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Post by sonnybh on Sept 20, 2023 20:37:38 GMT
According to somebody on a Facebook group the BBC suffered an archive fire at one point. This instantly set alarm bells off with me as in all the years I've been reading Dr Who Magazine features on the archives I've never head of such a fire happening.
The only archive fire I can think of happening in the UK was one at Scottish Television.
Unsurprisingly things went quiet after I mentioned the above, so it's probably someone just messing around.
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Post by brianfretwell on Sept 25, 2023 8:19:03 GMT
I seem to remember from the old RT site that it was a fire in a vault that held video masters for VHS releases, not the actual program masters, also that it was a minor fire and the main damage was from the sprinklers going off.
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Post by sonnybh on Sept 25, 2023 20:29:35 GMT
I seem to remember from the old RT site that it was a fire in a vault that held video masters for VHS releases, not the actual program masters, also that it was a minor fire and the main damage was from the sprinklers going off. OK I've not heard of that, though I can remember DWM mentioning that the VHS releases were made from taped copies, probably to prevent damage to the original masters & allow for some cleaning up by the Restoration Team, but not as much as they could for the DVD releases.
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Post by sonnybh on Oct 3, 2023 20:34:15 GMT
Talking of archive fires, I was reading a few days ago about films that have been lost & sometimes found. A lot of Harold Lloyd's early films were lost when his personal film vault at his house caught fire.
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Post by Martin Dunne on Oct 7, 2023 9:16:38 GMT
Talking of archive fires, I was reading a few days ago about films that have been lost & sometimes found. A lot of Harold Lloyd's early films were lost when his personal film vault at his house caught fire. Harold Lloyd and his people have downplayed it, from Facebook: (His social media account also has his hair raising account of the quite serious August 1919 bomb accident, if you're interested.) Harold Lloyd 28 September 2023 THE VAULT FIRE MYTH (Repeat of Sept. 2020 post.) Photo shows Harold inspecting the damage after his 1943 film vault explosion, which according to some accounts destroyed most of his early films, including the Lonesome Lukes and original elements to some of his later ones. And the story has him running in to save what he could of his film library and being dragged to safety by his wife. But it was FAKE NEWS, and Harold was not happy about it, blaming his publicity man for going too far. He told us (his young friends) that it was not a film vault at all but a storage room that should never have contained nitrate film. He insisted there wasn't much film of any significance, just some trims and leftovers and junk. He also told us that he was in his house up the hill from the explosion and it would have taken ten minutes to get there if he ran. Several of those square boxes look like shipping cases for thousand-foot reels of 35mm projection prints, not negatives. They may have contained preview prints of earlier works in progress. A preview print of PROFESSOR BEWARE turned up in the garage of Harold's nephew in 1973 and included the Egyptian pageant sequence deleted from the finished feature. Perhaps there was the 3-hour preview version of MOVIE CRAZY, and that would be something to see. But it's certain there were no Lonesome Lukes in there. Most of them may have burned in a Pathe fire in New Jersey. Anyway, Harold did not acquire them from Hal Roach or Pathe, he did not want them; he said it and we believe it.
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Post by sonnybh on Oct 7, 2023 20:22:57 GMT
Talking of archive fires, I was reading a few days ago about films that have been lost & sometimes found. A lot of Harold Lloyd's early films were lost when his personal film vault at his house caught fire. Harold Lloyd and his people have downplayed it, from Facebook: (His social media account also has his hair raising account of the quite serious August 1919 bomb accident, if you're interested.) Harold Lloyd 28 September 2023 THE VAULT FIRE MYTH (Repeat of Sept. 2020 post.) Photo shows Harold inspecting the damage after his 1943 film vault explosion, which according to some accounts destroyed most of his early films, including the Lonesome Lukes and original elements to some of his later ones. And the story has him running in to save what he could of his film library and being dragged to safety by his wife. But it was FAKE NEWS, and Harold was not happy about it, blaming his publicity man for going too far. He told us (his young friends) that it was not a film vault at all but a storage room that should never have contained nitrate film. He insisted there wasn't much film of any significance, just some trims and leftovers and junk. He also told us that he was in his house up the hill from the explosion and it would have taken ten minutes to get there if he ran. Several of those square boxes look like shipping cases for thousand-foot reels of 35mm projection prints, not negatives. They may have contained preview prints of earlier works in progress. A preview print of PROFESSOR BEWARE turned up in the garage of Harold's nephew in 1973 and included the Egyptian pageant sequence deleted from the finished feature. Perhaps there was the 3-hour preview version of MOVIE CRAZY, and that would be something to see. But it's certain there were no Lonesome Lukes in there. Most of them may have burned in a Pathe fire in New Jersey. Anyway, Harold did not acquire them from Hal Roach or Pathe, he did not want them; he said it and we believe it. View AttachmentOK that puts it all in perspective!
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Post by garygraham on Oct 10, 2023 23:47:35 GMT
The only archive fire I can think of happening in the UK was one at Scottish Television. There have been a few UK archive fires that resulted in the loss of films. The Mancunian Films archive was lost in a fire and in 1993 several of the camera negatives of the Ealing Comedies including The Lavender Hill Mob, Whisky Galore and Passport to Pimlico. Some idiot thought it was a good idea to have all of those in a film lab at one time so prints could be made for a festival. I suspect the camera negative of the Ladykillers was lost too, looking at the current picture quality. The original negatives of around 25 other British films from the Forties and Fifties were also destroyed. In these cases the public is always assured that dupe negatives are available and they won't notice. But in reality it's visible with modern HD releases. It's why "Singin' In the Rain" has such a high-contrast glassy look to it.
