Miel, a variation of the planned but scrapped stencil printing innovation can be seen in THE WOMEN (in the transition to the Technicolor fashion show, the room is briefly seen in black & white with the stage in the middle of the shot bathed in blazing color.) It was developed for the OZ transition but abandoned in favor of the less cumbersome but equally effective "fake out" we have now.
It works in THE WOMEN because it's a static shot, and the black and white portion of that transition has apparently been lost. Old video/tv prints just showed the color insert surrounded by white. The new dvd tries to recreate the effect by using a still from later on to recreate the black and white audience area.
It was never used in the release prints of OZ, and it's irksome at this late date that the myth is still being perpetuated in print.
They are indeed referring to the latest release of the film on DVD.
It would be nice if they were actually striking negs and prints on these titles. With Kodak's latest high-con stocks, these films can look as colorful and with the same contrast ratio, yet sharper and far better balanced from print-to-print than original Technicolor prints.
Thanks very much for the explanation! If I understand correctly, the b&w area is sort of masked off to print in the color portion (?) Sort of reminds me of the burning/dodging we used to do in photography class. I just watched the new Oz DVD last night, and even knowing that the interior door shot isn't true sepia, it's still a very successful effect.
I'll keep an eye out for THE WOMEN next time it airs on cable.
Is this similar to the technique they used on the Tom and Jerry discs? The behind the scenes footage they showed of that process is great and yes, I also agree that this is NOTHING like Star Wars. Aligning negatives to create a sharper image is not altering the film.Quite true. If someone is opposed to this method of clean up, then you have to wonder why they buy DVD's in the first place, because (as you said) digitizing film is (by super strict standards) 'altering' the film. To put it in real terms, digitizing film adds compression and there was no compression in the original theatrical showing.