109 - King Kong - 35mm BFI Screening - Doug Weir and Kieron Webb

Weirding Way Media. Welcome to episode one hundred and nine of the Film Youmentaries podcast. This is Jamie Benning speaking to you as usual from my house here in southeast London. Welcome to any new listeners. If this is your first episode, you have another one hundred episodes to listen to.

The podcast generally takes the form of an interview between me and one or sometimes a few other guests. Those guests are behind the scenes artists, including editors, the effects artists, directors, sound designers, and many more. Thanks to those of you that are returning to the podcast, and a special thank you to all of you who support the podcast. In fact, in the last two weeks, I've gotten another four new patrons via Patreon dot com forward slash Jamie Benning, So that means there's now one hundred and nineteen of you helping to support the podcast. I want to get that number to two hundred and fifty by this time next year.

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I always appreciate the feedback, good or bad. Otherwise it's just me putting this stuff out with no idea on how it's going down. So yeah, keep that feedback coming. In fact, talking of Matt Painting, I'm hoping to get in touch with another Matt painter, Chris Evans, who worked on some amazing movies that we all grew up watching. Hopefully that will be in the coming weeks.

As you know, I occasionally go off pieced with this podcast, and this is one of those episodes. I ended up going to the British Film Institute, the BFI on the South Bank here in London to catch up with friend and friend of the podcast former guest a couple of times, in fact, Doug Weir. He invited me down there to talk about a new thirty five millimeter print of the nineteen thirty three Classic King Kong and a screening of that very movie as well. And rather than going into the specifics about how that came about here in the intro, I'll just let you hear that in the conversation coming up, but just to say Doug is the content remastering lead at BFI, and this time we were joined by his colleague Kieran Webb.

He's head of conservation at the BFI. So first of all, you're here Doug, he's got the Scottish accent. And then a little bit later in the conversation you're here Kieran talking about the specifics about how the project came about. Again we mentioned in the conversation, but it's worth saying here that if you do want to go and see this new print of the nineteen thirty three classic King Kong in thirty five millimeter with a Doug Wiars intro beforehand, on the eighth of September, so you haven't got much time, so book your tickets now. You can find those at the BFI website.

And then there is a secondary screening without Doug's intro on the sixteenth of September, so that's at the BFI South Bank in London. I know there are a few of you listeners that live in London or can get to London, but if you don't, this is an interesting conversation anyway about film restoration and conservation and the projects that they do behind the scenes there at the BFI. So here's my conversation with the BFI's Doug w Weir and Kieran web and I'll be back at the end for a bit more jabbering on. So we're here to talk about this season of stop motion in which many films are playing, but also we're here to talk about King Kong in particular. Doug, can you give us some context of the film of its sort of place in history, and then we'll talked to Kieran Hear about the print itself.

Wow, you just asked me to give context. Can you just tell us about King Kong to big question, I think King Kong's or just to be clear to people who are listening, it's the one from nineteen thirty three. I hope that's what you're asking about. Well, I know all my research is on the seventies one. Sorry, oh no, no, I mean that's such a huge question.

And to put the nineteen thirty three, the original King Kong's place into the history of cinema. I mean, it is monumental. It's almost hard to even and for me anyway, because it's my favorite film and for so many reasons. There's so many levels of why it's a great film. It's very hard to encapsulate.

Yeah, I mean, it's easier to sort of break it apart and say, you know, it's the visual effects, obviously that's probably the key bit, but it's also the storytelling. It's the way it's been directed, it's the music, it's the editing. Everything about that film almost everything was pioneering. I think the only thing that wasn't pioneering was probably the film stock because it was just you know, probably Kodak film stock that was being used in all but everything else was almost brand new to cinema. What they were doing was so far ahead of its time, probably in my opinion, so far ahead of its time that cinema didn't catch up, you know, for maybe twenty thirty years until yeah, other people came along and started being influenced by it.

Even that the films that followed it were another quators pioneering. Yeah, some of those techniques used, like matte painting is older than that movie obviously, and some of the things that you know, like giant robotic puppets and things, but this film managed to sort of perfect those techniques, and also the combination of those different techniques in a single shot is kind of what's mind blowing even looking back now. And this is like nineteen thirty one thirty two released in thirty three. It's kind of baffling that they were able to come up with these ideas and then combine them in a single shot. Yeah, you talked about matte paintings, but as you say, the combination of those techniques, they were just throwing everything at the wall.

They had people on conveyor belts running in front of rear projection. But then you heard rear projection within matte painting composited with real water. I mean, there's shots in there with there's almost everything that they could achieve at that time in one shot. And you've got KLM, you've got other creatures, you've got live action in one little corner, and as I said, you've got real water, you've got real you know, trees, and then you've got matte paintings, and then you've got glass layers and then you've got like, you know, focused step for folk, the camera focusing in in different layers and pulling out. It's almost done.

Inconceivable for that era for something to be that perfect, but it is. And I think I think we were chatting beforehand, and like I was said beforehand, it's almost like how I'd love to be in the meeting where they're going, I've got this idea and they go, wow, we've done Matt shots with with you know, fair ache and just stand in front of a rear Projection's like, yeah, but what if we did this and that and then did this? And they obviously just absolutely went for it. I mean, one of the reasons that they did really go huge Young King Kong is because if you look at KAO all the time, our k was my favorite Hollywood studio from that era. They were in a bit of a slump and it was kind of like, you know, we've got to hit big.

So they all sat around the table and just said, look, whatever, you've got a school for it, and Mary and see Koper, who was a you know, big on his adventure films, just went for it. You know. Yeah, his idea about Kong it. Is crazy that, you know. I read this morning actually that it went over budget considerably, and I think it went over time a bit.

