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Post by Steven Sigel on Sept 18, 2012 14:52:35 GMT
UPDATE: I just put Episode 5 of "Ice Warriors" on the rewind and found the fade-to-black in the middle. There is NO splice printed into my print, which means that there is NO physical splice in the original print. Did you look just at the f-t-b or elsewhere in the film for a splice? Just checked the fade. But at some point I'll run the whole print and verify.. It would be unlikely to have been cut anywhere else..
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Post by Steven Sigel on Sept 18, 2012 14:56:46 GMT
Re : splices in prints - why would the print have to be physically cut at the point of a commercial break ? Presumably commercials were played in from a separate machine anyway, so wouldn't it just be a matter of fading out / stopping the Dr.Who telecine, playing the commercials, and then re-starting the Dr.Who episode ? It seems very unlikely that commercials were physically spliced into the print at the episode break - for an evening's TV, you would need multiple copies of each advert, and these would then have to be edited together, spliced into the print, and removed afterwards and dis-assembled - it seems far too much work ! In the US, the commercials were spliced right into the prints and then taken out until about the 80s when they started transferring prints to VT first. With Network TV (which had regular sponsors), the comercials were often printed right into the prints.. I have a number of prints like this - they're fun to watch - you can see how someone in, say, 1965 saw an episode of something like "the Addams Family" etc.. Don't know how other countries would have done it. But in any case, Jon's theory about A-B reels would only hold if the prints had been physically spliced.
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Post by Jon Preddle on Sept 18, 2012 19:39:22 GMT
If these prints were returned from Gibraltar, then who supplied them to Zambia - Singapore? Or the BBC directly...
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Post by Jon Preddle on Sept 18, 2012 19:48:47 GMT
Jon - a 73 minute film would have to be on 2 reels. the absolute maximum 16mm run time on a packed to the edge 2300ft reel would be about 63 minutes... A show like that would have been sent most likely on 2x1600ft reels. 30 minute shows were almost always sent on single 1200ft reels. In 25 years of collecting and tens of thousands of prints I've handled, I've never once seen a half hour show that was cut into multiple reels. Unless for some reason this particular consignment of eps (I said at the start that it may have been only 18 eps) was transported in smaller cans, which necessitate them being halved. We've only seen the labels here, not the cans they were sent in. But if the BBC NEVER EVER sent half hour eps split in half - why did the BBC write on the label 2 of 2, or A/B?! I'm perplexed by this as much as you.
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Post by Steven Sigel on Sept 18, 2012 20:22:07 GMT
@jon - I noticed one interesting thing on those labels -- they all say "Cutting Copy" - generally used for editing rather than as a release print..
Negatives often are done in A&B rolls to allow for smooth scene changes, dissolves, etc.... One would think that T/Rs wouldn't have been done this way (usually they were done as single rolls I believe) - but perhaps for some reason they were in this case there were A/B rolls for the negs and that's what they are referring to?
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Post by Jon Preddle on Sept 18, 2012 21:43:10 GMT
@jon - I noticed one interesting thing on those labels -- they all say "Cutting Copy" - generally used for editing rather than as a release print.. Negatives often are done in A&B rolls to allow for smooth scene changes, dissolves, etc.... One would think that T/Rs wouldn't have been done this way (usually they were done as single rolls I believe) - but perhaps for some reason they were in this case there were A/B rolls for the negs and that's what they are referring to? Probably not, because the labels say POSITIVE. Did the BBC merely use up an over-stock of Cutting Copy stickers for this particular consignment? Was the "Cutting Copy" sticker applied because these films were given clearance to be cut in 'half'? Mysteries, mysteries, mysteries...
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Post by Robin Stephenson on Sept 18, 2012 21:47:06 GMT
I really hope that the suggestion that episodes were destroyed in the 80s is false- we were well into home video ownership by then even my family had one by 82- it really would be wrist slitting territory if this has any truth to it.
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Post by Rob Moss on Sept 18, 2012 22:00:45 GMT
I really hope that the suggestion that episodes were destroyed in the 80s is false- we were well into home video ownership by then even my family had one by 82- it really would be wrist slitting territory if this has any truth to it. ...not that Dr Who fans are prone to overreact..!
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Post by Greg H on Sept 18, 2012 22:17:17 GMT
I really hope that the suggestion that episodes were destroyed in the 80s is false- we were well into home video ownership by then even my family had one by 82- it really would be wrist slitting territory if this has any truth to it. ...not that Dr Who fans are prone to overreact..! Lol! Not quite cause to end it all Keep the faith, an episode of the savages might come back one day In all seriousness though as annoying as some BBC choices were theres not a lot that can be done now.
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Post by Jon Preddle on Sept 18, 2012 23:13:13 GMT
Did you look just at the f-t-b or elsewhere in the film for a splice? Just checked the fade. But at some point I'll run the whole print and verify.. It would be unlikely to have been cut anywhere else.. I've taken a look at my very ropey nth gen video copy, one I got soon after they'd been found, so there's no "reconstruction" work done on it. In both parts one and six, around the 13.15 / 13.20 min mark a very clear cue dot flashes up in the top right hand corner. The part one scene is a film sequence anyway, and the dot might be an artefact from editing, but the one in part six occurs during a studio recorded scene. The dot appears shortly before a scene transition, and there is an audible 'pop' as the scene changes, which usually signifies a splice... What does your print show? (It's the bit after the Ice Warriors start collapsing from the rising heat, and there's a super-imposed ripple effect. Varga says the humans "will die" [cue dot]; cut to the Doctor and Victoria in the Ice Warriors' spaceship...)
