Faded film prints (special example)

[emitron]

A bit of shameless self promotion, but it is free and illustrates a film preservation problem not often easily seen on the internet.

So, if you have time to spare, you might find it interesting to have a look my blog entry for today:

lost-british-television.blogspot.com/2006/12/colour-problem-fading-away-to-nothing.html

I've added images that allow you with your mouse to compare a old 16mm faded export print of the art series Civilisation with the BBC 35mm version in blazing colour.

If you hover your mouse over it should change back and forth. A novelty, but it does show how a film can deteriorate and become a shadow of the original print. I was amazed at the difference myself. It does show why we should be grateful for the people who work so hard at film restoration and conservation.

Andy.

[Andrew Doherty]

A fascinating example, but 'Civilisation' is a 'milestone' BBC television series.

I would have thought that where the colour is lost, or is a monochrome print / video , the colourization process would be an alternative answer, along with a digital conversion and placing the converted film / video to an electronic store until a print / video was needed. The key is to have some colour photographs to aid more accurate colour conversion.

I believe the colourization process has improved considerably over the past two decades.

'The Year Of The Sex Olympics', along with the 'Steptoe And Son' 1970 series, would be prime candidates.

Yours,

[hartley967]

it should be pointed out that 16mm syndication prints were not meant to last anyway, cheaply processed on Eastman rubbish with unscrupulous processors (especially in the USA )sometimes leaving out a couple of bleaching fixing processes to save on time and cost.

I maybe wrong but 'Adventures of Sir Lancelot' masters are on IB Technicolor which has proved a worthwhile investment for us to see it today. I would have thought the BBC would have done a similar thing with 'Civilisation' to prtect its investment.

[emitron]

hartley967 said:

it should be pointed out that 16mm syndication prints were not meant to last anyway, cheaply processed on Eastman rubbish with unscrupulous processors (especially in the USA )sometimes leaving out a couple of bleaching fixing processes to save on time and cost.

I maybe wrong but 'Adventures of Sir Lancelot' masters are on IB Technicolor which has proved a worthwhile investment for us to see it today. I would have thought the BBC would have done a similar thing with 'Civilisation' to prtect its investment.

There doesn't appear to be much, if any evidence in the public domain to suggest that 16mm syndication prints were much different in stability terms from other Eastman materials available at the time. Those materials had stability if stored under perfect climatic conditions, but of course the syndication prints wouldn't have that luxury. Despite that there have been cases of syndication prints retaining colour better than the surviving 35mm material.

The negatives of 'Adventures of Sir Lancelot' cannot be IB Technicolor because that process was a printing process. After 1955 all IB Technicolor prints were made from Eastman or Ansco/Agfa negative materials.

It might be possible that prints were struck using dye transfer (IB Technicolor), but I'd think this unlikely because technicolor IB print runs were at least 150 prints before the cost of each print became cheaper than printing on multi-layered stock. It seems unlikely that more than 150 prints of a 50s TV series would be struck for television use only.

[Steven Sigel]

There were in fact some small run IB printings Andy, but very few TV shows were printed in IB, with the notable exception of the "Wonderful World of Disney". It was more expensive for small runs, but some people wanted to use Technicolor no matter what. 1950s color shows were often printed on Kodachrome (I've got several of these; Kodachrome is/was a reversal stock, so small print runs were much easier to do) -- but when they were later reissued for syndication, they would have likely been printed on Eastman stock. (Eastman stock didn't come into being until 1954 IIRC).

Hartley: As for TV show stock fading faster than other stock -- I don't buy it. I've looked at thousands of prints and what seems to be the major factor is the year of the stock - different forumulations seemed to fade more or less than others. The processing probably also was a factor, as was the storage, but the stock itself is by far the biggest culprit.

Also = The shows printed on post 1975 Fuji or AGFA stock still have great color in most cases.

Post 1982 stock is all theoretically low-fade and is supposed to last for at least 75 years.

It's really amazing to take an early 1982 print of a film (on standard Eastman) and compare it to late '82 (or beyond) LPP stock -- the difference looks like Andy's Screen shots.

BTW - negative stock often was better than release print stock, so a lot of the negatives have held up a lot better than many prints.

The best way by far, however, to be able to preserve a color film is by making B&W separations for each of the C,M and Y registers. That way you can always reconstruct the color exactly.