But it has become culturally so important. I mean, even my kids who have never been anywhere near the movie know what it is. They understand as soon as you see that image of him the top of the Empire State Building spoilers, which is only part of the movie. It's only a very small part really, because there's so many sequences in that film. Well, it's got that chaplain I call this chaplain effect where you can show a little kid a picture of Charlie Chaplain and they just know, yeah, you know, and the King Kong and the But I think it's because it's become such an I can't as you say, image, and it does appear in so many different mediums, and it's referenced so much that even if people don't link it with King Kong, they recognize it because it might be on the side of a cup.

Yeah, yeah, you know when I take away place, so I've seen it on the side of a plastic cup in like a bug or it doesn't. And that was in New York. Obviously, that's the connection with the New York uses it. Yeah, if you got to the Empire State Building today, there's a King Kong like they are, Yeah for you. But I think when Fa Ray died, I think they dimmed the lights on the Empire State Building for a day, and I mean it just goes to show what an impact it had.

I was thinking as well this morning, what when is the next time a visual effects character is so loved? And it's probably Gollum Doug tell us you about your love for Lord of the Rings. I've never seen that. That was deliberate, Doug told me beforehand. We've not seen it.

Yeah, sorry about that, everybody, But. I think that probably is there. I can't think of another purely visual effects creature that is so loved and appreciated and seems to have a personality. I would probably say, I don't know how big it was at the time, but Godzilla in the fifties, and then obviously they the RKAO again was in a slump in the fifties and did that deal with Toho to do King Kong versus Godzilla. Yeah, so Kong was the guy they kept bringing out to revive the studio's expenses.

But the yeah, I mean going back to how pioneering it was as well leaves it leaves an indelible mark on you know, people's brains of how perfect the film it was. I don't think that. I think that's for me. Is the thing that makes it timeless is it was never no other film like that. They perfected the animation techniques and everything, but the storytelling and the combination of those things never really struck it for you know, they never really hit it again for a few decades.

Everything, even the music. I mean a lot of people don't realize that the music in King Kong. It was the first time. Obviously, we had had silent films, and a lot of silent films had people, you know, improvising as they watched the film. But this was the first film to have a score composed and recorded specifically for what is going on screen.

So everybody had their own theme tune or whatever you call that motif and the music cuts to the action. There's moments in the film where the action takes a left turn or a right turn and the music goes with it. And before you even see Kong himself, you hear him his footsteps, but it's not his footsteps it's the orchest struggling, and that's the first time that the music had been used almost in a sort of storytelling way to imply what was about to happen, or to ply what's going on on screen. And also this is like five years late after we were still getting silent films. That's the other thing that's amazing.

It's like it's such a huge leap forward in that post production technology world in that five years before we were still having people going. They did it in front of as well. I mean, it was better than that, but it was silent cinema. And as Karen and I in another discussion can tell you how great silent films are as well. In silent films, there are silent films, you know, from pre Kong that were incredible, credibly well edited and in credit, dramatic and fantastic.

But Kong almost was too early for its own era in that it came into the sound era and said we can do all these things with sound and we can do all this. But then after Kong, if you look at what was made, you know, in the years following, and it's just like the back to the old, you know, just having one jazz track in the background and people mixing cocktails, being wetty to each other. It's like they never caught up with that. Again. Yeah, it's kind of hard to appreciate what it must have been like going from silent movies and you know, as you said, with an organist playing along, and then coming to a film like this where you've got a false score specifically made for it, with sound effects and everything else.

And then the most amazing visual effects that had ever been created. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean I was looking and back at them again last night, and some of them, even though I saw a description side by side of how they achieved that shot, I was still going, what how. It's just a sheer imagination and it's one or two. It's Willis O'Brien plus a few assistants and animators.

But that's it. And you know that the only other time that I can think of, I mean, I'm no historian, but if you can think about people, you talk to people referencing that mind blowing moment in the cinema is either after that, It's like a lot of people talk about Star Wars and go, oh my god, I've never seen anything like that, because they were inventing techniques, you know, which you've documented, you know a lot in this podcast. But then after that maybe Jurassic Park. Yeah, you know where people go I've never seen anything like this before, but like Jurassic Park. I fact, it is a really good example is you watch Jurassic Park and you don't see the visual effects.

You're just totally it's such a well made film and it's so well written and directed and edited, and the visual effects. There's actually not that much CGI in Jurassic Park is not as much as people think. I remember at the time it was like, ah, they're all computer generator, but it turns out it's only a few sequences. But you're just so into it. It's so well combined, and cong's like that.

But even in King Kong, you look at Kong and you're like, that is fake. That is so they can see that. It's like that sort of Wallace and you see the fingerprints, you see his hair ruffling, you know, and you can tell it's a it's a foot and a half size armature and it's been built and it's not hugely realistic. But because it's so well animated and there's so much humanity put into that that creature, that that character. You're just totally in on it, and you know, I cry every time.

There was one review at the time that said, you even see the wind rushing through Kong's fur atop the mPire statement, but of course it was Willis O'Brien's fingers. That's a good Yeah, it's the wind, all right. Yeah. There are multiple different versions of the film. In as much as the film was cut.

Some sequences were cut here in the UK, some were cut in the US. There were different scenes from what I understand. Yeah, I mean, my my main function here at the BFI is preparing films for distribution and on the different platforms on cinema and thatio, you know, Blu ray, DVD and streaming, and so I've been doing that in that I've been doing that for about fifteen years. And even in the fifteen years that I've been doing that, you notice the different ways that the BBFC here in the UK changes. You know, we were re releasing Watership Down plug the We're releasing Workship Down in cinemas and on UHD and Blu Ray later in the year, and famously I submitted that to the BBFC last year and famously it got an upgrade from U TPG because they were viewing it in a different light.

