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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 21, 2017 21:36:16 GMT
Not all the existing prints have to be ex-broadcast prints returned from overseas. Some may have been spare "oops, we made one too many, let's bung it on the shelf for now" copies. I wonder whether any consideration has been given to one rather obvious point: if Season One and Season Two were originally marketed as skip-field film prints in 1963/64, but were then re-transfered in 1967 as stored-field prints, does that not inevitably leave a large quantity of skip-field prints sitting on a shelf in London? Time and again I see the same point raised here, asking 'where did such-and-such an episode come from?' In the case of those serials which were TK'd twice (originally as suppressed-field, then as stored-field), surely the question answers itself: there must have been a large surplus of prints at the BBC which, having been made as skip-field were redundant once superceded by the stored field replacements. The superceded prints thereafter were no longer needed for "cycling", so never (or never again) left the UK. Being redundant prints, they were henceforward free to pass into the hands of film collectors (or actors, extras, producers, directors, stage crew - anyone at all really, who'd any connection with the episodes concerned). May I mention here that Gerald Campion, the actor who starred as Billy Bunter, wandered off with a film print of one episode of the BBC-tv series 'Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School' that he starred in, on leaving the show in 1961 - simply because he wanted a memento of the production. In the Sixties, if you were in it you could get hold of an episode even if you were walking away with the only existing recording of it! But to get back to the percentage game: if we consider purely those Hartnell Seasons which were TK'd twice, is it not inevitable that there is a greater probability of these surviving, given that being TK'd twice creates far more prints than you'd get for a 'normal' Season? We ask, 'Why do so few episodes turn up for Season Three and Season Four?', when what we should be asking is, 'Why do so _many_ episodes survive from Seasons One and Two?' The answer, at least in part, must logically be that, statistically, Seasons One and Two are over-represented due to having been completely re-TK'd, such that far more prints were made for them than for later Seasons: thus it is inevitable that more have survived, because there were more in existence to begin with. Also, when we hit the Troughton era we have to cross the great divide: the gap that some tv shows never survive, in losing their star and re-casting. Even at the BBC the show was thought to be doomed: the British audience was expected to hate the change in the lead actor; and foreign stations didn't buy Troughton serials, because their audiences prefered Hartnell. Here's another reason why Hartnell serials sold strongly even after 1966, while sales were weak for Troughton serials. This gives added impetus to the chances of the Hartnell episodes surviving: they continued to sell, because overseas stations were free to reject the new Doctor and re-contract for Hartnell serials instead. (The BBC failed to take into account that a significant part of the domestic audience were children, who accepted the change in the show's star far more readily than an adult audience might have done. But the serials were being ordered for viewing abroad by tv station managers overseas who were adults, and who seem to have believed what the adults running the BBC believed: they bought - or refused to buy - the Troughton serials based on their adult gut-reaction to the loss of the show's popular star, Bill Hartnell.)
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 21, 2017 20:13:17 GMT
No you don't, because this is a non-event. And at $40 a ticket plus transportation, a bloody expensive one! Only the BBC are going to make the type of announcement anyone on this forum would be interested in, but the BBC aren't invited - and aren't going to announce anything 3 months in advance. If the Beeb do have anything to say, they'll call a Press Conference, and give not more than 72 hours notice. This guy Phil is going to smile, be pleasant, bask in the glory of his past accomplishments, pocket his fee, and say nothing. Oh, there'll be the usual denials - especially of the Omni rumour. And maybe some hype. But nothing worth flying 2,000 miles to hear.
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 21, 2017 19:17:09 GMT
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 21, 2017 19:02:46 GMT
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 21, 2017 15:56:36 GMT
It's really surprising so few film prints showed from the first year. No. If you think about it, you'll remember that in the years we are discussing, i.e. 1963-64, even the BBC was only able to produce suppressed-field film recordings. The technical quality of the picture when such a print is played is greatly inferior to the later film recordings which became possible after 1966, which did not involve discarding 50 percent of the picture information. The picture quality of a skip-field film print is so poor that tv stations rushed to welcome the new stored-field prints that became available from 1966 on. Hardly surprising that skip-field prints were discarded (junked) early on, given that they were so much poorer than subsequent material. I cannot imagine any tv station filling its limited shelf space with skip-field prints that the station manager was never going to re-broadcast, when they could use that space to store a much better product which they could re-use. Hardly surprising then that even the BBC was not hanging on to skip-field prints, given their poorer picture quality.
