8mm Forum: Meteor (1979 with Sean Connery, ...)

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Topic: Meteor (1979 with Sean Connery, ...)

Joerg Polzfusz
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 815
From: Berlin, Germany, Europe, Earth, Solar System
Registered: Apr 2006

posted January 18, 2010 07:39 AM

Hi,

on Saturday some friends and I watched "Meteor" (complete film, 16mm, Scope, German soundtrack). After the screening we did have some questions:
* The only subtitles in the film were used to show the current day in English (seemed to be the original subtitles as the same "font" as for the title has been used). However the Russian text-passages didn't have any subtitles, too?! Is this caused by the different aspect ratio (1:2.35 original 35mm version vs. 1:2.66 16mm version - so the upper/lower part of the original image had been removed)? Or by the German dubbing (maybe the English version is completely in English with all Russians speaking only English)? Or is this due to the print (as the lab forgot to add German subtitles)? Or were these scenes really without subtitles?
* The colours have been perfect. However two or three scenes were totally reddish. It looked there weren't any splices before/after these scenes... so either the lab made some mistakes or the negative wasn't perfect ... or the "reddish tone" was by purpose as all of these scenes only showed communists (Soviet president discussing the situation with some other guys in the Kremlin, ...)?!

Jörg
P.S.: No, we didn't found out who made that print [Frown]

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John Whittle
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 791
From: Northridge, CA USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted January 18, 2010 11:05 AM

The movie that did in American International. The attempt at the big budget failed and took the studio down.

It was common back then when sending materials off to a foreign distributor (and AIP didn't do their own foreign stuff) that a "textless" negative was required. I would guess that's what happened and the local distributor "forgot" to re-do the overlays OR as was common back then, the subtitles ran as another roll when the 35mm prints were made and wouldn't have been used in the optical printer when the 16mm negative was made.

It's hard to determine if the slight change in aspect ratio would be at play. A full frame (without sound track) 35mm scope negative will project at 2.66. The amount that would be cut is most often very slight although Warners did release some scope prints for Inflight that used a 1.75x anamorphic lens so that 16mm prints projected at 2.35 instead of 2.66.

John

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