And very recently it was in the press that Nightmare Elm Street got downgraded, yeah, from eighteen to fifteen. So I think the censorship, even going back then, it's just about who's watching it, what the legislation or the rules are, and those change all the time, going right through to the video nasties and then all that stuff you can watch for free on Amazon now. But when I was younger, it's like I had to get pirate videos of some stuff that you can just watch for free, like you know, a kid could just switch on TV on Amazon and the other it is, whereas I had to go to video shops and get dodgy backroom vhs. I went down just down the radio to Westminster Central Holes. Yeah that's yeah, yeah, yeah, little counter copy.

Of But I didn't know this about Kong until literally yesterday when I was looking and I've got the Making a King Kong book and a few other things because I'm, you know, a massive film nerd. But there was another of So they all they censored cong and they did different There were different sensors cuts, as you say in the America in the US. The famous one that everyone always talks about is when he you know, he smells his fingers and he peelbacks are closed. Yes, but there's also other little bits where it's just like shocking, you know, violence, it's very violent, but the but they also made a print in the sixties, I think it was that was darkened. So they darkened the print to sort of make it because they thought by darkening it would cover up a lot of the threat, as the sensors would like to call it, and make it easier to watch it, make it less frightening.

So there were there were dark prints out there, and it wasn't until the late sixties but that the film was put back together again and new prints were made and it had a rerun, and then you know, a whole new generation of people who you've interviewed. Yeah, I think actually I've read the other day that there was a famous TV screening in the sixties where they showed it several times over one weekend, and there's a whole generation of filmmakers and visual effects guys who saw that, and yeah, and that got their head going. But it was re released after it was put back together again in the late sixties, and that's when it was you know, a lot of people think these films are being I mean Kieran and I.

You know, we work in remastering and restoring films now and sometimes the work that we do is the first time the film's been put back together since you know, the nineteen twenties or thirties. But with Corn actually it wasn't that long after. It was only actually thirty years. You could have remember it's nineteen thirty three, so yeah, but it was the sixties. It was late sixties, and then ever since then it's been complete.

And there was that original copy discovered in the UK sometime I think I read it was in the early seventies, which had some of those deleted scenes in it, and it was in better condition than other prints that were around. Well, yeah, there was also a copy discovered t twenty five years twenty years ago behind a brick wall in Glasgow in my old local cinema. They were converting it and demolishing it and there was this King Kong film print. I don't know how that happens. Did the well, you'd be surprised, honestly.

You find find film prints and all, but bricking a film print up is one thing. I'm king Kong, Yeah, you know, I mean I don't know anything, thank you. I don't know what happened to that print. All I remember is that being in the news. Was it an original print or anything.

I don't know what happened. Yeah, it's gone. I don't know where it is, that print, but it was found in Glasgow behind a brick wall about twenty five years ago. Yeah, it's probably in someone's house. It was a colorized print.

It's not nitrate. H. There was a colorized print in the eighties as well. There was that horrible fact and there sort of try and get younger audiences here, but we can, we can. Well I saw that and Kong had a sort of purple tinge to them.

I remember that. Yeah. For years that I thought, It's a wonderful life was color because my granddad had the colorized vhs and then I saw it in black and white. I thought what was going on? Yeah?

But yeah, but the yeah, there was, there was, Yeah, there was. I mean, Kieran can probably talk about this more than me, but there was the best copies of the film. When it came to putting it back together and restoring it were in the UK. So Kieran, can you talk about this latest printing and kind of the origins of it. Yeah, yeah, it's just have to sort of widen out a little bit because this is part of a program that ran for five well for five years, but with a COVID interruption.

So we started in twenty seventeen with National Lottery funding, right, and it was really a strategy to create one hundred. That's a suspiciously round number, isn't it. But it was based actually on what we thought the money that we could bid for and received, how many prints could we get, And we knew they would be feature length features very naturally, but you know, cong is a trim one hundred. Minutes or some one hundred and four. I think the last print we achieved poetically enough was Jan Dielman, which is worth quite a few congs in terms of length.

So yeah, that's that three and a half hour, that's right. Have I got time to just describe a bit of prehistory on this on this print program? So I brought along one of my treasures, which is a cit and sound supplement from the late nineties ninety eight and at that time, so you and people listening might be familiar with the books the BFI Film Classics series, those paperback I don't know what size it is technically, but you know they're actually good fit in little gains exactly, film scholars tape stuff exactly. That monograph, yeah, you know, and the range of writers chosen to discuss the film is not, you know, all usual suspects and some so the that came from one of our great keepers of fiction film.

That was his title, David Meeker, and he worked at BFI for about forty years. He interviewed me for a job in late two thousand, just before he retired. So the fact he to me is either his last gift to the BFI or is a party shot. I don't know which. But David was asked.

He explains in that supplement at the time, the draftsman's contract was bringing in money. It was it was actually a BFI produced film that was commercially successful. And this was not the point of them always but unheard of in any case, And the then director of the BFI asked him what would he do with that money? And it's very interesting this is early eighties then, and David said, I'd like to build a library of show prints. So even in absolutely pre digital tall the way that we would think of it pre digital era, he wanted really nice show prints of let's use the word important titles.

He goes into a bit more detail about the list, and he came up with a list of one hundred. It grew to three hundred and sixty, and there was this idea that if we achieved all of those prints, you could watch every day of the year, because the NFT as it was then BFI South mcnow wasn't open three hundred and sixty five days a year, but three hundred and sixty. So every year once you could see Kine, you could see Kong, you could see Vertigo, you could see seven Samurai, you could see Thrown of Blood. And about half that number of prints were achieved. I used to come and watch them here before I joined the BFI late nineties.

