Legend Film's new SCROOGE (1935) DVD...
 

I just picked up and watched the new Legend Films disc of SCROOGE and am VERY disappointed. It appears that the print secured by them is one of the later, edited prints (60 minutes long) and is of fairly poor quality. Thats too bad. I guess my hopes were pretty high based on some of the other discs I have from them and my expectations were probably unrealistic. The old, now out-of-print IMAGE release is still your best bet and has superior picture quality compared to the new release and has the missing scenes intact, although it has some annoying ghosting primarily in the beginning from what appears to be a PAL to NTSC conversion.

It's a pretty respectable adaptation of one of my favorite stories. I need to pick up the new VCI edition and see how their (bonus) print of this version looks although it also seems to be the 60 minute version and the few reviews seem to indicate its a bit worn.

Where'd the Legend Films "Official" Thread go? It was here a few hours ago!

A case similar to the Science Fiction film "Things To come", where Legend only could get a 16mm print, while Image Entertainment had a 35mm print. I thing not all film archives are kind to provide Legend Films a good print to telecine and futher colorization, due consider colorization a ofense,, even than Legend Films restore the B&W original. Legend Films probably did the best they could, considering the situation.

I guess my assesment of thier work really comes from the great disc the did of "SHE"....it's a beautiful restoration, even better than the earlier KINO release...

There are cases when even the most respectable film restorer can't get the bether film element to work on. David Shepard, a very respectable film restorer, who used to restore and realise several silent films on quality DVD editions, had trouble with lack of cooperation with some film archives which didn't want to help hin to realise some films, so Shepard relised some films with inferior quality footage, once the best footage wasn't allowed for hin.

I reamber when Shepard wanted to realise a brazilian talk picture of the brazilian director Alberto Cavalcanti, who was friend of hin. He proposed to pay for everything, from restoration of the best element available, making a safety fine grain preservation, HD telecine, DVD mastering, and even digital filters to reduce sound noise and image dust spots. He considered even a special edition DVD with this and plus 2 silents of this brazilian director.
Shepard expected even to lose some money in the project, just to make a homage to the director, since that was the director's favourite film.

But no one on Brazil, from Cinematheques to owner of the films wanted to properly help hin.
It's hard to imagine the absolute lack of attention to a so well intented and generous iniciative of hin.
I got frustrated myself too, since I tried to help Shepard, as I live on Brazil and he contacted me, and I called Cinematheques, get contact with the owners for hin, and even traveled to visit the Cinematheques and talked with film restores, the best film lab restor facility of Brazil, and even Kodak of Brazil to buy fine grain duplicationvirgem film with descont.
After all that the project couldn't go ahead due lack of cooperation.

A chance that practically fall from the sky in their hands, and wasted due negligence.

Preservation it's a dificult question. It's not always easy even when money is available for a project.

Yes, I remember reading about David Shepard's attempt to get access to THE LOST WORLD footage held by The George Eastman House for his restoration of the film. He was met with insurmountable resistance and eventually pursued another path and out-did them anyway with a great DVD. Years later now the GEH "restoration" has apparently shown up as a bonus feature on the Fox DVD release of the 1960's version of the film. Go figure.

David Shepard really is one of my heroes. He has done more to keep alive our silent film history than just about any one person has.

A good restoration for Nosferatu (1922), but in HD and not 2K resolution. Not sure about they used HD in rich bits to get several thousands of shades, or if the contrast ratio of the telecine was good to get all light and dark information of the chemical film

Vertical tranparent scratchs, or tick transparent scratches was left, and also large transparent blemishs. Digital toold for,image restoration of motion picture still have anoying limitations. Anyway the result is the bether the film look in more than 80 years. A very welcome work.

http://eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/catalo...4-nosferatu.mov

http://www.kino.com/video/news.php?news_id=57

But they didn't replaced the missing frames, since most missing frames was available in other footages, prints, but with inferior picture quality.
Lucciano Berriatua was the film restorewr for the reconstruction of the film, and prefered to not use the best footages in somes scenes, since the best footage was shorter for some scenes and he didn't weant a abrupt change in image quality. The restoration of Chaplain Keystone shorts used a similar approuch, and they demonstrated that a long lower quality footage was placed for the entire scene, and a short version of the same scene, with more image quality, was left due be not complete.
I prefer to mix the quaity and lower quality footage in a same scene, even that this create a fall in picture quality allong the scene. Matching the contrast and gometry of the frame, with some sharpness adjust to the lower quality footage, helps to ride the image quality hiccup.

