Back from screening and lunch meeting. I'd say that the second half of Nudie Musical looks pretty immaculate with only the occasional white specks of negative dirt (it would take another twenty hours to clean all of that up and it really isn't worth it - it's so minor. They did an amazing job of removing the cue marks and all the light scratches (not that there were that many) - but the most amazing thing is that they cleaned up the end credits, which were riddled with big fat ugly gold and green emulsion scratches up and down both sides of the image. Those are now completely gone and I do mean not a trace.
But there were a few things in the first fifteen minutes of the transfer that I thought could be better, clean-up wise, and they probably just prioritized what they could do in the time allotted. Some of that had to do with the white negative specks, but mainly had to do where reel one and one A are joined together (at the ten-minute mark). Whoever cut the original camera negative did a very poor splice there and the image has always had a little hiccup, plus the ten seconds before and after the join were still scratchy - so I approved doing two more hours and they'll take care of that section and told me they can absolutely get rid of the hiccup in the picture - that will be a wonderful thing. Of course, it's just more money, so we really have to get this Kickstarter thing happening because as of Monday I'll be writing a rather frightening check to the lab. Meantime, I told them I can come back tomorrow to just see that fifteen minutes and then it's approved. Also, the sound had a teeny bit of distortion but I'm going to assume that was the room we were in because we didn't hear any of that doing the audio layback. It wasn't bad, but it shouldn't really be there at all, so I asked my gal to have the guy who did the layback check on it, especially during the main titles and opening scene.
