
Too many classic films remain buried in studios' vaults - howsilly
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20151025-column.html
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ohthehugemanate
The description of these films and their value reads like a word for word
explanation of why we have the public domain. The author described Warner Bros
as the "Gold standard" \- making re-releases on protected media one at a time,
just in time to extend their copyright.

No, the gold standard is the Library of Congress, digitizing thousands of
Edison wax cylinders and putting them online for researchers, artists and
curious people to use for free. The gold standard is allowing people to see
and hear and reuse what these great artists created, because it's undeniably a
part of our cultural heritage.

Almost a hundred years later, and the third party inheritor of the rights is
drip feeding paid access to the world. "Gold standard" indeed.

------
slg
There are technical angles to this that weren't mentioned in the article. For
example, we are constantly getting better at restoring and digitizing film. If
we digitized a lot of these films 20 years ago, they wouldn't look nearly as
good as today (and those digitized today will probably look like crap on our
8k TVs of the future).

Countering that is the fragile nature of film. Not only do they degrade over
time, but they are also highly flammable. When you store thousands of them in
vaults, it isn't unheard of for the entire thing to literally explode. We have
gotten better at preventing that over the last few decades, but that was a
consistent problem for much of the 20th century. If we don't digitize some of
these soon, we are running the risks that they will be lost to time.

~~~
MichaelGG
Scanning 35mm at 4K is likely to be as good as it's gonna get, right? This
link seems to indicate so:
[http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/pixels.html](http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/pixels.html)
\- So it seems like the technical capacity is there to get nearly all the info
out of 35mm film, today.

I do appreciate even 720p copies of film, as the quality just looks so, so,
much better than stuff from the 80s/90s targeted at VHS/DVD. The biggest sin
being the idiotic producers' idea to record Pink Floyd PULSE at Earl's Court
for live transmission, and thus use low quality recording equipment. It's one
of the best visually-amazing concerts, and there will never be a high-quality
version, ever. (After a long time to restore it, they released a DVD version,
but it's not even really DVD quality.)

~~~
devindotcom
From what I understand, 4K is about the right size for getting most of the
detail out of the film. It's sort of 35mm's native resolution. But because
it's an analog medium, it essentially has unlimited detail - doing it at a
higher rez just means better detail on grain and so on, and also allows more
latitude for future digital work.

In the same way, you could adequately document a painting with a 30-megapixel
photo, but if you want to _completely_ document it, you'll be working with
x-rays, depth maps, restorers, color technicians etc. It depends a lot on your
goal. For a great-looking copy of a movie you'll watch happily, 4K is great.
But there may be other uses or applications out there that require or benefit
from more.

~~~
glomph
The thing is you don't really get better detail on grain. You just get
different noise. There just isn't more detail on a 35mm frame.

~~~
devindotcom
Oh, I know, the grain is the limit of detail provided by the film. I mean that
with a high resolution scan you will actually get better detail on the grain
itself, the shape of the actual crystals. Probably a needless level of detail,
sure, but like capturing an image of a painting down to a level where you can
see the individual hairlines in a brush stroke... hell, why not?

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fallous
More disturbing is the refusal to make available movies that were incredibly
significant culturally at the time of release but are now considered
"offensive" to modern sensibilities. Disney's Song of the South is a prime
example, despite the fact that James Baskett was awarded an Oscar for his
portrayal of Uncle Remus... the first black man to receive an Oscar and only
the second black person to do so (Hattie McDaniel won in 1939 for her
portrayal of Mammy in Gone With the Wind.)

Try and encounter someone who doesn't know the song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", then
ask them the origin. Most people under 30 have never seen the movie, and those
that have did so using unauthorized sources.

~~~
stordoff
It's not ideal, but at least the VHS release of Song of the South is fairly
easy to find in the UK. I had it as kid (I'm 25 FWIW) and there are plenty of
copies for sale on Amazon.

It doesn't help that some people are very quick to claim something is
offensive to them / a category of people, and can rather vocal about it, even
if the thing in question is totally inoffensive (for example, I saw a forum
thread this morning claiming that using 'niggles' to describe minor hardware
issues was a 'borderline racist' term).

~~~
newman314
I'm floored that someone would define "niggles" as borderline racist. That's
just ignorant.

I hope you pointed them towards a dictionary.

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ZenoArrow
I would love to spend time watching these old films, it's a shame the
restoration costs are so high. Is there any way they could be digitised in
their current form, released without restoration on a streaming service, and
then allow the relative popularity of the films amongst modern audiences
influence the priority in which films are restored?

