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Aleph Null posted:But Manos was an earnest attempt to make a serious movie. It's more like Plan 9 than a bed that eats people. Have you seen Death Bed? Death Bed was also an earnest attempt to make a serious movie. George Barry was not making a self-aware "bad film". There are elements of humour, but there are also elements of art-film styling.
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Jul 29, 2015 15:49
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Ballz posted:Ben sent out a lengthy update to Kickstarter backers, most of which was stuff we already knew about here, but he ended it with this important nugget of information: Why is 35mm the best method of preservation? Is the media just generally that much better?
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Jul 30, 2015 02:26
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Panty Saluter posted:Why is 35mm the best method of preservation? Is the media just generally that much better? Long term media storage is in general, really difficult. 35mm film is a known quantity, and we know that it can last a long time in storage. Digital, on the other hand, really isn't that great for long term storage. It's actually less resilient to damage, even though it's less fragile. When it breaks, it breaks. Digital, in many regards, is much harder and much more expensive to store long term. There's a lot of things that go into it. Hard-drives eventually fail. Digital media is much more volatile in some ways, and while it doesn't degrade like analog does, it also has a point of no return. You can do amazing things with a heavily damaged film print. With digital media, if you can't get the data off of it, that's it. It's done. You've lost it and you can't go back. It's much more expensive because it requires you to back it up more frequently. And no, they don't have all of these things sitting on a computer somewhere with RAID capability. It's a process, and you need to test it. And just having a hard drive sitting around doing nothing isn't great either. You have to think about software compatibility too. You need something that can read the digital media and understand it correctly. And while I wouldn't bet any money that AVI would be unreadable in 20 or 30 years, if you start thinking long term, who knows? Film, you just need light and the ability to move it past that light at 24 frames per second. And of course, I'm assuming that these things aren't being stored in a proprietary format. Here's an article on the matter: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/file-not-found-the-record-industrys-digital-storage-crisis-20101207
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Jul 30, 2015 02:56
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Cemetry Gator posted:Long term media storage is in general, really difficult. Especially with films that aren't considered worthy of preservation for whatever reason. An improperly stored 35mm print isn't going to help much more than an improperly stored digital copy. MANOS will now be stored properly.
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Jul 30, 2015 14:44
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It's kind of scary when you realize that we have the original negative for a film like Manos, but we don't even have copies of some popular TV shows. Like, there's a ton of Doctor Who episodes you will never see because the BBC was like "Well, why do we need to keep these old episodes?"
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Jul 30, 2015 15:03
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Cemetry Gator posted:It's kind of scary when you realize that we have the original negative for a film like Manos, but we don't even have copies of some popular TV shows. Like, there's a ton of Doctor Who episodes you will never see because the BBC was like "Well, why do we need to keep these old episodes?" Because they were a large company and were forced to record over the old episodes to cut down on cost?
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Jul 30, 2015 15:21
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2DCAT posted:Because they were a large company and chose to record over the old episodes to cut down on cost? fixed
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Jul 30, 2015 15:26
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2DCAT posted:Because they were a large company and were forced to record over the old episodes to cut down on cost? There's a really good chance that you'd never have seen or be able to see a single Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch if Terry Jones hadn't bought the tapes from the BBC before they were recorded over to save a few budget dollars.
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Jul 30, 2015 15:35
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2DCAT posted:Because they were a large company and were forced to record over the old episodes to cut down on cost? Rather, because they were considered to be ephemera and not worth keeping around. Once something has been broadcast a number of times, it loses its novelty and thus isn't worth broadcasting anymore. Why keep the tapes?
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Jul 30, 2015 16:34
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Cemetry Gator posted:It's kind of scary when you realize that we have the original negative for a film like Manos, but we don't even have copies of some popular TV shows. Like, there's a ton of Doctor Who episodes you will never see because the BBC was like "Well, why do we need to keep these old episodes?" It's cool, Robert Mugabe has them and also they've been rerecording the ones that have been bouncing off other stars or smth.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:11
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Cemetry Gator posted:It's kind of scary when you realize that we have the original negative for a film like Manos, but we don't even have copies of some popular TV shows. Like, there's a ton of Doctor Who episodes you will never see because the BBC was like "Well, why do we need to keep these old episodes?" Do not look into the archival process of any media you enjoy.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:22
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Archiving alway reminds me of Johnny Carson. The first ten years of his show were taped over or erased by NBC, which he wasn't happy about. In1972 his new contract gave him ownership of all future tapes, and realizing they might be valuable some day, he had them stored in a salt mine in Kansas. So all of the Johnny Carson episodes of the Tonight Show are stored safely, having been digitized and returned back to storage in Kansas.
