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whaleallright wrote:

35mm print of the completed film, which leaves the door open to some type of theatrical release.

I should note that a 35mm print is hardly necessary for theatrical distribution these days. This thing could exist only in the digital domain and still get a high-profile theatrical rollout.

With the way modern theaters are designed (including cinematheques and art houses), you can ONLY get a high-profiled roll out if this is digital. Most theaters tossed out their old 35mm projectors or prefer playing DCP. There's no way in hell they are going to make a 35mm tour. They might make one for archival reasons, but I can't see them touring a print.

I posted that quote from the Wellesnet story only because "beamish13" had asked about the "35mm print" perk offered as part of the Indiegogo fundraiser. It's likely the requested 35mm print is for archival purposes and has no bearing on theatrical showings (I believe 35mm is still considered a safer bet to preserve a film long-term than a digital file that can become corrupted or unplayable over time).

And, yes, the fact that the footage is in Los Angeles being scanned is a very big deal. Not once during all of the previous negotiations over the past thirty years or so have the negatives left the Paris lab where they have been stored since 1976.

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:

whaleallright wrote:

35mm print of the completed film, which leaves the door open to some type of theatrical release.

I should note that a 35mm print is hardly necessary for theatrical distribution these days. This thing could exist only in the digital domain and still get a high-profile theatrical rollout.

With the way modern theaters are designed (including cinematheques and art houses), you can ONLY get a high-profiled roll out if this is digital. Most theaters tossed out their old 35mm projectors or prefer playing DCP. There's no way in hell they are going to make a 35mm tour. They might make one for archival reasons, but I can't see them touring a print.

The Film Forum in NYC still can play and has played 35mm prints. Bruce Goldstein likes to show films in this format when he can. He says it's getting harder and harder to find prints to play, though.

It sounds like there won't be a physical media release. Unless, sometimes down the road after it's been streaming for a while.

Too Late (2015) with John Hawkes was theatrically distributed solely in 35mm. Striking prints would be a prudent move, as many venues in metropolitan areas will exhibit it, and they can subsequently be deposited at the Academy Film Archive or other film preservation facilities.

I imagine prints will be struck but the theatrical tour will largely be DCP. Restorations of L'Avventura, Badlands, and other films playing at FF have played in newly struck 35mm prints from 4k restorations.

FrauBlucher wrote:It sounds like there won't be a physical media release. Unless, sometimes down the road after it's been streaming for a while.

Those that bought BD/DVD perks through the IndieGogo campaign will still get one, but it seems like a physical release for non-funders is not in the cards for at least some time.

Of course there are lots of venues that can still play 35mm; I was just noting that striking a 35mm print has no practical bearing on whether the film will get a theatrical release as was implied above. An interesting point, though, is that the reconstructed (or rather, simply constructed) Other Side of the Wind will be a digital project. The film has never properly existed before, in any medium (except perhaps for the medium of Orson Welles's grey matter). So any 35mm print that results will be, like most films released in that format today, a hybrid product.

As to home video, I'm sure the stakeholders will find every possible way to monetize this project, sooner or later.

Netflix video about the project here.

Glad they put that out... I made inquiries about press coverage with them today and got shot down.

Since this is a new film, it will be eligible for Oscars. How wild would it be for Welles to finally win Best Director decades after his death?

domino harvey wrote:Since this is a new film, it will be eligible for Oscars. How wild would it be for Welles to finally win Best Director decades after his death?

just a note from within he industry, this was the immediate and only topic of conversation at my office when the news broke: Netflix wants an oscar and at the very least they want Orson Welles to get one. Thats the only/main reason they wrote a blank check for the project.

The next topic of conversation was about who gets to edit it followed by a discussion of the editing in chimes at midnight.

4K scans means they can print back directly to an inter negative and or preservation negative quite easily both graded and ungraded. And yes it's the best long term archival medium and most insurance companies require film elements as part of your final deliverables for that reason (and you can't make a financed movie without insurance). A friend at lions gate was complaining of how much money they have to spend on separation masters insurance requires them to produce even though everything is digitally acquired.

It feels off that they'd get people who are known for big-budget action spectacles like the James Bond and Spider-Man films. I would've gone after an editor who worked in more avant-garde films or documentaries, and maybe someone that worked with David Lynch on his sound designs, but whatever.

