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Post by Andy Howells on Jun 20, 2009 13:22:29 GMT
Just been catching some rare reruns of the early Steptoe series from the 1960s on GOLD in recent weeks. Despite on screen graphics and idents I've actually enjoyed watching these immensely, (often having seen the first series and later colour episodes which have frequently been repeated over the years).
However I've been quite intrigued by 3 episodes which were broadcast this week from the mid sixties, as each episode has ended a small silent Black and White ident sequence with the words A BBC Production have appeared which I've never seen before. What was the purpose of this ident? Was it for overseas prints and has anyone seen it anywhere else? Does it appear on the Steptoe DVDs at all?
Apologies if this has been covered anywhere else!
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Post by Bob Savage (robstar) on Jun 22, 2009 19:20:40 GMT
I have been enjoying these repeats too and quite amazed that gold are showing black and white material again, I thought they would stick to just colour! My question is that although the condition of most of these episodes is good they would benefit like the recovered Dads Army episodes from restoration - removal of tram lines etc! Has this been done on the dvd releases or not?
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Post by Mark Smith on Jun 23, 2009 12:59:07 GMT
My question is that although the condition of most of these episodes is good they would benefit like the recovered Dads Army episodes from restoration - removal of tram lines etc! Has this been done on the dvd releases or not? Sadly, the DVD releases of Steptoe only received the basic attention all archive releases get when put out on disc. As one of the archive jewels in the BBC crown, the Steptoe DVDs were something of a disappointment for many fans. It would be a little unfair to compare them to the Dad's Army releases though, as they were put together and overseen by chaps who had a genuine love of the series, and the superb results on DVD admirably demonstrates that. |
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Post by StevePhillips on Jun 24, 2009 19:29:56 GMT
However I've been quite intrigued by 3 episodes which were broadcast this week from the mid sixties, as each episode has ended a small silent Black and White ident sequence with the words A BBC Production have appeared which I've never seen before. What was the purpose of this ident? Was it for overseas prints and has anyone seen it anywhere else? Does it appear on the Steptoe DVDs at all? Most of the 60's Steptoe film recordings are recoveries from BBC Enterprises - the caption you mention is, yes, for overseas sales. Those captions were also on the DVDs. |
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Post by Andy Howells on Jun 25, 2009 7:58:43 GMT
Thanks Steve, GOLD have started showing the 1970 series now which I believe were the ones recovered back in the 90s, and dubbed "The Lost Steptoes" on BBC2 for a while. These were also the episodes that were originally broadcast in colour.
It would be good if these could be colourised but I wonder if the quality of the prints maybe arent as sharp as say the Dad's Army episode "Room At The Bottom".?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 25, 2009 9:04:53 GMT
The Lost Steptoes (all of series 5 and a large part of series 6) were recovered from domestic reels held by Ray Galton, which were originally dubbed from the masters. Dad's Army: Room At The Bottom existed as a full quality b/w t/r. So - assuming you could actually extract colour from those domestic recordings for the sake of argument - the overall quality would obviously not be anywhere near as good. The episodes as they stand though could be improved by some more restoration anyway, I reckon (particularly as techniques have moved on since these were transferred in the '90s).
It's always possible that t/rs of those early colour Steptoes could exist somewhere though; part of the t/r for A Winter's Tale turned up not so long ago (the first evidence of any from this period of the show). It's much better quality than the domestic recording of the episode and does have the chroma dot information on it...
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Post by StevePhillips on Jul 7, 2009 21:25:15 GMT
Thanks Steve, GOLD have started showing the 1970 series now which I believe were the ones recovered back in the 90s, and dubbed "The Lost Steptoes" on BBC2 for a while. These were also the episodes that were originally broadcast in colour. It would be good if these could be colourised... There's no way the bandwidth of those 1/2-inch reel-to-reel Steptoes is anything like good enough to resolve 4.43MHz, so they cannot be restored in the manner you are talking about. |
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