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Jul 30, 2015 19:35
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The craziest is silent films. over 75 percent of movies made before 1927 are lost presumably forever.
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Jul 30, 2015 20:38
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Possibly Chicken posted:The craziest is silent films. over 75 percent of movies made before 1927 are lost presumably forever. This becomes less impressive than it seems at first when you realize a whole bunch of those were very short single reel or less, and often never shown outside the immediate area where they were filmed and first shown.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:10
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Nintendo Kid posted:This becomes less impressive than it seems at first when you realize a whole bunch of those were very short single reel or less, and often never shown outside the immediate area where they were filmed and first shown. Honestly, how many films like Nosferatu, Metropolis, or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari do you think have been lost forever? For every fifty films of some dude using forced perspective to make his head expand or pepper's ghost or tilting the set to walk on walls, there could be one gem. Crap... isn't there a well known silent film with no known surviving copies? Edit: I was thinking of London After Midnight. Aleph Null fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Jul 30, 2015 |
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Jul 30, 2015 21:29
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Not too long ago I made a video about interesting lost films.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:40
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Aleph Null posted:Honestly, how many films like Nosferatu, Metropolis, or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari do you think have been lost forever? The legendary second reel of Laurel and Hardy's "The Battle of the Century" was only rediscovered this year.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:02
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Aleph Null posted:Honestly, how many films like Nosferatu, Metropolis, or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari do you think have been lost forever? That's the thing, not that many, in all likelihood. Both because the 75% tends to include not so great movies, but also because things have the funniest habit of turning up again after a hundred years, you know? The thing is that before the 20s really, movie making was in the majority slapdash and fly by night as hell, and in the earliest period of films you'd have things that only lasted a few minutes. All together that's a lot of stuff being lost, but much of it would be thoroughly mundane stuff. If you look through collections of what's preserved from then, people could be happy just seeing a short reel of daily life in a neighboring city on a random street corner. Then there's things like how something that was popular for a while was to make recordings of some vaudeville act, but there would be different people recording the same troupe doing the same act in different cities. You could easily end up with 10 different recordings but only 1 surviving today. And there would be many instances like that, especially where there was only ever one projection print available. In many ways, you could compare it to how, say, we've probably lost a ton of garage rock recordings by some teenagers over the years. most of them never get anywhere with music, the tape or digital recording might even still exist, but if you weren't in their homeroom you'd never know. Some of them actually go on, to make a name in music and oyu might even hear their first sets played in Timmy's house or whatever. Early movies are kinda like that.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:06
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Aleph Null posted:Crap... isn't there a well known silent film with no known surviving copies? There's Theda Bara's Cleopatra, for one. Although that's technically only partially lost because there's a whole 40 seconds surviving.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:22
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Nintendo Kid posted:That's the thing, not that many, in all likelihood. Both because the 75% tends to include not so great movies, but also because things have the funniest habit of turning up again after a hundred years, you know? This is an incredibly wrong headed way of looking at it. You have no idea what many of those lost films contained. Because they're lost. No one alive has any memory of them. Even the stuff you described is interesting from a historical perspective. Every movie, no matter how 'mundane' deserves to be preserved. All those movies/shorts being destroyed is a travesty.
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Jul 31, 2015 00:17
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Yaws posted:This is an incredibly wrong headed way of looking at it. You have no idea what many of those lost films contained. Because they're lost. No one alive has any memory of them. Even the stuff you described is interesting from a historical perspective. No we do tend to have a pretty good idea of what they would have contained, from the very sources that let us know that there was a movie that was lost to begin with. Also they usually weren't "destroyed", they tended to be merely forgotten, or filed away somewhere and maybe eventually deteriorated due to sheer lack of knowledge of how to make film that lasts, but that's very different from destroyed. Many might even just be around somewhere, accidentally stored well enough, but heck who's going to bother to go through every possible storage site? Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 00:27
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I'm pretty sure there's a movie that was nominated for Best Picture that's now lost, but I don't have the time at work to look it up.
