A Touch of Frost Restorations

[InsideUlster]

Recently when watching repeats of A Touch of Frost, more episodes are being shown in its restored version compared to its grainy, dull, old fashioned 4:3 ratio feature.

Yesterday, on ITV3, I was taken by surprise that the Series 3 episode, No Refuge, has been shown in its clearer and widescreen version ( ) as was its 2 other episodes, Quarry and Dead Male One. Appropriate Adults is still being shown in its dull version with one or two bits cut off e.g. Frost walks into the police station and tries to enter the correct pin for the first time but no success.

As for the episode, No Refuge, it used the 2002 end credits style version and finishes with the current ITV Studios Global Entertainment endcap.

Feel free to discuss this with me.

[Neil Jones]

Are you sure they are "restored" and not just cropped?

Cropping is not the same as "restored", and if you say it is, then the exit is over there.

I suspect because IIRC the bulk of this was done on location so its more likely it was shot on film. If that is the case then assuming the original rushes are still in existence the remaster can be done like that. However its more likely to be a Friends style remaster, ie framed for 4:3 so in the case of Frost you'd see more of a wall or a tree or stray shadows or something like that either side of David Jason and whoever else.

[InsideUlster]

Are you sure they are "restored" and not just cropped?

Cropping is not the same as "restored", and if you say it is, then the exit is over there.

I suspect because IIRC the bulk of this was done on location so its more likely it was shot on film. If that is the case then assuming the original rushes are still in existence the remaster can be done like that. However its more likely to be a Friends style remaster, ie framed for 4:3 so in the case of Frost you'd see more of a wall or a tree or stray shadows or something like that either side of David Jason and whoever else.

Well, AFAIK, it seems that if the master filming sequences still exist in its archive, they can use it to acheive a 16:9 look despite losing the far top and bottom of the picture. Not much loss of the picture there and then.

[wonkey_monkey]

I'm not quite sure how it comes about but it seems that when stuff is shot on film there is often quite a lot to the left and right that is cropped off, so by rescanning the whole frame, they only have to lose a little bit from the top and bottom to get a 16:9 ratio (that's what's been done with Friends). The downside is that things you weren't meant to see, like crew and equipment, can creep back into shot. This kind of reframing was vetoed for the HD remaster of Star Trek: The Next Generation as - unlike a sitcom studio set which is laid out simply to accomodate the audience - there was often equipment littering the edges of frames which would have needed too much digital work to clean up (plus they didn't want to mess with the established framing).

IIRC, Joss Whedon was asked to shoot with widescreen in mind for Buffy series 4 onwards for international markets (the PAL transfer was also greatly improved from then on), whereas domestic TV was still showing the series in 4:3. He wasn't best pleased, as he composed his shots very specifically for 4:3 (the only exception being the musical episode, which was deliberately framed for 16:9 and shown that way in the US as well). In one episode you can clearly see another cameraman on set in the 16:9 version. I don't think he had anything against 16:9 per se, but he wanted to stick to one format, not compromise for both.

[James2001]

Some HD restorations are better than others. Buffy's one that's become infamous for being a complete mess... but somehow has ended up becoming the only version available to streamers and broadcasters regardless.

Seems some people just want anything in "widescreen" or "HD", even if it's an inferior product.

[Neil Jones]

Buffy had more wrong with it than the fact it received a HD remaster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F28XcxHxH6k

Recording on film doesn't necessarily give you a wider picture AIUI on its own. The widescreen you see in cinema is a matte effect/deliberate cropping. When "this film has been remastered to fit your TV" was a thing for home video (heaven help us on those "remasters"), all that matte stuff didn't apply, so you could quite often see boom mics and shadows and whatever else in parts of the picture that you wouldn't have seen while eating popcorn in the cinema. Once widescreen DVD was a thing all that reformatted crap went away and we just got either a full 16:9 frame or the wider 2.35:1 or whatever it was.

It may have been a same concept when shooting on film, frame it for 4:3 and then crop it out later, which preserves the resolution/look but the resolution would be far higher in the first place. Remember lots of TV shows were doing this in the 60s right through to the 90s, film on location and videotape in the studio. The budget for the show usually dictated what you had as it was cheaper to edit on video than it was on film, and of course if you never went outdoors but built your exterior sets on a sound stage somewhere it was a no brainer.

Frost was probably done on 16mm film I would imagine, not really sure if anything went to the extreme of 35mm just for a TV show, although its probably debatable if there's any real visual difference once you've squashed it down to 576 lines.

[AaronLancs]

Well when watching quite a lot of the behind the scenes featurettes on DVDs. The monitors in the media village - if they are still old 4:3 square units - still have these lines on:

if they have 16:9 monitors in the media villages, you'd see something like this:

so it would be up to the director, cinematographer and executive producers on how they want to film and if when say - filiming in a "natural 4:3" as per image one - whether or not to film in preparedness for possible cropping to take place.

So probably just guessing, for "true 4:3" filming. It would need to be in the orange and green area on image one and green on image two.

[sdaonline]

Lots of ITV big hitter dramas have had this treatment, most of Morse, Frost, Wycliffe and I spotted a rather nice Darling Buds of May the other week. Though sadly these do not translate into a Blu Ray release!

ITV do a lot these remasters themselves at their Content Delivery dept in the archive base in Leeds if I am not mistaken.

Their twitter at https://twitter.com/itvcontentdeliv?lang=en shows a lot of their work on the Carry On films for example.

[Neil Jones]

Lots of ITV big hitter dramas have had this treatment, most of Morse, Frost, Wycliffe and I spotted a rather nice Darling Buds of May the other week. Though sadly these do not translate into a Blu Ray release!

Very little TV appears on Blu-Ray, even when it was made in HD in the first place.

Remember the bulk of archive TV shows would have been done on videotape, for which going anywhere above SD/DVD quality is a waste of time, because it will not be HD, it can never be HD and while it will look sharper, doesn't make it better. Zooming in and chopping the top and bottom off doesn't make it widescreen (case in point: ITV4 reruns of Mr Bean are absolutely dreadful and while I can understand people might think it went out like that in the 1990s, they're going to be in for a rude shock if they buy some DVDs of it).

[wonkey_monkey]

An (just one) episode of Bergerac has been remastered from the original film and will be shown in Jersey to celebrate the series's 40th anniversary:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-58834378

I won't hold my breath but It'd be nice if they'd do the rest, since the original broadcast transfers as used for the DVDs were not the best. Some episodes exhibit a lot of blending.

Apparently the reboot is still in the works, too...