Singin' In the Rain question

I had read once that the original prints of the film were either lost or distroyed and that most releases were taken from some "other sources" that were not complete. Meaning that pieces of the movie were/are missing.

True or false?

If true or false what is the best version of Singin' In The Rain? VHS, DVD, laserdisc, or something else?

 

I don't have the DVD, but I believe it contains some excised scenes. The original negative was destroyed in a fire, but I'm assuming all the surviving prints are complete.

 

The latest 2 disc set from Warner was restored in the digital domain and looks/sounds extremely good. Even if the original negative doesn't exist any longer if there is a decent interpositive still in existence they could have done digital clean up there, transfering it to computer and then creating a digitally restored version.

 

As far as I've read:

True: the negatives were lost in a vault fire.

False: there is no complete release. The original negatives were used for a "safety" in the late 60s or early 70s... alas, not YCM or anything, but that money-saving stuff archivists later came to dub "CRY" as it proved less than ideal. Fortunately, in this case it hadn't gone too bad, and both photochemical and digital restorations, when recently combined, have proven stunningly effective.

There's nothing from the released version missing. Picture and sound for one of two known deleted songs also exist, as well as a wealth of soundtrack elements.

I've no idea of the situation with regard to any extant prints. They would be IB Technicolor, which is great news as far as the possibility of such a print being suitable for a great projected presentation and/or color timing reference. They are not the first option for video transfer, due in part to their very high contrast. There exist preferable elements for this film.

The latest DVD. Hands down. Startling job. Under George Feltenstien's care, each release just gets better.

A review:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews3/singinintherainse.html

 

2 years ago, a Warner insider I used to talk with over at AVS told me they were gonna release Singin' In The Rain in HD. He said they were well along on the project. I figur either they hit or a wall or it's on the warming table waiting.

 

Since they're putting out "An American in Paris" and "Gigi" on BluRay early next year, maybe "Singin in the Rain" on BD will be included in a promotion

 

I hope so. I was gonna buy a copy soon, I thought about 1.5 years ago.

 

A dupe neg can be made from the original neg with reversal film. I've seen the results with 16mm film and it didn't look too bad, but the contrast was bumped a little.

 

An American in Paris has also recently been re-released in a 2-disc set. Anyone get it? It's still mono, BTW. I'm surprised.

 

Not only are most "stems" lost, but the ballet was evidently recorded live to mono, contrary to customary practice. This may have been an engineer's mixing choice, or maybe they were able to skip an optical stage in the process, I don't know.

Was there an EK neg? Thought it was 3-strip. Anyway, it was said some time ago that there was only one reel of original negs and a CRI for the rest. Color Reversal Internegative. Has the story changed then?

 

You mean a "CRI" (as in C-R-I, "color reversal internegative"). When I'm forced to use one of these for video masters, I tell my assistant, "you know that that stands for: 'color really icky.'" They suck.

The fine-grain interpositives on Singin' in the Rain survived just fine, and as far as I know, that's what's been used for all the video transfers of the last 20 years. This is a special kind of contact print made off the surviving original camera negative, but color-timed and with no splices, on very fine-grained, low-contrast stock. It looks fine.

Aapileocole above is 100% correct: Tech IB prints look like crap when used for video transfers. They don't have enough midrange or black detail for any kind of TV screen. They work fine for projection as prints in theaters, provided you can put more than 1000 watts of light behind them.

Yeah, I think Singin' in the Rain was shot in 3-strip Technicolor, which went on the decline once Kodak perfected monopack color negative. 3-strip was just too expensive and required too much light (because of the beam-splitter in the camera), plus the camera was mechanically very heavy and noisy.

As far as I know, all that survives is just several IPs, which were created from the YCM separations.

No, a Dupe Neg can be an exact copy of a cut camera negative (usually a CRI), but usually it's a new negative struck from an IP. To me, they're better off using the IP, because the IP is less grainy -- unless of course it's falling apart, which is always possible.

The chain goes like this: cut original camera negative [OCN], with spliced-in opticals and titles; interpositive [IP], a contact print on lo-con color stock of the OCN; internegative [IN], a negative made from the IP only for making theatrical prints; and print. In general, most theatrical prints are four generations down from the original negative. In some cases, for important venues, studios will strike special "Show Prints" directly from the original camera negative, avoiding two extra generations, and providing better picture quality. But this is usually avoided because the original negative is too fragile and too important to be handled excessively.

With new digitally-timed films, they create a series of digital negatives -- often as many as 10 -- so they can strike many thousands of prints. Big releases like Iron Man, Spiderman, and Harry Potter typically make upwards of 8,000 prints, and since every one of them is made directly off the digital negative, there's very little generation loss. A laser recorder is used to etch the image into a special type of IN film, using a super-strong Estar base, and you can run about 1000 or more prints from each one.

All this will go away once theaters switch entirely to digital projection, since this shows a version of the actual digital files used to put the movie together. To me, there's a lot of pros and cons with this, but that's more for another thread.

 

On a side note--If I recall correctly "Around the World in 80 Days" was struck from the original camera negative for ALL versions when it was shown hence the poor quality of the original negative. Evidently Michael Todd was very specific about this being done for the film.

 

Thanks for the info Vidiot. Yes, CRI. I'm glad there are quality fine grain IPs. It looks fantastic, not apparently a film that's suffered significantly and the folks involved in its modern day care and releases have done fantastic work on it. Thank goodness, as it's a beauty.

Yes, for the large format prints at least. The 35mm prints at that time were Technicolor IB I think... so one might think that neg was just used a few times maybe to make seps from, but I don't know it seps were kept or needed or whatever. afaik, it's the large format roadshow version that's in trouble.

It's probably good to remember that in addition to being a "standard practice" then, he had a lot invested in the Todd A-O processes, and no doubt it was thought a good idea to have this associated production appear as sharp etc as possible. While the massive printing from the large format negs was bad, the lack of seps and what happened later (edits removed from the negs and thrown away etc) was worse still. Similar might or might not have happened if Mike Todd were still around, but as he wasn't, its subsequent owners were responsible.

 

Can't add very much to this thread aside from the fact that we ran one of the more modern reissue prints last year at the theatre, and it looked great. Not sure when it was struck, but the colors were solid and crisp.

 

I did all the video mastering for Fox on the THX version of Oklahoma in the 1990s, both the 24fps version and the 30fps version. I was surprised to see that the 30fps version was not really any sharper, and if anything, had some weird strobe problems I didn't see in the other version. The performances between the two were clearly different, since they used different takes -- even slightly different lighting in some cases.

The elements held up OK, but it was a struggle to keep the color consistent. I recall each of those took over a month to master.

Singin' in the Rain was all done from 4K data files over at Warner Digital, made from different negatives and IPs (depending on which held up best), and I think that took months and months to do. They're doing some very serious reconstruction and archival work over there. But for a movie this important, it's worth it.

 

I too have seen re-issue prints in the theater, several times actually. They may date from the 40th anniversary (early 90s).