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Topic: Be Careful!
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Claus Harding
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1149
From: Washington DC
Registered: Oct 2006
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posted December 10, 2008 10:16 PM
Good reminder, John.
One of the things about collecting (whether it be on a large scale or a small one) is precisely the awful feeling that increasingly one has to peruse what is written in descriptions as if one is a lawyer, to detect damning information that is buried in a longer paragraph (usually pertaining to the color having gone red or the smell of vinegar.)
It leaves me with (even less) faith in my fellow man.
I don't buy a lot, but if there was a requirement or a grading system that all sellers had to go by, where only films with perfect color (or B/W) and no vinegar smell could be Category 1, and everything else had to be officially noted on a sliding scale, perhaps we could avoid many heartaches. Of course, the day everyone agrees to that, Hell will also freeze over, but one can dream...
It does make me angry when I read a listing as a 'test' to see if/where the dealer will try to get around the "saying/not saying" part of it with silly phrases like 'vintage, warm colors" and other such duplicitous nonsense.
Also, I feel that if anyone can go to the trouble of regularly buying films for selling purposes, they can also go to the trouble of picking up a cheap projector to at least spot-check the stuff on, so we don't have to hear endlessly about how "they have no way of viewing it" but that "the films appear to be in good shape." It's either that, or just dump the films for next to nothing, as this would be a fair price for unknown goods.
Anyway, not saying anything new here, but it's good to sometimes re-state the things we have to go by not to get heartburn when we open the package, just because the title looked far more desirable than the condition.
My first 16mm feature purchase was "Cabaret" and my excitement was of course high when I opened it, only to find that the whole film was red.
I got a refund, and it was also an excellent lesson.
Claus.
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"Why are there shots of deserts in a scene that's supposed to take place in Belgium during the winter?" (Review of 'Battle of the Bulge'.)
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Osi Osgood
Film God
Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted December 10, 2008 10:47 PM
I've never heard "vintage" but "warm" is quite common. The only time I'm bugged is when a seller will say very good color and it's anything but that.
"Well what do you know, it has a very nice red color! Well, that's a color, isn't it?!"
... but as I've said before, even some professional sellers can be a little tricky, (as some folks at the last BFCC found out from a certain seller). A few out there, (which I fortunately do not deal with anymore) measure they're rating scale not on color but on the "condition" of the print, (which I do feel SHOULD include the color as that is certainly a "condition"), so the print could have an "A" in condition, (no scratches, original leader), but have a bad fade.
I must also state, however, that part of the responsibility is on the buyer. In all the cases of professional sellers that I dealt with, if you ASK them the "condition" of the color, they will tell you.
... but you have to ask; that's the important thing.
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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "
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