As Andy correctly points out, IB Technicolor prints are postives only -- the negatives were either three strip B&W negatives, or separations made from standard negatives.

[Andrew Doherty]

I know the quality of Agfa colour film, since my two audio-visually minded aunts had a Bell and Howell standard 8mm cine camera, along with projector and lighting for internal work, back in 1959.

Agfa had a tendency to record orange and green exceptionally well. In 1990 I received some of the work and had the prints transferred to VHS video. The results surprising as there was hardly any deterioration in the colour.

I did note that my aunts had thought of Kodak film, since the brand was considered to be very good for registering red and yellow, but they went for Agfa, instead.

As for Technicolor, did they not do away with the three strip process in 1972? For almost ten years after 1972, cinema films made in colour were noticeably poorer, that is, until around 1984, when I noticed a richer colour to films for both television and the cinema.

Yours,

[Steven Sigel]

3-Strip technicolor cameras were only around until about the 1950s at the latest (can't remember exactly when). After that Technicolor printing was done from separations made from Monopack negatives. This of course means that the negatives from that era are in danger of fading unless separations were made and stored.

35mm IB printing was stopped in the US in 1974 (the last film made in IB was The Godfather. II). In the UK it continued until around 1977 -- I've been told that the last UK IB printing was "Star Wars".

In 16mm, IB printing was stopped for new titles in 1970, and for reprints in 1972.

There was a revival of 35mm IB printing in the late 90s - early 00s - they did a few reissues - Wizaard of OZ, Gone With the Wind, Rear Window, Apocalypse Now. And also a few regular releases (Godzilla was one). It didn't last long though.

The time between the end of IB printing and late 1982 when Low fade stock came out is pretty bleak -- most of the prints struck in that era are faded (with the exception, as I mentioned before, of some Fuji and AGFA printings).

[emitron]

andy said:

I know the quality of Agfa colour film, since my two audio-visually minded aunts had a Bell and Howell standard 8mm cine camera, along with projector and lighting for internal work, back in 1959.

Agfa had a tendency to record orange and green exceptionally well. In 1990 I received some of the work and had the prints transferred to VHS video. The results surprising as there was hardly any deterioration in the colour.

I did note that my aunts had thought of Kodak film, since the brand was considered to be very good for registering red and yellow, but they went for Agfa, instead.

As for Technicolor, did they not do away with the three strip process in 1972? For almost ten years after 1972, cinema films made in colour were noticeably poorer, that is, until around 1984, when I noticed a richer colour to films for both television and the cinema.

Yours,

The AGFA was always a bit cheaper than Kodachrome, though I always used the Kodak stock because the dyes were permanent and it was very good on reds.

The UK IB Technicolor prints carried on a bit longer than the US plant (I think Godfather 2 was the last). I think there was even a run of Star Wars, which might explain why it looked so stunning when I first saw it, but years later was washed out. There was a general release stock change in the 1980s, but I know what you mean about washed out prints. There were some shocking prints produced around that time. If optical effects work was introduced, it became as if grain flecks were the size of Golf balls (Clash of the Titans was one such film which looked very grainy).

[Steven Sigel]

UK IB Printings never cease to amaze me -- prints have popped up from the UK of titles that never were printed in IB in the US - like Can Can, 100 million BC, and several others.

The UK also used a lot more AGFA stock than the US, so there are unfaded UK SCOPE prints around of stuff like Diamonds are Forever and Spy Who Loved me, which are only around in RED Eastman (or flat) in the USA. Similarly Family Plot, Godfather part I, etc are around in AGFA from the UK....

[emitron]

stevens said:

UK IB Printings never cease to amaze me -- prints have popped up from the UK of titles that never were printed in IB in the US - like Can Can, 100 million BC, and several others.

The UK also used a lot more AGFA stock than the US, so there are unfaded UK SCOPE prints around of stuff like Diamonds are Forever and Spy Who Loved me, which are only around in RED Eastman (or flat) in the USA. Similarly Family Plot, Godfather part I, etc are around in AGFA from the UK....

I was told by a pal who was a cinema projectionist that they had Star Wars on an 80s re-issue and when they got the print, it was an original and not a re-print as he'd expected. Anyway, he got quite a surprise when they first run it because he now thinks it was IB tech. He says the stars were set against an inky black sky and there was a rich texture he'd never seen before.

