Laurel & Hardy need your help!

[Martin Weiss]

Usually I stay away from forwarding posts from other groups, but this one is special.

Please help us save the Laurel & Hardy film library!

The Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy shorts and features that we baby boomers grew up on.... those great comedies that played on television constantly...those films are in danger of turning to dust. Although some work has been done over the years for video release (the current DVD boxed set actually looks quite nice), most of the library has not been properly preserved or restored. The reason is simply this: There is no money in it. But if this work isn't done soon, the nitrate (a very fragile and flammable film element) will continue to deteriorate, and these amazing films will only exist digitally--and, even then, in mostly "low resolution" versions.

Throughout the years, the Hal Roach film library was sold, resold, leased, and rented, over and over again, and the printing elements were just used up. Hard as it is to believe, most 35mm prints (and even 16mm prints) were struck from the original 35mm camera negatives. Consequently, these original negatives are in awful shape. It is necessary to do both digital and photochemical clean up on them; the soundtracks have to be fixed, the main title sequences replaced, and so forth. (Various reissue companies put their own main titles in place of the original Hal Roach/MGM titles). Since both digital and 35mm preservation is required, the costs are simply enormous. The average 20-minute short will cost around $50,000 to complete. There are more than 60 shorts (and about a dozen features).

We need to get this done now, while it's still doable. Waiting even a few more years not only means that more of the original film elements will have turned to dust, it also means that the folks who know this library won't be around anymore to work on it. I find it shocking that movies that were so well known just a few years ago are now almost forgotten; I think it's a crime that material that has meant so much to so many people has been treated in such a shoddy manner....and that future generations may be unable to view these films properly.

This restoration project is being spearheaded by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Most of the Hal Roach film elements are at the UCLA, and their archivists are some of the best in the business. But film archives (and schools, for that matter) tend to always need more money than they have. Without donors stepping up, the Laurel & Hardy collection can not be saved. (Many film-archival projects rely on outside donors.) We need your money to make this happen.

I have personally made a decent-sized donation to this project to get the ball rolling, but we need quite a bit more if we want to get this done before it's too late. Anything you can donate would be most appreciated. Here is the main website:

http://www.savelaurelandhardy.com

There is a Donate Here button about halfway down the page, or:

https://giving.ucla.edu/Standard/NetDonate.aspx?SiteNum=274

I recently saw the UCLA restored version of the 1933 L&H short Busy Bodies (one of my all-time favorites) in 35mm at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre. It looked simply stunning. I've seen this short many times over the years, and it tended to look scratchy, "dupey," and just plain old. Now...it doesn't. It looks like it was shot yesterday. And there's still time to do this for the rest of the library. But this window of opportunity will not stay open for long; every year more and more nitrate film turns to goo and then to dust.

Please. Anything at all that you can donate would be most appreciated. As Stan Laurel said in Brats, "You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be led!"

Thanks so much,

Jeff Joseph
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[Marc Wielage]

This is a very worthwhile project, and I hope they have much success with it. Though I have to kind of question the statement: "The average 20-minute short will cost around $50,000 to complete."

That seems kind of high -- I know of full feature DI's that have been done in LA for maybe $100K or so without any problems, and we're talking thousands of shots and a 2-hour movie, digital and film negative delivery. I bet you could get scanning down to maybe $2000, dust-busting and grain management (which would be intensive) at $10,000, color correction in one day at $3000, and a film out for $10,000. That's half the quoted price of $50K, though I'm just guessing on the numbers.

I bet if they found a restoration house and gave them the entire job, then made a quantity deal, it could be done on average for $25,000-$30,000 per short, maybe less. Just my observation.

 

[Martin Weiss]

Marc,

As I understand the remaining camera originals are mostly nitrate films, that have been used all-too often for copying by the various owners. This is not a simple "put it in the scanner and voila" job; first the films have to be cleaned and inspected for mechanical problems, some of which will need creful manual repair by experienced hands and eyes. For analogue preservation, a 35mm contact copy (most likely with a wet gate) will have to be made. Then the film has to be scanned at a low speed setting; this can only be done in an archival grade scanner. Once it is digitized, you need to stabilize the film, remove splicing problems, clean up the sound, grade it, etc. In other words: there will be much more manual labor required than on a standard DI.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I have personally scanned nitrate before, quite a few times, and it's not necessarily the rocket science you might think. In many cases, the nitrate has not survived and all they have are safety fine-grain prints made after 1950. Some modern scanners can handle nitrate without risk, but there is a specific warning against doing nitrate on the DFT (formerly Philips Spirit) 4K scanners. Arriscanners and Northlight 2s can do it fine, and I've also seen nitrate scanned on Imagica scanners, but you have to mechanically adjust the gate depending on how warped the frames are. One key issue is just having halon fire extinguishers in the room, making sure the room is well-ventilated, and also making sure you have insurance.

In severe warpage cases, they have to re-photograph the image on an animation stand, and even that's doable with modern equipment, using stabilizing tools on the final full-ap result. Again, I've actually worked on lots and lots of 2K and 4K restoration projects myself in the last decade, so I'm extremely familiar with the steps involved. A lot would depend on the condition of the elements for each specific short; some might be an absolute nightmare, while others might be done in a few days. I'd have to put my hands on the actual materials to know for sure, but again, I think $50K per title is a little high.

 

[Martin Weiss]

I'm also scanning nitrate on a regular basis, using DFT's newer Scanity 4k scanner. The only reason I mentioned nitrate was that as you rightly point out, it limits the choice of scanners to be used. But we are digressing.