Thos digital restoration of nosferatu was based in the reconstrunction of the film by Lucciano Berriatua, and so follow this same principle. Lucciano foun a print of superior quality in the Cinematheque Francaise, bether than any other print of nosferatu, and he spent years and years trying to find that (I think was shot from original camera negative, so a fisrt generation print).
Some segments was deconposed, and there was some censored cut scenes not available in this quality print. Those segments was replaced with footage from toher prints, and that's why some scenes are really very good, and others just so-so. So the censor cuts, deteriored segments, wa s the reason, together with their decision of not allow image quality changes allong the same scene when possible.

For me they could have replaced the missingf frames at least, since if balanced by digital filters to get more sharpnes (since the frames was available in lower quality footage) and match contrast and geometry, the change in quality would not be much noticeable. The scene when Orlock rises after suck blood from Huter, have some missing frames that should be replaced. See the trailler in the link above.

The tinting seens to have some few different choices for this new digitally restored version, compared to the earlier Kino DVD. It's the third different tint of the movie in a reestored edition, since the earlie Kino DVD had diferent tinting than Image Entertainment DVD. The carnivorous plant scene was yellowed in the eraly Kino DVD, and in those clips are tinted and toned getting a gradient from red to orange.

I got a message from Barry minutes ago.

He said about the Scrooge Legend Fims realise:

"The Legend Version has superior dynamic range. The film is pure vitage and we secured the best print available. We then did extensive picture and audio restoration. This is not a new film but the best anyone will see. The color adds a great deal to the imagery offering detail that has all but faded."

However it is the truncated 60 min version, correct? I was going to get this, but since the uncut version is out on another label, I won't buy the Legend version if it is the common shorter one.

Yes, it IS the shorter, truncated version of the film. The picture quailty is poor, although probably superior to all the other low-end releases of this film. The out of print IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT disc is really beginning to seem top notch in retrospect and is the full 78 minutes. It's only problem is a weird ghosting thing that's apparent mostly in the very beginning (a PAL conversion possibly?)...this appears to be from a 35mm master and is light years ahead of all the other discs out right now.

Yes...he is putting his best spin on it understandably. I'm just disappointed in the disc in light of the GREAT edition of SHE that the put out. I have no doubt this was the best print they could secure at this point. For all I know the source print used by IMAGE is the best existing full length copy there is and access to it is almost impossible.

Like I said earlier: Not all film archives want to cooperate, even that thgis could turn to then a HD B&W digitally restored version.
If the archives that holds the best footage for Things to Come and Scrooge had cooperated, now would be a HD Digitally restored version in B&W and in color, superior to all other realises.

Hey, What about colorize the silent classic Nosferatu (1922)??? With colors like a 2 color technicolor system, to give a vintage feeling.
The film already got a HD restorastion from a Murnau Stitung foundation.

Check clips.

http://eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/catalog...-nosferatu.mov

http://www.kino.com/video/news.php?news_id=57

Alfred, I think you mentioned you had some contact with David Shepard...the IMAGE release of SCROOGE came via FILM PRESERVATION ASSCOCIATES which is David Shepard's company. Maybe you could get in touch with him and ask him about the origin of the print used and how it was mastered for DVD....

I had contact with D. Shepard year ago. I'm not sure If can still contact hin since he stoped emai me after the project of the brazilian movie failed.
Image Entertaiment and Kino video are publisher used by Shepard, but he don't own those companies.

I really don't know what is his opnion about film colorization, except for hand tint colorization of silent films, a common practice in the beginning of century.

Who's Barry?

Barry is the guy who heads up Legend Films.

The blacks are extremely crushed and contrast is eleveated... but the biggest distraction to me is the ghosting that likely comes from heavy recursive filtering. I avoid the use of filtering in our restoration because of such degredation.

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Howdy Barry...glad you jumped in. Do you know what the source print was for the Image disc?