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Universal Fire

post #1 of 70
6/1/08 at 10:44am
Thread Starter 
According to MSNBC:

Quote:
NBC Universal President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Meyer says 40,000 to 50,000 videos and reels were damaged in the video vault, but there are duplicates in a different location.

One shudders to think what could have been (was?) lost.
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post #2 of 70
6/1/08 at 11:09am

Re: Universal Fire

From what is being report:

" massive fire at Universal Studios in California destroyed the building housing the King Kong exhibit and damaged a video library vault, officials said today. The blaze also destroyed the courthouse square from "Back to the Future,"
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post #3 of 70
6/1/08 at 11:56am

Re: Universal Fire

It was JUST the video vault that has been reported damaged. Much of that, I imagine are dubs or stuff in production, and not masters, which Universal stores off-site.
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post #4 of 70
6/1/08 at 12:19pm

Re: Universal Fire

Fox is reporting pretty much the same thing:

Thick columns of smoke have been seen rising thousands of feet into the air, and one person described the scene as "looking like a bomb had exploded in the San Fernando Valley."

Freeman said the black smoke is a result of plastic video containers burning in the vault, which firefighters worked to save. “They moved 100 and 100 of containers out of that structure,” he said.

Ron Meyer, President and Chief Operating Officer at Universal Studios, said that the main vault containing film masters was not damaged.

“We were really lucky today.” Meyer said. “Nothing irreplaceable was lost.”

FOXNews.com - Large Fire Breaks Out on Universal Studios Lot
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post #5 of 70
6/1/08 at 12:45pm

Re: Universal Fire

Quote:
The studio's film vault, which is lined in concrete and lead and contains irreplaceable film negatives, was not affected.
Fire rages at Universal Studios - Entertainment News, Film News, Media - Variety

Quote:
"Fortunately, nothing irreplaceable was lost," said Ron Meyer, CEO of Universal Studios. "The video library was affected and damaged, but our main vault of our motion picture negatives was not."
Universal Studios blaze burns sets, video vault - CNN.com
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post #6 of 70
6/1/08 at 1:28pm

Re: Universal Fire

This was very scary to watch, especially when one report said we were looking at the Universal Film Vault on fire (which turned out not to be the case).
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post #7 of 70
6/1/08 at 2:00pm

Re: Universal Fire

Still a scary thought because a fire like the one at Universal might not reach films in a concrete and lead vault but could raise the temperature inside the vault to a point that would damage or destroy film negatives.
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post #8 of 70
6/1/08 at 7:00pm

Re: Universal Fire

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Theakston
It was JUST the video vault that has been reported damaged. Much of that, I imagine are dubs or stuff in production, and not masters, which Universal stores off-site.

Unfortunately...no longer true.

From Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily.com

Quote:
UPDATE: Uni Blaze Burns Musical History

It looks like more was damaged or destroyed in today’s Universal Studios fire than anyone previously thought. I've learned that Universal Music, which is a completely separate company and owned by Vivendi (which owns 20% of NBC Universal), rents space in the huge video vault housed on the studio lot. But one source tells me that, as a consequence, inside the video vault that was billowing thick black smoke were 1000's of original Decca, MCA, ABC recording masters from the last century including a wide range of music from Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters to Judy Garland and The Carpenters. "This is a tremendous loss in music history. A very sad day indeed. It's too bad they saved the videos that they have backups on instead of the master recordings in which they do not, although they may not have had a choice since the fire had already engulfed much of the music side of the vault," a source just told me. Universal Studios can't confirm what has been damaged or destroyed music-wise at this point because it doesn't yet know what exactly was housed in the storage rented to Universal Music.

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post #9 of 70
6/1/08 at 7:24pm

Re: Universal Fire

Vivendi Universal Music also owns the Motown back catalogue.

This is horrifying news. When I heard of this I feared something would be lost.
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post #10 of 70
6/1/08 at 10:43pm

Re: Universal Fire

FWIW, in photos I've seen firefighters carrying out DigiBeta tapes, single-reel film cans and multiple-reel film cans (the kind that are used to deliver films to theaters).
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post #11 of 70
6/2/08 at 7:47am

Re: Universal Fire

Has anyone else reported that story about the Music library?

