Post by Paul Vanezis on Feb 6, 2020 16:25:50 GMT
Another question if I may Paul, for you to consider at your leisure!
The Ron Obvious material looks beautiful and the excised lines are every bit as strong as the rest of the sketch. (In fact, I wonder if this is what Barry Took's idea of a Cleese/Palin sketch show would have looked like.)
What I was wondering is: why does some of the cut material have audio, but the rest doesn't? It's a more general question about what survived and how it was recovered from the Python archive. Are you able to tell us more about the restortation of this filmed material if possible?
Sure.
When I looked at the inventory at the BBC, the series 1 #10 film holdings included a couple of A&B roll 16mm negs (I assumed Terry G's animation masters), a 35mm print and a 35mm mag. I had a DVD copy made of the print and mag and it was longer than the TX. The print was a bit faded but nothing we couldn't handle. A few years went by and we finally got the project off the ground. The cans were sent to the transfer facility for cleaning and I checked all of the material and to prep it for scanning. I couldn't find the 35mm mag sound. All there was was a 16mm mag. But in the can labelled the mag was a 35mm neg. This was a bit of a revelation. The A&B negs were indeed Terry's animation masters, but for episode 8 not episode 10 (the episode 10 negs turned up in the Python archive). It turned out that the BBC had made a 16mm mag on polyester and junked the acetate 35mm mag. They reused the 35mm can number for the 35mm neg. So we used the neg obviously for the scan. However, it turned out that the print and mag had been cut AFTER the print had been made from the cut neg, I assume to save time. Then the show must have been over-running, or they felt some additional material wasn't as strong as the rest and made cuts in the VT edit as well. But of course, they hadn't gone to the trouble of cutting the neg and so that section was still there after fifty years. Alas, the sound was not, so I subtitled it.
Lots of bonkers stories like that.
Paul