From: Mark Toscano (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Jul 12 2006 - 21:12:46 PDT
In maybe a more optimistic vein than my last post, I
thought I'd pass on the news that three recently begun
preservation projects I'm working on are David
Bienstock's 'Brummer's', Standish Lawder's
'Necrology', and Morgan Fisher's 'Documentary
Footage'.
The nearly forgotten cubist narrative film 'Brummer's'
survives only as a single reversal print formerly at
Canyon Cinema. Bienstock's film 'Nothing Happened
This Morning' is more well-known (and is a near-future
project too), but 'Brummer's' was more precarious. In
a way, it's great that almost nobody ever rented this
film, because the print's in excellent condition, with
only a small tear in the head credits. A new negative
was made from this print, and the sound was
transferred from the print's optical track. Some
minor digital cleanup was done on the track only to
eliminate obvious optical noise physically on the
print. A new optical track and mag were made, and I
should be getting the first answer print this week.
The reversal original for 'Necrology' is lost, but
we're working from the original dupe neg that has made
all the prints all these years (which by the way are
indeed supposed to be as flat looking as they've
always looked). The original mag sound is also lost.
The original track negative was severely shrunken, but
Cinema Lab (aka Western Cine) was able to make a new
track positive from it which sounds great. This track
pos has been transferred to 24-bit digital so we can
clean a little of the optical dirt noise and make a
new optical track and new mag from the restored
digital. Picture is still in the works for answer
printing, and once it's approved, we'll make a fine
grain master positive, and a dupe negative from that,
and see how it turns out.
'Documentary Footage' was shot in 1968 on color
negative, a bit uncommon for the time. But the neg is
in good shape, and the answer print I saw today showed
no signs of fading in the negative. The original 16mm
fullcoat mag is deteriorating with vinegar syndrome,
but was still transferrable with little difficulty,
and should sound great (I'm checking it tomorrow).
We'll make a new track negative, a new mag, an
interpositive from the original negative, an
internegative from this IP, and prints, which Morgan
will hopefully make available for rental directly
through him.
Anyhow, thought I'd share the news,
best wishes, and feel free to toss questions/thoughts
my way,
Mark T
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