Nikki Finke, has been known to like breaking news more than being correct.
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post #12 of 70
6/2/08 at 8:16am

Re: Universal Fire

You'd think that this sort of thing would've stopped by now with today's technology. When I think of all the great stuff lost in various vault fires over the years:

The 1937 Fox vault fire (many Fox silents lost, including Theda Bara's Cleopatra)

The 1967 MGM vault fire (in which the last known copy of Lon Chaney's London After Midnight was destroyed, with at least one fatality)

The 1978 Atlantic Records vault fire (many raw session tapes and unreleased masters from 1947 to the early 70s were lost, including works by the likes of Ray Charles, The Drifters, and Aretha Franklin- the finished LP and single masters were kept in a separate facility)

It really makes a grown man cry.

Here's an article that will shock a lot of you:

Bill's award winning "vault" piece
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post #13 of 70
6/2/08 at 9:06am

Re: Universal Fire

scary to hear about the music stuff. Hope it's not true
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post #14 of 70
6/2/08 at 10:02am

Re: Universal Fire

From over in the TV thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Corey3rd
reports are now that UMG had moved their Masters from that vault so that nothing was lost. Hits magazine has posted:

MASTERS NOT DESTROYED BY UNIVERSAL FIRE: Reports that this weekend’s fire on the Universal Studios back lot destroyed a video vault which housed thousands of original Decca, MCA and ABC recording masters, including a wide range of music from Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters to Judy Garland and the Carpenters, are unfounded. A UMG spokesperson insists: "Thankfully, there was little lost from UMG's vault. A majority of what was formerly stored there was moved earlier this year to our other facilities. Of the small amount that was still there and waiting to be moved, it had already been digitized so the music will still be around for many years to come. And in addition to being digitized, physical back-up copies of what was still left at that location were made and stored elsewhere." (6/2a)
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post #15 of 70
6/2/08 at 10:24am

Re: Universal Fire

Well at least the studios are learning from the past and making backup copies. Still, there's nothing like the original source material. While the Atlantic Records catalog from the 40s-70s is practically complete, it would've been great to hear the unreleased music and stereo multi-tracks that were lost in the 1970s fire.
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post #16 of 70
6/2/08 at 3:36pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Universal Fire

Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Ellis
Well at least the studios are learning from the past and making backup copies. Still, there's nothing like the original source material. While the Atlantic Records catalog from the 40s-70s is practically complete, it would've been great to hear the unreleased music and stereo multi-tracks that were lost in the 1970s fire.

The Atlantic fire, I think, is one of the great cultural and historical losses of our times. The unreleased music plus the studio byplay and alternate takes and sessions that are forever gone...the sense of loss is almost unimaginable and unbearable.

It also makes one think, when future generations look back at us, what will they shake their heads over, about what will they say "What were they thinking? Didn't they realize?..."
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post #17 of 70
6/2/08 at 5:02pm

Re: Universal Fire

Well, some stuff has been saved: individual artists and producers kept copies of items that were destroyed in the fire. Some alternate takes and chatter from sessions made by Ray Charles and The Coasters have been put out on CD. Futhermore, legendary songwriter/producer Jeff Barry produced an album ("Faithful") for Dusty Springfield in 1970/71: some singles were put out, but the project was scrapped when the singles failed to chart and Dusty moved on to ABC Records. The complete album was assumed lost until shortly before Ms. Springfield's death in 1999 when Jeff Barry provided Rhino Records with his personal copy of the finished songs. Most of the recovered Springfield/Barry tracks are on CD in the Deluxe Edition of Dusty In Memphis, and some other tracks are part of the CD release of A Brand New Me.
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post #18 of 70
6/2/08 at 7:51pm

Re: Universal Fire

What is strange though, is whenever you hear about music box sets being created, the producers always talk about how they track down the original analogue tapes, then bake them in ovens to make them capable of being played, and then they copy them using the finest azimuth adjustment possible onto whatever is the latest digital technology. It takes a lot of money, time, and care. Sometimes they take weeks to find the same model recorder/playback device that the reels were originally laid down with. Yet now Universal says "we did all that". Color me skeptical, because I've never read a story where the producer of a box set says "Yeah, it was easy to make this box set because Universal had already made digital backups. I just sat at my computer at home, and was done in a week."
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post #19 of 70
6/3/08 at 12:33pm

Re: Universal Fire

Unfortunately, VP of Dist. at Uni., Paul Ginsberg sent out a memo to exhibitors the other day that the studio archive vault was one of the casualties, burning hundreds of 35mm rental and studio prints. My guess is that many of the titles will never be printed up again.
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post #20 of 70
6/3/08 at 12:45pm

Re: Universal Fire

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Theakston
Unfortunately, VP of Dist. at Uni., Paul Ginsberg sent out a memo to exhibitors the other day that the studio archive vault was one of the casualties, burning hundreds of 35mm rental and studio prints. My guess is that many of the titles will never be printed up again.

