Acetate film preservation

[iceman57]

1970s 16mm masters and films that were sold from major studios turned to purple color and are nowadays no more restorable due to this time damaging effect. Fortunaly working cutting films were done in extremely stable safety film 35mm Eastman KODAK.

I'm honored to announce that Miyazaki's Conan Future Boy original 35mm working film containing opening credits in its overseas version (video only for screen caption add) is now registered in company archives.
Professionnal telecine was used in order to convert 35mm original film into DV (digital video) in SD format (576p = DVD quality) for a 4:3 screen format display.
The most interesting aspect is that animation cel working process is clearly visible on this video with tracelines and painting limits on pictures' bottom, broadcasted and commercial version were trimed/cropped as those information do not appear on existing versions. Full video would be broadcasted in exhibition project (see dedicated thread) on framed 15" 4:3 LCD screen or if required on a larger FLAT TV through a pocket multimedia player device.

Sample picture (watermarked picture, be kind to not reuse without permission):

[genomexec]

This is so cool!

[iceman57]

Thanks

For additionnal details the cost of this operation which is generally done in different goverment National Film Archives is about $200 per telecine operator working hour. This is quite prohibitive, but the result is stunning and even allows us to arrange a 2'37'' opening credits projection (to be tested, actual tests were done on 15" and 42" screens) which can be consider as a world premiere.

The extracted video matches with this one with prologue and opening credits. Differences are, as listed previously, that the bottom image had been trimed in order to suppress the visibility of cel painting work. This painting work with paint limits and tracelines is in my opinion crucial to link the film (as the process end) with the production cels to better explain animation process to visitors.

There is in addition an extremely interesting aspect with the film countdown (about 10 seconds) that had not been cutted on film start, while it was cutted on the ending credits 35mm film. This countdown creates a rough aspect during video start. We noticed a small color difference with DVDs capture that have an higher contrast than our source film.
We unfortunally didn't work on the ending (see video here) because it is repetitive and extremely basic, generating useless additionnal costs. We do then have focus on opening credits.

[Joost]

I made a bid on these to ^__^
Glad to see you have it

[iceman57]

I made a bid on these to ^__^
Glad to see you have it

Interesting to see that there are people, who as I do, collect various existing acetate support. I thought first that I was auction rumbling with Arabic fans whom consider "Adnan Wa Leena" as a part of local culture such as UFO Robot Grendizer. Fortunaly the Arabic opening credit sequence is different (they do kept the prologue but not the boat sequence) so that reduced a bit the competition (see video).

In order to respect those fans and the deep respect they have from this Miyazaki's/Takahata's common work, we do get sand from different local deserts that we would like to enclose in a thin plexiglass box in order to enhance the presentation.

We do have in inventories in addition to those films a storyboard from episode 7 that was done by Takahata about the desert (unfortunaly this one is a staff copy and not the original) and a signed EP4 cel from Conan by voice actor Noriko Ohara. Not yet defined the exact composition of this TV series in exhibition and if we'll exhibit all items (that sounds to be hard due to their size) or to resale them in order to finance expensives plexiglass boxes and frames.

[iceman57]

Latest research results, proud to announce that TV display crops 13% of an original 35mm shooting film. This digitalised video will be extremely useful for fake opening cels identification as 13% of the animation art is missing on existing available versions.

[Olivier]

Sure, Future Boy Conan OP cels show-up everyday on YJP
With this you have about 0.2% of the whole series covered, that's very useful

[iceman57]

Sure, Future Boy Conan OP cels show-up everyday on YJP
With this you have about 0.2% of the whole series covered, that's very useful

In extenso, same information applies on any existing series/movies compared with the 35mm films, you may apply this to your favorite Saint Seiya series/movies to detect fakes by refering to 35mm source image and comparing it to cel.
Conan opening cels, sketches and background were sold recently in Mandarake BWA and do appear from time to time there. This Conan Future Boy series comes from Hayao Miyazaki & Isao Takahata whom are globally recognised as major contemporary artists. This show titled "Adnan Wa Lina" (or Leena depending on countries) is extremely popular in arabic countries and in Japan. Several codes from "Conan Future Boy were imported in the movie "The Castle in The Sky", and explain its extreme popularity in Japan.

[Olivier]

Sure, everybody knows that.

[Joost]

For Ghibli fans it is well known that Hayao Miyazaki & Isao Takahata worked on this serie, hence the nice prices you pay for them

[iceman57]

For Ghibli fans it is well known that Hayao Miyazaki & Isao Takahata worked on this serie, hence the nice prices you pay for them

I made a bid on these to ^__^

Yeah, the price you made me pay for those gems by bidding on them
Next time I have an appointment in Belgium you deserve local tasty beer and french fries.