Do Any of You Have Sit-Coms on 8 or 16mm Film?

[Jack1000]

Hi,

If so, which sitcomes and episodes do you have? I assume that these are of the old Real-to-real variety? I saw on E-Bay some months ago that some one was selling 2 episodes of Leave it to Beaver on 8mm film! I think one of them was "The Black Eye" I don't think they were the original masters, but what was cool was they were all uncut 25 minutes long, and they showed the original commercials! Back in those days, you only had 1 commercial (2 at most) The commercial actually sonsered the show. For Leave it to Beaver, it was a typewriter company, and it showed kids using the brand of typewriter and promoted how they could get better grades in school. I don't remember what the winning bid was for the episode on real-to-real at E-Bay, but that stuff is pretty rare.

Please list any sitcomes and episodes of each that you have, or have heard about on 8mm or 16mm film.

Jack

[dawsongirl]

No, but that would be cool. I have seen some on ebay, an epiosde of I Love Lucy I think.

[DarleneIllyria]

No, don't have any. I've seen some Batman eps on ebay, though.

[Attmay]

I have several Mary Tyler Moore Show episodes, some uncut. Also a few Bob Newhart (1970s), 1 or 2 Leave it to Beaver, 2 I Love Lucy.

The problem with 16mm film is the fact that it is a high-maintenance hobby. The prints themselves take up more space then videotapes, laserdiscs or DVDs. Film breaks, and splices can be evident in projection. DVD releases of TV shows are a god send for these reasons and one more:

Color film stock has a tendency to fade over time due to the instability of chemical dyes. Before the 1950s, the only way to shoot movies in color was to use a three-strip Technicolor camera which shot the scenes, which would come through the camera on a prism, which separated them into Red, Green, and Blue segments (covering all elements visible to the human eye) on Black and White film. The prints were made on a special film stock, which was soaked in three different color dyes, creating a color film image. The process was expensive and shooting this way required much more lighting, but the viewed results could be absolutely stunning.

But in the 1950s, Eastman Kodak developed a single-strip color negative film and a positive color print film, which cut costs. There were two caveats, however:

1. The prints were not as vivid as the Technicolor ones.

2. The color dyes, already in the film, were not all that stable and would fade over time.

Coupled with improper storage, these one-strip color (or "Eastmancolor") pictures' negatives and prints could fade very quickly, making an accurate reproduction of the film impossible unless protective three-strip elements were made. The stability of the dyes has improved over the past 20 years, luckily.

The Technicolor company continued their specialized printing process (known as "imbibition") until 1974. They brought it back briefly a few years ago.

Few color television prints, to my knowledge, were made in the imbibition process. A very good book on the Technicolor process, called "Technicolor Movies," written by Richard W. Haines, and available through Amazon and other sellers, claims that there were some TV shows printed in this process. He gives no names except for "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color."

There's also the fact that film prints of TV shows also tend to be cut, except in special cases, such as network prints (16mm backups in case the main film chain from the network, which projected in 35mm, failed). These network prints will be more expensive if they turn up, particularly if they contain original commercials.

And for syndication prints of color TV shows, they'll probably be in Eastman color. Heaven knows what quality the color will be on any of them.