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Jul 31, 2015 00:31
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DStecks posted:I'm pretty sure there's a movie that was nominated for Best Picture that's now lost, but I don't have the time at work to look it up. That's apparently The Patriot (1928).
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Jul 31, 2015 00:38
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Nintendo Kid posted:No we do tend to have a pretty good idea of what they would have contained, from the very sources that let us know that there was a movie that was lost to begin with. I mean, we have vague plot descriptions but that's about it. If that's good enough for you than that's a shame. Regarding the destroyed bit: whatever. Plenty were destroyed. My point was it'd be nice if they had been preserved. Many notable directors have films that will never be seen. F. W. Murnau, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang etc. It sucks. I want to watch those movies.
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Jul 31, 2015 00:41
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Yaws posted:Regarding the destroyed bit: whatever. Plenty were destroyed. My point was it'd be nice if they had been preserved. Many notable directors have films that will never be seen. F. W. Murnau, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang etc. It sucks. I want to watch those movies. It works the other way, too. For all we know, there may have been just as many Harold P. Warren-esque films that were, God forbid, actually screened for some kind of paying audience. I'd like to think that there are some "lost" movies out there that are just as impossibly awful as Manos is. In fact, I think it would have to be a statistical likelihood. Imagine if some of these "gems" are still out there, waiting to be found and…uh, appreciated. It would be a shame if Manos was the only one. But if you're only going to have one…
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Jul 31, 2015 00:57
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Nintendo Kid posted:Also they usually weren't "destroyed" quote:Further, it gives the impression that all of these nitrate films simply decomposed while attempts were being made to preserve them. This is untrue. Most of the early films did not survive because of wholesale junking by the studios. There was no thought of ever saving these films. They simply needed vault space and the materials were expensive to house.
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Jul 31, 2015 01:02
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Yaws posted:I mean, we have vague plot descriptions but that's about it. If that's good enough for you than that's a shame. It is though? Like especially many of the oldest and shortest, they were straight up what they said on the tin, as it were. Yeah it would be nice to see the exact way they played out, but it's not like we know nothing about them at all. People even wrote reviews for many of them, sometimes scripts are available, or drafts for intertitles, if the thing warranted them. And to be honest, many of them might have just been dropped off at some local library or something similar, and they have it, maybe even copied it to preserve it, but nobody's aware there that other people consider it a lost film. Yaws posted:
Well the thing is, you may well see those if you can wait long enough. There's all sorts of things that have been thought to be lost/destroyed forever that turn up eventually. That covers a much different time period, and much different circumstances. That's not the era of invention of the art to the mid 20s.
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Jul 31, 2015 01:05
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computer parts posted:That's apparently The Patriot (1928). The trailer survived. It's sad to not have it considering it was directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starred Emil Jannings. The big problem was that films were printed directly from the camera negatives usually up until the early 1980s. That's why Star Wars '77 was in horrific condition by the early 1990s. However, other hugely popular films like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz are still in excellent condition. The difference was that Technicolor films were printed from secondary elements produced from the negatives. During the original run of GWTW, it might have only been used a dozen times to create the printing run of Technicolor prints. By contrast, Rear Window had almost 400 prints made in 1954 directly from the negative and was in pretty bad shape by even the 1960s. Even if Manos was popular, the 16mm reversal probably wouldn't have had much extra wear due to it being a 35mm blowup. All the wear would be on the 35mm elements. Film isn't as volatile as you think. There's no reason for a nitrate or acetate negative to be in excellent condition as long as its been kept in proper storage. Film just needs a cool, dry place to sit for years. Most damage to film is from poor handling, poor storage conditions, and idiotic corporate decisions.
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Jul 31, 2015 01:06
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Nintendo Kid posted:That covers a much different time period, and much different circumstances. That's not the era of invention of the art to the mid 20s. Unless they weren't using silver nitrate back then, they probably already were melting film down for the silver content. Film was a major expense!