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Sept 18, 2012 23:33:26 GMT
OK.
I think I may have the answer, and perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier, but here goes.
Film is measured in two ways. For 16mm and 35mm they are measured in 16mm feet and 35mm feet. Unexposed 35mm comes in 1000ft reels, 16mm in 400ft reels. However, what is important here is the duration, which is roughly the same, around 11 minutes.
When we did syncing up at the BBC, film was measured in 35mm feet, not 16mm feet. Various film collectors I've spoken to over the years have referred to a 25-30 minute 16mm film as a "two reeler", meaning 2 x 11 minutes or thereabouts. So when the note says "Splice in both reels", what it means is that there are two splices, one somewhere in the first 11 minutes of the film and another in the second 11 minutes, and these splices could either be a splice where a commercial break was put, or where the film snapped at some point and has been joined back together.
The cutting copy labels could have been used as they were the only ones available at the time... or they could have been changed when films came back from overseas to denote the fact that the films had splices in them. The cue dots do indicate to me that these films are overseas returns. The labels themselves aren't the same as contemporary labels of the period, but around 3 years older, and as Enterprises wouldn't have much use for cutting copies unless they were re-editing lots of negatives (which did happen with DW), they may have had a lot of spare labels around.
I think the A/B denotes either copy A or copy B.
I can't explain the 11, 15, 16 but these seem to me to be later additions anyway.
Hope that helps,
Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Sept 18, 2012 23:45:30 GMT
Just a quick note about the label on the film print of 'The Evil of the Daleks' ep 2. When I first saw that print in May 1987, it didn't have a BBC label on the can and at any rate, it most certainly wasn't the original can. The label on it was added afterwards by Gordon Hendry who was given some blank labels by the BBC IIRC.
On a slightly different subject about identifying some of these old films; early Doctor Who films (season 1, suppressed field recordings) were distributed in aluminium Cinemaxa 1000ft cans with a corresponding reel. When Phil Morris sent me the missing 'Manned Bases on the Moon' edition of The Sky at Night' from 1963, it had a BBC Enterprises label on its Cinemaxa can which was torn and had started to become unstuck. I removed the label and beneath it in permanent marker was written the recording number. Since then, I have seen a similar can (an episode of Steptoe and Son) with a similar label and the recording number written beneath the label.
When the photo's of 'A Land of Fear' appeared on EBay, you could clearly see signs of the permanent marker underneath the remains of a torn label; it's why I was so sure that the print was an original from 1964 and it was also on the original reel.
Paul
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Post by George D on Sept 19, 2012 2:13:41 GMT
Listening to the experts I hope it would be ok to share my thoughts and perhaps others can comment on them. 1. I agree with Paul and Steven that A and B refer to different print copies and not Reel 1 and 2. 2. I believe the labels and the black sharpie type lettering was done by the bbc as another station wouldnt have access to those and the black marker appears to be the primary labelling on the labels therefore i believe it was from enterprises. 3. While its true that David was able to remove the labels, I dont think that these labels generally go from can to can, so Im assuming the can they were on to be the original. (If Im wrong on this point, please let me know) 4. If you notice, the only one that says "splice in both reels" is the only can that was a small 35mm can for Fury 6. missingepisodes.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=who&action=display&thread=6936Here we see that this can could not contain a larger 16mm reel. however it could include include two of the 11 min reels. (16mm x 2=32mm which is still less than 35mm.) Unless someone has a different explanation, my thoughts still remain that the can contained the two apx. 11 minute reels and that "splice in both reels" is basically an instruction that the two reels in the can should be spliced together for the entire episode. I dont believe it is talking about internal splices. I believe the word splice here is a verb and not a noun. While this makes the most sense to me, we will probably never know for sure what happened to the Fury 6 and at what time it was removed from the can. If the episode was actually split on two reels, this could have caused confusion and led to its loss. Its still unknown what was in the Fury can when it was returned. When David found it the day after its return, it was empty. I think we can tell if these were archive copies or bicycled prints based on the condition of them. If they were played in a lot of stations, my thoughts are there would be wear visible. I doubt that they would send an episode out in two parts so my hypothesis is that it was returned like that and they put a label on the can, or it was for internal use and therefore never went out as such. Of course it would be great to question someone who worked at enterprises for their memories
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Post by Steven Sigel on Sept 19, 2012 2:27:56 GMT
I just ran episode 6 all the way through. Found the following: 1) There are NO splices anywhere in the print 2) There are cue marks of some sort (odd looking ones) in two spots. There are no splices near them. They are not done like normal cues - there is a single cue, rather than two spaced apart (normally cues are at 6 seconds and 1 second before the break).
One thing I recall -- I think David Stead once said that someone intentionally damaged the prints before making the copies that I have for Ian Levine so that they could tell if additional copies were made from them. I wonder if that's what these marks are.. There are not any other marks on the prints.
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Post by George D on Sept 19, 2012 2:40:15 GMT
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