I suppose you'd see them only in NFT three at the Museum Cinema, and if they were non English language, they decided not to subtitle The Prince in order to keep them kind of pristine in that way, and you would put headphones on and someone would be delivering the dialogue to you. That way, right, Those booths, those commentary booths are still in the building. Yeah, they're full of boxes. Yeah. Yeah, And I heard the colleague of mine does remember that.

I'm sorry, I don't remember the person's name. But the guy who did Throne of Blood when I saw it there was great. I mean he just slightly put on the witches kind of you, but not camp. You know, it was great. And then another time Rock and his brothers I saw that way.

So okay. So that was David Meeker's list. It's quite a personal list, like you said, it should be. You can't program by committee, he said, But it does include an all for three hundred and sixty titles. It's got about thirteen fourteen.

John Ford's on there. I love Ford, but that's quite a high Yeah, that's quite a high proportion. And Jean Pierre Melville, David was a big fan. So more recently, cutting to fifteen sixteen, as we put in this application to National Lottery. Even then it felt like quite a brave thing to do for our then creative director, Heather Stewart very keen to support film as a medium, to recognize it as a medium, but the idea of someone funding the creation of one hundred new Prints felt, you know, it would be a fantastic thing to do, very very valuable.

But you know, luckily National Lottery understand and so we began work to look at David's three sixty list. A committee of just remember that David said, program committee, but a group of BFI colleagues, not me, looked at the list and we wanted to bring it a bit more up to date as well, because he'd the last film on his list is Mad Max two, okay, and he felt, you know, you should have that gap in a way. So he was late nineties he was doing that work. You know, there's that gap. Similarly on our on our list, you know there's a there is a gap too, although it's not quite as big a gap.

I'm just gonna double check what that most recent title is on our list early two thousand, okay, So Hunger Steve McQueen's Hunger and The Headless Woman. They're the two most recent titles on the list of our one hundred at David's three sixty list, we've updated that, but we knew we couldn't achieve three hundred and sixty. Prints would love to. We'll carry on best we can, but we had a lottery funding to achieve one hundred and we did. In fact, we made one hundred and five.

So that's and some of them in some cases we could afford to get two prints, but that was unusual pretty highly. I think two or three titles actually we could get two prints. So these are show prints. Some of them absolutely exceptional quality. I mean the original leg Yeah, some from original negative, including Persona and Daisies.

So that's you know, that is very cool something. But we should recall and I think getting back to come. You know, film is about duplication. These films were made. That is how it had to happen.

And cong contains, he contains multitudes, Come right, he's got the match. So there's already duplication going. On within the frame. Yeah, frame you have, you know, one frame, you could have maybe eight, nine, ten duplications in Kong, you know, so, as you're saying, already at that point it's gone through, there was that many jups before it even gets made into a jupneg or a finger in or a print. Which of course is why later they went for VistaVision, a larger format, so that when you went down a generation, you didn't lose the detail.

Yeah, and too much of an extent. What's been great. This sounds a bit selfish, really, but I guess I feel very fortunate that one thing, when I was studying film what turns out to be thirty years ago, I was at a college where they ran print thirty five mil. If they could get hold of it or that was the right format. I think we saw two video and it would have been tape in those days, two video projections, but otherwise it was print.

And then similarly, checking these prints, I couldn't stay for all one hundred Unfortunately, colleagues of mine covered a lot of that work. But it did remind me when it came to optical effects, how far ahead the American industry was with the development of those optical printers. The first title I really noticed on so when you're watching French or British or German productions Italians of the time, even well into the thirties, it looks like they're actually almost by packing the film rather than you know, In other words, the scene that's going to fade out and the scene that's going to fade in are in the printer together together, sandwich together to create the effect. Whereas one of the first films we made a new one of these prints for was I Walked with Zombie.

I mean, fantastic title and fine grain made from original negative at the library Congress, then a new jubeneg that we had made a new soundtrack negative. And so you know that those optical effects, those dissolves, you're seeing them produced through photochemically, photographically really and they're so smooth. I mean, if you if you did a remastering, people would almost be suspicious you'd remade them, tidied them up. But the truth is it's a great reference a film like that. And and Kong similarly, I mean that's that's probably a decade earlier than the I Walked with a Zombie, but still the techniques and the photographic techniques to get that result, when you think about how many layers are in it is incredibly.

Currently now, you know, going to Kong is you was talking about what with the zombies? What was it the print? It was, OK, yeah, well it was our cue as well, but you know you were working. I mean that print looked I mean, that's one of the prints I saw as well with the Zombie that looks really beautiful. But it was made from what, So what was the element that was made from you just said.

So it's a in the In the case of that one, it's original negative is a Library of Congress Archa printed a fine grain positive and then there was a new dupe nag was made and then the. Print was made from that, whereas Kong doesn't have an original nag let alone, barely anything else they've got. I think the closest they've got is a fourth jen away from it. But it still looks fantastic, it still looks really really great. But there's lots of as Curan will probably be able to tell better than myself, there's lots of different ways of printing and lab techniques to really bring out the quality and detail of something that there's quite a few generations away from the original legg to try and make it look as great as possible, And that's part of the restoration techniques.

So what are some of those techniques you've used then to get the print up to the standard that it is now? Well, one of the one of the best. I'm laughing because one of the best techniques you can use is choose the right lab to work with, right, Yeah, yeah, that's one of the best things you can do from an archival. There are prints that you can watch and I'm not one of these people maybe in a small instance, but there are people that are colleagues who will watch a print and they can tell you straight away that was made there, right, yeah, because just for the way it looks. Yeah.

So again just a bit widely on this latest sort of printmaking initiative, hundred prints funded by National Lottery. We intended always to work locally, so in other words, where there was the materials, let's work with a lab nearby to help, you know, not unnecessarily put elements at risk of traveling. In some cases they do have to travel. So for example, for the Australian New Zealand titles in the list, they went to the west coast of the States because that's as close more or less as there'll be labs to work with. We worked a lot with two labs in LA that will probably be familiar names.

