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Post by JOHN SMITH on Jul 11, 2008 20:31:55 GMT
ANY print from private hands is a print that was 'supposedly' destroyed and signed to say so. Except you're using what happened in NZ as being a blanket generalisation as to what must have happened in every other case. But given that you don't know the detailed back history of every print that's been found in private hands, you can't make that assertion. As rich the farmer said, it's just all supposition. Richard Nevertheless. Blanket generalisation aside. ANY print from private hands, should NOT have been in private hands in the first place since ALL of them SHOULD have been in landfill instead. One doesn't need to be a brain surgeon to figure out that ANY print in private hands must therefore have either A: Come out of the skip or B: Not been put in the skip in the first place. And without sight of those original index cards (or any other bits of paper that the same information was written on afterwards by Ian/Sue etc ) there is no way of knowing whether that is/was the case for any given episode. However there is no possibility C because there are NO other possibilities other than those 2 exist. However since they were ALL meant to have been put in the skip, then logically ALL the private prints were rescued from there. Which DOES seem to prove the point that EVEN prints which are signed off as being destroyed, can STILL be in existence.
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Post by Steven Sigel on Jul 11, 2008 21:28:33 GMT
Nevertheless. Blanket generalisation aside. ANY print from private hands, should NOT have been in private hands in the first place since ALL of them SHOULD have been in landfill instead. Not true... Ian Levine bought a large number prints directly from the BBC in the 70s and 80s -- those clearly should NOT be in landfill. Also there are a lot of prints in private hands that came from the batch of a half dozen or so shows that were "borrowed" from the BBC and copied in the late 80s.
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Post by Steven Sigel on Jul 11, 2008 21:32:18 GMT
PS -- I'd also like to point out that if there had been a high survival rate of prints that were supposed to have been destroyed, there should have been a whole lot more duplicate print recoveries for stuff that's already in the archives... In practice this has not happened.
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Post by Richard Bignell on Jul 11, 2008 21:33:56 GMT
ANY print from private hands, should NOT have been in private hands in the first place since ALL of them SHOULD have been in landfill instead. Nope. This is what Basil Fawlty calls "stating the bleedin' obvious"! What, you mean other than... C - Someone legitimately obtaining copies of telerecordings from the BBC, a la Ian Levine. D - Frances Watson who obtained Day of Armageddon and The Expedition after they had been used as projector test prints when they were no longer required. etc. Richard
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Post by Stuart Huggett on Jul 11, 2008 22:04:16 GMT
Out of general interest, are there records to show if anyone, aside from Ian Levine, purchased BBC prints (not only Doctor Who) during the 70's or early 80's? Was his a unique case, or was this something the BBC practised more widely?
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Post by B Thomas on Jul 11, 2008 23:31:41 GMT
There is also the case of the DWAS obtaining permission to purchase prints of "Galaxy Four" only to find that said prints had been destroyed in the interim (some time around 1978, I think...).
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Post by JOHN SMITH on Jul 12, 2008 4:25:43 GMT
Nevertheless. Blanket generalisation aside. ANY print from private hands, should NOT have been in private hands in the first place since ALL of them SHOULD have been in landfill instead. Not true... Ian Levine bought a large number prints directly from the BBC in the 70s and 80s -- those clearly should NOT be in landfill. Also there are a lot of prints in private hands that came from the batch of a half dozen or so shows that were "borrowed" from the BBC and copied in the late 80s. I was meaning the prints of previously missing eps, not prints which were already known to be in existence.
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Post by JOHN SMITH on Jul 12, 2008 5:01:14 GMT
ANY print from private hands is a print that was 'supposedly' destroyed and signed to say so. Except you're using what happened in NZ as being a blanket generalisation as to what must have happened in every other case. But given that you don't know the detailed back history of every print that's been found in private hands, you can't make that assertion. Richard Slept after reading the postings, and you know what they say about a good night's sleep. socially aware up this morning and realised there IS a way to check the history of a 'missing' ep that was returned from private hands. Just look at the print. As far as 'I' know, the ONLY 'negatives' of the prints were the original BBC 16mm's held by Enterprises. 'Positives' were struck for other TV stations. (Anybody know what format 'test prints' or 'viewing prints' take? Positive or negative?) Because if the answer in both cases is 'positive' then a look at the print of a 'missing' ep returned from private hands would easily tell if it was positive or negative. Therefore ANY returns which were 'negative' can ONLY have been from Enterprises. (I'm surprised no one seems to have raised this point before) In which cases, they could only have either come out of a skip, or not even seen a skip. Though without sight of those fabled index cards, or pieces of paper that 'unaccounted for episodes' may have been written on by Ian/Sue etc, no one can say which scenario would be the case. However the stronger of the two possibilities would have to be that they were from out of a skip. Which would prove my original point, that episodes signed off as desroyed and put in a skip, WERE indeed then 'rescued'. Which begs the question. Does anybody know whether the 'lost' prints from private hands (and I'm not just talking Dr Who here)are positives or negatives ?? If those of Time Meddler for instance that were returned from private hands ARE negatives (and test/viewing prints ARE positives), then that is undeniable proof that 'entire stories' never mind single eps were either rescued from skips or sprouted legs and ran out of Villiers upon hearing the screams.
