(no subject)

From: Wayne M. Smith <wmsmith_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Sun Jan 19 18:43:00 2003

> I wrote:
> >> Demonstrably false. UCLA has restored many films that the studios
> >> weren't willing to spend a penny on; some still in
> copyright but most
> >> expired. In general they've done a much better
> restoration job than
> >> the studios usually do.
>
> Wayne M. Smith wrote:
> > Perhaps I need to write a bit more clearly. The antecedent
> for "this
> > simply doesn't happen" in my post is "studios . . . spend
> huge amounts
> > of money to restore the prints for issue in DVD format."
> UCLA, last
> > time I looked, is not a studio. Academia is almost always an
> > exception to any general rule.
>
> If you're trying to argue that works entering the public
> domain don't get preserved, you can't simply choose to ignore
> academia on the basis that it's an inconvenient data point
> that doesn't fit your model.
>
I wasn't arguing anything. I was just pointing out that I was referring
to what studios do, not what happens in the non-profit world.

If I had been arguing, I would have pointed out that the type of
cleaning up that studios do on titles for DVD/home video release, and
the work academia does on film restoration, are fundamentally different
things that don't even belong in the same model. Academia, and UCLA in
particular, is interested in preserving works that if not restored, will
become lost. These are the type of public domain works where all that's
left tends to be crumbling and you try to come up with a decent quality
master by combining numerous elements sources. The work that studios do
on remastered DVD releases is not to preserve endangered films, but
rather, to create a higher-quality master using original
negatives/interpositives. Most of the work usually involves fixing
faded colors, removing marks in the negatives, redoing the audio and
doing other minor clean-up. A good example of such work is the 2001
re-release of Superman the Movie, the quality of which blew away the
previous VHS/laserdisc releases, particularly in the vibrancy of the
color.

UCLA is not going to "restore" a public domain picture like Royal
Wedding, because it doesn't need restoring. The original interpositives
reside in a temperature controlled vault in Colorado and are in
relatively good shape. Nor, however, is anyone going to spend the money
(usually around $200,000) it would require to prepare a new master from
the original source materials and do the necessary clean up on the audio
and video. Sure, there are some people who will spend the extra dollars
for restored print, but not nearly enough to justify the cost.
Received on Sun Jan 19 2003 - 18:43:00 GMT