So one is photo Kem, who of course Christopher Nolan Ema Thomas work with in terms of post production on their films, and we worked with them a lot. The other is a more boutique lab but very long standing in Burbank is YICM maps and they carried out in probably mid late eighties, they carried out preservation restoration work on King Kong. They brought together a lot of materials, including as we said, nitrate dupes held here at the BFI, and so this is in the end they produced a negative that was with held by Warner Brothers and a soundtrack. It's important. You'll be surprised how many times we went after titles, and to digress a little bit, if you ask me why this one hundred or one hundred and five titles.

There's also a kind of the other side of the coin is titles that we wanted to do but there just aren't printing elements available. So the titles are preserved. It's not a question that they're unpreserved somehow unprotected. But in order to have a negative that's ready to go for printing along with a soundtrack negative that sinks is a different matter. So there's this kind of I don't know what to call it, not a shadow list, but the kind of interlocking list.

And there was a moment where we weren't sure that there was a sound negative ready to go with King Kong and our budget didn't really stretch to producing new film elements, but fortunately they had in the library, so we wanted to work with ICM again. We noticed Doug and I checked an earlier print of Kong that we had came from the same dupe negative we would call it duplicate negative of the full feature. And what we could see is that Eric, the grader at ICM, who's a terrific both color and black and white grader timer as they refer to it in the States, he'd given you know that he won't just print straight away again with the lights from last time. You know, he's taken another look and we could just see where he's Stephen Moore, So that that's such a crucial process that at any moment, but with these historic titles and a negative that's probably well nearly forty years old, then this this one from the eighties, he could just add those last improvements, you know, touches.

So the print that's showing on the eighth October, eighth of September, September, it's showing twice. If you can't make it on the I'll be introducing it on the eighth of September. It's a Sunday afternoon. It's off peak travel, you know, it's cheap, you know, and it's it will be showing again the next day, and it's actually you can get a double ticket with the Mighty Joe Young. So it's showing on the Sunday the eighth and Monday the ninth.

And I can't tell you if it will be showing again because, as we've just been talking about extent extensively, it's a print that's been made to preserve. So this is a real one off or twice off. It's getting shown twice, but yeah, it's a one off opportunity to see something is and it is a beautiful print. I mean, I've seen King Kong. It's my favorite film.

So I've seen it in every medium. I even own a print on Super eight, and you know, I've seen it and it looks incredible. I've got the Blu ray it looks great. But this seeing something on the cinema screen. It's a film designed to be seen big, and it's a thirty five no print, So it's not like watching a DCP.

You were at Jaws, you know what I'm talking about. Absolutely, it's like, you know, the thing, the whole thing about Jaws was My message was, all right, you think you've seen this, but trust me, afterwards, you're going to be coming up to me and going I thought i'd seen that before, but I hadn't. It's a whole different experience seeing a print projected. And this is again another probably one of the main reasons for Kieran's project is to preserve that experience in cinema, to be able to in years down the line to say, oh, we can see King Kong or any of these other titles as the they were intended to be seen. You know.

Digital projection is an amazing thing to keep cinema alive, and it's a great way to preserve films as well. I call it preservation through distribution because King Kong can be re released across the UK at very little expense if it's distributed digitally, and it will look incredible. But to have you've got to preserve that original experience. It's like having the Mona Lisa, making the best print of the Mona Lisa ever and then sending it to all the different galleries. It's not the same as standing in front of the Mona Lisa.

I described it when we saw Jaws here that it was like time travel. For me, I genuinely felt like I was back in seventy five. I wasn't even born. I was born in seventy six, but it felt like time travel because it was there with the original color timing, it was the original mono mix. It was with an audience, some of which had not never seen the film was great.

My mum. You know we chatted about this in the other podcast. But the other great thing about Jaws, the print of Jaws, not to talk about Jaws too much, is it wasn't perfect. And I think again with King Kong as people have got to remember that photochemical is not perfect. Digital is perfect, you know.

I mean it's like digital visual effects. There are two perfect. You know. It takes hundreds of people to micro manage pixels, and I know people that work in visual effects, they will have people micro managing pixels on a visual effects shot, but it won't be as memorable as King Kong, you know, just walking through the jungle because you know it's yeah scratch, but yeah, it's that quote. Am I misremembering the quote about was it?

Willis I Brown? A great monster is one that you can imagine, yeah, repose or Yeah, that's just beautiful. Isn't it. There's a shot in the film where they're in the foreground and it's in the background there's the t rex and he just scratches and it's just beautiful. And I remember I studied animation, and I remember, obviously even by the point where I was a teenager studying animation, I was already doing that because of King Kong and because of just being fascinated how how does this work?

How are these things put together? Which kind of led to working here because it's got me interested in the photo chemical side of things. But also I remember doing these you had to do these exercises and there's no I mean, you can do this film school in the UK and now, but this was like an entry level college that was for boat building in Scotland, but they had this little art school in the basement where you could study practical animation. It's long gone and it was you know, it's this is amazing. So I went there with no qualifications.

But yeah, the part of the exercises was doing different things. I remember the shot and King Kong of the t rex discretch it here. So I always made sure that every time I did something you know, you said, oh, I'm doing exercise with a bird flying, so you can do follow through motion and all that sort of stuff. I always made sure the bird did something else, like just sort of you know, like shook its leg or something. Yeah, because that's that suddenly gave it that little bit of reality I remember doing.

My mate still talks about it. He said, you remember we did that exercise of characters just walking. Yeah, he's really hard to get a character to walk again. This is what is amazing about Kong is it Just to get a character to walk across the screen is really difficult. It takes a long time.

