NEWS: Yes, sounds like the kind of
announcement you may hear on any train station platform up and down the
UK... 'The 19:84 from Scunthorpe to London, has been delayed until
20:15. We aploogise for the delay..! No this is news that the BFI DVD
of '1984', (Remastered and Restored) adapted by Nigel Kneale, produced
by Rudolph Cartier and starring Peter Cushing, has been delayed until
March 2015.
This official
release has been a long time coming, though groggy-fuzzy bootlegs from
Spain and the US have given us a tantalizing taster over the years.
Though I will tell you that this release has been on the table and had
several false starts since 2004!
In 2004, it was announced that it the BBC 1984 television play would be
released by DD Video. This was followed by a press release from DD and with the news that considerable effort had been made in
order to present the programme in the best possible quality.
The DD Press release of 2004:
BBC CLASSIC SF DRAMA PAINSTAKINGLY RESTORED
Classic TV specialist DD Home Entertainment claims to have set a new
quality benchmark on its restoration work for the 1954 BBC drama Nineteen Eighty-Four.
This early landmark of British television, which will be available
for the first time ever on DVD and video on November 8th, required
extensive work on it, but viewers will – according to DD – find the
restored picture even better than when it was first transmitted. In
December 1954 videotape recorders (even for broadcast use) were two
years away and existed, if at all, only in prototype form in research
laboratories.
Since 1947 BBC engineers had been able to make crude recordings of TV
pictures simply by pointing a film camera at a monitor screen.
However, dramas were not recorded until 1953 and Nineteen
Eighty-Four remains one of the earliest surviving examples of the
art-form. It was recorded at the time using an ingenious system of
modified telecine machines.
New transfers of the film recording were commissioned from BBC
Resources using its highest quality Spirit Datacine equipment. Special
arrangements were made with the BBC Film and Videotape Library for
access to the archive master material, which cannot normally be used.
The new copies of the play were graded. This is the process of taking
each shot (or even part shot) and adjusting the brightness and
contrast. Dirty cuts (where a frame is made of superimposed and
distorted pictures from two cameras) were removed or, where possible,
repaired using paintbox techniques.
Nineteen Eighty-Four will be available from November 8th 2004
Needless to say, the DVD never arrived in November 2004, the word was there had been 'problems' and a dispute with author George Orwell's estate. Things went very , very quiet for a long time.....
Then in July 2014, the BFI announced that they would be releasing the 2004 restored DVD as part of their 'Days of Fear and Wonder' SF season... but that too has now been postponed until March 2015.
Orwell estate trying to claw the last few few bucks from their rights to the material, before it slips into from their ownership? BFI busy putting together some worth while extra features? Who knows...
Until March of next year, we sit and wait...
Another slice of buffet car coffe anyone?
