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A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

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Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#51

Post by hexane360 »

naikrovek wrote: post #35
hexane360 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosion >An explosion is a rapid expansion in volume associated with an extreme outward release of energy, usually with the generation of high temperatures and release of high-pressure gases. Supersonic explosions created by high explosives are known as detonations and travel through shock waves. Subsonic explosions are created by low explosives through a slower combustion process know…

I'm not talking about a shock wave, but a pulse wave. would you feel the event from a reasonable distance? true shock waves will generally kill you because they move faster than sound.

I can't quickly find any resources that distinguishes between a 'shock wave' and a 'pulse wave' in the context of explosions. Do you have some resources?

If you're defining pulse wave as a sub-sonic pressure wave, deflagarations can definitely produce those, even with relatively poor fuels (e.g. wood dust). Why do you expect nitrocellulose couldn't? Not enough gas volume?

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#53

Post by dhosek »

zitsarethecure wrote: post #46
dhosek wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctor Who fans are probably the most aware of this. It’s hard to say which is the more stunning fact: how much of early Doctor Who was lost or how much of the lost managed to be recovered later.

Correct me if I am wrong, but weren't some of the lost episodes recovered from copies that were illegally made by people recording the show off their TV? I can't help but feel that the costs to preserve these things would be much lower if we just let fans do the backing up.

Not really, as home videotaping was not yet available. There are audiotape recordings from broadcast that were used for some recreations (there are some stories which were recreated with animation and the original soundtracks or still photos either from broadcast or on-set). Most of the recovered copies were film copies that were sent overseas.

What’s really wild is how in some cases, what was able to be recovered was a segment that was censored before broadcast as the film that was broadcast was lost, but the segment that was cut managed to survive.

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#54

Post by lemonberry »

oasisbob wrote: post #38
wincy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the one I know of near me in Kansas has an article about it.[0] This one is in a salt mine as the salt helps keep the moisture out of the air. I could definitely imagine a recurring multi year lease expense like this being a blip on the radar for movie studios, so these things are mostly forgotten. If a movie studio goes out of business though, who know what happens to these films? I’d imagine that’s how movies…

> This one is in a salt mine as the salt helps keep the moisture out of the air As an aside, various salts are useful as humidity regulating agents due to their deliquescence characteristics. Different salts and brine solutions can be used to either pull moisture from the air, or to maintain a higher humidity. https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/salt-humidity-d_1887.html

This is what I love about HN. A post on silent films leads to a really interesting comment like this.

I really appreciate how generous everyone here is with their knowledge and that HN exists at all.

Many thanks to everyone that keeps the conversation going.

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#56

Post by nukeman »

eesmith wrote: post #12
speakspokespok wrote: post #6

This is tangential to the article but when ever I read about a lost film being found there’s always mention of how it was found in a vault. I can’t help but always try to imagine what that is. Can anyone describe what these vaults are like? People can reference a data center but most probably have never been in one. However I’m very familiar with the slightly dusty smell, the whine of fans and HVAC, the odd people th…

The article said it was in the George Eastman Museum. The site has a virtual tour at https://www.eastman.org/virtual-tours which includes a link to the "Technology Vault", at https://goo.gl/maps/CXX9qDt7JemuASss5 . It uses Google Maps Street View to move around inside the vault. EDIT: having gone through it, that vault appears to contain machines - "technology". I didn't see anything which looked like a large film st…

I wonder what the other three places are that store nitrate film? I would guess the National Archives and some facility in Southern California. Where else though?

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#57

Post by qingcharles »

rdlw wrote: post #52
botanical wrote: post #11

So is it in the public domain?

It's public domain but no scan is available even though it's found. So it won't be available for viewing unless the owners decide to screen it (unlikely given its age) or scan it.

Sadly this remains the case for a large number of copyrighted works which have fallen into the public domain, but the original media is hoarded by the owners for various reasons (elitism, investment etc).

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#58

Post by retrac »

dhosek wrote: post #37
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even just films. The BBC was notorious for taping over old programmes to save money on tape and thus there's early episodes of Doctor Who that are lost along with some classics such as episodes of Hancock's Half Hour. I'd suggest that tapes should be digitised and that way they're far easier for the public to watch and categorise them so that other hidden gems can be found again.

Doctor Who fans are probably the most aware of this. It’s hard to say which is the more stunning fact: how much of early Doctor Who was lost or how much of the lost managed to be recovered later.

I remember reading about the efforts to restore colour to material that had only been preserved in black and white.

Before magnetic tape for video really became feasible (1970s), to make a record of television broadcasts, the BBC (and many other broadcasters) would film a quality TV monitor with a film camera. Black-and-white film recordings exist of a number of Doctor Who episodes originally broadcast in colour in the late 60s and early 70s.

Black-and-white analog televisions, like used in the BBC telecine recorder, receive the same signal as a colour TV. They receive a signal with colour information, encoded at very high frequency within the otherwise black-and-white compatible TV signal. On a black and white TV, that high frequency colour information, shows up as fine variations in texture with repeating patterns. Shift the phase of the colour carrier, and the colour changes for an appropriately equipped colour decoder, and the pattern shifts on a B&W TV. It's almost imperceptible really, which was the hack that allowed compatible colour TV. But it's there on the B&W display. And it's preserved on the film recording, too. That colour data can be recovered with appropriate software:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_recovery#From_chroma_cr...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/dec/11/digital-v...

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#59

Post by monocasa »

naikrovek wrote: post #33
retrac wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might mean that it does not detonate -- it does not. It is not a high explosive. But gunpowder (of both smoking and non-smoking varieties) is still generally considered an explosive. An explosive is something that can produce an explosion - a blast. And they can certainly do that.

show me a video of a reel of old nitrocellulose film producing a pulse wave and I'll change my mind. I was conventional munitions (non-nuclear) maintenance in the USAF. I am trained on these things.

Just about any extremely flammable material in a constrained environment will generate a pulse wave. The combustion sucks in the oxygen and radically changes the pressure in surprising ways.

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#60

Post by kmoser »

mmaunder wrote: post #42

Half of all American films made before 1950 and over 90% of films made before 1929 are lost forever. The vast majority (75 to 90%) of silent films are lost forever. This is mostly due to fire caused by the nitrate used in the film. Projectionists used to have an escape tunnel from some projection rooms in case of fire.

I don't think fires during projection were responsible for most lost films. If one or two prints of a particular movie were lost that way, surely others would have survived. Rather, Hollywood just didn't care to keep most such films around; many were tossed, reused (nitrate base stripped of the emulsion and recoated), or relegated to poorly run vaults in which they slowly degraded.
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