{"id":40266,"date":"2018-03-29T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T07:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/?p=40266"},"modified":"2018-03-29T00:35:49","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T07:35:49","slug":"back-to-iwerks-the-comi-color-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/back-to-iwerks-the-comi-color-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to Iwerks: The Comi-Color Series"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"\n

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Some Thunderbean news:<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s been a crazy busy time here at the school, but as it finishes and the various projects at Thunderbean also come closer to completion, I can imagine a time where Thunderbean expands and has the ability to do man, many more projects. Last year\u2019s ambitions led to quite a few bottlenecks, but out of those is coming the ability to have quite a few titles working their way through the pipeline, in progress in various stages by the folks helping on them. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Scanning details have started to be worked out by project, with (happily) less nitrate needing to be shipping as scanning possibilities become more available). The first scans from the Iwerks Comi-Color<\/em> cartoons should be to me within a week or two, as well as many of the Rainbow Parades. Noveltoons<\/em> have started getting further cleaned up, and the Screen Songs<\/em> I needed to finish that \u2018special\u2019 set are now all set.<\/p>\n

2018 is looking to be a great year for the many titles that are coming into completion. It\u2019s never as fast as I\u2019d like it to be, but exciting to see them getting there.<\/p>\n

Lots of things are in their finishing stages. Fleischer Rarities<\/em> is now officially \u2018in the can\u2019 and finally off to replication. The Cartoon Commercials<\/em> Blu-ray is all scanned now. All the films are scanned for More Stop Motion Marvels. Mid Century Modern<\/em> 1 and 2 are complete and have masters (and will replicate as soon as finances allow). Cartoons to the Rescue<\/em> is finally getting sent after a very bad week with the Blu-ray replicator. More scans are happening for Award Winners<\/em> this week and other stuff.<\/p>\n

The 16mm Rainbow Parades<\/em> have become my biggest challenge on that set at this point, and we\u2019ve started to scour the archives around the world a little further to see if any of the titles we don\u2019t have in 35mm may be hiding there (so far with little luck). My collector friends are coming through with the best material we can find, but I always have my fingers crossed that another one or two will show up in 35mm. <\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Starting work on Ub Iwerks Comi-Color<\/em> series is exciting. There are many cartoons in the series that are favorites of mine\u2014and it\u2019s a great joy that we\u2019re able to use the master materials held at UCLA archives. The archives has been incredibly helpful in this venture so far. <\/p>\n

The series have long been available in various versions, with perhaps the best versions in Greg Ford\u2019s excellent series The Cartoons that Time Forgot<\/em>, released on DVD and VHS. These sets were from the best versions available to scan of the films provided by Blackhawk.<\/p>\n

Happily, David Shepard (of Blackhawk Films) gave Thunderbean access to all the materials that were held on the series – from prints made for masters by Commonwealth, to preservation materials, and even the original nitrate negatives. Serge Bromberg at Lobster Films continues this relationship; I\u2019m so happy to be helping to make this beautiful material available in HD.<\/p>\n

Last year I looked at many of the Comi-Color<\/em> master materials, and was happy to discover that the original color records existed on most of the titles. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As far as I knew, there should have been successive exposure negatives on each film; a single edited negative with two records of each frame, shot successively on one piece of film. At first I was confused; there were two negatives on each cartoon and no successive exposure negative. The Willie Whoppers<\/em> were shot successively, so why were the Comi-Colors<\/em> different?<\/p>\n

It turns out that the two records I was looking at are the camera negs, and had been shot with a single camera using a prism to shoot both the red and blue Cinecolor records. For the most part, the series exists intact from this material, as well as excellent condition prints of every title in 35mm. There are a few titles early in the series where the camera negatives do not exist. These are the films being scanned first for the first volume, and since the material is in such great shape I think they\u2019ll look fine. <\/p>\n

In the coming weeks we\u2019ll be seeing the first scans, and we\u2019ll be announcing the pre-order of Volume 1 soon (of two). I\u2019ll also start talking about the restoration process as we take a close look at some of the materials. We\u2019ll also be talking a little about the music in the films, if I can twist my friend Chris Buchman\u2019s arm enough to do so!<\/p>\n

The Comi-Colors were promoted well by Celebrity Productions, with really beautiful posters and lobby cards. We\u2019ll be featuring this publicity material and other extras in the bonus features on each set. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve seen them, but here are some of my favorite posters:<\/p>\n\"\"\n

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We can\u2019t end this without at least showing one \u2014 and they are all over youtube since the series is in the Public Domain. Since Winter is on its way out for a little while, here\u2019s one of my favorites, Jack Frost<\/em>. I can wait to see how this looks from the negs. A wonderful little short with a lot of heart. I love Stalling\u2019s excellent score for this cartoon (and especially the wonderful build from xylophone to full instrumentation (and onto \u2018Cab Calloway\u2019 the Scarecrow) starting at 3:28 here; I think this is one of the most magical moments in the series). The series is more humble than the Silly Symphonies<\/em> or Happy Harmonies<\/em>, but it more than makes up for it in heart.<\/p>\n