Timeslip-What Happened to the Colour Prints?

[Richard Hunter]

I've just been reading up on this show from the early 70's that I vaguely remember watching as a child.

It would seem that Carlton are going to release the series on DVD later this year and although the series was originally shown in colour most of what remains is only in B&W.

I think it was originally made by ATV and Carlton now own the rights.

I'm just curious as to what would have happened to the colour prints. I always thought the ITV companies were always more careful at preserving their stuff as opposed to the BBC. By the way is the show any good??

I seem to recall it was a bit spooky as a 7 year old my fear is I may be disappointed watching it as an adult.

[helpful Hartley]

Richard there are threads and theads gone by discussing the fate of Timeslip , but the great website is your best source for information
www.timeslip.org.uk/links/index.php

basically the release is to made mostly from overseas prints which are in B/W.
The fate of the colour master tapes used in the UK can be put down to three theories (1) they were damaged or need restoration.
(2) they were erased due to contractual arrangements.
(3)they are simply lost in the vast ATV archive and will turn up eventually.
Some of the master tapes maybe in B/W anyway as some of 'Timeslip' was recorded during the colour strike.

[Jim Spriggs]

(4) residing on mythical philips tapes!

[Steve HardyController 2957]

The oft-told story is that the 2" masters were found to be water-damaged back in the 80s (though why episode 12 should have escaped this fate is a bit of a mystery!) The damaged tapes were then marked for destruction but beyond that there is no information. The truth is, the actual fate of the tapes is currently unknown - it's as simple as that...

It seems highly improbable (but not impossible - I try to avoid talking in absolutes...), given those series of events, that the 2" tapes still exist. IF the tapes WEREN'T destroyed, IF they were FOUND and IF they were in a state where they COULD be REPAIRED then we'd be cooking. Anyone want to calculate the odds on that?

And does the series stand up to scrutiny today? Well, given the recent advances in cloning I would say it is a series that gets MORE relevant as time passes... Yeah, it's pretty good

[Richard Hunter]

Thanks for that chaps.

I think I'll have a look at the series when it comes out again later in the year.

I've noticed that the original videos that were released in the early 90's are going for around the £30 mark on E Bay already.

Interesting, I wonder how much it would cost to take something like that in B&W and redo it in colour, probably mega bucks me thinks.

[Ricardo01]

Probably a lot cheaper than when colourization was really hot about a dozen years ago. I knew someone slightly who worked on the colourization for McHales Navy episodes and it was very tedious work with the speed of computers in those days. How many frames to make a second of film. A lot of people working hard to do a couple of minutes of film per day.
In McHales' Navy, Gilligan's Island and a couple of other series, it allowed them to sell an extra season or two of episodes which were much in demand because they were in black and white.

[Steve HardyController 2957]

This just in from Carlton Visual Entertainment...

We have tentatively scheduled the release for July, below are the details regarding the clean up of the masters:

The 16mm Telerecorded Negatives were telecined to Digital Betacam and the image was put through a noise reduction process. Once a test DVD was viewed, any analogue drop out, tape or film defects noted were then removed via Edifis Scratchbox.

This is as far as we have gone with the process and no further work will be carried out on the masters.

To confirm we have one colour ep. (Time of the Ice Box) all other are the black and white recordings.

Each series will be on 1 DVD - there will be 4 DVD's in total, these will be packed into double amaray cases and will be available as complete box set to buy.

So there you go...

[Jay]

I believe that Episodes 22 and 23 (The Day of the Clone, Episodes 2 and 3) were recorded in black and white due to industrial action, so there are twenty-two missing colour episodes.

[Alan Hayes]

Guest-Steve said:

This just in from Carlton Visual Entertainment...

We have tentatively scheduled the release for July, below are the details regarding the clean up of the masters:

The 16mm Telerecorded Negatives were telecined to Digital Betacam and the image was put through a noise reduction process. Once a test DVD was viewed, any analogue drop out, tape or film defects noted were then removed via Edifis Scratchbox.

This is as far as we have gone with the process and no further work will be carried out on the masters.

To confirm we have one colour ep. (Time of the Ice Box) all other are the black and white recordings.

Each series will be on 1 DVD - there will be 4 DVD's in total, these will be packed into double amaray cases and will be available as complete box set to buy.

So there you go...

Good news. And only a short(ish) wait until July... Yay!

[Matthew K Sharp]

Guest-Ricardo01 said:

Probably a lot cheaper than when colourization was really hot about a dozen years ago. I knew someone slightly who worked on the colourization for McHales Navy episodes and it was very tedious work with the speed of computers in those days. (...)

It can't have been that difficult, surely - the colourized McHale's we had only seemed to ever have three colours - blue, green and brown.

[Jeremy Williams]

I can't wait for the DVD release of this now, been going through my video's of it, is it going to be VIDfire'd?

I'd actually forgotton how good this series is, and it is going to have Front, Ad, and End Caps too?

Jez

"Your watching ITV1...move along...nothing to see here!"

[Andy McKinney]

Guest-Jeremy said:

I can't wait for the DVD release of this now, been going through my video's of it, is it going to be VIDfire'd?

I'd actually forgotton how good this series is, and it is going to have Front, Ad, and End Caps too?

VidFIRE wasn't mentioned, and they said that NO further work was going to be done, so it appears they will still retain the "film" look.

If Carlton's "Sapphire and Steel" is anything to go on, I wouldn't hold my breath for adcaps or frontcaps. Might get lucky with endcaps, though.

[Laurence Piper]

I must admit, i'm not expecting perfection here as Carlton's performance on DVD releases is inconsistent (e.g. UFO / Sapphire & Steel). Timeslip is a favourite of mine but sadly I don't think it will get a full treatment with Vidfire etc. I do hope the ads and idents are intact though; easy and cheap to achieve, so there's no excuse really.

[William Martin]

well, some people do consider Carlton to be more interested in profit than quality, but not me because I don't want to get sued

[Jon Preddle]

Richard Hartley said: basically the release is to made mostly from overseas prints which are in B/W.

This would explain why on a bad nth generartion dub I have of some episodes there is an old NZBC ident at the end of one episode!

Timeslip screened in NZ in 1973, and was repeated in 1975-1976. Although we were broadcasting pretty much exclusively in colour at that time, the odd b/w repeat was also going out.

Jon Preddle