NitrateVille.com

Ah, ah silver lining has a cloud. I expect to hear lots of complaints about the print quality, the musical score, not enough butter on the popcorn, etc. etc.

Bob

Bob,

No complaints here. The print is about as good as we will ever see. Alas, no Camera Negatives to CITY LIGHTS exists. I think it is much improved over the out of print Warner DVD release of 2004.

Absolutely superb film. The ending is a killer.

Sweett I be over my parent house I going try get 5 year old nephew watch this with me at their house Sunday July 3

I have seen this film a hundred times. The very first time was probably in 1985 when Salvador Sammaritano presented it on Cine-Club. That first time I felt asleep as it usually happened to me then but I was able to see it completely later.

I wasn't aware the OCN was lost. Didn't Chaplin preserve everything which he owned the rights to, or was there a mishap or decomp?

Well, the Blu Ray of City Lights look like came from a resonable master shot from Camera negative, but not a print, probably a fine grain.
We see no grain, but the master it's somewhat out focus, explaning the lack of grain as the camera negative grain was probably nearly disolved by the focus problem and futher HD video compression.

The City Lights DVD from Image Entertainment, by Mr Shepard, looks like came from the same master, and had a very wide dynamic range (MK2 increased the contrast for most Chaplin films you see on the restored DVD&Blu Ray), one more evidence that the master was shot from camera negative.

I presume this master was made from a worn camera negative, and made not by contact but by a optical printer, but someone did not adjusted the focus correctly. Maybe after made fine grains for his films, they thrown away the original camera negatives, due be afraid of fire. Nitratephobia...

Anyway, I used a quality Photoshop sharpness filter and was able to get a interesting result in the HD screen captures. I presume the uncompressed digital frames in 2K would render a better result. Based on that, I can say the best image detail enhancement in digital film restoration, from Lowry Digital, can recover many fine details for this film.

Interesting... we see informs about the elements used in the Chaplin Keystone restoration, original print, internegative, interpositive, 16mm... and for the Chaplin Mutual restorations... But for the full lenght films digitally restored in 2K they never informed if was a camera negative, a print, a fine gain interpositive.
I searched a lot and found nothing about film elements used for the restoration of the full lenght films or The Chaplin Revue. They just say that used the best available.

Gagman 66 wrote:Bob,

No complaints here. The print is about as good as we will ever see. Alas, no Camera Negatives to CITY LIGHTS exists. I think it is much improved over the out of print Warner DVD release of 2004.

Preserve a film do not always mean that a camera negative will survive.

Film preservation it's about make safety film element, as fine grains from camera negative or best elemenht available, and also preserve the original negatives (already copied to safety master) in cold storage.
But many times they just copied the camera negative to fine grain and throw away the nitrate camera negative, or in other cases do not put the camera negative in cold storage.

A good fine grain is suposed to retain almost all information from a camera negative. But when it's not copied right, the image detail loss can be a problem. My bet this is the case of City Lights.

Brianruns10 wrote:I wasn't aware the OCN was lost. Didn't Chaplin preserve everything which he owned the rights to, or was there a mishap or decomp?

Well we will surely learn more when the day comes criterion releases city lights themselves. Hey always describe the source of the resto, be it the ocn, an interpos, interneg, etc.

They did not in Modern Times and in The Great Dictator. Just said something like "from restored elements from Bogna restoration"...

Criterion have a good sharpness filter, from the digital restoration software pack they use. They use to try to resharp image when necessary.

I think what happend to all prints of City Lights ??? Some original print must have better sharpness. And if then film had a rerun in the 50's, probably they did some copies from opriginal negative, remamber that in 50's print stock (to make copies) was better than in 30's.
How only a out of focus master survived ????

Brianruns10 wrote:Well we will surely learn more when the day comes criterion releases city lights themselves. Hey always describe the source of the resto, be it the ocn, an interpos, interneg, etc.

Yeah, I can't believe there isn't a better state of materials given Chaplin owned his own films. I would've thought City Lights would at least have a lavender print or something..A shame.

I don't know all the specifics -- but I believe that when CITY LIGHTS was first being prepared for reissue in the early 1950s that it was discovered that the master element was MIA. Chaplin's own 35mm print was thus duped and that's what we all saw for decades (even on home video) until the early 1990s when David Shepard uncovered the master element (a first generation nitrate negative I think) in the Chaplin holdings - in cans marked in Japanese writing. The thinking is that this element went to Japan at some point - and upon it's return and placed in storage, was as good as missing.

Mr. Shepard may be able to shed more concise light on this - but I believe that this is the gist of it.

uhhnn ??? What do mean by MIA ?

How can a a first generation master from 30's or 40's be a negative ?
If you name the original camera negative as first generation, only it can be the first.
In some cases first generation is named by the first after the camera negative, like Camera neg >>> First generation >>> second generation... In this case a master from camera negative would be second generation.

So, in any case, if the negative was lost, a first generation would not be a negative cause CRI film did not exist in 30's or 40's.

M Verdoux wrote:I don't know all the specifics -- but I believe that when CITY LIGHTS was first being prepared for reissue in the early 1950s that it was discovered that the master element was MIA. Chaplin's own 35mm print was thus duped and that's what we all saw for decades (even on home video) until the early 1990s when David Shepard uncovered the master element (a first generation nitrate negative I think) in the Chaplin holdings - in cans marked in Japanese writing. The thinking is that this element went to Japan at some point - and upon it's return and placed in storage, was as good as missing.

Mr. Shepard may be able to shed more concise light on this - but I believe that this is the gist of it.

Alright -- I suspect it was the cut camera negative ---but not being 100% sure I generalized. Again, Mr. Shepard would be able to illuminate with finer details.

I was just trying to give out the info that I could remember off the top of my head. Good lord people get touchy here!

Yeah, semantics will get you into trouble. Like just try mentioning two-strip technicolor in a thread and see what happens...

Sorry folks, I exagerated.

But the point is that the image in City Lights it's too much soft to be from a camera negative. But at least it have a great dynamic range, still a nice presentation.
Thanks to David Shepard for save the day.

By the way, even a film restorer once mentioned the term two strip technicolor, despite it be shot in one strip using prisms. The term is so popular, despite of wrong, that the restorer use it to let the public understand.

Brianruns10 wrote:Yeah, semantics will get you into trouble. Like just try mentioning two-strip technicolor in a thread and see what happens...

In the early 90s when the CITY LIGHTS laserdisc was released - I was so very impressed with the superb picture quality (and knowing that all prints and videos previously were clearly from duped material.) I remember at the time that Shepard illuminated me with the 'master' negative/Japan cans tale - and even more on the taller than wide 'Movietone' ratio, etc.

I wonder if the Chaplin's personal print survived or not, or just dupes made from it ...
Was it a copy from camera negative ?

Here a sharpness quality enhancement from the Bu Ray HD capture:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/69 ... nedcap.jpg



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

It looks fine in SD resoltion (typical DVD resolution).

The problem is that in HD it don't look so great after sharpned, specially due the video compression used in Blu Ray and the filters they used that created some few halo near edges that will get enhanced too, but still interesting.

M Verdoux wrote:In the early 90s when the CITY LIGHTS laserdisc was released - I was so very impressed with the superb picture quality (and knowing that all prints and videos previously were clearly from duped material.) I remember at the time that Shepard illuminated me with the 'master' negative/Japan cans tale - and even more on the taller than wide 'Movietone' ratio, etc.

A DVD like that image, sharp with fine details, would be very nice.




Uploaded with ImageShack.us

More...



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

More...



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

More again...




Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Uploaded with ImageShack.us





Uploaded with ImageShack.us