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Post by stevehoare61 on Dec 22, 2013 9:18:09 GMT
I have to say I totally agree with a poster on the last page. Theres been a lot of critism aimed at fans and web sites such as this and some of the other less well monitored, and how they hinder finds etc, but to deliberately place a Marco Polo can as a wind up on the top of a pile, which is going to have exactly the effect these so called experts are complaining about is stupidity beyond belief. Why on Earth would you do that? You cant complain that the fans are fanning the flames when you keep lighting the fire. What a sadly ill judged foolish thing to do.
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Post by adamjordan on Dec 22, 2013 9:33:52 GMT
I was there and the figure 10,000 was definitely mentioned because me and my partner both discussed it in the interval. TIEA was mentioned in the second part because Dick Fiddy gave an explanation for why the running order wasn't published in advance - they were waiting to hear if Phil Morris was going to release some items for inclusion. That IS what was said. |
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Post by Phil Leach on Dec 22, 2013 9:34:51 GMT
I have to say I totally agree with a poster on the last page. Theres been a lot of critism aimed at fans and web sites such as this and some of the other less well monitored, and how they hinder finds etc, but to deliberately place a Marco Polo can as a wind up on the top of a pile, which is going to have exactly the effect these so called experts are complaining about is stupidity beyond belief. Why on Earth would you do that? You cant complain that the fans are fanning the flames when you keep lighting the fire. What a sadly ill judged foolish thing to do. Saw the film and it wasn't like that. It worked as a joke simple as that. It was a reel of film on its side behind Tim Disney's head during an interview. The reel had Marco Polo #4 (or 5 can't remember which) written on the leader in marker pen. Didn't see a can at all. Anyway it looked like a 400ft reel. Why would he have a reel of unique master film sitting behind him in a pile! The film was excellent by the way and was the best look at old TV I've seen. The Morris find came over as a genuine one in the film but as other people who were there have said no details were given. Thousands was mentioned but not Zambia or anywhere else. Morris's search being a legitimate thing sanctioned by both the BBC and BFI was the major news that came out. |
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Post by adamjordan on Dec 22, 2013 9:40:01 GMT
I was there and the figure 10,000 was definitely mentioned because me and my partner both discussed it in the interval. TIEA was mentioned in the second part because Dick Fiddy gave an explanation for why the running order wasn't published in advance - they were waiting to hear if Phil Morris was going to release some items for inclusion. You clearly heard what you wanted not what was actually said. Well we seem to have differing ideas of what was said. The 10,000 figure has been widely reported elsewhere and it is not a case of people mis hearing or echoing a rumour one person started. Dick Fiddy was on screen, he said that there were hundreds, thousands, possibly ten thousand reels that he suspected had been returned to the Uk and were probably mostly residing at the BBC. I am not one for stirring rumours. I am one for repeating what was said to the best of my memory. Hopefully the Kal documentary will be posted up somewhere soon and we can put this to bed. |
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Post by John Wall on Dec 22, 2013 9:40:48 GMT
I was there and the figure 10,000 was definitely mentioned because me and my partner both discussed it in the interval. TIEA was mentioned in the second part because Dick Fiddy gave an explanation for why the running order wasn't published in advance - they were waiting to hear if Phil Morris was going to release some items for inclusion. That IS what was said. Read David Buck and Phil Leach's posts. |
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Post by John Wall on Dec 22, 2013 9:43:05 GMT
You clearly heard what you wanted not what was actually said. Well we seem to have differing ideas of what was said. The 10,000 figure has been widely reported elsewhere and it is not a case of people mis hearing or echoing a rumour one person started. Dick Fiddy was on screen, he said that there were hundreds, thousands, possibly ten thousand reels that he suspected had been returned to the Uk and were probably mostly residing at the BBC. I am not one for stirring rumours. I am one for repeating what was said to the best of my memory. Hopefully the Kal documentary will be posted up somewhere soon and we can put this to bed. I posted hundreds/thousands minutes after the film was shown. No mention of 10,000. The reality is that nobody on the film actually knew what PM had recovered. |
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Post by Adrian Last on Dec 22, 2013 9:57:45 GMT
The encouraging thing from MBW yesterday was confirmation that there has been a significant recovery of "thousands" of film cans. What is in them remains to be seen but I am sure we will hear more shortly.
I was hoping we might get to see the Ken Tynan clip from BBC-3 but alas...
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Post by adamjordan on Dec 22, 2013 9:58:27 GMT
Read David Buck and Phil Leach's posts. I concur with everything they posted. There is some confusion about the 10,000 figure being mentioned, that's all. Until we get to see the clip again then there will be endless debate. I and many others may have misheard what was said and you may be right. But it is academic really, as Mr Fiddy was only speculating on the numbers returned as he doesn't know himself. But it is now beyond reasonable doubt that a significant haul of vintage British television has been returned. What WAS really exciting was confirmation of the BBC and BFI involvement in Mr Morris's endeavours and the nature of their involvement. I was also agreeing with spcowen's recollection of Dick Fiddy's comment about the late posting of the programme line up as he had been waiting to see if Philip Morris had anything to offer. |
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Post by David Buck on Dec 22, 2013 10:00:52 GMT
I thought the Joke was fine - but obviously it's divided people, and yes to demonstrate how different people remember things differently Marco was on Leader footage dangling down from a reel not written on a film can as earlier commentators suggested
One last comment just to clarify what I posted earlier re Chris & Dick - I believe they would be likely to know more than the rest of us ( barring those directly involved ) on the veracity of the rumours rather than any specific details - If the material in the documentary was so far off the truth I'm sure it would have been snipped out.
