Restoration experts piece together silent Sherlock Holmes mystery

The Manila Times

Restoration experts piece together silent Sherlock Holmes mystery  Sherlock Holmes fans are being promised a most authentic depiction of the fictional detective, with the restoration of a century-old silent film series chronicling the London sleuth's adventures. Painstakingly restored by staff at the British Film Institute's National Archive, audiences will get a first glimpse of the restored works from the early 1920s next week at a London Film Festival screening, accompanied by a newly commissioned live score from Royal Academy of Music performers.   AFP VIDEO  Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe  Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net    Follow us:  Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook  Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram  Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter  DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion    Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital    Check out our Podcasts:  Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify  Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts  Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic  Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer  Tune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein   #TheManilaTimes  #worldnews  #sherlockholmes  #restoration

Transcript

00:00One of our recent projects, the one we're working on at the moment, is quite an ambitious

00:17one, which is to restore all of the silent Sherlock Holmes series, which was made by

00:23a company called Stoll between 1921 and 1923.

00:28And I think the particular appeal for a modern audience is not only that they're quite close

00:37to the time when Conan Doyle was writing the stories, you know, they're separated by, you

00:44know, as little as 20 years really, so closely adapted from the original stories.

00:50So they're not just Sherlock Holmes as a character doing some stuff in a film, they are actually

00:55following the line of the original Conan Doyle stories and they were approved by him.

01:02He really loved the actor Eilidh Norwood as well, who he thought really looked the part.

01:08Eilidh Norwood, who we see behind me here, was really the great Sherlock Holmes of the

01:15silent film era.

01:17He was the most prolific, so he played Sherlock Holmes more times than anyone else and still

01:23holds the record on the big screen, if not the small screen.

01:27We all know that, you know, Hollywood likes a happy ending.

01:30It's almost impossible to do a film without a happy ending.

01:35It's always, it's quite difficult not to make Sherlock Holmes likeable, whereas he's not

01:41particularly, you know, in the books.

01:44So it's interesting to see him in an early stage of development for the screen and we're

01:50just getting to the point where we're about to premiere the first programme.

01:54So what we've done is to take an episode from each of the series and these will form a programme

02:02called Silent Sherlock Three Classic Cases, which is going to show in the London Film

02:08Festival at the Victorian Theatre in Alexandra Palace, which is a very beautifully appropriate venue.

02:18I'm particularly excited to restore these Sherlock Holmes films to the public because

02:25they've not been available before and they're the last silent Sherlock-related works to

02:32be restored.

02:33All of the other surviving ones have already been done.

02:37Sherlock has been the most challenging restoration I've worked on, mainly because of their scale.

02:44By running the film through your fingers, you can really feel all the, any split puffs,

02:52any bumps, you know, anything that is unusual and any damage in the film.

03:00Okay, so this film is a nitrate print from 1923.

03:06As you can see, it is quite damaged.

03:10We have lots of split and broken puffs and also tears in the film.

03:16It is very special, it is very special to be able to work on these films that have been

03:26here for a century and have lasted a century and despite all the damage, it is in pretty

03:34good condition, especially as, you know, a lot of films over the years have decomposed

03:40into powdery, sticky, solid messes.

03:45This has done well.

03:46The palette of colours that are used generally help to portray the time of day.

04:06What's nice is that this film changes colour pretty regularly and this is a flashback,

04:12so, you know, this is a flashback to night and this is a flashback to an interior.

04:19You know, most of what restoration is, is using adjacent frames to, you know, copy pixels

04:28or, you know, use them as an algorithm.

04:34So this is the section just before Waterloo Station.

04:40On the road there, it is irresistible to have a go and remove that frame by frame.

04:49Just very carefully.

04:52Real starts and ends are always the most haggard because they are the bits that kind of went

04:58on the floor or, you know, as it is being wound, electric winder, you know, something.

05:03So that's the original on the left.

05:07The black level is slightly sat up so you can see all the defects, you know, but that

05:15hours and hours of cleaning is, as I said, you know, the early shots on the reel are

05:20very often the worst and this is right at the start of reel two, the final problem.

05:32Ultimately, use equals wear and tear and, you know, Scandal and Bohemia, probably the

05:42first shot on that one is a scene of Baker Street, you know, in the 20s and I probably

05:50spent three days on it.

05:53One shot.

05:54Ten seconds.

06:02But, you know, there are, when we got a very, very, you know, that's how effective it can

06:11be in bringing back the sharpness of the image and it's generally, I'll play that.

06:18So the one on the left is the original, the one on the right is one frame, you know, the

06:23new one on its own.

06:27Let me draw that away.

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