8mm Forum: Missing believe wiped at the NFT today

This is topic Missing believe wiped at the NFT today in forum General Yak at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on December 16, 2017, 03:18 AM:

This showing of TV programmes believed to not exist anymore but later found in other archives, film industry members' homes and film collectors got a mention on the BBC Breakfast programme today.

It referred to one being bought from "A fairground owner near Blackpool". Now I wonder if you recognise who that is???!!!

Mr Guest, of course but he wasn't mentioned by name. I had this confirmed by Chris Perry of the vintage television organisation Kaleidoscope and they have check with him that there is nothing else that is missing, so no-one should pester him. I expect if anyone did he would sell them another film, or projector anyway :-)

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on December 16, 2017, 03:41 AM:

I've got the pilot programme of "Dad's Army" (The Man and the Hour) on standard 8. This was first aired 31 July 1968. Black & White.
But I don't think the BBC would be interested as it's on youtube and other sites.
It would be interesting to know what distributor issued this film on standard 8.

Posted by Melvin England (Member # 5270) on December 16, 2017, 03:42 AM:

I also heard something about it on Radio 2 news this morning.

If anyone is attending (Brian????) Could they possibly do a write up about it on this forum,please? It would make great reading.

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on December 16, 2017, 12:35 PM:

Maurice, I heard on the old Dr Who restoration team forum that someone who worked in the BBC Film Library smuggled out some negatives of show he liked and got prints made perhaps it is one of those.

I'll do a write up of the event later as I am only just back home.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on December 17, 2017, 04:58 AM:

Thank you, Brian, for that interesting information.

Kaleidoscope do seem a rather strange lot, offering their collection for access or licensing only to bona fide people who need to have a trade account with them, and nothing available for sale to the "General Public".

Not only that, they have no details on their site of what they have hidden away so how can anybody know what's available. The short bit on TV yesterday with Cilla Black singing to a piano accompaniment by Dudley Moore was superb.

https://www.tvbrain.info/

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on December 17, 2017, 02:53 PM:

I think Kaleidoscope is only storing these as they have no rights for broadcast public performance or sale. When am item is bought or given to them they give a digital copy to the rights holder. If they release anything they have to negotiate rights the same as any other company.

Anyway here's my review of the Missing Believed Wiped shows yesterday.

Session 1 had Cilla, Whack-o and Till Death us do Part. Cilla was a 50minute show with Dudley Moor, Freddie (Parrot face) Davies and Roy Hudd. A mixture of songs and comedy (and some of the dance routines brought howls of laughter from the audience). It was from a scan of the 16mm film recording prints as 16mm film recorders could only manage a single take of 30 min. The first half was very soft and low contrast leading me to believe it was a viewing copy dupe, the second half was much clearer. Whack-O, for those not knowing it is a 1950's comedy series about a Headmaster (Jimmy Edwards) of Chislebury School whose main aims are drinking, tapping money from the school funds and caning boys. This was a very worn (especially at the end) film recording that I'm sure I had seen before not too long ago (though that may have been a 1970'd remake) where boys were being sold caning insurance 2/6d a week 10s payout per stroke if caned. Jim needed to fiddle this as he had to pay back petty cash due to the governors sending in an accountant. despite the now rather dubious set up it was very funny and got lots of laughs. Till Death us Do Part (Sex Before Marriage) had only existed as a sound recording and as usual seemed much funnier with a large audience, though it was a very good episode with Alf trying to redecorate a room as the arguments started. There was no between item introductions due to it starting late due to trouble with the video files provided by the rights holders. Perhaps it would have been better and easier from 16mm, but who would risk archive prints today.

Session 2 started with a compilation by Ed Stradling from domestic video of things like the Multi Coloured swap shop and a short extract of the Redifusion police series No Hiding Place episode found in Australia's National Film & Sound archive, again from 16mm film recording, of 236 episodes made only 20 are known to survive!! I assume due to the earlier mentioned problem it did not fill the full height of the screen. The episode of Second city firsts "Thwum" was introduced by the director who had kept this copy in Philips VCR N1500 format which was very worn but had been copied without more then 2 minutes loss. The final item was the only surviving episode of the series Late Night Horror - The Corpse Can't Play. Again from a B&W 16mm film recording, which though rather scratched was clear enough to show the "Chroma dots" revealing it was originally a colour programme. Rather disturbing and (off screen) very violent.

As most will know Film recording = Kinescope and Chroma dots are the diagonal lines caused by the colour TV colour sub carrier not being filtered out during copying to film and showing on picture in B&W as it did on B&W TV sets.

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