Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, restored)

This is topic The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, restored) in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=002106

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 05-29-2003, 07:15 PM:

Has anyone seen this? It's billed as a digital restoration. Just wondering if it's as super wonderful as the Singin' In the Rain restoration.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-30-2003, 02:00 AM:

If it wasn't restored by Bob harris then it hasn't been restored!!
Mark

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 05-30-2003, 02:08 AM:

Also, who cares...I don't! What a POS movie! I can think of many other more owrthy of restoration.

>>> PHil

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-30-2003, 03:10 AM:

There were new prints released in the UK by the British Film Institute in '98 or '99. Very patchy, I thought, and it looked like differential shrinkage between the Y, C and M o-negs had caused varying degrees of misregistration in places. Individual sections ranged from brilliantly sharp and dense to a blurry mess.

So I would have thought that this film is an ideal candidate for the digital treatment, given that presumably you can now just scan the three strips individually and have the computer register them.

Posted by Bernard Tonks (Member # 809) on 05-30-2003, 04:38 AM:

Talking of film restoration, yesterday I looked for Film-Tech on AOL, and accidently came across an interesting web site: Film Technology Company. Vintage restoration 8mm - 35mm picture & sound.

www.filmtech.com

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 05-30-2003, 08:12 AM:

Mark, I hold Bob Harris' work in the very highest regard, especially his emphasis that a film restoration must result in printable film elements. But he is not the only one who does this work and if you ever have the opportunity to see the Singin' restoration you should check it out as the resulting film prints (the only end product that matters!) are superb. The sharpness was incredible.

I made a point of walking up to the Virginia Theatre's huge screen while test running a reel at Ebertfest (having previously run a different print a couple times at my screening room) and I could not detect any digital artifacts, just the random film grain one would expect. And the very saturated color seemed to be a good approximation of IB Tech--at a sharpness level that I think the real thing would be hard to match.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-30-2003, 09:00 AM:

Agreed that the SITR restoration looked and sounded great.

Warners made new prints of Robin Hood in 1998 for the WB 75th festival that toured around the US. The one that I ran looked about as others have described--not wonderfully sharp and with some mis-registration of the 3-strip elements in some scenes. The sound wasn't especially good, either.

I had the good fortune of seeing a nitrate IB print of this a few years ago at the Egyptian during the first IB Tech fest and it looked stunning in every respect. Hopefully it can be restored to its former glory.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 05-30-2003, 09:49 AM:

Shouldn't be difficult if the o-neg seps haven't got to stage 2 of the decomposition process yet. I would have thought that it would be a pretty simple software task to register the three scans of each frame and then add the colour. Given that the frames are Academy size (i.e. each outputted pixel on the new prints will be magnified a lot less in projection than for 1:1.85), even 2k scanning should give a pretty good result.

Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 05-30-2003, 10:17 AM:

The quality of the SITR restoration is especially gratifying in light of the fact that the 3 strip camera negs perished long ago in a vault fire. Shrunken or not, I'm under the impression that the Robin Hood negs still exist. In fact, UA was churing out some fairly impressive LPP Robin Hood prints in 16 and 35 in the early '80's with incredible saturated colors, although I can only guess how many generations were lost in the pre-print.

Posted by Fred Georges (Member # 505) on 06-01-2003, 09:07 PM:

Hey Phil, This is the one with Errol Flynn NOT Kevin Costner! (LoL) [Wink]

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-01-2003, 09:27 PM:

Steve,
I thnk you mis-read, mis-took, or mis-understood my post. I certainly agree he is the one and only......
Turner and others have done some supposed film restorations using other labs that looked shameful and were a joke. Hence Bob is definately the one and only!!
Anyway, I agree with Phil.....The film is a bore! there are far more important things in need of restoration.
Mark

Posted by Fred Georges (Member # 505) on 06-01-2003, 10:27 PM:

"The Adventures of Robin Hood" IMHO is a Technicolor classic that has stood the test of time. The picture ALWAYS made great money for us in rep and in my book that mkes it very good indeed! LoL. The magnificent score by Korngold. The deliciously Fey performance of Claude Raines, the snarling of Basil Rathbone and (at least for me) the Technicolor beauty of Olivia DeHaviland make ol Errol's magnum opus tops in my book. If this film isn't worth all the care the Restorationists art can muster what is? I'll be handling a print of this in about a week and I have an IB to compare it to. I'll report back. [Big Grin]

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 06-01-2003, 10:34 PM:

Hey Fred, I know... [Big Grin]

>>> Phil

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 06-02-2003, 05:59 AM:

browsing the new castro theater calendar, i see they claim a "3-strip technicolor restoration with new digital sound". whatever that means, it can't be what it sounds like it means since the technicolor lab is shut down.

really fun film though; don't listen to the haters.

carl

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 06-02-2003, 06:15 AM:

The Castro is a super-cool theatre! I love it! [beer]

It probably means they took the original 3-strip archive stuff and printed it to a modern tri-pack inter-negative for making restoration prints.

BUT! That film still sucks! [Razz]

>>> Phil

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 06-02-2003, 07:29 PM:

No Mark, I understood you; I simply disagree. I think perhaps you misunderstood me. I'm sure even Bob Harris would not claim to be the only person out there supervising quality film restorations. The "Singin" restoration is proof of this. My hat is off to the folks who did it, to Mr. Harris for the work he does, and to everyone else whose work results in great projection prints and film archival materials.

On a related topic, what do you bet that the ultimate last-resort preservation elements for George Lucas' digital video movie is film, probably even B&W color seps?