Why do you think they will never be printed again?
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post #21 of 70
6/3/08 at 12:49pm

Re: Universal Fire

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan1
Why do you think they will never be printed again?

I can think of two reasons:

—The repertory market is minimal.
—Many of these titles are obscure.
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post #22 of 70
6/3/08 at 1:08pm

Re: Universal Fire

AND printing those features costs big bucks, which is the biggest disincentive. You're talking about prints STARTING at $3-5k a piece, most of which will be rented maybe twice in a decade... maybe.

Popular titles were stored elsewhere, so basically what you had left on the lot were prints new and old of features that didn't get out much. I'll bet more than 2/3 of those titles probably won't be printed again.
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post #23 of 70
6/3/08 at 7:05pm

Re: Universal Fire

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Theakston
AND printing those features costs big bucks, which is the biggest disincentive. You're talking about prints STARTING at $3-5k a piece, most of which will be rented maybe twice in a decade... maybe.

Popular titles were stored elsewhere, so basically what you had left on the lot were prints new and old of features that didn't get out much. I'll bet more than 2/3 of those titles probably won't be printed again.

Just so we're clear, these lost prints were just the ones used for the occasional theater showings, correct? The master negatives and/or prints for these films still exist elsewhere?

From what has been posted here and in the TV forum it sounds like the losses are potentially much greater than what has been admitted publically.
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post #24 of 70
6/3/08 at 8:29pm

Re: Universal Fire

Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve...O
Just so we're clear, these lost prints were just the ones used for the occasional theater showings, correct? The master negatives and/or prints for these films still exist elsewhere?
Yes.

Quote:
From what has been posted here and in the TV forum it sounds like the losses are potentially much greater than what has been admitted publically.
While they may be correct, those posts seem like guesses based on the guesses of a friend of a friend than any actual hard information.
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post #25 of 70
6/3/08 at 11:45pm

Re: Universal Fire

The most potentially depressing aspect of the fire for classic film lovers is that while original negs and/or prints of many if not all of the prints lost still exist elsewhere (according to the information we've been given so far), the net cost of the fire most likely means that any perceived lower revenue DVD releases (read as "older, semi-obscure films and/or films with only a small cult following") that Universal may have been even remotely contemplating releasing in the near future have likely gone from 20%-50% probability of release to somewhere in the region of 0-10% probability.
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post #26 of 70
6/4/08 at 12:04am

Re: Universal Fire

One repertory theater I go to is Film Forum in NY. They've shown a lot of Universal owned Paramount films the last few years in new 35mm prints, including many obscure ones from the early 1930s, like Kick In and No Limit, both with Clara Bow. Is this the short of stuff that went up in the fire? It took 70 years to get 35mm prints struck of these films; who knows if they'll ever be struck again.
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post #27 of 70
6/4/08 at 10:25am

Re: Universal Fire

But would studio/rental prints (which by definition are covered in handling crap) be used for striking DVD masters? Agreed, the loss of such prints is a blow to film societies, but I wouldn't be too sure about the effect on DVD releases - remember that prints can be sourced from anywhere in the world, and in the past (so I've been led to believe) Universal has sourced DVD releases from the UK and Europe, with the BBC and BFI involved in restoration of movies including the RKO Fred Astaire musicals.
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post #28 of 70
6/4/08 at 10:41am

Re: Universal Fire

I'm sure Universal has insurance which would cover the costs of striking new prints.
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post #29 of 70
6/4/08 at 1:21pm

Re: Universal Fire

^True, but that doesn't mean that they will spend their settlement money on striking new prints. They could just pocket the money.
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post #30 of 70
6/4/08 at 1:29pm

Re: Universal Fire

THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE was slated to be shown in Columbus next week, but it has now been cancelled, apparently due to the Universal fire. :-(

Maybe it is for the best. The print they showed of LOVER COME BACK last year from Universal was in dire condition.
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