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Post by Richard Bignell on Jul 12, 2008 8:12:54 GMT
As far as 'I' know, the ONLY 'negatives' of the prints were the original BBC 16mm's held by Enterprises. 'Positives' were struck for other TV stations. Dupe negatives were also created. I can't recall there ever being a case when someone holding a Doctor Who episode, missing or otherwise, had a negative. Especially from a film collectors point of view, what would be the attraction, given that you couldn't properly watch it? StevenS - From your experience, would negatives hold any attraction for people in the collecting community? Richard
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Post by Martin Dunne on Jul 12, 2008 10:47:24 GMT
Australian listings show duplicate copies through simultaneous (pre-coaxial cable) broadcasts of missing episodes of Marco Polo, The Reign of Terror, The Crusades, Galaxy 4, The Massacre, The Celestial Toymaker, The Tenth Planet, The Power of the Daleks, The Highlanders, The Underwater Menace, The Moonbase, The Macra Terror and The Faceless Ones.
I don't know if these were copied by the BBC or ABC, let alone if they were struck from a common negative.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jul 12, 2008 11:46:17 GMT
If this collector rescued 321 reels of film from the Karori dump, what has become of the 320 others? It would be interesting to know what else was saved. Was is all foreign (BBC) stuff, or was there more importantly BCNZ recordings too?
Is there a list of the recovered films online anywhere?
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Post by Steven Sigel on Jul 12, 2008 14:33:26 GMT
As far as 'I' know, the ONLY 'negatives' of the prints were the original BBC 16mm's held by Enterprises. 'Positives' were struck for other TV stations. Dupe negatives were also created. I can't recall there ever being a case when someone holding a Doctor Who episode, missing or otherwise, had a negative. Especially from a film collectors point of view, what would be the attraction, given that you couldn't properly watch it? StevenS - From your experience, would negatives hold any attraction for people in the collecting community? Richard Most collectors don't have much interest in negatives - you can have a positive printed from a negative - but the cost is very high, and so you wouldn't do it unless the negative was for something that you considered valuable enough to want to pay for. Negs usually have separate picture and soundtrack - which means that you need both to make a positive print (there are composite negatives out there, but they're not as common). As for Dr. Who negs -- I'm not sure what speople is trying to get at -- so far as I know there has never been a full episode recovery from a negative outside of what was found to still be at ents or in the archive. In fact I've never heard of anyone having a negative of ANY full episode. The only negative footage that has turned up was stuff like the colony in space and invasion of the dinosaurs film inserts.
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Post by Steven Sigel on Jul 12, 2008 14:34:44 GMT
Australian listings show duplicate copies through simultaneous (pre-coaxial cable) broadcasts of missing episodes of Marco Polo, The Reign of Terror, The Crusades, Galaxy 4, The Massacre, The Celestial Toymaker, The Tenth Planet, The Power of the Daleks, The Highlanders, The Underwater Menace, The Moonbase, The Macra Terror and The Faceless Ones. I don't know if these were copied by the BBC or ABC, let alone if they were struck from a common negative. I believe the ABC had their own negatives... I've seen a few 16mm prints with ABC leaders on them (although I'd have to go look to see if they were printed that way or spliced on).
