Ivor The Engine

[richardlatto]

Hello

I'm trying to locate the soundtracks for 4 black and white episodes of Ivor The Engine.

They are as follows...

4 - The Outing
6 - Dai And The Donkey
9 - Ivor's Friends
10 - Fire Engine

These are not the colour versions (some were remade into colour later and are quite widely seen).

There were 4 series of Ivor.
1 - 6 in B&W
2 - 13 in B&W
3 - 13 in B&W
4 - Colour

These are series 2 episodes.

Any help greatly appreciated. I've reached out to NRK in Norway who apparently showed it regularly and haven't heard back yet. Any contacts in Norway may help.

Thanks
Richard

[RWels]

This too was shown in West-Germany (1st channel); that doesn't HAVE to mean they only have it dubbed. (IF any at all, of course.)
Some programs are archived there with the original English intact (although I'm not sure if they were perhaps subtitled or if there was a technical reason).

[richardlatto]

Jan 29, 2023 19:38:48 GMT RWels said:

This too was shown in West-Germany (1st channel); that doesn't HAVE to mean they only have it dubbed. (IF any at all, of course.)
Some programs are archived there with the original English intact (although I'm not sure if they were perhaps subtitled or if there was a technical reason).

I will try Germany again (sadly they only had video for Paddington Bear, but it's just the audio I'm after here).

[RWels]

Jan 29, 2023 21:01:03 GMT richardlatto said:

Jan 29, 2023 19:38:48 GMT RWels said:

This too was shown in West-Germany (1st channel); that doesn't HAVE to mean they only have it dubbed. (IF any at all, of course.)
Some programs are archived there with the original English intact (although I'm not sure if they were perhaps subtitled or if there was a technical reason).

I will try Germany again (sadly they only had video for Paddington Bear, but it's just the audio I'm after here).

It was the first channel, so that would be ARD. E.g. 19 July 1964: www.abendblatt.de/archive/1964/pdf/19640718.pdf/ASV_HAB_19640718_HA_005.pdf

The example I was talking about was a BBC program from 1968/9 (originally 1963) from German public television, that they had in English. (Although like I said I don't know the exact technical explanation for that - whether it had anything to do with sepmag or simply if they made an exception to use subtitles for once.)


Wikipedia tells me that the b/w programs were remade in colour nearly identical. If that's true, then the remake's audio could be used as a last resort.



I'm digressing now, but I suppose that if for either program they have a separate score & effects track, then some use could be made of that. In theory multi-channel sound could be done with narration over L&R and the effects and music over the others - mono or not.

[Sue Butcher]

Didn't they use the original sound for the remakes?

[Geoff Sear]

Just to clarify, even though it does seem like a request to state the obvious: I presume that, of the b&w Ivor films found in the Smallfilms cowshed, these have proved to have no soundtrack on further inspection? TV Brain just says that they all exist on film, with no "soundtrack missing" caveats, but I guess that hasn't been updated yet. Sorry to hear that (or NOT hear that, as seems to be the case).
Would any attempt to release them get tied up with Universal releasing the DVDs of the colour shows?

[timmunton]

I hope very much the soundtracks can be found.
As a more general comment:
I'll take Richard's post to mean it's very likely the monochrome Ivors will fairly soon-ish be released on disc (!?).
Which if so is marvellous.
The last I heard, a few years ago, there was some rights issues then unresolved. Hopefully this means they have now been resolved.
Richard did a fantastic job on the recent Pertwee "Complete Worzel Gummidge" set -
so I'm sure a black & white Ivor collection will likewise look (& sound) brilliant.
(Ditto for Paddington!)

[darrenlee]

Is there some necessary secrecy or point of etiquette I don't understand which means we can't simply ask Richard what is going on rather than guess?



Have there been any developments since this video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEcIHkVgIP0, was posted?



The 26 b&w episodes 'found in a pig-shed' in 2010 are, I think, at least 9 and a half minutes plus titles/credits and the 40 'colour remakes' are at most 5 minutes each. There is a lot more material in the black and white version.



Eight b&w episodes can be seen dubbed in Norwegian embedded in the earliest 8 episodes of 'Tertitten' here, tv.nrk.no/serie/tertitten, so if you are familiar with the colour episodes you can make the comparison for yourself.

[RossL]

Some of the B&W episodes can be found on archive.org.

[richardlatto]

Hi guys

To clarify the details... I have soundtracks for these four episodes but sadly they are significantly damaged and cannot be fixed with restoration.

The only solution is to find other copies of the audio in better condition.

Thanks for any leads.

Richard

[RWels]

Straw clutching: I don't suppose the Norwegians might have the original audio track?

TV was of course mono, nut there were in the early 1970s two audio tracks on the ampex tape, one for broadcast and the other one for... something else. On a different 1971 program I suddenly heared some of the voice-over only on the left.
That Norwegian show appears to be taped judging by the rest of the program. But a large amount of luck would be needed of course.

[richardlatto]

Feb 4, 2023 10:55:42 GMT RWels said:

Straw clutching: I don't suppose the Norwegians might have the original audio track?

TV was of course mono, nut there were in the early 1970s two audio tracks on the ampex tape, one for broadcast and the other one for... something else. On a different 1971 program I suddenly heared some of the voice-over only on the left.
That Norwegian show appears to be taped judging by the rest of the program. But a large amount of luck would be needed of course.

Sadly they don't - I've asked and they only have the Norwegian soundtracks, not even M&E tracks. Although I have located one of the M&E tracks elsewhere.

[richardlatto]

Feb 3, 2023 17:35:32 GMT darrenlee said:

Eight b&w episodes can be seen dubbed in Norwegian embedded in the earliest 8 episodes of 'Tertitten' here, tv.nrk.no/serie/tertitten, so if you are familiar with the colour episodes you can make the comparison for yourself.

Hi Darren. Thanks for flagging up. I can only find two B&W episodes on that link, in the shows labelled 14th Feb and 21st Feb. Which other editions also featured them? Ta!

[darrenlee]

Feb 4, 2023 13:08:27 GMT richardlatto said:

Feb 3, 2023 17:35:32 GMT darrenlee said:

Eight b&w episodes can be seen dubbed in Norwegian embedded in the earliest 8 episodes of 'Tertitten' here, tv.nrk.no/serie/tertitten, so if you are familiar with the colour episodes you can make the comparison for yourself.

Hi Darren. Thanks for flagging up. I can only find two B&W episodes on that link, in the shows labelled 14th Feb and 21st Feb. Which other editions also featured them? Ta!

You need to click on 'vis flere episoder' (see more episodes) at the bottom of the list to see the earliest six (all with Ivor).

[timmunton]

It's a shame to hear about the unrestorable tape damage.

I suppose if nothing else can be found music & effects can be taken from elsewhere:
Some or more of the master music recordings for early Ivor survive - & perhaps the effects too - as they were used on the official Ivor/Pogles CD put out by Jonny Trunk a long time back.
So, although not the final original M&E audio for 3 of the episodes, convincing new M&E tracks could be assembled from these & other Ivor recordings of the period - eg. voiceless segments from episodes of Series 1, 2 & 3.

And then new voices added if the scripts survive -
& if the scripts don't survive; then maybe rewritten based on the onscreen images.

Labelled as having a reconstructed soundtrack most fans - certainly I would - will be grateful & happy to see the 4 episodes in that form (though less than ideal), rather than not at all.
It's all fairly obvious what I'm saying but hopefully worth a mention.

If Dan Postgate & other relevant Smallfilms people are happy with this sort of solution & there's enough budget to cover said audio reconstruction, then, if it's needed, it would work well.