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Post by sonnybh on Oct 11, 2023 20:24:11 GMT
The only archive fire I can think of happening in the UK was one at Scottish Television. There have been a few UK archive fires that resulted in the loss of films. The Mancunian Films archive was lost in a fire and in 1993 several of the camera negatives of the Ealing Comedies including The Lavender Hill Mob, Whisky Galore and Passport to Pimlico. Some idiot thought it was a good idea to have all of those in a film lab at one time so prints could be made for a festival. I suspect the camera negative of the Ladykillers was lost too, looking at the current picture quality. The original negatives of around 25 other British films from the Forties and Fifties were also destroyed. In these cases the public is always assured that dupe negatives are available and they won't notice. But in reality it's visible with modern HD releases. It's why "Singin' In the Rain" has such a high-contrast glassy look to it. I hadn't heard of those incidents before!
While not lost in fires, some Technicolour elements of early colour films were discarded as they were thought to be of no further use, possibly deteriorating & taking up vault space!
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Post by garygraham on Oct 12, 2023 12:08:54 GMT
There have been a few UK archive fires that resulted in the loss of films. The Mancunian Films archive was lost in a fire and in 1993 several of the camera negatives of the Ealing Comedies including The Lavender Hill Mob, Whisky Galore and Passport to Pimlico. Some idiot thought it was a good idea to have all of those in a film lab at one time so prints could be made for a festival. I suspect the camera negative of the Ladykillers was lost too, looking at the current picture quality. The original negatives of around 25 other British films from the Forties and Fifties were also destroyed. In these cases the public is always assured that dupe negatives are available and they won't notice. But in reality it's visible with modern HD releases. It's why "Singin' In the Rain" has such a high-contrast glassy look to it. I hadn't heard of those incidents before!
While not lost in fires, some Technicolour elements of early colour films were discarded as they were thought to be of no further use, possibly deteriorating & taking up vault space!
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ealing-film-classics-destroyed-in-fire-1486095.htmlRegarding Mancunian Films it was apparently a fire at Kay Laboratories in 1980.
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Post by garygraham on Oct 12, 2023 12:29:16 GMT
There have been a few UK archive fires that resulted in the loss of films. The Mancunian Films archive was lost in a fire and in 1993 several of the camera negatives of the Ealing Comedies including The Lavender Hill Mob, Whisky Galore and Passport to Pimlico. Some idiot thought it was a good idea to have all of those in a film lab at one time so prints could be made for a festival. I suspect the camera negative of the Ladykillers was lost too, looking at the current picture quality. The original negatives of around 25 other British films from the Forties and Fifties were also destroyed. In these cases the public is always assured that dupe negatives are available and they won't notice. But in reality it's visible with modern HD releases. It's why "Singin' In the Rain" has such a high-contrast glassy look to it. I hadn't heard of those incidents before!
While not lost in fires, some Technicolour elements of early colour films were discarded as they were thought to be of no further use, possibly deteriorating & taking up vault space!
Once the strips of film started to age - warping and shrinking - it must have been difficult to get a good Technicolor print from them? Talking of which, last week I watched "Blithe Spirit" on the ITVX site. My whole life these British Technicolor films have looked less than great. But I sat there and thought "wow!" At times it was almost like looking at something that had just been made today.
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Post by sonnybh on Oct 12, 2023 20:26:54 GMT
Often it was the original Technicolour negatives which were binned, with 3 reels of black & while film filtered to red, green & blue light, with the colour master being a dye print.
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Post by garygraham on Oct 13, 2023 17:06:42 GMT
I wonder how long they kept the matrixs that were used to print the colour onto the colour print? If at all.
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Post by rmackenziefehr on Oct 14, 2023 9:17:10 GMT
While not lost in fires, some Technicolour elements of early colour films were discarded as they were thought to be of no further use, possibly deteriorating & taking up vault space!
My understanding is that it was the two-color Technicolor films of the late 1920s/early 1930s which experienced that fate- Technicolor offered the negatives to the various studios that had produced the films in question, and, while some clearly accepted (as some two-color negatives have surfaced in studio archives), others did not- with unfortunate consequences in later years, as many two-color Technicolor films either don't survive at all or survive (solely or predominantly) in black-and-white prints made for television in the 1950s.
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Post by sonnybh on Oct 14, 2023 20:30:06 GMT
While not lost in fires, some Technicolour elements of early colour films were discarded as they were thought to be of no further use, possibly deteriorating & taking up vault space!
My understanding is that it was the two-color Technicolor films of the late 1920s/early 1930s which experienced that fate- Technicolor offered the negatives to the various studios that had produced the films in question, and, while some clearly accepted (as some two-color negatives have surfaced in studio archives), others did not- with unfortunate consequences in later years, as many two-color Technicolor films either don't survive at all or survive (solely or predominantly) in black-and-white prints made for television in the 1950s. That sounds right, many studios didn't seem to regard their back catalogue highly.
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Post by garygraham on Oct 16, 2023 19:23:31 GMT
My understanding is that it was the two-color Technicolor films of the late 1920s/early 1930s which experienced that fate- Technicolor offered the negatives to the various studios that had produced the films in question, and, while some clearly accepted (as some two-color negatives have surfaced in studio archives), others did not- with unfortunate consequences in later years, as many two-color Technicolor films either don't survive at all or survive (solely or predominantly) in black-and-white prints made for television in the 1950s. That sounds right, many studios didn't seem to regard their back catalogue highly. There was limited or no money to be made once a film had completed its initial release. Were there even events such as film festivals in those days? It was all about the next thing. In some ways more healthy than our rather backward looking society today? I wonder if this is why modern music, films and TV are so terrible?
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