Well, dear readers, I got home very very late last night, therefore I am very very tired this morning. Therefore, there may be some unseemly typos which I will be too tired to fix. I did get up at an early hour to try to write these here notes, but something was awry or perhaps amok with the page that I write these here notes on. I could not access said page – it kept saying “website not responding”. I hate when it says that. How dare the website not respond when I got up so early just to write these here notes? That was just heinous (heinous, do you hear me?). Of course, Mr. Mark Bakalor told me it was me not his fancy shmancy page. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, he was trying to give me the Gaslight treatment, trying to make me think it was all my fault somehow, or the fault of aol or Internet Explorer.
Note from Mr. Mark Bakalor, “If he was able to get to the site, which he was, then he should have just as easily been able to get to the admin. section, which he wasn’t. Therefore, I suspected the problem was client side and not host… so there!”
But, luckily we’ve had a happy ending to the story (we love happy endings) and here we are, writing these here notes.
Last night I went to Todd AO labs and sat in on the transfer of my film, The First Nudie Musical. It was a very interesting experience. I’d never sat in on a telecine transfer before, and what they do is fairly amazing. First of all, let me tell you the sad story of the elements. Oh, yes, we will now have the sad story of the elements, but luckily there is a happy ending to the sad story of the elements (we love happy endings. But, to read the sad story of the elements, you will have to click on the Unseemly Button below.
And now, the Sad Story of the Elements by Bruce Kimmel.
The First Nudie Musical was shot in 35mm in 1975. It was released by Paramount Studios in early 1976. The prints were made by Metrolabs in Eastman color. That was all there was back in 1976, because Technicolor had sold all their dye transfer machines to China (IB Tech prints never faded) and they hadn’t quite gotten a stable film stock at that point (five or six years later they came up with an LPP film stock, which holds its color perfectly). At the time of the release, per my contract, I got a brand new 35mm print of the film. All this is preamble to doing the deal to release the upcoming DVD. Somehow, rather shockingly, the camera negative has disappeared. I have my suspicions as to where it went, but no on, not Metrolabs nor anyone else could find it. Also, the sound elements had disappeared with the camera negative. Well, I was petrified, because my brand new Paramount print of the film had faded and was left with about 1O% of its color, which means it was purple and brown. I had one other print, not in great shape, but which had about 20% of its color left, still a terrible situation. Luckily, the co-director of the film, Mark Haggard, had somehow acquired the one print done on a different film stock, Fuji, which although not perfect was much better than Eastman stock. That print had, thank heaven, held about 60% of its color and was actually in pretty good shape, too. Only the beginnings and ends of the reels had scratches and a handful of splices, the rest was pretty much excellent. My this is a long unseemly paragraph, isn’t it? If I’m not careful, Mr. Mark Bakalor will not only give me the Gaslight treatment, he’ll also bitch slap me.
So, we used the Fuji print to do the transfer. It still had a slightly purple cast to it, though, and I was really nervous about how it would turn out. But the genius transfer engineer and colorist somehow, by turning this knob and that knob, made the color absolutely perfect, as if it were shot yesterday. I couldn’t believe it, no purple cast at all, with vivid colors which popped incredibly well. There weren’t many splices at all, really, although tonight we’re going to try to see if we can use the beginnings and ends of each reel (only about thirty seconds per) from my mint print. He thinks he can match the color sufficiently well, and then we’ll have a perfectly marvelous DVD transfer. The sound will be transfered from the mint print, so that there won’t be any pops even if there’s a picture splice somewhere. I was so happy when I left there, I can’t tell you. It’s enhanced for widescreen tvs, and looks sharp, with really good density.
The other great thing is that its finally in its proper screen ratio. None of the home video releases have been right, they’ve all been full frame with the mattes just opened up. The open mattes means you can sometimes see right over the top of the sets, and sometimes occasionally see the boom mike. Horrible. Now, it’s perfect at about 1:77. Oh, joy, say I. We even reframed a couple of shots I’ve always hated, to make them look better. What fun it was. Happy ending indeed.
Our dear reader S. Woody White, left a comment yesterday (to view yesterday and all other days, merely click on the Unseemly Archive Button at the top of the page): He wanted to know what would be a good disc of mine to pair with Christiane Noll’s new Ira Gershwin album. Before I could even give it some thought, our very own Donald Feltham suggested Rebecca Luker’s Cole Porter album, and I couldn’t agree more. A perfect pairing.
Don’t forget to post your comments using the Unseemly Comment Box below. We look forward to them, and there haven’t been nearly enough of them. We don’t mean to be comment gluttons, but it’s always very heartening to see them.
I do hope all of you are preparing for a lovely and safe Thanksgiving. More on that tomorrow.