Quality Question

[Rollo]

They are over at alt.silence besmirching Lloyd's slapstick.
They think it's too "slappy" and not enough "sticky."

What's going on here?

I do have an observation. Recently I was able to scan
through the first 5 vol.s of L&H's Univerals UK set over
at a friends house and after reading posts here from the
past years I was a bit put off by some of the quality.

I kept reading about how the films were restored and
that the best prints were being used and I didn't really
notice. The features looked the same as I've always
owned them (VHS) but some of the shorts looked a
bit ragged. Now granted I was navigating through them
rather quickly because I wanted to get an idea of what
was done to them and I did notice some restored opening
credits on some shorts but I also saw lines running up and
down and flickering and the occassional bright light on the
Boy's faces (I think it was "Beau Hunks.")

Pardon me if this has been hashed over when the set was
originally released but for some reason I was expecting
pristine prints that came out of some film collector's vault.
Was this just wishful thinking on my part and is this the
best material quality-wise we are going to see of their work
in our lifetime?

[Kimba W. Lion]

Post by Rollo
I was expecting
pristine prints that came out of some film collector's vault.
Was this just wishful thinking on my part and is this the
best material quality-wise we are going to see of their work
in our lifetime?

It depends more on how much effort is spent on preparing the video release
than on the luck of finding pristine prints. When I got the first DVD release
of The Goodies TV show
http://preview.tinyurl.com/24525u
I was amazed by the included 5-minute demonstration of how the films were
restored for the DVD. It is simply amazing how splices, scratches, and other
film faults can be rendered invisible by people willing and able to do the
work. If someone was willing to spend the time and money on the L&H movies,
they could look like new.

[Rollo]

And I had read that they did exactly that.
It appears that the corporate world in Europe
holds The Boys in a higher esteem than here
in the Land of the Flee and the Kirch Group
was putting out restored L&H.

Maybe I read too much into it.

On a related note I remember reading a couple of
years ago about an avid restorationist here in the
States that spent most of the 80's & into the 90's
working on restoring every L&H film (maybe just
the talkies) and just as he was finishing his work
the entire U.S. rights were sold to Hallmark who
immediately locked up all of his work in a vault and
kicked him out.

Can anyone jog my memory on this tale and do we
have an update on this true American Hero?

Gary J.

[m***@yahoo.com]

Post by Rollo
And I had read that they did exactly that.
It appears that the corporate world in Europe
holds The Boys in a higher esteem than here
in the Land of the Flee and the Kirch Group
was putting out restored L&H.
Maybe I read too much into it.
On a related note I remember reading a couple of
years ago about an avid restorationist here in the
States that spent most of the 80's & into the 90's
working on restoring every L&H film (maybe just
the talkies) and just as he was finishing his work
the entire U.S. rights were sold to Hallmark who
immediately locked up all of his work in a vault and
kicked him out.
Can anyone jog my memory on this tale and do we
have an update on this true American Hero?
Gary J.

The avid restorationist is most likely Michael Agee, who has put out
the L & H silents on DVD, and will be issuing a new box set later this
year, restored in Hi-Def. If anybody should be get the job to do
their talkies it would be him--though it's costly and time-consuming,
and because of that it takes him a while to get the product out.

He did a lot of restoring of the talkies for Hal Roach back in the
80s, and I think he is under the impression that the video masters he
created have been destroyed. The European companies that have put out
the DVDs have a few differences in quality here and there, but they're
still much better overall than the pair of DVDs Hallmark licensed a
few years ago.

I'm sure it will be done someday, but it's difficult to guess much
more than that. Who'd ever think that a picture perfect copy of
Flying Deuces would show up, after seeing lousy video copies for years
and years?

[Kimba W. Lion]

Post by Rollo
I was expecting
pristine prints that came out of some film collector's vault.
Was this just wishful thinking on my part and is this the
best material quality-wise we are going to see of their work
in our lifetime?

It depends more on how much effort is spent on preparing the video release
than on the luck of finding pristine prints. When I got the first DVD release
of The Goodies TV show
http://preview.tinyurl.com/24525u
I was amazed by the included 5-minute demonstration of how the films were
restored for the DVD. It is simply amazing how splices, scratches, and other
film faults can be rendered invisible by people willing and able to do the
work. If someone was willing to spend the time and money on the L&H movies,
they could look like new.

[Derek Gee]

Post by Kimba W. Lion

Post by Rollo
I was expecting
pristine prints that came out of some film collector's vault.
Was this just wishful thinking on my part and is this the
best material quality-wise we are going to see of their work
in our lifetime?

It depends more on how much effort is spent on preparing the video release
than on the luck of finding pristine prints. When I got the first DVD release
of The Goodies TV show
http://preview.tinyurl.com/24525u
I was amazed by the included 5-minute demonstration of how the films were
restored for the DVD. It is simply amazing how splices, scratches, and other
film faults can be rendered invisible by people willing and able to do the
work. If someone was willing to spend the time and money on the L&H movies,
they could look like new.

It's really a combination of three things. First, find the best
negatives or prints you can find and clean and prep them for transfer.
Second, transfer them on high quality telecine equipment by operators
who know what they are doing. Third, if you have the money, use digital
restoration tools to remove obvious blemishes. There are still finite
limits to how much digital tools can fix, but those limits are being
pushed every year.

Derek