archiving and restoring old movies

[Filip Plesha]

What happens to films when studios lose the ownership?

Are the negatives and other elements owned by goverment or something?

 

And if a studio makes a restoration of a film and re-releases it,

does it get a prolonged ownership?

 

And another thing,if the film director has passed away before the time

a restoration is being done,does this mean that the studio can't change

anything in the movie? (like adding scenes,or timing it

differently than it was when it was first made)

 

Often when films get restorations directors are involved in it

recutting the negative,retiming the film etc.(like in the case of E.T.)

And even adding CG

sometimes.

 

Is this all possible,if the original filmmakers are not involved,

or is there some law that forbids any drastical changes unless specified by the director and alows only to restore films as they when when they had been shot?

 

 

p.s. Are there any studio films being archived digitally?

[John Pytlak RIP]

Usually, another company would buy the rights, or a court would assign them.

 

A restoration with added elements would likely be able to get its own copyright for the restored version, but subservient to the original copyright.

 

Whoever "owns" the copyright has the right to change the work, unless the creatives have negotiated a contract otherwise.

 

FILM is still the preferred medium for long term storage, and even digital productions are often output to a film master for archiving.

[Filip Plesha]

Yea,but isn't there some unwritten moral rule

about honoring the original artistic vision between people?

 

I mean i didn't see anyone putting CG into old black and white

films like metropolis.

That would be just silly,and just not right from an ethical point of view

even though it would be legal.

 

The only changes,re-edits or new effects put in restored films that

i know of were done under the supervision of the director of the film

[David Mullen ASC]

Films have been colorized, not to mention panned & scanned, for home video without the director's permission, and altered for TV broadcast in terms of editing. But this is not an alteration of the original though.

 

Of course, it can be hard to determine what the original intent was in regards to color-correction of an old color film if no copy survives that gives an indication of intent. It helps that most older movies were fairly conservative, color-wise, when it came to fleshtone reproduction.

 

In the U.S. there aren't many laws that protect artistic integrity of the original for alteration by the current owners, although the old example of the American who buys the Mona Lisa and cuts it up to make napkins is not exactly true -- I believe when objects come under the category of having historic value to the culture at large, they can be protected (for example, when a historic building is granted protection from alteration by the owners by being declared a historic landmark.)

[Filip Plesha]

Yea,the colorization is just a commercial thing,

it is made so that those films sell better,but the original is

still preserved in Black and white,and i doubt that anyone would

colorize it in a digital restoration project.But you never know..

 

And as for color correcting, well if there are no prints awailable,it

is probably best to grade it as close to the negative color balance

as possible because it is better to have a neutral look than a look

compleatly different from the look originally envisioned.

 

Films that are considered by US national film board to have a historical value

are preserved,but not in a way of protecting the originals by some law,

they just go and collect good prints of those films.

[Mitch Gross]

The flip side to this is filmmakers who wish to change their own films. When "Laurence of Arabia" was restored with lots of cut footage put back into the movie, David Lean chose to also REMOVE a few shots for pacing reasons. The restored version of "Tom Jones" had four minutes trimmed by the director. The rerelease of "Blood Simple" was shortened by the Coen brothers. Ridley Scott recut "Blade Runner" a few times in various "Director's Cuts," and Stanley Kubrick famously would re-edit his films, sometimes years after their original release. I've seen three distinct cuts of "The Shining" all approved by the director, ome for American TV release that has some major footage cut and other scenes (oral sex with a teddy bear?) added. I'd love to see the original 12 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey which supposedly had a scientist explaining a lot of the theory behind much of the movie's themes, cut just after the film's premiere.

[Filip Plesha]

Yes but sometimes,the recut is not done with the actuall recutting

of the negative.

A good example is alien:director's cut

The original negative is still the same. The new cut was made in DI ,

and was made only for this release.

 

But in the case of blade runner,the new final version he is supose to make

these days is going to feature actuall recutting of the negative.

[Guest Ultra Definition]

Regarding film storage, I read somewhere that one of the major studios has basically by now archived everything digitally. It was not Sony. I don't know what format they used.

[Filip Plesha]

I think that is pretty much imposible,unless they used

a low qualitty format. Technically it was possible years ago,but

think of the cost of scanning (not telecining) all the films the studio made

in the past. It would take millions of dollars.

Studios are often not willing to pay for a 4K DI,much less to scann

everything they have in that resolution.

 

there are all kinds of smaller TV houses that store all their video and

16mm material on digital formats like digibeta,but i never heard of a

real movie studio storing everything on digital.

 

You know,regarding digital storage of images,one man on the AMIA list

said a funny line, something like: "in the future nobody is going to

pull out a CD out of his wallet to show you a picture of his kids" :D

 

I think this holds a lesson for motion picture industry too..

[Guest Ultra Definition]

The article said that they compress everything quite a bit

[Filip Plesha]

Like i said,the main finantial problem is getting the images

in the first place.