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 21, 2017 15:22:31 GMT
It's highly unlikely any '60s Who would be here in the US, but then again, there was that episode-and-a-bit from Ian Hendry's series of "The Avengers" (which was NEVER broadcast in the US) that turned up at UCLA's archive, so I supposed though unlikely, anything is possible. UCLA Los Angeles is the nearest thing - geographically speaking - to an independent film archive in Hollywood, so there is nothing surprising about film holdings which are not owned by the local Hollywood Studios (e.g. British films) turning up there.
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 21, 2017 14:17:53 GMT
This thread occured long ago, but I think it worthwhile to clarify a couple of loose ends which were never addressed at the time. Firstly, the mysterious discovery which is referred to has turned out to be a 1940 remake, by Canadian Radio, of the BBC's now-lost 1938 Paul Temple serial - the first ever BBC production in their series that eventually ran until 1968. The 1940 Canadian remake has survived intact: all the episodes exist. It stars Bernard Braden, who never played Paul Temple in any of the BBC serials. Secondly, the question of 'The Sullivan Mystery'. This turned out, sadly, not to have been found. The reports that it had been were a misunderstanding, which arose when an American fan heard a recording of the 2006 BBC re-make of that serial (the very first of the modern remakes), and didn't understand the significance of the fact that what he was listening to was a serial starring Crawford Logan (instead of Kim Peacock). The fact that the remake was in Mono, instead of stereo, and used the original scripts plus original microphones, sound effects and incidental music, apparantly made the re-make appear unnaturally authentic. Thirdly, I *have* listened to the 1950 serial starring Kim Peacock, held by the British Library, and can confirm it does exist, is complete, and is being released this month (Feb 2017) by the BBC, as part of a CD box set release of all the surviving Paul Temple serials. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Temple
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 14, 2017 16:17:44 GMT
The series of JNT's tapes dedicated to monsters and Doctors were all excellent.Great linking material and good selection of episodes to view.Would love to see them released and expanded on DVD. Not sure that this would be feasible. Certainly would be a formidable job to re-master the VHS material for DVD, because the technical quality of some of the material on the VHS was appalling. I'm thinking in particular of 'Cybermen - The Early Years', which included one especially bad film print of one of the episodes from 'Wheel in Space'. The BBC later recovered a much better print of that episode, so starting from the material used for the VHS release would be inappropriate - and that episode may not be the only example. For instance, the Pertwee 'Years' tape included some episodes in b/w that have recently been restored to colour, so putting out b/w versions would be problematic to say the least. If the perceived solution was to use episodes from the existing DVD, 'Lost in Time', probably the re-release of the 'Years' tapes would be a non-starter: all the episodes featured on those VHS releases are on the 'Lost in Time' DVD, or have been released on DVD as part of complete serials (i.e. all the Pertwee and Tom Baker episodes), so where is the market for re-releasing them as 'Years' productions? Don't think I'd pay fifteen quid just to watch several hours of John Nathan Hyphen talking into camera about serials which he didn't work on, and hence knows nothing about.
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 14, 2017 11:25:41 GMT
Strictly off-topic, as this has nothing whatever to do with Dr Who. Roger Delgado was a well established character actor, long before he first appeared in Who in 1971. His early film and television career is well known, as is the fact that so many of the early (live) tv productions in which he appeared are lost from the archives. Many were never recorded at all. However, he had a long career in radio, too. Whilst he was in Who, he was still making radio appearances in situation comedies. Almost everyone will have heard him in a 1972 edition of 'Parsley Sidings' with Arthur Lowe, which is periodically repeated on Radio 4 Extra. His work in a 1960's science fiction serial for radio called 'The Slide', written by a well-known Who scriptwriter, Victor Pemberton, is also pretty well known. But his radio career began in the 1940s. I'm not sure whether it is widely known, but one of his early radio recordings has recently been discovered. As this recovery has not been making news, I'm presuming the few people who do known of it are not big Who fans! In 1950, he was appearing on the BBC Light Programme in a popular detective drama series called 'Paul Temple' (which ran on BBC radio from 1938 to 1968). One of the early Paul Temple serials, and one which was not retained in the BBC Sound Archives, this was 'Paul Temple and the Vandyke Affair', which aired between October 30th and December 18th, 1950, in 8 episodes. Those who have heard 'The Vandyke Affair' on BBC Radio 4 Extra recently, will probably not have noticed Delgado's name among the credits -- because he isn't in it! The BBC only hold a remake of the serial, starring Peter Coke, made many years later with a different cast. In 1950, the character of Paul Temple was still being played by a now largely unknown actor called Kim Peacock (and the BBC only preserved those serials which starred the more popular Peter Coke). The 1950 serial, long believed lost, has turned up, and Delgado plays one of the suspects in it, a character named Philip Drosty. For those of you who've known about this already, sorry for rabbiting on. For anyone who hasn't heard it, Roger Delgado appears in episode 3 ('Introducing Mr Drosty'), and is then in most of the rest of the serial. This 8-part serial can be found at: www.mediafire.com/?pfkcmf5559lb4Don't be deceived by the odd co-incidence that Peter Coke (pronounced Cooke) is also named among the cast. He has a small role in this lost 1950 serial, which is one of two serials in which he played minor characters prior to being cast as the new series lead (which happened in 1954). For reasons unknown, although the 1959 remake features many of the same actors who appear in the 1950 original, Delgado is one of a few whose character was recast (presumably because he was, by 1959, too big a name to be offered only a supporting part). Addendum: For anyone who can't quite place Inspector Eden (played by Donald Gray), the reason he may sound familiar is that, some years later, he appeared on tv as the Voice of the Mysterons in "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons" (as well as Colonel White... and Captain Black).