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Jul 31, 2015 02:09
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Don't forget the very real danger (back then) of vault fires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire quote:"20th Century Fox officials at the time remarked that "only old films" were destroyed" quote:"Although copies located elsewhere allowed some of these films to survive, mostly as lower-quality prints or mere fragments of film, over 75% of Fox's feature films from before 1930 are completely lost." quote:An electrical fire burned the vault and destroyed hundreds of silent films, including The Black Butterfly, The Divorcee, A Blind Bargain, The Big City, The Divine Woman, London After Midnight and The Actress, most famously. I always thought Saved from The Titanic would have been an interesting piece. The actress was actually on and survived the Titanic, and the film was shot and premiered in the US just 29 days after the ship had sunk. The movie burnt up in a 1914 studio fire and was never seen again. Dr.Caligari fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 03:47
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I have a feeling I've said this before (maybe this thread?), but I don't get the bemoaning the loss of really old movies/tv shows/etc. Doing it well is expensive, and you only know multiple decades later if all that expense was money well spent or not. For every lost Doctor Who episode, there's prolly a dozen of movies/tv shows that nobody has thought about in 70 years and you just threw money down a pit preserving it for no reason.
MisterBibs fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 04:58
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I mean, if you're looking at it from a purely financial aspect, than sure.
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Jul 31, 2015 05:03
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Think of it in reverse: assuming nothing is worth saving means you lose everything that IS worth saving.
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Jul 31, 2015 05:08
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Preserving film isn't that expensive where a routine project is astronomical. Most B&W films have minimal costs involved because it's usually just a matter of routine cleaning and repairs, then producing new elements for use so that the negative doesn't have to be touched again for a while.
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Jul 31, 2015 05:21
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MisterBibs posted:I have a feeling I've said this before (maybe this thread?), but I don't get the bemoaning the loss of really old movies/tv shows/etc. Doing it well is expensive, and you only know multiple decades later if all that expense was money well spent or not. For every lost Doctor Who episode, there's prolly a dozen of movies/tv shows that nobody has thought about in 70 years and you just threw money down a pit preserving it for no reason. As awful as it is, I can't imagine a world where the only episode of Turn-On was never archived. Thankfully, NBC didn't tape over it and now you too can enjoy the awfulness that is Turn-On at The Paley Center for Media if you're ever in New York (or LA probably). As Ben Solo says in the OP: "[E]very film, regardless of the place it holds in movie history, deserves a fair shot to be maintained and presented in the best way possible."
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Jul 31, 2015 05:31
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I just wanted to note how crazy it is that when this project started, Roger Ebert was alive and active enough to tweet about it.
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Jul 31, 2015 08:45
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Yaws posted:I mean, if you're looking at it from a purely financial aspect, than sure. It's the most important part of the discussion, though. Old stuff isn't saved because money and resources are inherently finite, and not everything deserves the same amount of resources spent on preserving it. We only bemoan things not being saved retroactively. Terrorist Fistbump posted:Think of it in reverse: assuming nothing is worth saving means you lose everything that IS worth saving. And what's worth saving, since the folks who have to foot the bill for saving it aren't going to listen to an irrational "everything!" answer? Remember, someone a century down the line will judge your response.
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Jul 31, 2015 10:09
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Ballz posted:Now despite what some dorks on the Internet might tell you, the whole goal of the Kickstarter was to restore and preserve Manos in archival quality. Getting a professionally released dvd or blu-ray was always meant to be a bonus for contributing to the project. Getting that 35mm print to the Academy could be the biggest milestone in truly preserving Manos for future generations to... um, experience for themselves. This is really funny and it's worth reading the dudes posts where he bitches about it constantly and demands a refund then whines about not getting the bluray for his donation he got refunded and having to preorder.
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Jul 31, 2015 11:46
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MisterBibs posted:Remember, someone a century down the line will judge your response. oh no!
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Jul 31, 2015 12:15
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hemale in pain posted:This is really funny and it's worth reading the dudes posts where he bitches about it constantly and demands a refund then whines about not getting the bluray for his donation he got refunded and having to preorder. Not enough  for that one.
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Jul 31, 2015 16:27
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