When I used to see a lot of movies in the 70s, most were on a double bill and the Disney stuff glowed in colour compared to most of prints that were shown at that time.

Not that many people would know today, but I always noticed the reds on an orginal IB tech print have a glow and saturation that the other stock didn't have and the greens had a lovely antique richness that is difficult to describe, though today's LCD HD sets are getting nearer that look compard to CRT. Contrary to popular belief, the process could reproduce pastel colours which were very subtle, particularly pale yellow.

[Steven Sigel]

I've got a large collection of IB tech prints, and the colors are absolutely amazing. The reds are like nothing you have ever seen (if you haven't seen IB).

You are quite correct about pastel colors -- films like Gone With the Wind and Moby Dick were done in pastel colors. There was usually a Technicolor consulatant on each film and they decided what the color scheme should be. We recently screened a 1950s era IB print of "Gone With the Wind" and it's just amazing to see -- looks nothing like the DVD.

[emitron]

stevens said:

I've got a large collection of IB tech prints, and the colors are absolutely amazing. The reds are like nothing you have ever seen (if you haven't seen IB).

You are quite correct about pastel colors -- films like Gone With the Wind and Moby Dick were done in pastel colors. There was usually a Technicolor consulatant on each film and they decided what the color scheme should be. We recently screened a 1950s era IB print of "Gone With the Wind" and it's just amazing to see -- looks nothing like the DVD.

I don't understand the colouring on the new GWTW DVD. At the end of the first half, there is a famous sequence at sunrise. When I first saw the film on TV, this was completely a red sky. In a later restoration, the sky was much more varied, with purple and blue as you'd expect on most natural sunrises, but on the latest DVD we are back to an image biased towards orange.

Some of the shots in the DVD are those that were selectively cropped for the 50s widescreen release, so we've ended up (for example) with shots of the railroad yard zoomed in more than they were originally. I thought someone would have taken a pre-1954 IB tech print and put these brief shots back in to restore them...but to my amazement I get the impression from collectors that there isn't a complete 1939 era print of GWTW left!

[Steven Sigel]

You are correct -- when they did the so-called wide screen version, they cropped certain scenes (to make them fit in the 1.85 image area) and actually spliced the cropped versions into the master negative. Idiots.

I know that there are a few reels left from a 35mm '39 print, but I don't think there's a complete print - and there's definitely not a complete negative.

I haven't seen the color on the latest DVD, but the color on earlier DVDs (and on non-IB prints I've seen) is cranked way up and doesn't look like the IB at all. I once ran an LPP and an IB side by side -- I'll have to go look and see if I saved any screen shots.

[emitron]

stevens said:

You are correct -- when they did the so-called wide screen version, they cropped certain scenes (to make them fit in the 1.85 image area) and actually spliced the cropped versions into the master negative. Idiots.

I know that there are a few reels left from a 35mm '39 print, but I don't think there's a complete print - and there's definitely not a complete negative.

I haven't seen the color on the latest DVD, but the color on earlier DVDs (and on non-IB prints I've seen) is cranked way up and doesn't look like the IB at all. I once ran an LPP and an IB side by side -- I'll have to go look and see if I saved any screen shots.

It would be very interesting to see screen shot comparisons of these! Please do, if you can spare the time.


You'd think with the number of prints made in 1939 (and 1944) that a complete print would survive. I wonder if the BFI have a 40s print? No idea where the BBC got their 1981 master from, but it was quite subdued. Though the BBC do own some IB Tech prints, including a 35mm of the 1938 Robin Hood, which still glows on TV. I see they've shown the 1939 TCF Jesse James from an amazingly good master.

[hartley967]

Andy with regards to Lancelot. I think when they released the DVD, they left an or/couple of the colour episodes as B/W because they only survived as IB 'elements' and would have obviously cost too much to strike a print for a budget release like that. However having not seen it, I have no idea what the surviving colour episodes are from.

Kodachrome seemed like a good solution, but I understand older telecines just could not handle the wide contrast ratio? Making the luminance look decidly milky. There is a lovely Kodachrome print of an episode 'Larry the Lamb adventures in toytown' going around, which shows its potential.

Watch out for 'Dirk Bogarde's home movies' only shot at 18fps so slightly jerky but the Kodachrome is quite stunning.