Re: The Brady Bunch- Edited
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Originally Posted by MatthewA
I'm wondering about one thing...
The scenes that were cut from syndication but reinstated on this DVD were of other, later generation sources inferior to the main body of the shows. Some speculated that the syndication cuts were made to the original negatives. However, The Odd Couple Season 1 is uncut and has no such jumps in quality. I find it hard to believe that Paramount would have, at any time, edited the negatives of this show and not another.
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Matthew,
I bought The Odd Couple Season 1 release from Time Life. A head authority on DVD restorations, Paul Brownstein, worked with Time Life and Paramount on the project to restore the best quality to the disks and he did a fine job. This restoration from what I understand was not done "in house" like Paramount has done with other DVD's to save money. Perhaps the original prints for The Odd Couple were found and were easier to get up to DVD quality standards than than the original negatives of The Brady Bunch.
Well, most believe with regards to The Brady Bunch that Paramount took their edits from the original prints of the show when it went into full syndication around August 1974. Those original prints with the edited scenes were either lost or destroyed. Therefore, Paramount, before the DVD's came out, had to resort to looking for the original negatives of the prints that were cut from the first full syndicated cycle. (Probably about 1 minute gone from each episode or time compressed accordingly. Today, most stations that syndicate have at least 3 minutes cut from each show.)
Problem was that in a few instances, Paramount not only didn't have the original prints anymore, they couldn't find the back up negatives for The Brady Bunch's cut scenes. (Along with several other reported Paramount series on DVD.) The last resort is to than go into the vaults and use 16mm/35mm back up scenes so that the show can be put on DVD uncut. When a back up print is restored along with being digitized you will notice differences in a scene. The picture may be fuzzy, the color may be saturated, and the scene may itself have a "neon glow effect." What you are seeing are the back up prints, when digitized, on your Brady Bunch DVD's.
It's unfortunate that this had to happen, but the alternative would have been edited DVD's and no one wants that. At that time, some studios did not preserve their original prints or back up copies as well as others, because the powers that be did not expect home video/digital technology to even EXIST back than, let alone be what it is today. Hundreds of video tapes were destroyed and erased by networks from the 50's to the early 70's because so many people at the time didn't even see the value of rerunning a show. If they did it once, that was considered the end.
But the preservation of the shows varies from studio to studio. Warner Brothers got the home video/DVD rights to Gilligan's Island and every scene on all three seasons of the show is stunningly beautiful and completely uncut.
So regarding this, it's very fortunate if not almost a miracle that there are great classics that are still around!
Jack
