Columbo Complete Blue ray set

My guess-the syndicated print they used was either damaged or poor shape so,they had to use other sources to complete the episode. A lot of the negatives were destroyed in unverisal's vault fire.

 

Do you work for Universal?

 

No, though I know people who have worked for Universal Digital Video Services and I've done work for them in the past. The ones I know are really good, sharp people who work very hard and go above and beyond to make their films & TV shows look as good as possible.

 

This is the curse of people who work in post...when they care they'll put more effort than their paycheque suggests. "I need two weeks to do this right." "You got 1." Guess what they do? Work two weeks in one week. Not every time, not everyone but I used to see it all the time. They cared about their work because their name was going to be associated with it, love what they did and wanted to be proud of the end result. I always felt that as a result, in many cases, we have much better quality work out there than studio's actually paid for.

 

Yes, I'm glad you understand that. Many's the time when I turned to a client and said, "you know, this shot bothers me -- let me fix it," and they "naaaa, I don't care about that, let it go." And I'll frown and say, "go take a break while I fix this completely off the clock." If it's for free, they're generally all for it.

I learned a long time ago that (as Rick Nelson once sang), "if you can't please everyone, ya gotta... please yourself." Sometimes, you have to do your job better than what they expect, simply because it's the right thing to do. I always, always, always try to go the extra mile whenever I can. If I just slough it off, it'll bother me for days afterwards.