Movies that are forever visually restricted by the tech used to create them

[Martoto]

Originally Posted by Aclea

When we were restoring Giant in 1995 we could get remarkable results for everything but the optical fade ins and fades out which were baked into the negative (you can always tell in a 50s film when a fade in or out is coming because the image becomes grainier because of the limitations of optical printers of the day and the dupe footage required for thosesections). Unfortunately, almost every scene in the 201-minute film begins and ends with a fade, while some scenes themselves have several fades. While the rest of the film is in good shape - it was shot in the notoriously crappy WarnerColor but restored in Technicolor - there's nothing that can be done about those sections.

Does that just mean that the actual camera negative was missing?