2015-09-02, 03:27 PM
At least the studios still have complete sources. They are not ruining the film itself. (The only possible exception is Star Wars, though I have no idea what happened to the pieces of negative that were swapped out with 1997 restoration footage.)
The Cage is the most tragic one nobody ever talks about. I had always heard that Paramount could not find even a print of it, the only complete copy known to exist was Gene Roddenberry's B&W 16mm print, and even when Bob Furmanek found the color footage, what he found were silent negative trims - and there were a couple brief snippets in the B&W print that were missing from the color footage, edits of a couple seconds that were made to scenes that did make it into The Menagerie, so the official restoration is still missing a couple bits of dialogue (which were also left out of the earlier hybrid home video version, presumably because it would have looked jarring to cut from color to B&W in the same shot?)
Anyway, even a faded color print would be something Paramount could never find (unless they were aware of its existence, but ignored it because the color was beyond saving?) But I would have loved to see even a fan transfer/attempted color-correction of that print. Alas, the print that was on eBay now may be selling in pieces - there are faded Cage frames (including stuff like the credits that couldn't possibly be from The Menagerie) from this eBay seller.
The studios may "hoard" film, but if it's not something like The Alamo where the film isn't continuing to deteriorate the longer the studio sits on it, it's not AS big a deal.
The Cage is the most tragic one nobody ever talks about. I had always heard that Paramount could not find even a print of it, the only complete copy known to exist was Gene Roddenberry's B&W 16mm print, and even when Bob Furmanek found the color footage, what he found were silent negative trims - and there were a couple brief snippets in the B&W print that were missing from the color footage, edits of a couple seconds that were made to scenes that did make it into The Menagerie, so the official restoration is still missing a couple bits of dialogue (which were also left out of the earlier hybrid home video version, presumably because it would have looked jarring to cut from color to B&W in the same shot?)
Anyway, even a faded color print would be something Paramount could never find (unless they were aware of its existence, but ignored it because the color was beyond saving?) But I would have loved to see even a fan transfer/attempted color-correction of that print. Alas, the print that was on eBay now may be selling in pieces - there are faded Cage frames (including stuff like the credits that couldn't possibly be from The Menagerie) from this eBay seller.
The studios may "hoard" film, but if it's not something like The Alamo where the film isn't continuing to deteriorate the longer the studio sits on it, it's not AS big a deal.