If thousands of film cans are with the BBC and the ITV material once sorted out is to be sent on to the BFI wouldn't the BFI by now at least know the scale of what's on the horizon?
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Post by John Wall on Dec 22, 2013 10:03:00 GMT
The important thing is that whether PM has recovered 100s, 1000s or 10000s of programmes, not all of them will be missing and there may not be any more missing Dr Who there. The impression I got from the documentary was that PM is basically a Dr Who fan and needed "encouraging" to look for other things.
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Post by John Wall on Dec 22, 2013 10:05:43 GMT
I thought the Joke was fine - but obviously it's divided people, and yes to demonstrate how different people remember things differently Marco was on Leader footage dangling down from a reel not written on a film can as earlier commentators suggested One last comment just to clarify what I posted earlier re Chris & Dick - I believe they would be likely to know more than the rest of us ( barring those directly involved ) on the veracity of the rumours rather than any specific details - If the material in the documentary was so far off the truth I'm sure it would have been snipped out. If thousands of film cans are with the BBC and the ITV material once sorted out is to be sent on to the BFI wouldn't the BFI by now at least know the scale of what's on the horizon? Considering that the documentary had the BBC News clip of PM at the 50th anniversary celebrations means that the final part of the documentary was put together in the last few weeks. |
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Post by adamjordan on Dec 22, 2013 10:17:03 GMT
............ If the material in the documentary was so far off the truth I'm sure it would have been snipped out. ....... That is a very important point. KAL and BFI obviously felt they needed something in there to at least acknowledge what's been going on, and they said as much as they could in the documentary. |
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Post by David Buck on Dec 22, 2013 10:24:09 GMT
The important thing is that whether PM has recovered 100s, 1000s or 10000s of programmes, not all of them will be missing and there may not be any more missing Dr Who there. exactly yes, and covered by Dick's comment in the film that after adding the BFI's letter to Phil's accreditation they said to ship back any & all British tv and let it get sorted out at this end - A sensible precaution as far as the potential for misfiled films goes. The impression I got from the documentary was that PM is basically a Dr Who fan and needed "encouraging" to look for other things. I think the initial impetous for a lot of people involved in hunting down missing tv was their Who fan status - I'm one & whilst I've sent a selection of shows back to the BBC, Kaleidoscope & the BFI - DW sadly has not been among them; no, I'm sure Philip was intending to look for everything from pretty early on if not day 1, once the idea took shape and it became a real project. |
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Post by John Wall on Dec 22, 2013 10:38:12 GMT
It looks like PM might have "extracted" EotW/WoF for "priority" treatment because, as a fan, he wanted to see them !
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Post by scotttelfer on Dec 22, 2013 10:43:39 GMT
hopefully - that small extract with Chris and Dick discussing the rumours could make it online - If you cut out the BBC news clips there'd be no clearance issues - or a transcript because I don't think it's at all clear cut. I personally thought Dick said something like, not just hundreds, not even just thousands - which would lead the brain to fill in the 10,000 comment; Anyway - this segment followed on from the library of congress finds and was built up as something significantly bigger - not on what has been announced so far it isn't! Chris or Dick also very pointedly stated that this info was what they had heard when the segment was recorded, I'd personally expect Chris & Dick to know a damn sight more than the rest of us about this ( other than those involved directly of course )and If the sort of figures being suggested were based on the notions Dick mentions in that Facebook comment then I don't see how that fits with the impression given in the documentary at all, On the other hand of course you have to reflect on the earlier comments, I think from Paul, that most of these countries had disposed of their foreign film holdings in the past few decades so you have to wonder how a haul of that magnitude could be possible - that's the essential crux of the matter & the reason why this won't go away until there's an unequivacable statement from TIEA / BBC : An almost impossible scenario yet even the experts in the field appear to give it a fair degree of credence the thing is .....(despite the actual intrepretaion of whats been said at MBW to the actual numbers.) 10,000 isnt that many when you consider television in the 60s....... if a tv station had to fill 12 hours of programming , thats 12 film cans a day right there , if half of the days prograaming were half hour shows thats an average of 18 cans of film a day or 6570 can per year for just one tv station....... so if somebody found the last two years of a single tv stations programming in storage thats 13, 140 cans of film.... ! now if it was a country with 4 tv stations that showed different programming to each other ...(ala Nigeria) and they were all sent back to one storage area..(ala Nigeria) . thats 52,560 film cans in storage...... (from many tv companies areound the world.....) theres a precedent for this in New Zealand , as over 10.000 ex TVNZ prints were stored in two shipping containers on a wharf in wellington for many years , they were eventually sorted by workers hired on a job scheme for the unemployed , by the NZ film archive to search for any NZ related material , in about 1994 ....... (non NZ content was apparently destroyed , but im aware that quite lot of stuff still went walkies from the 94ish sort.....) from memory ,it was the same material that Grahame Howard discovered the Moonbase and Marco Polo cans in a few years beforehand that sadly had different material in the cans so yeah.......its surprising how quickly the numbers add up , if you found a film storage warehouse that hadnt destroyed expired product or sent it on to other countries..... (especially if it was at the end of the chain .....and they were been held awaiting further instructions..... like the TVNZ containers )
At the last official estimate (around the end of 2012 I believe) the BBC said they were missing 1.5 million programmes from their archives, and that there is a further 2 million currently in their archives. You can see from that just how many programmes there were produced over the years and that even if there were 10,000 cans all heading to the BBC and all missing, it would barely scratch the surface. I still find it a bit odd that it is actually in that ratio, you would presume after 35 years of near complete archiving of television (and a relatively thorough radio archiving for most of it as well) it would be far higher especially with the current explosion in channels that has happened.
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