Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZenoArrow | Hacker News Reader

I would love to spend time watching these old films, it's a shame the restoration costs are so high. Is there any way they could be digitised in their current form, released without restoration on a streaming service, and then allow the relative popularity of the films amongst modern audiences influence the priority in which films are restored?

I'd rather have that than to let these films be lost forever. I enjoy the charm of films from the first half of the 20th century, I don't mind if I have to watch them at a lower quality.

View on HN

Unfortunately even basic handling and inspection of film this old is costly and time consuming. The machinery is old, the people who do it have specialized skills, and if you do it wrong in any way you can easily destroy what might be the only copy of a film.

I certainly agree they should put this stuff out there, and it sounds like it is happening, but I doubt it's a profitable endeavor so probably not particularly high priority.

I doubt it's a profitable endeavor so probably not particularly high priority.

Did you read the article?

> To Allied Artists and Lorimar, their producers, "these films were worthless and they said it's OK to let them rot," Feltenstein says. Instead, Warner Archives packaged them into DVD collections, "and they've all been nicely profitable."

> Feltenstein says Warners is releasing 30 more titles to its manufacturing-on-demand library every month. "It's growing precipitously and there's no end in sight."

Paramount just released a big chunk of their back catalog for free on YouTube: http://nofilmschool.com/2015/10/paramount-vault-free-movies-...

Mosfilm, the Soviet/Russian film studio also uploaded a lot of their old films to youtube[1] including Stalker, Solaris, and Battleship Potemkin. Many of them also have English subtitles. Here's a small list of more examples: http://366weirdmovies.com/your-guide-to-mosfilm-in-english-o...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/mosfilm

IMHO direct digitization is the way to go. I'm sure one could find grant funding and train an army of volunteers to perform this over time in a relatively inexpensive manner.

Cheap equipment and volunteers is no way to go about restoring 80-year-old celluloid. It's not an easy task, though I think you're right that many would love to help.

Do you need to restore the celluloid version though? Can't you just digitise the images (and sound, if available) from the celluloid and restore the film based on the digital source? If we have high quality digital photographs and high-bitrate lossless digital audio of every frame in the film, what extra detail are you going to add to that by performing physical restoration on the celluloid version?

Not all the film would have to be carefully washed/restored of course, but the chances of a reel of film that's been in a can for 75 years just coming out and rolling like it came off the reel yesterday are slim to none. Even under the best of circumstances there's going to need to be special care taken and it ends up (AFAIK) being quite labor intensive.

Fair point.

Wouldn't a lot of it be damaged to the point where you have to do a lot of restoration in order to get anything usable off it?

Possibly. I don't know. Just thinking about how to increase the chances of the films being saved. Guess they could start with the films that require the least amount of work, though then the oldest of the films may be restored last, which wouldn't necessarily be the best idea.

I did not read the article, so I don't know if it was mentioned, but Warner actually has such a program: http://instant.warnerarchive.com/

Lots of non-restored films (mostly from VHS/TV captures) are also circulating on BitTorrent, there are a few invite-only places that specialize in that kind of thing.

Thanks. Yes, the Warner program is mentioned in the article. Looks like the content has been restored though. I'm trying to find a way of accessing the content that is unlikely to be restored without demonstrating the demand.

Browsing from Europe, I can see the first page but whatever I click I get the empty result? Does it work in the US?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com