A Few Words About A few words about...™ Windjammer -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Robert Harris]

Dave Strohmaier, project producer Randy Gitsch and digital guru Greg Kimble took on yet another impossible project...

Bringing Windjammer to HD, based upon a faded 35mm print. With that in mind, the final result is superb.

I saw this one in Cinemiracle in NYC in 1958, and was amazed.

You can go here for some background into the HD restoration:

http://www.davidstrohmaier.com/review/FaceLiftDomeFinal-iPhone.m4v

But I'm going to save you the time of reading further.

Support the restoration of further Cinerama productions by purchasing this great Blu-ray. Also see my notes regarding This is Cinerama for more details.

Image - 4

Audio - 5

Highly Recommended.

RAH

 

[rsmithjr]

Windjammer was shown at the LA Cinerama Festival last month. I had seen in it 1962 and was very impressed with it and recommend the film on its own merits.
Dave, Greg, Randy and others are doing this work for next to nothing.
I also saw the new restorations (from 3 strip negatives) of Cinerama Holiday and South Seas Adventure. These were really excellent.
I talked to the folks from Austin who did this work. They contend that they have a process that does a lot more automatically than most other processes, thus reducing the cost. This process was used on Cinerama Holidy and South Seas Adventure.
Robert, do you know anything about this work?

 

[Robert Harris]

Originally Posted by rsmithjr /t/324839/a-few-words-about-windjammer-in-blu-ray#post_3995762
Windjammer was shown at the LA Cinerama Festival last month. I had seen in it 1962 and was very impressed with it and recommend the film on its own merits.
Dave, Greg, Randy and others are doing this work for next to nothing.
I also saw the new restorations (from 3 strip negatives) of Cinerama Holiday and South Seas Adventure. These were really excellent.
I talked to the folks from Austin who did this work. They contend that they have a process that does a lot more automatically than most other processes, thus reducing the cost. This process was used on Cinerama Holidy and South Seas Adventure.
Robert, do you know anything about this work?

I do. They scan in 4k / 6 perf, using Digital Ice, a clean-up process invented by Kodak. Their work looks very nice. Would be nice if they could be recorded back to film in 4k.

RAH

 

[alistairKerr]

Can I put in a good word for the terrific documentary about the making of "Windjammer" which is also in the set - heart-warming and full of relevant information about the trials and tribulations of creating the film. Lovely to see some of the cast still waxing lyrical about their experiences on the "Christian Radich".
Considering what the restoration team had to work with, this is a magnficent effort - and that Morton Gould score makes the hairs on the back of your neck tingle when it roars into action.I can see how breathtaking it must have been on that giant screen when it first came out.
This and "This Is Cinerama" must be two of the contenders for best blu-rays of the year, surely. If only for the amount of time, love and dedication that were lavished on them.
Alistair

 

[rsmithjr]

I do.  They scan in 4k / 6 perf, using Digital Ice, a clean-up process invented by Kodak.  Their work looks very nice. Would be nice if they could be recorded back to film in 4k.
RAH

Robert, thanks for the info about Digital Ice, the results were very good and they claim that it is cheap.
It would have been ideal to dump out new 6 perf 35mm prints of the restorations. I think the budget precluded that. These folks were doing a labor of love and running on fumes for money. David, Randy and Gregg are all big fans of the process. John Sittig (who is retiring!) of Cinerama Inc. has been very supportive as well.
I think that Cinerama Inc. (=Pacific) wants to get this into the digital domain both for preservation and exhibition. I talked with John Sittig about this. The extant 3 strip prints may be the last that we see, with only 3 theatres capable of playing them. So we are down to: new and runnable prints of TIC and HTWWW, a single dye-transfer print of Brothers Grimm (beautiful but barely runnable, it broke down several times in 2 showings, should NOT be run on platters), some archive dye-transfer prints of HTWWW, and a bunch of magenta prints that can still be run but are tiresome to watch.
I would not be surprised if future 3-strip Cinerama festivals have HTWWW and TIC, and then anything else in digital, which will be both a gain and a loss.
BTW Robert your list of 9 3-strip movies is the same as mine, but it is open to discussion on the following points:
1. HTWWW and Brother Grimm were shot at 24 fps, while the original process was 26.
2. Windjammer was produced in Cinemiracle but then shown in Cinerama. The geometry is slightly different than Cinerama.
3. Russian Adventure was filmed in the Soviet Kinopanorama process, a clone of Cinerama. It was actually edited from a number of Russian films. It only played in 3-strip at the McVickers Cinerama Theatre in Cinerama in Chicago, which was the last 3-strip house I believe. I understand that there were a number of movies made in this process, which had some variants. Two of the movies played in NYC in the summer of 1959 at a theatre in Times Square, I remember seeing the advertising but not the films during a trip to NYC (with my parents, who always gave short shrift to my film interests unfortunately).
4. One could also argue that Holiday in Spain (aka Scent of Mystery) was 3-strip since it was optically converted from 70mm to 3-strip! I don't count it however.