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Posted on the Classic Horror Film Board:
Hi Guys,
Last Sunday I sat through Kevin Burns presentation on LIS on BR. And it's a ton of great news. All of the episodes have been re-mastered from the original film elements and sound recordings. Lost in Space will never look or sound better. Billy Mumy is working to coordinate the "extras" including new interviews and commentaries on the pilot episodes. Yes they have both pilots on the disks and have even found some missing clips and sounds. No release dates yet other than 2015, and I take it from some of the comments they are still adding content to the disk set. The current plan is to release all 3 seasons in one set and maybe in a B9 case.
Now, if you have been following the aspect ratio question they have a unique solution. As you know LIS was shown in the old "square" aspect ration of 1960's TV. However when it was shot the film recorded a wide screen image. When filming for TV they would draw lines on the side of the viewfinder to indicate the "safe area" this was to leave room for the optical soundtrack that would be added later and because TV sets of the day would not show the outer edges of the picture. When they scanned the film the technicians grabbed the whole frame even in the safe zone, yielding a windscreen format of LIS we have never seen.
This sounds great, however, the folks working on the set in the 60's all knew about the safe area, and when working at the speeds they were if a light stand or set clamp was int the shot but not in the safe area they would go ahead and shoot knowing that part of the film would never be seen. Until now. I have always felt that the original artist only meant for us to see the original squareish format, and they composited the shots for the small screen. Showing the full frame is the same as George Lucas "fixing" Star Wars. It was not that way originally, leave it alone. Having said that seeing LIS on the a big screen at the con filling up the wide 16:9 ratio in HD was breathtaking.
So, this is the long way around to their unique approach. The Blu-ray disks will be in the original format. What's called "pillar box," with black bars on the sides filling the space so the picture look as it did when originally broadcast, even on a wide screen TV. However the episode broadcast on stations like ME-TV, Netflix and Amazon streaming, will be the wide screen versions. So the hard core collectors, like us, who will be buying the blu-ray's get the show as it was, and the new fans seeing it for the first time will get the more modern wide screen version. I think this is the perfect compromise. "Why not put both versions on the Blu-ray?" I hear you ask. Unfortunately it's too cost prohibitive. It's 85 plus hours of content, and the disks will be expensive enough. Who knows maybe someday they will release a wide screen blu-ray, until then you can always download the wide version.
Couple of other notes before I wrap up this long post. Sheila Allen fronted the $700K to do the re-mastering with no grantee from Fox they would distribute them. That was a huge risk and shows how much she really loved us fans. AND now that Fox is again interested in LIS, they are looking at starting up a new show.
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It's possible that if enough widescreen interest is shown, they might offer a widescreen set.
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The show was shot full frame and they are creating a 'Widescreen' image from the safe square image as you have said. This is being done more and more now, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series is also being reformatted this way, pissing off Joss Whedon enormously.
Some LIS scenes will look amazing this way, but in other places you're going to see what you shouldn't (lights, plywood, 2 by 4's) at the sides, and miss something you ought to see that was cropped off the top or bottom (even using the full width of the film, I'm sure they'll still have to crop the height somewhat).
I think the first season of BUFFY was shot on 16mm film for budgetary reasons, and it shows as a lower resolution or graininess on TV. Cropping off the top and bottom, and then blowing the image up to fill the vertical part of wide-screen TVs, is going to make that Season 1 issue worse. Plus you lose things that were in the frame. It's dumb. Wide-screen is just not that important for things originally shot in 4:3.
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I've seen all of Star Trek TOS remastered and I love the wide screen effect. I never once thought to myself the composition is all out of wack now. I never had a problem with top and bottom bars in the old days of wide screen projection on smaller televisions, but I really hate pillar bars on wide screen televisions. Just personally watching a square image on a giant rectangle is just distracting for me.
TOS-R is in wide screen? That must be on the Blu-ray version, then? Because the remastered DVDs and the syndy broadcasts are 4:3.
BTW, pillar-box 4:3 looks terrific to me. It's better than it ever looked on the old TVs.
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