But I thought, hey, what if I got my character to walk from left to right, But as he's walking from left to right, he'll just sort of put his fingers through his plaster scene here and just sort of push his fringe back. And I did that and everybody went ah, and I was like, you know, and then I went, ah, that's the important Yeah, it's not. It's not the spaceship doing the most amazing thing. It's the guy in the cockpit pecking his nose. Yeah.

I was saying this to Field tip It. I interviewed him for episode one hundreds. I mean, there's the master, right. I said to him. You know, he's a very humble guy and he doesn't take praise.

Well, I said to him, you know, regardless of the quality of the film of his his work is in his work always stands out because it not not stands out as it takes you out of the film, but it has personality to it. Well, yeah, no, I mean, you know, it's a total humanity if you ask me, I mean that's thing. I mean, the character is just it feels he don't feel human, but it's a humanity. There's an empathy right there, and that's almost like distilling some kind of gold dusting into a character. You can do your character walking left to right and putting his fingers through his hair, but if you feel really sad because he falls over, then that's it.

You know. I also think what's really interesting when you rewatch or Seeking Kong that you might not remember is the opening sequences and that depression era, that sort of hangover of Depression era economics. And you know, I suppose Kong itself is coming just after the pre code era in Hollywood, so that you know, the code is beginning to get enforced and formalized a bit more, but that it's quite a long. That's not complaint by the way, but it's just that setup of looking for work, and can tell you it's the motivation of that. In terms of setting off.

It's about forty five minutes until Kong actually appears, so it's about half an hour until they get to the island. Yeah, you can tell. I've seen it. But I always thought that the opening of cong and that amazing footage of New York and the other thing is there's no music after the opening credits. There's no music until we get to the island.

Yeah, so that Max Steiner is incredible Max Steiner, Yeah, exactly, he's sitting there. It must not conduct music. Yeah, there's no music, and it's all I think. It's all deliberate and going back to that depression. Now, it's got that idea that I'm going to give them a show they've never seen before.

I'm going to pull them out of that slump. And again that's like RKAO. At the time, it's like we need a big hit, so we're just gonna throw everything and the kitchen sink in here. And you see that in the film. It's like America is in a depression.

Let's just give them the biggest film they've ever seen. And in the film, it's like America's in its depression. Let's just you know, give let's get a monster and give them something they've never seen before and make money. You know. It's it really relates, doesn't it to the to the musicals of the time, and you know what Fred and Ginger is to come afterwards.

But still that that sort of show business is it just courses through It's more than that. It's showing ship in it. Fred and Ginger. It's either that year or a year or so later. I can't remember, but I mean those films are amazing, and I love the Fread and Ginger, you know, musicals like top Hat.

But they were very typical. I mean, they were huge, but they were very typical of a type of filmmaking at the time, which was musicals and jazz music and upper classes in Manhattan. And as I said earlier, shaking cocktails and being really wetty to each other, Con was nothing like that. Shaking men off a tree trunk. Yeah, shaking, Yeah, Con was shaking that sequence.

Actually, I watched it about three times last night because it is very complex. Let's see. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure the effects experts still look at that and go, how the heck did they pull that up? It's those amazing little touches. It's like I was saying, the fingers through the hairs thing and the scratch the t rex scratches ear.

I watched a tiny clip last night just to sort of refresh my brain, and it was, you know, the bit where he goes you know, all hell breaks those spoilers towards the end and he's going through. I mean, my favorite bit is the train and the music again takes a total you know, it's like a change of gear in the music and in the film you suddenly got diddling is the sound of the tracks, and you've got the actors in the train, the trains made of you know, it's two parts. There's the model part, then there's a live action part in the foreground, and then there's a bit where he cong just picks up a car so he just throws it, but then it comes back into the foreground. As a practical effect, to think these processes through as a one or two guys and to achieve them is really really difficult nowadays you could do that in your bedroom on your laptop, and you know, there you go.

It's too easy, whereas back then to orchestrate that. I mean, it's a huge pro But also the little detail of something going from being you know, a model car with Kong just chucking it over his shoulder while he's climbing a building to suddenly coming back just briefly in the foreground is a practical effect, so that the actors in the foreground, who are you know, acting in front of what would have probably been a black screen, can react to it and be physical with it. The physics of it is incredible. Yea. You know, when he goes up the building and he's you know, one of my other favorite pits is there's the couple and he's looking for he's looking for, you know, for fair and and he's looking through the window and then this big hand comes in.

And there's already a real projection in the window and comes in the other. Yeah, and then he's like, oh, that's not hers, so he just throws her away. There is something about the combination of all these things we talked about, like the character in Kong, and then within the animation, the complexity of the effects and the combination of those effects, yet you still buy it all to do with all of those. So again it's the sort of Jurassic Park is a good modern well I say modern, that's a long time ago, but a modernish example of that, and that you've got the t Rex and most of that sequence is a practical effect. But then there's like one or two shots where he walks, he she walks across the screen and it's c GI.

But because it's so beautifully you know, put together all the color and all that is grading or as curious as timing in the States, all of the matches, all the eye lines match. It's those are the really important actually physical things because that all works, and in King Kong, because it all works, you believe it. If you're a not very good director and you've got all the tools, if none of these little things match or meat, you know, it just falls apart because your brain just goes nah. In going back to the Jaws example, the shot never worked. So that's just like that, Well, just don't show it because people won't believe it.

Tells me otherwise. Sorry, but that's something for my DOCCU. When I finally finish it, I was going to say as well, directly to the listening. Yes, you've ditched Netflix and Amazon, and you've got your curated Blu Ray collections, and you've got King Kol on VHS and DVD and Blu Ray. But come down here, you know, come outside, come to see the film in a theater with a group of people.

Unfortunately I'm working. I'm going to miss it. September the eighth, come to the BFA. So blank. It's one of the few cinemas that can project natriate and all sorts of film formats.

