The Professionals Negatives Query

[Brian Fretwell]

Mar 31, 2011 1:54:49 GMT gileshill said:

Mar 2, 2011 11:39:39 GMT Peter Stirling said:

Shame about the negs, as 16mm stuff like Inspector Morse
has now been blown up and archived on dependable 35mm making it look very nice indeed.

The ITV 3 HD repeats don't have bounces on cuts so they can't have scanned the 16mm negatives. Does this mean they blew them up to 35mm prints for making HD telecines?

As print stock is very fine grain I don't think blowing up to 35mm would produce better telecine results, the optics involved might negate the benefit of a contact 16mm print. Hear the comments of Robert Rodriguez on the El Mariachi DVD (the 10 minute film school feature) about blow up prints, though they may have improved since then.

[Steven Sigel]

If you blow a 16mm print up to 35mm you will get the same quality or worse. A copy can never be better than the original it was made from (although you can do restoration to it of course).

[Peter Stirling]

I think the main reason is to have a universal archive format that will be able to be seen in the future without much bother. Hollywood is archiving its digital movies on 35mm for the same reason and the fact that you can open a can of film and instantly it tells you everything about about it IE. like its condition and cuts etc which obviously you cannot do with videotape or digitally stored movies.

[Anthony Clark]

I seem to recall that The Professionals negatives weren't lost in the true sense of the word - they were known to exist but not their exact location. Something to do their sale and storage. Others will no doubt remember more details. I seem to recall that the film recordings for a handfull of Coronation Street episodes fell to a similar fate: "They're in there somewhere - we just don't know where."