I'd rather have that than to let these films be lost forever. I enjoy the
charm of films from the first half of the 20th century, I don't mind if I have
to watch them at a lower quality.

~~~
jbaiter
I did not read the article, so I don't know if it was mentioned, but Warner
actually has such a program:
[http://instant.warnerarchive.com/](http://instant.warnerarchive.com/)

Lots of non-restored films (mostly from VHS/TV captures) are also circulating
on BitTorrent, there are a few invite-only places that specialize in that kind
of thing.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Thanks. Yes, the Warner program is mentioned in the article. Looks like the
content has been restored though. I'm trying to find a way of accessing the
content that is unlikely to be restored without demonstrating the demand.

------
devindotcom
This reminds me of a very good read on film restoration focused on the Star
Wars films. Lots of interesting info about how film degrades, what can and
can't be done to save it, and so on.

[http://fd.noneinc.com/secrethistoryofstarwarscom/secrethisto...](http://fd.noneinc.com/secrethistoryofstarwarscom/secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html)

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eevilspock
As for the great film that _has_ been restored, I'll repost what @sotojuan
posted a few days ago:

"About film: If you have Hulu, watch the Criterion Collection films on it.
Criterion is a company that releases and remasters some of the best films of
all time (from all countries!), and about 600 of them are on Hulu."

[https://www.criterion.com/library/expanded_view?m=hulu&p=1](https://www.criterion.com/library/expanded_view?m=hulu&p=1)

~~~
walterbell
Do the Hulu Criterion streams include extras like commentary and making-of
interviews?

~~~
intopieces
No, these are restricted to the discs. Don't want to give too much away :)

------
RUG3Y
My grandfather works for one of the studios. He's cleaning up and digitizing
films that have never been released other than in theaters. They're slowly
releasing these old films one at a time, I'm not sure where you can buy them
though.

~~~
yitchelle
Can you elaborate what happens to the films after it has been digitized?

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dbcooper
Equally frustrating is when well regarded modern films are unavailable due to
rights issues.

 _The Big Fix_ [1] and _Joshua Then and Now_ [2] are two examples.

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077233/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077233/)

[2]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089383/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089383/)

~~~
Cymen
Is there a summary of the rights issues? I did some basic googling but didn't
come up with anything.

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bsder
This is the problem when copyright doesn't expire.

If the copyrights expired, the studios would have to release the films before
that point in order to get any money.

~~~
danieltillett
Actually while I agree that copyright length is an issue, in this case
copyright should actually encourage the studios to release these films. If
they have the only copy of these films and they were out of copyright then
they would have no incentive to ever release them. If you own the only copy of
something then making it public domain does not allow the public to view it.

~~~
jerrysievert
in that regard, i think that the copyright actually makes things worse. at
this point, the films are likely a liability (being so flammable); releasing
them to the public domain is unlikely, due to costs and potential costs.

spending the time and money to get a good transfer likely won't mean much
money before the copyright expires, thus making it economically a worse
proposition.

i feel this is a case where law/finance and technology don't intersect.

~~~
CookieMon
the transfer would be a "work" in its own right, and have its own copyright.

~~~
nitrogen
AFAIK US copyright law does not provide a "sweat of the brow" copyright[0].
For example, a faithful restoration/reproduction of a public domain image was
still public domain in [1].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#US_copyright...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#US_copyright_law)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp).

~~~
CookieMon
That is damn interesting. US art photography books here I come.