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 10, 2017 17:10:43 GMT
I have always wished that John Cura could have had multiple cameras and tonnes of film to use to take a picture every few seconds. With the technology we have today, we could *really* reconstruct the original stories. Yes. All he needed to do was buy tons of Kodachrome film, and snap away at 25 frames a second.
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 10, 2017 17:04:16 GMT
Entirely depends on which country you mean when you say "this country". I'm in New Zealand myself, so that's the law I'm most familiar with. As you highlight, copyright is variable and complex, it's extremely irritating to deal with. Then throw in trademarks and things like that and it gets even more fun. There is perhaps some ambiguity, in regards to BBC-tv programmes shown overseas, such as in NZ or Oz. But I doubt it in this case. The UK copyright law is certain to apply to a BBC broadcast of 'Who', because it's bound to have been first transmitted in the UK (any transmission in NZ would not have occured until many years afterwards). Therefore the UK's Copyright Act 1956, as amended, is bound to apply.
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 10, 2017 16:45:29 GMT
The Seeds of Doom was also going to be repeated as a 90-minute compilation that year, but it wouldn't have been on the late-December date that he was expecting - that would have been shown on 11 December, ending the three-week run of repeats. Sadly, it got pulled at very short notice and replaced with Gerry Anderson's Into Infinity. I remember seeing 'Into Infinity' (possibly not on the occasion you mention), and thought it very dull. Not a patch on even a butchered omnibus version of 'Doctor Who'.
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 10, 2017 16:19:21 GMT
Thanks for brightening my day. You gave me a good chuckle, talking about your thoughts on the possibility of the BBC heirarchy choosing 'Inferno' as a Christmas repeat in 1970. You made me laugh: even though it was a 7-parter, the likelihood is they would have still cut it to 90 minutes. 'Inferno' without the parallel world bits. I felt cheated when I saw from your second piece that the BBC cut 'The Sea Devils' to 90 minutes, but then showed half an hour of rubbish after it, when they could easily have run the omnibus repeat for 2 hours instead. If I'd only known sooner, I'd have written in and complained!
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 6, 2017 21:56:21 GMT
Convert Audio file to Video using a still image - Windows Batch file command line: ffmpeg.exe -loop 1 -i image.jpg -i audio.mp3 -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a copy -shortest -flags:a global_header output.mp4 Zeranoe's FFmpeg Windows builds: ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/
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Post by Ed Brown on Jan 29, 2017 21:55:20 GMT
Nobody denies that but don't think you're going to be able to retire to South America ! Don't forget that copyright terms vary between countries and a number have terms of only 50 years for films and broadcasts. That means some Hartnells may already be out of copyright in some countries. I'm sure that what you meant to say is that all the Hartnells are out of copyright in this country! As you may recall, the Copyright Act 1956 created a period of copyright which, in the case of broadcast copyright, lasts for 50 years from the date of the first transmission of a tv or radio programme - provided that the transmission occured after 1 January 1957. Much was later amended, in the case of the rights of authors of books (and written literature generally), but I believe the period of copyright in a BBC sound or visual broadcast still remains 50 years. Hence, the BBC's exclusive rights, as the broadcaster of the material, have already ended for any tv or sound broadcast which was first transmitted on or before 31st December 1966. Much has been said in connection with the BBC's forbearance in not disrupting any of the reconstruction projects, which have seen Hartnell and Troughton episode reconstructions posted on YouTube and elsewhere. In law, the BBC has no right to control either sound recordings or photographs after the 50 years has elapsed. It might be different for the author of a script, or his heirs, whose rights may last until 70 years after his death. But those rights belong to the scriptwriter, not to the broadcaster. Terry Nation's estate might sue for breach of his copyright in a script for, say, episode 1 of 'The Daleks'; but those rights belong to Mr Nation's family, not to the BBC.
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