Black Sunday question ...

[Osi Osgood]

I have coming in the mail what I think is the 3x400ft Marketing Films digest of the Robert Shaw thriller, "Black Sunday". My question, for those who already own this, is this full frame or letterboxed?

[Mike Newell]

All versions are letterboxed Osi

Mike

[Osi Osgood]

Then, I certainly have something to look forward to! Now here is the funny thing. I have never seen this feature! I have only seen the trailer. I will wait to watch the full feature until after I have seen this digest. The trailer was really good, and made me want to see this!

[Douglas Meltzer]

John Frankenheimer's Black Sunday is one of my favorite films. I have every version of it that Marketing put out....full length, 3x400', 400' and 200'. That ending makes your heart pound in all of them!

[Mike Newell]

The 3x400 is a good mini feature and you can follow the story easily without having seen the feature.

[Osi Osgood]

That brings up a curiosity on my part. In the case of many of Marketing Films releases, the digests tended to be saved on great film stock, but the full features tended to be on lesser film stocks. It seems that they used specific labs for they're digests and other labs for they're features, or was this done on purpose?

[Osi Osgood]

I received that 3x400ft digest. I found it rather odd that the color on the image was OK, but the color on the actual black bars was fairly off. Do your copies of this show this?

[Philip Hamilton]

I have a 400' version from Marketing films I should be able to view at the end of the month. I will check mine. Do you mean that the 'black bars' have some red in them? or what?

[Osi Osgood]

While the colors to the actual image are OK, the black bars at the top and bottom are brownish red. Curious, as, usually, the black bars tend to fade later, it seems, than the actual image you bought the film for in the first place.

[Philip Hamilton]

On my films that have begun to fade with is most all - whenever the image is fade to black - it's always a fade to reddish-black. That is where the red shows up but when the film is not dark the colors look decent. I think it's because with an image that is supposed to be black - the fact the RED is the main register that has not faded - it shows up. Think of it like this - you have RED GREEN BLUE. GREEN and BLUE have been turned down a bit due to fade. But, RED is still there so that is why the black bars look reddish IMO. This is how I have come to understand it.

[Brian Fretwell]

Well on the prints it is Yellow, Cyan and Magenta (as is other printing including inkjet printers) not Red Green and Blue as in digital projection, so it will be the yellow and cyan that have faded. Perhaps the yellow most as red formed by cyan and magenta.

I believe the colour restoration process is actually fading the magenta layer to match the fade in the other to, then boosting the contrast - so exactly what you said.

[Philip Hamilton]

Thanks yes I meant yellow blue red and the proper reference is yellow cyan and magenta.

[Stuart Budd]

I've just received a version of this movie. Marketing Films. Two reels. 600 and 400 spliced from 3. It's letterbox but as yet haven't viewed it. I'll give it a clean and have a viewing this evening. I'll give some feedback on colours.

[Stuart Budd]

It looks 16:9. Bars top and bottom. The whole frame had a rust red tint includind bars. Nothing is black. I'm guessing vertical lines are from cleaning or film path. Mostly right hand side.
Sound is good.

[Osi Osgood]

Fortunately,mine is a lot better than that. The color is OK, but that first sequence, at night, suffers the most on my print. It gets better as the print goes on. Reels 2 and 3 are better than reel 1. Thanks for the effort with the screenshots.