And thanks for taking the time to cite it.

~~~
nitrogen
As always, consult a lawyer (I'm obviously not one) to be sure.

------
beloch
There's a fabulous amount of information in a single 35 mm frame of film. Do
we have the technology to capture it all yet? What resolution is sufficient?
It's not easy to answer this.

Perhaps the first complication worthy of notice is that not all film is alike.
During the first half of the twentieth century, film evolved rapidly. First,
there was the struggle to make B&W film more sensitive to light without
massively increasing the size of grain. Early film required a _lot_ of light
to capture a high quality image. It was costly and difficult (not to mention
unpleasant for workers/actors) to use the amount of light necessary to get a
high quality B&W image with fine-grained film stock. Color film initially
amplified these problems as well as introducing it's own, which is why B&W
film lived on for lower budget productions long past the broad adoption of
color film.

Color film was there from the very start of cinema but, at first, it took the
form of tinted stock, hand-colored film, and a variety of other labor
intensive processes. Technicolor had a 2-strip color process by the 20's that
captured flesh tones to a certain degree (e.g. "The Black Pirate" (1926)), but
the three strip process of the late 30's and 40's is what most of us think of
as the first _real_ color film, and it heaped even more demands on film
makers. Technicolor 3-strip film only produced good results on certain limited
ranges of colors, and Technicolor provided consultants to help film makers
meet the stringent requirements of using this film. There was a scene in "The
adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) where the grass was, famously, not the right
shade of green to come out well and was therefore spray-painted the _right_
shade of green!

Finally, it's worth noting that editing, special effects, etc. and copying
from this era were all done optically, typically resulting in significant
image quality degradation by the final product. Theatrical prints typically
had substantially less detail than the camera negatives. Today, we often go
back to camera negatives, interpositives, answer prints, internegatives, etc.
when transferring a film to digital to get the extra quality. This obviously
makes life more difficult for film restorers than if they simply dumped a
theatrical print to digital. There are occasionally unintended side-effects of
this practice too. For example, "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940) features scenes
with a flying carpet suspended by wires. In the theatrical prints, the grain
size was large enough to hide their presence. However, standard definition DVD
transfers from the internegative made them show up easily. As surprising as it
may seem if you're used to the fabulous detail in well-projected modern 35 mm
film, sometimes DVD video quality surpassed the 35 mm theatrical prints of the
classic era!

Given how videophiles now view standard definition DVD's, it really is
surprising that, for some titles at least, DVD's showed more detail than
audiences would have seen when the film debuted in theaters. Digital
technology has come a long way since then, but how much higher do resolutions
need to climb if we're already past the point of revealing some flaws that
film-makers never intended us to see?

An interesting parallel to this is the recent trend towards hidef remasters of
TV shows. A great example is Star Trek: The Next Generation. The detail in
1080p bluray is far beyond what anyone could have had in mind when creating
this series for TV in the 80's and 90's. It's a fascinating show to watch in
hidef. Many of the costumes and sets are fantastically detailed and finely
textured. Others clearly relied on the limited resolution of broadcast video
to hide their short-comings.

Film deteriorates with time, so it makes sense to use the best technology
available to create digital backups. Perhaps we're at the point where films,
once scanned, will never need to be scanned again. Perhaps we're not. However,
it seems we've passed the point where some judgement needs to be used when
deciding how much detail to present to audiences. Perhaps sometimes, less can
be more.

~~~
intopieces
All of your points here are spot on. I was thinking of Star Trek: The Original
Series as well when I read this article. I'm pleased that they included, on
the Blu Ray, the original episodes as well as the "remastered" ones. I think
in the future we'll come to regret our remasters because they make the product
itself anachronistic. I'd much rather see the wires in "The Thief of Bagdad"
(1940) and appreciate the film as a product of its time than to hide the work
those effects artists did with other effects that themselves will eventually
become dated.

My only addition to your comments here is to echo your sentiment about the
diminishing returns of higher definition: putting more pixels in a display
doesn't necessarily result in a better viewing experience. In my small
apartment, the viewing distance from my eyes to the screen is about 10 feet.
Consulting the Optimal Viewing Chart[0], I find that in order to justify a 4K
TV I'd need to purchase a 75-inch TV.

I think 1080p restorations might be the final frontier, at least for me.

[http://www.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance-
televi...](http://www.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance-television-
graph-size.png)

~~~
beloch
One convenient thing about TOS is that everything was done optically and the
prints that were scanned for broadcast were still available. They were able to
go back to the film without being forced to redo all the editing and effects,
as was necessary for TNG, which was composited and edited on tape. As you say,
they were wise to include the unaltered versions on the Bluray releases. The
"upgraded" effects are certainly interesting, but far from subtle!

If you want to see the unaltered version of TNG you are forced to go back to
the DVD's. Fortunately, the restorers were meticulous in recreating the
original special effects as faithfully to the original as possible, even to
the point of bringing in a lot of the people who originally did those effects
in the 80's and 90's. Practically nothing sticks out as being as out of place
as the upgraded effects that were done for TOS do. Even though a lot of what
we see in the HD release of TNG is entirely new, it blends in seamlessly.
Extremely impressive work!

TV of the late 80's and 90's seems destined to be a bit of low-resolution dip
for for the foreseeable future. The TNG restoration was expensive and CBS
Paramount hasn't yet gone forth with restoring Deep Space Nine. It may simply
be too expensive to give most shows the same treatment. An added problem of
the late 90's was the advent of extensive use of CG effects in television.
DS9's restoration will be complicated by this, and another great example is
Babylon 5. The models, animation files, etc. for this show's CG effects were
lost, so they'd need to be recreated from scratch if the show was ever to be
restored in hidef. Even the DVD releases suffer from poor quality due to this.

~~~
nitrogen
Maybe future superresolution techniques will let us restore some of the old SD
video, although CGI that was never rendered at high resolution probably won't
gain anything.

------
rwmj
Here's a film that I'd like to see released properly:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087817/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087817/)
Nothing Lasts Forever (1984). It even has many major stars in it, notably Bill
Murray.

------
vertis
Seems like a great opportunity to set up a crowdfunding model. Put proposed
film up on Kickstarter, if it gets the necessary backing out it comes,
otherwise it sits in the vault for a while longer.

