I almost wish they would post some abridged comments to the Facebook page explaining the rationale for the cost (e.g., the complicated rights issues for some of the extras) just to stem all the "it's too expensive" comments. It cleared up any reservations I had, especially knowing that we will be privy to things that were aired once almost 50 years ago and haven't been seen since. I am an Eighties generation fan, having discovered them on Nickelodeon in fall 1986. With that in mind, I'm fairly in disbelief at how comprehensive and spiffy the show is going to look in these remasters.
I will have to go back and listen again, but it sounded to me like "Listen To The Band" was what he was talking about. He went on to say that for all those years he'd been told the masters were not there, now all of a sudden they have some (but not all) of the camera tapes (apparently it was edited film-style) and can restore portions of the audio. And outtakes on top of that.
There's no doubt that this is pricey, but I honestly believe that this is one of those purchases that you instinctively know already whether you are going to get it or not. The same folks who gladly plunk down $60 for the Rhino Handmade Deluxe CD's are going to get this without question. Given how incredible (I believe) this release is going to be, and the work that is going into the location and restoration of materials (not to mention possible rights issues roadblocks they may be coming up against), the pricing is quite fair, in my opinion. As a big fan of the show, and one who has often lamented the shape of many of the episodes on the two Rhino box sets, I dreamed of a hi-def restoration for a long time, and had my doubts it would ever happen. The fact that we are getting so much other incredible stuff, from HEAD, 33 1/3, etc is just icing on the already delicious cake! My point is, if you look at all of the content that is going to be included, but still think $200 is way too much to pay, then this set probably isn't for you. I believe I read that the print run for this is 10,000 copies. If they keep to their $200 asking price, I wonder if they will sell that many. (Obviously, if in a year or two they are still sitting on a large stock of these, they WILL lower the price to move the units.) I'm really curious to see how this will sell, since I see it as more of a Rhino Handmade type of demand, meaning around 5,000 copies. As I type this, I realize that my statement in the first paragraph is probably not totally true. I'm sure there is a segment of fans out there who at this point don't see themselves paying that much for this. But if it ends up being as great as I think it will be, when the reviews come out with details of all of the contents, it will push some people into going ahead and getting it, since they will realize that a lot of the extra content will probably not be made available again in any high quality physical format. So I amend my initial statement!
Personally I think the set is cheap knowing the restoration costs and song fees alone. As has been mentioned the VHS box was twice as much. That said all I really want (besides the restored picture) is for episode one to come with 'You Told Me' & 'The Girl I knew Somewhere' as an option. First episode I ever saw, the first way I heard it. ...but now that I know it's on the set, the Nine Times Blue clip is what I'm really looking forward to. It looks so much better than the Youtube clip that's been floating around.
Can someone give me a basic explanation of what is it about the restoration process that causes it to cost of $300,000? Is it the man hours needed to restore each frame or something else?
Vidiot is a better expert here, but I don't think The Monkees are getting a frame by frame restoration. The Beatles are probably the only band that got that treatment (for Help! and Yellow Submarine. But even now I don't think the Fabs are getting that kind of time consuming treatment any more.) But 58 episodes, a TV special, a feature film, some commercials, and various other clips are all being digitally restored from the OG 35 mm elements does take time even with whatever digital wizardry they're using currently. I'm currently training in some post production as a noob, so I'm guesstimating here. EDIT: so even though it's not a physical frame by frame restoration all the dirt and crap need to be cleared from each episode along with color correction. Those are the basic things (as far as I can tell from my limited post experience. That's what I gather Rhino is doing from Andrew Sandoval's tweets.)
I can do some quick math. If there were 58 episodes of The Monkees at a half hour each, plus the 2-hour movie, plus the 1-hour TV special, there'd be about 32 hours of material to remaster. $10K per hour is not a ridiculous amount, when you consider you have to clean and then scan each 35mm reel of film -- which takes about 3 hours per episode -- plus probably about 8 hours to color-correct. They also have to spend about 4-5 hours per episode to remove all the dirt, stains, and blemishes, and that's assuming there are no major physical problems. And don't forget they also have to transfer all the 35mm mag tracks (typically a 3-track mono of dialogue, music, and effects) to digital, fix any problems, and sync them up to the picture. If there's a stereo remix, you have to allow another half day or so for that. So one episode could easily take 20 hours of labor. Fifty bucks an hour for that ($10,000) is not an outrageous sum per episode. I think we got more than that for some shows we did back in the 1990s, and that was just standard def. My feeling is that The Monkees was not a great show, but it's a big fan favorite, it's important historically, and it absolutely deserves to be preserved -- at least in HD, but maybe not in 4K.
Do I have it right that very few films get frame by frame restoration? Only huge things like Lawrence of Arabia, etc. If so what happens to the rest? Are the 35mm elements cleaned good enough and then digital scans are manipulated? I can't remember if this process is only for films they intend to re-distribute in 35mm format only. If I'm not mistaken new digital scans are the go to version for almost all restorations going forward and the cleaned 35mm are left in preservation.
