I’ve had to increase the funding goal. This is just for scanning related costs and won’t cover the full amount either, but is enough that I could afford the rest. If it helps motivate you guys - between I paid about $2500 to purchase these two prints.
So far I’ve only had one donation towards these, from freedomland (THANKS!) I’ll be getting back to everyone that has offered shortly. 😄 I’ll also be starting a ledger so if anyone wants anonymity please say so in private conversation.
RU.08,
What Mr. Cook said was that they would find the best settings for a film and then hope they didn’t stray while they monitored the transfer to check. The machine was a best to change the settings on (an hour and a half at the start of the day) and between the two comments and many others in the 90 minute interview I understand that they did not tweak the scenes but rather looked for the best settings for the entire film (not sure if he meant for each reel or for the entire film).
That’s not what he said. He said they had to calibrate the machine every morning, and that they had to fine-tune the settings for every film they transferred because they were all different. Nothing about that suggests a transfer as straight-forward as you’re imagining.
He never mentions using a special telecine film. He never talks about 16mm. He talks about interpostives and internegatives which are the two intermediate steps in chemical processing from o-neg to release print. Both are lower contrast than the release prints.
When he talked about using an interneg he said “the interneg is actually another film stock …” I’m not sure exactly what he meant, but when he talked about the film being too fragile to fast-forward on the Rank II it was in the context of using internegs.
And according to the man at BBC interviewed about the next generation machine (Mr. Cook was using a Rank Cinetel 2 and the man at the BBC circa 1990 was using Rank Cinetel 3), it could do release prints, negatives, and intermediates. I conformed that with an independent source. So it can do anything on 35mm or 16mm from the o-neg to a release print. Please refer to all his comments about the 1982 telecine that happened right before he joined the team and refer to the images of the LD archive of that telecine that I have included. It is a fine transfer that really contradicts what you are trying to say. Per Mr. Cook’s interview, it was a release print that was turning green and they had to restore the color rather than just do a straight transfer. From how it turned out, they didn’t do a bad job and the dark areas contain far more detail than the Technicolor prints.
We’ve been over this already. If release prints worked so well why were they using dupe-negs and interpositives?
Just because it can do something doesn’t mean it does it well or that it is designed for it. Blackmagic claim their $30K BMD 4K scanner is designed to transfer prints - but it’s a complete lie. I can show you samples I have from positive prints transferred on it - they come out noisy as fuck. Anyone in the business could tell you the same thing - you would not use that scanner to transfer theatrical prints, and there may be other types of film it struggles with as well. Now does that mean that everyone does the right thing? Of course not - I have no doubt that some small companies have installed these and are using them to transfer prints - but as Ian Malcolm would say “just because you can doesn’t mean you should”.
And you are incorrect about prints not having crushed blacks. Please refer to the Technicolor scans. Either Mike Verta’s samples, DrDre’s scan, or the full film release as 4k77. It is full of shots where the dark areas are just a blob of darkness where all the telecines show an abundance of detail. We know that at least one telecine was from a release print (1982), at least two were from interpositives, and some from internegatives (interpositives would not have the reel change cues and internegatives would). Not one of them is from a special telecine transfer (not surprising since none of these are TV station telecines which is where you might find a special 16mm telecine print).
As I said, prints don’t hold as much detail in the dark areas, not even IB prints. It’s not because the blacks were “crushed” (the black point being set lower than shadow detail).
Your theory of the nature of the source of the telecines is not born out by the abilities of the machines used, the interviews with two different telecine operators, or the accounts of the sources of other telecines which agree with what Mr. Cook has said. I think the evidence presented makes it very clear how Fox did telecines and that it was from a release print or intermediate (the O-neg was too precious most of the time except when no other prints were available such as the Chaplin films). That matches what I have always heard and observed from watching movies on various movie channels from across the years. A great many telecines are made from theatrical prints, especially for older technicolor films where a full restoration would have to be done to realign the 3 strip Technicolor negatives - pretty cost prohibitive for a telecine for TV viewing. We could continue to discuss this, but I think the horse is dead and the evidence I have posted is pretty clear cut. Fox never used a special print for the Star Wars telecines. It was always a print on hand. Even the print used for the Definitive Collection was not one done specifically for that and was a standard interpositive.
We’ve been over this, I already said that negatives and inter-positives and other lab film would transfer just as well as a telecine print, but be on much more fragile film. I’m not sure what you think this proves… you only have the accounts of one distributor, and they were not using release prints as matter of course. Lab film is not referred to as “prints”, so the film they used for the DC was an interpositive film not a print.
Your continued comments about a low contrast print match the nature of interpostives and internegatives so I don’t know why you keep insisting that it had to be a special print when the evidence says otherwise.
What I said was that theatrical prints transfer poorly, and are more difficult for the telecine operator. As for what the telecine machines were designed to handle, you just have to listen to what Mr Cook said - the machine would tear apart lab film if used to fast-forward and stop. This is undoubtedly because when the Mk II was designed (in 1964) it was designed for TV broadcast not for home video. They didn’t imagine having to routinely work with lab film.
For a huge film archive like Fox, Paramount, MGM/Republic, WB, and Universal each have, having to make a special print for each telecine would become costly. Why do that when you can just buy a machine that can do anything. The Rank Cinetel was just that - a machine that use any source material.
Striking a low-contrast 16mm print for telecine would be a lot cheaper than having to replace a worn out 35mm interpositive. As I’ve already been over this, just because you can transfer theatrical prints on a telecine doesn’t mean they are easy to work with and produce nice results. They don’t. I’m sure the distribution company was not asking the film studios to send them theatrical prints, that would be almost last on their list of preferred film to work with.