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Post by Michael B on May 25, 2013 5:23:27 GMT
It is said that when NZBC moved its film store from Harriett Street to Avalon, they dumped all their film cans in rubbish tips around Wellington, seemingly BURIED FOREVER. The Lion was intercepted from this tip delivery and was returned in 1999. Could it be that the film cans can be excavated from these tips?
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Post by John Andersen on May 25, 2013 5:33:41 GMT
It is said that when NZBC moved its film store from Harriett Street to Avalon, they dumped all their film cans in rubbish tips around Wellington, seemingly BURIED FOREVER. The Lion was intercepted from this tip delivery and was returned in 1999. Could it be that the film cans can be excavated from these tips? Any moisture and humidity would ruin a film quickly. A can left outside wouldn't protect a film for very long. |
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Post by Michael B on May 25, 2013 5:46:52 GMT
I suppose that is true, but I have read that, if sealed they can last a huge amount of time in their cannisters. Even if they were damaged check this out: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gA9SwnaVgE |
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Post by richardwoods on May 25, 2013 8:57:09 GMT
Wow. Amazing. Would only be worth looking at I guess if the landfill was small and nearly full at the time of the dumping and if the reels were dumped in their tins. Interesting though.
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Post by Michael B on May 25, 2013 9:23:57 GMT
Apparently they were dumped in their tins, because the man who intercepted The Lion (The Crusade P1) and many other reels was made to take them out of their canisters and leave them behind at the tip to make it look as if they really had been dumped. I personally think that, for the sake of looking out of the box, a good idea would be to focus not only on retrieving tapes from foreign archives, but also on possible locations for JUNKED film such as tips. The BBC wiped their tapes but the junked ones from other countries are another case altogether.
In the 1999 Sierra Leone tragedy for example, it would be highly unlikely that any complete episodes could be resurrected, but technology is astoundingly advancing, and it is possible that if any clips are discovered in the wreckage, we might be able to use this technology to bring new life to them.
On another note, does anyone know about how rubbish tips deal with objects such as film canisters? Do they smelt them for recycling or to gain space? Or is it minutely possible that these episodes do exist undisturbed under mounds of garbage?
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Post by Jon Preddle on May 25, 2013 9:31:39 GMT
Or is it minutely possible that these episodes do exist undisturbed under mounds of garbage? Not at all. In the case of the landfill where The Lion was junked, the land was turned into a sports ground, so even if you did get as far as digging that up without getting arrested, you'd have to rummage through decades of highly compacted household waste on the off-chance that some hardly air-tight cans would have escaped suffering damage from decades of weather and other such conditions. Yuck. |
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Post by Sue Butcher on May 25, 2013 10:02:30 GMT
Do we know what else was pulled out of the Harriett Street cans before dumping?
There is always the possibility that the reels actually dumped in their cans were picked over too. Most tips had scavengers. And the can for Moonbase ep. 3 escaped burial.
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Post by Michael B on May 25, 2013 11:00:35 GMT
Apparently they were distributed around different tips in Wellington, not just the one where The Lion was retrieved from.
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Post by Steven Sigel on May 25, 2013 14:43:23 GMT
Take a look at this... This is a print with just some minor moisture damage. Imagine what a print that has been in damp conditions for decades would look like (if it was runnable at all) www.16mm-films.net/who/whodamage.avi |
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Post by Richard Tipple on May 25, 2013 16:38:16 GMT
Take a look at this... This is a print with just some minor moisture damage. Imagine what a print that has been in damp conditions for decades would look like (if it was runnable at all) www.16mm-films.net/who/whodamage.aviAmazing, I'd have to go through that frame by frame to try and fix it.. it'd be a mammoth task! If it was missing material though it'd be worth the pain! I'm going to take a punt and say this is one of the prints of 'The Romans'? |
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Post by Dave Green on May 25, 2013 17:09:03 GMT
Or is it minutely possible that these episodes do exist undisturbed under mounds of garbage? Not at all. In the case of the landfill where The Lion was junked, the land was turned into a sports ground, so even if you did get as far as digging that up without getting arrested, you'd have to rummage through decades of highly compacted household waste on the off-chance that some hardly air-tight cans would have escaped suffering damage from decades of weather and other such conditions. Yuck. It would be worth it, I'd volunteer for that (sports centre permission pending) .. |
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Post by Rob Moss on May 25, 2013 18:32:57 GMT
I think Steven's point is that it almost certainly wouldn't be worth it - after forty odd years, there'd be nothing left.
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Post by Jon Preddle on May 25, 2013 19:32:47 GMT
No, it wouldn't!  |
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Post by Michael B on May 25, 2013 20:36:31 GMT
If only we could find a rich, powerful Whovian entrepreneur who would pay to excavate the sport centre! I wish!
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Post by Michael B on May 25, 2013 20:40:26 GMT
On another topic, does anything think that if broadcast station and archive trails run cold, the BBC would bother trying to retrieve junked copies and resurrecting them. I know it sounds extreme and expensive but I think many of us would love if this could work.
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