Back from a really interesting telecine session. I'll talk in more detail in the notes, but I will say that Nudie Musical, when we're through, will look as good as it's ever going to look, given the camera negative is lost and therefore not an option. But the CRI is the next closest thing, generation-wise - so it's obviously not first generation but it is second generation, while the opticals are third generation. We had the DVD there as a guide - and I can only tell you I'd forgotten what a scratchy mess that was. The CRI is in great shape with only really minor dirt at the heads and tails of reels, all of which we'll be able to get rid of. The colorist is fantastic and it already looks 1000 times better than the DVD, which was not bad, color-wise. But here, we go shot by shot and it's a lot more detailed than the previous transfer - the tools are 1000 percent better now than they were almost a decade ago. So, the color is fantastic, the quality is 5000% better, and the sharpness is amazing compared to the DVD, as it should be in 1080p. The sound is a little more problematic, ironically. Unfortunately, what they played back for me was the raw transfer - they've already done a filter pass and I didn't hear that - it's supposedly better than the crackle-filled, sibilant, distortion thing I heard today. However, for more money, they can also do a sonic pass where all that stuff gets cleaned up. But the audio guy there said we might even be better off taking the sound from one of the prints - so next week I may bring in three prints for audio evaluation. I'm not going to do all this amazing work on the image to only have it sound bad. The sound on Nudie was never very good, but we want it to be as good as it can be.
And I do think I'm going to have to do the kickstarter thing - I've already submitted it and they think it's a great idea and only suggested I rethink the rewards part - I'd just sort of made it up as I went along - but they gave me some ideas and other projects to look at and then I revised them, so we'll see what they think of that. The way it's set up is that anyone can donate any amount of money, from $1 to $1000 and there are rewards no matter how much you donate. So, I'll keep everyone posted about the progress and I think I made some rewards that are really fun.
