Here are some notes on the restoration:
The original camera negative is the only surviving 35mm element on this film. None of the people that have owned the rights over the years have spent the money to create a back-up, preservation 35mm master.
For the past 30 years, these elements have been handled very poorly. The last time they were stored in an actual film vault was in the late 1970's when Monarch held the rights. Since then, the cans have been in warehouses and public storage lockers. In fact, when we finally rescued the negative a few years ago, it was stored in an outdoor storage unit in California with no temperature or climate control!
The cans were banged up and rusty with masking tape labels identifying it as "Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth." The tape was falling off several of the cans and the film was filthy.
Before transferring, the negative had multiple ultra-sonic cleanings. When we finally had it scanned, we found that much of it was faded from the years of bad storage. Thankfully, there was no shrinkage or vinegar syndrome.
Available funds for this project were not sufficient to do a wet-gate scan (four times the cost) so we have had to do manual dirt clean-up and repair to minimize the damage. The results are outstanding and the picture is sharper and brighter than anyone has ever seen before.
The original opticals for fades and dissolves are filthy. Some of them look as though they were lying on the floor. Those dupe sections were cut into the negative and have been there since day one.
Greg has painstakingly gone through every optical one frame at a time in order to minimize the dirt and damage.
It's not scrubbed clean like some of the studio-funded restorations which can cost several hundred thousand dollars, but it's a vast improvement over any previous version of the film.
You'll be seeing more of the image as well. In theaters, the Space-Vision prints were badly cropped in order to overlap the above/below 3-D image onto the screen. In addition, when the film was edited by Igo Kantor in 1966, he used a standard splicer instead of one conformed for anamorphic elements which would have given much thinner splice lines. As a result, at every cut, there are huge splice lines across the top and bottom of the image. Greg Kintz (Technical Director for the Archive) realized that too much important visual information would be missing if he simply cropped off that much height so he went to work removing every single splice line at each cut. As you might imagine, this was VERY time consuming but the results are worth it.
More than anything else, Greg has optimized the alignment from shot to shot for flawless 3-D. As Peter mentioned, it's now very easy on the eyes and truly demonstrates Charles F. Wheeler's superb stereoscopic cinematography.
We have also restored the original spoken introduction for Space-Vision and the opening title which was cut in 1976 when the film was re-issued.
Sadly, the cuts that were made after the initial bookings in late 1966/early 1967 are lost.
I've seen THE BUBBLE many times over the past 38 years. I can tell you that it has never looked this good before. I believe you will be very pleased with the upcoming 3-D Blu-ray from Kino Classics.
In closing, let me say this: Greg Kintz does excellent restoration work. So far, every vintage title on 3-D Blu-ray has had alignment issues which he could have corrected. It would certainly enhance any 3-D release if Greg were brought on board to optimize the presentation.
For more information on the 3-D Film Archive and our restoration work, please visit
http://www.3dfilmarchive.com
Please note: THE BUBBLE is not to be confused with UNDER THE DOME.
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The Bubble 3D Blu-ray (1966) [Region Free] Roadshow Cut coming: Kickstarter
which I think was actually attempted at some theme parks, along with a spray mist if I remember right from the Shrek 3D short (Universal Orlando I think?) It was many years ago.
And nice to know that Bob F's restoration efforts have found a good historical archive site for distribution.
"The picture floats off the screen!"
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