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Post by Steven Sigel on Jul 12, 2008 14:43:58 GMT
Except you're using what happened in NZ as being a blanket generalisation as to what must have happened in every other case. But given that you don't know the detailed back history of every print that's been found in private hands, you can't make that assertion. Richard Slept after reading the postings, and you know what they say about a good night's sleep. socially aware up this morning and realised there IS a way to check the history of a 'missing' ep that was returned from private hands. Just look at the print. As far as 'I' know, the ONLY 'negatives' of the prints were the original BBC 16mm's held by Enterprises. 'Positives' were struck for other TV stations. (Anybody know what format 'test prints' or 'viewing prints' take? Positive or negative?) Because if the answer in both cases is 'positive' then a look at the print of a 'missing' ep returned from private hands would easily tell if it was positive or negative. Therefore ANY returns which were 'negative' can ONLY have been from Enterprises. (I'm surprised no one seems to have raised this point before) In which cases, they could only have either come out of a skip, or not even seen a skip. Though without sight of those fabled index cards, or pieces of paper that 'unaccounted for episodes' may have been written on by Ian/Sue etc, no one can say which scenario would be the case. However the stronger of the two possibilities would have to be that they were from out of a skip. Which would prove my original point, that episodes signed off as desroyed and put in a skip, WERE indeed then 'rescued'. Which begs the question. Does anybody know whether the 'lost' prints from private hands (and I'm not just talking Dr Who here)are positives or negatives ?? If those of Time Meddler for instance that were returned from private hands ARE negatives (and test/viewing prints ARE positives), then that is undeniable proof that 'entire stories' never mind single eps were either rescued from skips or sprouted legs and ran out of Villiers upon hearing the screams. No idea what you are saying here. The only recoveries from negatives that I'm aware of came from the episodes that were at enterprises in 1978 when Ian and Sue went looking for them. As for coming out of skips etc --- that's just not true Just as an example (I believe these are correct): -- Dalek Masterplan (5,10) were found in a basement of a building that used to be a BBC facility (was at the time a church) -- Ice Warrirors was found "misfiled" at a BBC facility -- Tomb of the Cybermen was found in Hong Kong at the TV archive -- Dalek Masterplan (2) was held by an engineer who had taken it home after it was used as test film. -- Celestial Toymaker was found by the ABC in Austrailia there are many more examples... BTW - as an aside -- if a print actually made it to a skip, it was probably on a core (or worse, unspooled into a heap), outside of a can (they recycled the reels and cans), and so it wouldn't last more than a few days before getting severe moisture damage. So the point is that the fact that a print is positive, tells you nothing about where it came from. And furthermore -what does it matter anyway???
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Post by JOHN SMITH on Jul 12, 2008 14:47:06 GMT
As far as 'I' know, the ONLY 'negatives' of the prints were the original BBC 16mm's held by Enterprises. 'Positives' were struck for other TV stations. Dupe negatives were also created. I can't recall there ever being a case when someone holding a Doctor Who episode, missing or otherwise, had a negative. Especially from a film collectors point of view, what would be the attraction, given that you couldn't properly watch it? StevenS - From your experience, would negatives hold any attraction for people in the collecting community? Richard Hmm, first time I've ever seen anything about dupe 16mm negatives being created. Which does lead in to one obvious question. Ian Levine once stated that there were 28 copies made of EVERY episode (barring DMP7). Now why would a person of Ian's standing say THAT?? Don't forget, Ian is one of the few people alive who has ever had access to certain records. So it seems VERY odd that he would just pluck a number out of thin air. Anyway, it is definitely known which episodes came back from private hands (and those episodes are probably still available for inspection). So relatively speaking it should be simple to have a look at them to see whether they are 'positive' or 'negative'. Is there any way that anybody can do this?? Also it has not been answered what form 'test or viewing' prints take. Positive or negative?? Anyone know the answer?? These are ALL important questions that need answering as soon as possible because it could help us to discover if at least one of the private prints was a negative. Which like I say, would have therefore either had to have sprouted legs and jumped out of a skip, or sproutd legs and ran out of Villiers. If none are negatives, then it would more or less prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that NOBODY removed ANY reels of film from the skips at Villiers, either whilst they were in the skip or after they had been carted away. Or that none had gone out of the back door either. We would then only have the question, if NONE of these private prints came from Villiers, then where did they come from. Because that would in itself lead to questions of other sorts, such as if 1 complete story was in private hands (Time Meddler) whilst it was still considered 'lost', what are the chances 'other complete stories' could also be in private hands using the same method that 'Time Meddler' was obtained. After all it would seem VERY odd for a person to just obtain by whatever method was used 'just 1 story of Dr Who'.
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