Academy Award winner Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker) is editing the movie

Can't wait for the Grindhouse Pictures blu-ray

I wonder if the prints will all be orange and teal! Welles was such a pioneer.

Is it at all possible Welles had notes on how he wanted it put together? I would imagine Peter Bogdonavich wouldn't let it turn into a Michael Bay-esque hack job.

Big Ben wrote:Is it at all possible Welles had notes on how he wanted it put together? I would imagine Peter Bogdonavich wouldn't let it turn into a Michael Bay-esque hack job.

He had notes, but even the most detailed notes will take you so far. Given how much footage was shot and how much was left unedited, they'll still need a good editor to put it together. Alfonso Gonçalves would've been perfect - he's great at structuring, and supposedly he was very instrumental in turning the mountain of footage that became Beasts of the Southern Wild into a very tight and very coherent film.

More importantly I thought 40 minutes of the film were completely edited? I would hope that would be the template for the tone of this.

That's what I heard too. Think about all the great "lost albums" that were only partially sequenced, like Big Star's third or Jimi Hendrix's First Rays of the New Rising Sun - some of the work was done but you still have endless arguments on what would've been the final sequence.

That 40 minute rough cut/pitch reel is what Gary Graves showed to would-be completion investors like George Lucas and Clint Eastwood (who really watched it just to study John Huston for White Hunter, Black Heart). It's apparently out on some torrents now. :-$

I couldn't be happier with Netflix making a documentary to complement this. It's the best way to appease
purists who will only see this film as a facsimile of what could have been. Fingers crossed a 35mm print is
shown for general audiences a la Okja (which garnered some laughs at the New Beverly when Netflix's logo appeared).

Drucker wrote:More importantly I thought 40 minutes of the film were completely edited? I would hope that would be the template for the tone of this.

Given Welles' working methods, saying 40 minutes of the film were "completely edited" would not be the best term to use. Welles would begin editing individual scenes out of sequential order according to his interest and the availability of footage; some of these scenes would be very tightly-edited (the oft-seen footage of Jake Hannaford's arrival at his birthday party is cut, some might say "over-cut", to an inch of its life) while other scenes would be loosely-assembled with multiple takes of the same line or alternate angles of the same action. When Welles began the final assembly of one of his features, combining all of these scenes in sequential order, the early editing of the individual scenes could be changed dramatically to work better within the context of the whole film. Not only would Welles tighten up a loose assembly, but he might significantly shorten sequences he had "locked-in" a year or two earlier, re-locate the footage to some other place in the film than he had originally intended, or discard the footage altogether. Actually, this approach is pretty standard for most filmmakers going from a rough assembly, or work-print, to a fine edit.

The 40 minutes that Welles edited himself should really be seen as a collection of rough cuts that probably would have been altered in some way had Welles the opportunity to get close to a fine edit. While Welles obviously intended a frenetic approach to the cutting (unmistakably present in the work-print edits), the edited footage he left behind should not be taken as gospel. As it turned out, most of the 40 minutes that Welles cut assembles shots for the "movie-within-the-movie" which, arguably, should not be the focus of the story (this has been a source of contention for years - co-screenwriter Oja Kodar believes the footage of the film the Hannaford character is trying to finish should take up 50% of the running time of The Other Side of the Wind while the existing drafts of the screenplay note the Hannaford film footage as appearing only sporadically).

Equally important, Welles never had access to all of the footage he shot for The Other Side of the Wind; the current producers do. While it might sound heretical for a Welles fan to say this, a fresh attempt to create a feature out of this footage without the obligation to edit around the chunks of material that Welles cut might be the best approach.

Although it still feels absolutely unreal, it appears that a [rough?] cut of the film has screened for the first time.

Honestly, I find this to be far too soon to be confident in what they've done. Given the amount of footage, doing the best possible job by Cannes felt like a stretch--this feels like a rush job more concerned with completion than anything else.

albucat wrote:Honestly, I find this to be far too soon to be confident in what they've done. Given the amount of footage, doing the best possible job by Cannes felt like a stretch--this feels like a rush job more concerned with completion than anything else.

if you’re working mostly from Welles circle takes it isn’t that long to pull together an assembly cut simply because films shoot so little footage especially compared to contemporary filmmaking. Computers are much faster at making all your footage available than cutting on film like Welles did.

If you’re second guessing Welles and trying every take regardless it will take longer. Basically it depends on the script supervisor and Welles instructions.