Anyone know how to order via Paypal? I remember there being an option for it but I don't see it anymore. The pre-order keeps falling off my card.
There are various levels of digital restoration, kind of a "good / better / best" thing in terms of time and budget. I would assume the Oscar-winners, huge blockbusters, huge critical faves, and National Film Registry titles would all get top-of-the-line 4K restorations these days. Dirt removal alone is one of those things that can take months and months of work, particularly for 1930s/1940s titles. TV shows are not as bad because the elements were generally not used as often. One problem is that the scanning process itself has changed and improved over the last 20 years. In the 1990s, not much was pin-registered. After 2005 or so, a lot of it was pin-registered 2K. Right around 2010, it's jumped up to 4K. There are arguments being made now for wider dynamic-range transfers, but the standards are still (somewhat) in a state of flux. So what tends to happen is they go back to the negatives every few years and start over again. There are titles out there that I think have been transferred 5 or 6 times, maybe more if you count additional scenes, director's cuts, and so on. Me personally, I wish they'd stop redoing the same movies & TV series and start preserving new ones, some of which have never been touched.
Watch "Andrew Sandoval Exclusive Interview (2015) Monkees, Bee Gees, Kinks, Big Star and More!" on YouTube
That's a great idea, and I wish it could be done, too. The Laurel & Hardy films were absolute classics that should last for hundreds of years. Funny is still funny.
Well, looks like I'll finally be purchasing a Blu-Ray player! I was hoping for the alternate soundtracks back when the DVD set came out but no such luck back then. I also was disappointed by the picture and sound quality on the majority of the episodes on DVD, especially when most of the episodes I had videotaped off of TV looked about 5 times better!
I was on the fence about buying a Blu-Ray player, but, like you, this set is the reason I'll finally be buying one... As far as the original DVDs of their series, I thought most episodes looked really good... But I guess we all have our own opinions on what a good picture looks like...
I am pretty fussy I'll admit. I just found the audio to be too distorted and had figured they would have cleaned the prints up at least a bit, and fixed some of the colour timing. As I said, some of the syndication prints I had taped looked far far better, that's what bothered me most! I like the fact we will have the option of choosing the different songs they used for the romps on some of the re-airings. Hearing the same songs over and over gets a bit repetitious (IMO) and some of the replacement songs are imbedded in my brain as that's how I first saw them on TV. For instance: "Forget That Girl" replacing "I'm A Believer" on the episode One Man Shy (a.k.a. Peter and the Debutante), which gave it a completely different vibe. I just hope they can do it seamlessly and that they preserve all the alternate mixes.
And they were about the only silent-era actors to successfully transition to sound... And they got even more popular! (Although truth be told, they did evolve their characters into VERY different characters to make the transition. The silent L&H were pretty rough and tumble guys, almost bullies. A far cry from the stupid guy who thinks he's smart and stupid guy who knows he's stupid characters they became) Seems like they've done every other classic comedy team/actors... Chaplin, Keaton, Abbott & Costello (although I don't think their remastered films are on Blu-Ray yet) even the Three Stooges films have been restored, but not L&H. Not Really. Kino did a minimal restoration/remastering job for the massive box set they released worldwide (but not in America) but it's a really ham-fisted sub-par effort compared to what's been done for others. Not sure why L&H don't command more respect than they do these days. I guess it's more who owns them. That would be Turner Broadcasting.... So... AOL / Time-Warner these days? And if they could find some of the missing silent-era footage, that would be amazing! Kino managed to piece together about 1/3 of Battle Of The Century, but surely that entire film must exist... in pieces... somewhere. Ah, don't mean to threadjack. Back to the Monkees discussion.
L&H were mastered in HD for the Essential Collection a few years ago. But the source material has really taken some major body blows. (Fortunately, not like what apparently happened to the silent L&H negatives.) I gather quite a few are safety duplicate negatives, because that's all there is now on some titles. Maybe Vidiot (or some of the other film guys) can enlighten me here. Back in the 1970s-1980s-1990s, I was used to seeing films and TV shows which had been shot on film aired on TV from video transfers. They often looked clean and nearly flawless like they were filmed yesterday (on the TV sets of the day), and had a very smooth look to them with very little debris, at least that I could see. Even something like the Yogi's Gang cartoon series, which Warner Archive released not long ago. Their version has much more of a "film look" to it than what I remember seeing on TV. I have read references to a process called "wet gating" and I'm not real tech-savvy, but I think I read that the L&H films were not "wet-gated" and so that's why we see so many blemishes on the HD transfers featured in the DVD collection, because they are high-resolution scans of essentially what is on that piece of film. The fact that those negatives were ground through the wringer over the last several decades probably doesn't help. IINM the "black frames" you occasionally briefly see in the Hal Roach films are there because the soundtrack is on a separate medium (for the earliest talkies, they were on disc) so if the film print is damaged with missing frames, they have to be "slugged" to keep the sound and picture in sync.
