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Post by John Wall on Sept 22, 2012 18:48:55 GMT
In a third world country like Sierra Leone I would imagine that a destroyed building would have been picked clean of anything of value - such as metal film cans. It's not unusual to see TV reports of people in countries like that making a living from "recycling" what they can find on rubbish tips.
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Post by Jon Preddle on Sept 22, 2012 20:09:23 GMT
I know all the Nigerian stations were nationalised in 1976 as NTV but would the lady that Ian Levine contacted in 1984 (and who returned the three Hartnell stories sold to Midwest TV) have had access to BPTV's archive? Yes, she probably would have, assuming of course that BPTV still had possession of those prints at the time of amalgamation. But even eight years later, the presumably vast film store might not have yet been fully catalogued / sorted, and the lady in Nigeria probably only had time / opportunity / access to check only the portion of films that had been sorted. Of course, she might not have communicated to Levine that there might be more...
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Post by John Wall on Sept 22, 2012 20:48:21 GMT
I think that Nigeria has now been thoroughly checked.
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Post by George D on Sept 23, 2012 2:26:35 GMT
In a third world country like Sierra Leone I would imagine that a destroyed building would have been picked clean of anything of value - such as metal film cans. It's not unusual to see TV reports of people in countries like that making a living from "recycling" what they can find on rubbish tips. Everything you say may be true however Im still unsure of some things which prevents me from having closure. First, they say they didnt have it, then they said they had them but dont have them again. How thorough was the destruction? If they were destroying the whole town, would it be possible that some buildings were damaged less than others? If these were large buildings with large archives is it possible that stuff could be buried under feet of debre and kept safe? Could they have another archive that might have missing material? While we have other locations checked regularly, it would be nice to one day have an on site inspection.
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Post by John Wall on Sept 23, 2012 7:47:01 GMT
Desperation won't get you anywhere. If the exact location of the building is known the site can probably be checked on Google Earth.
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Post by Richard Bignell on Sept 23, 2012 9:10:24 GMT
If these were large buildings with large archives is it possible that stuff could be buried under feet of debre and kept safe?. Go and have a look what happened to the film buried in the Blue Peter time capsule in 1971 that was dug up in 2000. The film they carefully buried in a sealed can in a box was almost completely ruined. There is no chance that film that was in a building that that was bombed, burned and buried would have survived. And no one, but no one is going to go out to Sierra Leone to dig up the site on the off chance.
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Post by adamjordan on Sept 23, 2012 11:57:27 GMT
As an addendum: There are so many rumours flying around at the moment, chinese whispers of the BBC hoarding away films and * pick your favourite story* being found intact and secretly being prepared for the 50th anniversary. Ask yourselves why we have these rumours now? The first is that two episodes have recently been returned. Fantastic news which inspires us all to believe the almost impossible... and we got the same rumours after the last episode was returned... and at a screening of 'The Faceless Ones' #3 in 1987 I was accused of hoarding away all sorts of missing episodes. Secondly, we have the 50th anniversary around the corner ....... Paul My faint, clinging to straws hope is that someone out there who has held onto 'lost' prints will see the 50th Anniversary as a suitable moment for returning their material to the archives. If nothing surfaces in 2013 then I'm hanging my hat up that we've got back all we can get.
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Post by dennywilson on Sept 23, 2012 18:10:09 GMT
Please can anyone shed some light on the sales to BPTV Nigeria in 1974 of: The Abominable Snowmen The Enemy of the World The Web of Fear The Wheel in Space I know all the Nigerian stations were nationalised in 1976 as NTV but would the lady that Ian Levine contacted in 1984 (and who returned the three Hartnell stories sold to Midwest TV) have had access to BPTV's archive? Didn't they say they have checked into this recently and they don't have the episode anymore?
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Post by Jon Preddle on Sept 24, 2012 6:04:49 GMT
Going back to those The Ice Warriors and Fury from the Deep film cans for a moment... Does this scenario work?
When one of the foreign stations returned their broadcast copies of The Ice Warriors sans cans, the BBC happened to still have on file the Cutting Copies of parts one, four, five and six (but not two and three). Since they were no longer needed, they junked the CC prints (which were in two reels in two separate cans), and placed the returned prints in one of the corresponding Cutting Copy cans (A or B), biffing or reusing the other can (B or A). This would go so far as to explain why the prints that were found in 1988 don't have any splices in them, when the can indicates there should be...
