Friday, January 28, 2011

I love this print inspection report

Thanks to projectionist Sara. This should give you an idea of the way most of these prints look by the time they've settled down with us.

I have left out the title of the film to protect the innocent, though needless to say I will be playing it anyway:

flat, mono, 4 enormous reels

This print is not in good condition. All reels are severely warped at the heads. It is extremely faded and very red in color. There is excessive splicing throughout; it is especially bad on reels 1 and 2. Reels 2 and 3 have a lot of perf damage and tears that have been repaired. There is some minor edge damage here and there. All reels are scratched, primarily toward the heads. Some of these scratches are deep/green. Additionally, there is some speckly emulsion damage in a few spots. None of the original heads and tails are still with the print and they all seem to be from various sources, some in other languages. Reel 5 looks as though it suffered an accident of some sort and consequently segments of this film may be missing. There's not really a way to check for incongruity without actually watching it through and it's certainly possible that it's only missing a few frames here and there. Some of the splices, however, connect different shots/scenes. There is a title card at the end that says "The End," which looks as though it was added as an afterthought.