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Post by John Green on Oct 19, 2018 16:42:15 GMT
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Post by garygraham on Oct 20, 2018 14:20:23 GMT
This bit is interesting:
"However, the first two of Harris’s ITV productions were quite unusual in that they were recorded on film at ATV’s Highbury Studios where the HDF Company (High Definition Films Ltd.) was based. This relatively new High Definition Film system was a sophisticated, closed circuit telerecording system for photographing the play to produce a telerecording on 35mm film at a much higher line standard (700 lines) than the standard television of the mid-1950s (425 lines). (A short-lived technical system, it was soon abandoned as new methods of video-taping were introduced.)"
Do any film recordings of this kind still exist?
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Post by Peter Stirling on Oct 20, 2018 22:33:16 GMT
This bit is interesting: "However, the first two of Harris’s ITV productions were quite unusual in that they were recorded on film at ATV’s Highbury Studios where the HDF Company (High Definition Films Ltd.) was based. This relatively new High Definition Film system was a sophisticated, closed circuit telerecording system for photographing the play to produce a telerecording on 35mm film at a much higher line standard (700 lines) than the standard television of the mid-1950s (425 lines). (A short-lived technical system, it was soon abandoned as new methods of video-taping were introduced.)" Do any film recordings of this kind still exist? The original purpose of this HDTV system was for producer Harry Towers to produce quickly made,cheap plays (using multi camera TV studio techniques) and pass them off as cinema films to the distributors and get the associated dosh for a cinema film. Because of the age in which this was happening, much of the time was spend coping with the foibles of the technology,but they eventually found a reliable camera made by Pye which was actually capable of over a 1000 lines res. However ITV arrived and Harry Towers got involved in that and some of the plays he had filmed ended up in various ITV strands such as 'ITV play of the week' etc. If you look up some of the ITV play strands for the 50s on say IMDB and it says 'A Harry Towers Production" then these may well have been those experimental HDTV productions, although if they exist at all now it will probably be on a 16mm dupe? Also with the loss of interest in movies and the gaining interest in ITV, the studios were sold to TV companies and the HD system was still place when they started filming "Double Your Money " there, although once settled AR ripped it all out and stuck in 405 line gear. It may have been a dream, but I am pretty sure I once saw one of the first "Double your Money"s somewhere and it looked very good. |
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Post by iwest on Oct 22, 2018 7:32:16 GMT
As I recall it MBW did show a long time ago a fifties ITV play called "I Passed By Your Window", and I remember the notes at the time saying that it was shot in an experimental high definition format. Couldn't say what format the surviving copy is held in, although even if it was 16mm rather than 35mm what's left should still be far superior to 405-line standard definition in theory.
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Post by garygraham on Oct 22, 2018 8:42:18 GMT
Thanks for the info. Very interesting.
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Post by Peter Stirling on Oct 22, 2018 10:12:05 GMT
As I recall it MBW did show a long time ago a fifties ITV play called "I Passed By Your Window", and I remember the notes at the time saying that it was shot in an experimental high definition format. Couldn't say what format the surviving copy is held in, although even if it was 16mm rather than 35mm what's left should still be far superior to 405-line standard definition in theory. Ah Yes I remember now IIRC "I passed by your window" was discovered in a private collection and although obviously very technically interesting it was apparently a dire play to try and watch. If plays such as these were originally intended as the second feature (B) at the cinema then the 405 line structure would have been most prominent on the large screen had they tele recorded in the normal way, so using 'HD' was an attempt to disguise the fact it was a quickly made cheapo TV production. |
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Post by marcacrylic on Oct 22, 2018 12:29:09 GMT
Fascinating tale! Really love rescue stories like this. |
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