The CC cans for parts two and three weren't held, so those two prints were placed in cans with standard non-CC labels.
Much later, all films with Cutting Copy labels were relocated to a store room at Villiers House (including the four Ice Warriors although they were not of that format, and Fury 6 which contained something else). Parts two and three were not relocated because their labels were different, which is why they weren't found with the others in 1988.
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Post by Brad Phipps on Sept 24, 2012 7:11:10 GMT
And no one, but no one is going to go out to Sierra Leone to dig up the site on the off chance. Challenge accepted. (Joking)
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Sept 24, 2012 8:27:44 GMT
When one of the foreign stations returned their broadcast copies of The Ice Warriors sans cans, the BBC happened to still have on file the Cutting Copies of parts one, four, five and six (but not two and three). Since they were no longer needed, they junked the CC prints (which were in two reels in two separate cans), and placed the returned prints in one of the corresponding Cutting Copy cans (A or B), biffing or reusing the other can (B or A). This would go so far as to explain why the prints that were found in 1988 don't have any splices in them, when the can indicates there should be... OK. Update. It appears that all these prints may have had splices in them (to remove VT off-locks etc...) although some faults were not removed and remain in the surviving copies. I was told there were no splices originally, but then "apart from the ones you usually find" (which does paint a different picture in this instance). I now think that these are probably exactly what the labels say they are, Telerecording Cutting Copies. In many ways this makes sense; the films would have been reviewed and those with faults assessed and sent for edits. It's entirely possible that episodes 2&3 didn't have any faults, or any faults were impossible to cut around, so they weren't cut, hence no 2&3 copies amongst the batch. These prints would have been matched with the negatives and the negatives cut to match, with subsequent prints made from the cut neg, but with no physical splices in them. They probably survive because they weren't initially thrown away and after a while became an oddity no-one knew what to do with. It's also possible, as the 'Fury' material was once contained within a small 35mm can, that the two reels were indeed split into two for the purposes of storage. It was standard practice for ALL picture and sync sound cutting copies to be in 35mm cans to accommodate the 16mm picture and 16mm mag track. Here we have a small can available, so the editor would not have been fussed about splitting the reel in two as it was a cutting copy. Reels were often split for normal film edits with a leader indicating which reel it was, but would have been combined when the neg was cut. Regards, Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Sept 24, 2012 8:34:09 GMT
I know all the Nigerian stations were nationalised in 1976 as NTV but would the lady that Ian Levine contacted in 1984 (and who returned the three Hartnell stories sold to Midwest TV) have had access to BPTV's archive? Yes, she probably would have, assuming of course that BPTV still had possession of those prints at the time of amalgamation. Obviously we've looked into the situation in Nigeria. One thing I think we can all agree on with Ian is that he is thorough. I asked him way back whether it was possible for anything else to have survived there and he was confident he'd exhausted all possibilities. I had no reason to disbelieve him. Other countries though did have material at the same time and attitudes there were quite different, as we now know for Sierra Leone. That is a bigger problem for me; if someone had travelled there in 1984 they would have been able to watch 'The Savages' on telly. Paul
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Post by Alistair Gordon on Sept 24, 2012 9:27:42 GMT
.....And maybe taped it on VHS!
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Post by Richard Tipple on Sept 24, 2012 9:40:04 GMT
Shocking the likes of The Savages, The Mythmakers and Galaxy 4 were all on TV. Perhaps somebody managed to save something or some miracle has happened in Sierra Leone and they are being kept in a different storage facility.. clutching at straws in a big way.
The fact Australia had to make copies of their prints for their different territories is promising and about five prints have found there way into the hands of private collectors. Also, I read somewhere that when ABC moved out of Gore Hill they found a lot of missing material from various shows. Is this cataloging still on going? Wikipedia says it'd take 'years' but that could have been written years ago..
It looks like all the overseas broadcaster routes have been exhausted. We've had four episodes returned since 1998, that's actually pretty good. I personally believe if anything is going to turn up now, it'll be from private collectors and it'll be from the Australian batch of '75. I don't know which films were in this batch, perhaps Paul could enlighten me?
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Post by Jon Preddle on Sept 24, 2012 10:35:31 GMT
The fact Australia had to make copies of their prints for their different territories is promising... Er, no. That's idea's been dismissed. There were never copies made for Australian regional screenings. Only one print of each episode was ever used and cycled. (The odd exceptions to that was when a print went missing in transit or was damaged and thus a replacement was sourced, usually from London.)
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