Yeah, yeah, and you'll be seeing it on the main screen as well. Yeah, you think you know it, but you don't. And do you see it on the big screen. I've never seen it on the big screen. And with the crowd, yeah, it's a big croad already.

It's selling fast. And Doug's intro is worth I would say the price of a ticket definitely alone. But it's true for films that you know off by heart, but when you see them with an audience, that's when you really know. I remember, I won't. Actually it doesn't matter in a way.

I can't remember exactly which film is, but one of Fritz Lang's America. Can you know Hollywood titles Secret Beyond the Door something like that. You know that that that kind of era. But it wasn't until I saw it here with an audience that I could really appreciate from their reactions. You know, how.

Dare there being a filmmaker, because all right, it's a different era and some but. Still something about the communal experience. Those sudden terms. And I think, you know, Kong is full of that stuff because you know, he is such a great character and we've got, you know, sympathies, fear, just mix and change over the course of the movie for him, of him. I defy you not to cry at the end of I always cry at the.

End after your introductions. Yeah, I mean I was going to say, you were there at jazz, which is a great example of I mean, there was a guy at Jars dressed in jazz clothes and the audience was so into that. I've never That was one of the very few screenings I've been that where it's electric and everyone's cheering and shouting and jumping out of their seats, and that's a film everybody knows off by heart backwards And I mean to have an experience of that. I mean, Kieran's totally right. Seeing a film in the cinema that you've seen many, many times is a different experience.

This is embarrassing, but I'm going to come out public about it. I went to see Star Trek three that starts for a Spark in the Imax. I took my partner to see it. She'd never seen it on a Saturday morning, and I cried, I've seen that film so many times, and now I think this is actually one of the best ones. You know, and that's not a very popular opinion, but it was just so beautiful.

You're in a safe space. I'm in a safe space with a public podcast for the just so many hundreds of listeners. But the visual effects, because of the film had been remastered in four K properly and faithfully and sympathetically to those nineteen eighty three eighty four effects, they looked incredible and I was just you were just in it. You're in it's a very well made film. Where it was always held as one of the lesser ones, was it was just it just And that's also a testament to films being remastered and restored and being presented correctly, which is very important.

Yeah, yeah, if there's a moment just to just to add on in terms of the one hundred prints that we've created or just over as I mentioned, one hundred and five hundred and six something like that. There's it's titles and number of prints. But we. This is very active working out how to show and lend prints. So I'm conscious.

I mean I'm from Cornwall, right, and then when I was growing up, Movie Drone was the way I could watch stuff, you know, taking you know, I saw ran in a VHS which had been letterboxed, so you know how many lines of resolution was that I saw playtime in a similar kind of way, but still grabbed somehow. So we are conscious that the thing is with archival prints, you don't want to cut them in any way, the leaders and so on. So you need a cinema theater that can show with changeover, so two projectors, you know, real one reel two alternating. You know, in the UK this is a few dozen theaters. So we're working actively with that UK network I suppose to help get these prints seen.

So so far, I think about nine of them showed at Film on Film Festival. One of those was Mildred Peers also made at YICM Labs thanks to Academy Film Archive and Criteria actually for the soundtrack and a lot of work by ourselves Fiona Maxwell, who was head of our kind of relationships with rights holders and so on. This program incredibly important and that showed because there was an issue with one of the projectors on that opening night and we couldn't show the nightrate my trait print of Mildred Piers then, so we had this brand new safety print go ahead. Beautiful print Watershed in Bristol has shown over a couple of years more titles and in October two of these prints, Vertigo and The Apartment, are going to show at the Widescreen Weekend in Bradford at the National Media Museum pitch House there, so that will be public premieres for those two prints.

So we're working to with others to get them, but they're also remember you know, I've described them to some of my colleagues actually as a kind of they're a constellation, these hundred prints in the in the sort of galaxy of fantastic prints that we care for at the Archive, and partner caring for them is making sure that they go out to the right place and come back, and it's not unknown for things to go missing in shipping. You know, this idea that prints can be remade, which is, you know, as I joined the Archive, okay, you make another one. Well that's not impossible now obviously, And we're rejuvenating our black and white processing lab at the Archived with contact and optical printers and process control and so on.

It's quite a thing to do these days, but it's certainly nowhere near as cheap as it once was relatively, so there's all that to take into account. But of course you don't make prints without wanting people to see them. But there's there's prints and prints and prints, and it's that's what needs the really careful management to understand. Actually, what is the history of this print you've got in your hand. You know, what makes that Jaws print very special is not the same as what makes this print of Kong that we're going to run very special, you know, even though they both are, it's not the same reason behind it.

So that's that's really But I'm very glad. It's like it's a nice problem to have because almost almost ever since I joined the Archive, So getting on for twenty five years. Next year, I've been hearing about the death of film. Here we were during this five year program with hundreds of cans turning up, and it was like the odd days in a way, you know, not just hard drives and pelly cases and things. It was you know, so it's something that I hadn't predicted actually that you know, I could imagine that we would be using film in the background, if you like, making preservation copies and that kind of thing, you know, preserving a silent film to a lovely new modern duplicate negative.

But the idea that pretty actively making and lending prints beyond just other organizations like ourselves around the world, was not something we necessarily anticipated. So we're not that's very active thinking going on there. But it's a lot to care for these prints and make sure that they are there to be seen. There's definitely a massive interest for people viewing film on film, if you pardon the pun, I think analog and digital we've sort of reached a space where they coexist very happily. There was I remember ten or so years ago all the film labs were being ripped out and that's it.

It's over, you know, it's all going to be digital. And that's not the case. That film labs are reopening smaller film labs, albeit they're not huge labs like they were, you know, the deluxe labs are long gone. But people are shooting on film. People are shoot.

You can shoot film at your feature on film or your short film on film now, and it costs just as much, maybe cheaper, than shooting on digital because the expense with digital is the data management. And also at the end of the day, having a film print or a film negative is actually a lot more secure and future proof than having a hard drive. Still, but I know of some people who are doing film outs from digital to preserve on film because it's a lot more secure and easier to look after, quite frankly than digital. And in twenty thirty forty years, you know, USB two won't be able to be plugged in, but you'll still be able to hold a film print up and look at it through the light bulb, you know, yeah, and it will still film is you know, a very very modern film shot on a modern film stock still looks a million times more beautiful than even the greatest Ari Alexa or whatever.

And these are great cameras, but film will all for the moment. Film is still its own thing. Yeah, the magic is real, isn't it. Yeah. I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon, to be honest.

Well thanks to people like you too, hopefully you know, people come and see the films and keep supporting the BFI and keep playing our money into the National Lottery without any wins, but knowing it's going to good places, keep coming back. Yeah. My sister won thirty quid yesterday on the lottery and I noticed on her screen grab she had the BA and easy Jet tabs open and I thought that's a bit presumptuous, isn't it. Well, how much is the ticket for King Kong? She could bluy a couple maybe.

Oh that's a good question. I think it's twelve pounds, you think and if you're remember it's change. Yeah. But you know it's selling pretty well. I know the screening that I'm introducing, it's not so low, but it's selling fast.

And if you miss it's listen to me. If you miss it. It's on in the Monday as well, but not everyone wants to go to Seem on the Monday. Yeah, these opportunities to see these films do come and go, you know, over the years. I mean, there's many things I wish I could have come to see here that I haven't had the opportunity to.

So do take the chance, folks. I hope you enjoyed my conversation there with Doug and Kieran. As I said in the conversation, I'm not going to be around for either of those screenings. Unfortunately. My work, as you may well know, is mostly at weekends.

I'm in television sport mostly, so when you're watching the television on your days off at the weekend, that's when I'm working most often. So I do miss a lot of things, but I hope to catch some future screenings, and hopefully they do get another film on film season there like they had when I went and saw Jaws there on thirty five MIL. For those of you that follow on social media, you might have seen the Peter Kuran kickstarter project where he is going to recreate the opening titles from The Thing, the John Carpenter Classic. The good news is that Peter has finished filming and he's sent me a prelim edit of the piece to check over and give him some feedback on and I have to say it's great he's recreated the title.

I even got goosebumps watching it because it looks so cool and it's great to see how he did it with the fish tank and the smoke and the garbage bag plastic. He really has put a lot of effort into reproducing this and of course saving this bit of film history for us to watch. So hopefully that will be released to everybody to look at in the coming weeks. Just to remind it that, you can buy the unauthorized return of the Jedi Timeline book that Justin Berger and I put together. He also has got the Empire Timeline book.

If you want to look for those. They're both on Amazon, or you can visit Jedi Timeline dot com. If you search for Jedi Timeline or Empire Timeline on Amazon in your region, you can buy it there in paperback and in hardback as well. One of the advantages of having it print on demand with Amazon is that we don't have hundreds of them in in our bedrooms and our garages and sheds. But it also does mean that we barely make any money on the book, so your purchase would be appreciated.

If you want to support the podcast in that way, or you can go to the website Filmanmentaries dot com and there is a PayPal donation. But and then if you wanted to send some money in that form, because I know not everybody wants to get involved with the whole Patreon thing. Paddy Tindall and I continuing to find time to make our documentary about production designer Joe Ols, who of course worked on Jaws and Close Encounters with Spielberg, but also did a couple of movies with John Carpenter. He worked for Hitchcock. He was friends with Paul Newman race cars as well, and has an amazing collection of artifacts from his four decades in the industry.

If you're interested in helping to fund the film, please get in touch, or if you know anyone who is an angel investor. We really have a good thing here. We have a lot of footage shop, we have a great story in mind. We just need to find the time. The problem is, you know, when you've got other things that pay the bills, these projects become the last priority.

But we need to find the time. We need to find some money and push it onto the next phase. We're hoping to get a pitch deck together and another trailer to show potential investors and hopefully get this well and truly off the ground. Okay. Next up on the podcast, I have Andrew Whitehurst.

Andrew is an Academy Award winning VFX supervisor with twenty years experience in the industry, including commercials and television as well. He's worked a couple of times with Sam Mender's on the Bond movies. He also worked with Alex Garland on Ex Mackinna and we also chat about his work on Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny. Then I've got my conversation with Marie Anne Infield, who again worked for ILM for a bunch of years. She was there during the Return of the Jedi era, working as a camera assistant.

She has some interesting insights in the industry as a camera woman. I also have a conversation with effects supervisor and educator Ty Ruben ellingson So Yeah, a bunch of interesting conversations coming out. Also Kevin Jenkins, production designer who worked on the later Star Wars movies. He also worked as a concept designer on Edge of Tomorrow and on Rogue One as well. So plenty more coming your way.

One other thing to mention on the patron side of things is that I have created a couple of threads on there for general announcements and questions. So if you want to contribute to the podcast with a question or get a name check, then come on to patreon dot com, forward slash Jamie Benning or find me on social media. But on Patreon you can join those kind of closed groups if you like to chat about and I think you can do that if you're a free member as well, but you won't get things if you're a free member, like the exclusive videos and the ad free podcast. You'll get those if you contribute, as I said earlier, just twelve dollars for an entire year. I mean that's a couple of coffees.

And you know this is work. And for those of you that can't afford it, don't worry. Just just share the information, Just tell people, share on social media, tell your friends about the podcast, because I really can't do this without you. Thanks for joining me, and I hope you can do so far. The next episode of the film Yourmentress podcast, we are getting way Media