The hardest thing, honestly, about putting a Blu-ray set of vintage animation together is all the varied moving parts. Each set has a series of pretty unique challenges in getting those parts together— and as the sort of self imposed deadlines start to loom it often becomes a scramble to who’s-finishing this part, how can I get a better version of this or that thing, and what is the contingency plan if this or that falls through.
This particular set, Cartoons for Victory, has had two different versions so far.. well, really three. The first was a VHS tape from my little company at the time, Snappy Video with a cover design by Jeff Missinne. That sort was out in 1991.
The next version was an update (on DVD) from Thunderbean, distributed by Mackinaw Media. More Cartoons for Victory followed with cartoons from both the national archives and private collectors.
Since the first “Cartoons for Victory” had a section of Private Snafu cartoons that we’ve released bonbon DVD and Blu-ray, it didn’t make sense to follow the exact films on the DVD release, and some of the cartoons from More Cartoons for Victory also feature cameos by Snafu, so they’re on the Snafu set as well. So combining the two titles is the goal, and for some years now I’ve been regathering films for the set.
Getting the best quality we can for each title has been the most important thing to do in this project, and again it presented a whole series of new challenges. The four Hook cartoons, produced by the Navy, only surfaced in the private collection of Norman Hatch, a WW2 Navy Cameraman. Hatch was kind enough to lend the films to Warner Brothers to scan for their laserdisc ‘Golden Age of Loony Tunes’ sets many years ago. In 2004 when I was trying to get there DVD version of this set made, I talked with Norman, who had given the films to an archive, but couldn’t remember the exact archive they went to. He reported that the films were already starting to deteriorate at that point (“Vinegar Syndrome”). A search at all the archive proved to not take me very far, and I ended up using the copies that our good friend Jerry Beck had kept on the films for the set back then. Searching for the four Hook titles led me to the Navy archives, but sadly they’ve reported back to me that the copies they have are too deteriorated for use.
A few years back, I won a copy of what appeared to be Tokyo Woes from Ebay, only to discover it didn’t contain the film, but a Castle newsreel instead! The can is labeled ‘Print 1’.
For three of those four films, we’re left with the only option being to blow up the standard def versions. Luckily, David Gerstein managed to find a nearly complete version of ’Tokyo Woes’, probably the best of the three, and was kind enough to lend it for scanning.
Since I had done HD on a lot of the shorts from the National Archives, we were able to clean up a lot of the films from those scans. Other films are borrowed back from collectors to finish out the set.
After scanning, the films are all cleaned up/restored using the Diamant suite- a lovely restoration software. Right now, 22 of the 27 films are all cleaned up- so we’re getting there fast!
There’s a series of additional challenges at this point in the project in getting the lsat few films from one archive and getting a few more things scanned- but I’m happy to report that this particular project is pretty close to finish now. I’m very happy that HD versions will be available when it’s done- and can’t wait to show more.
Have a good week all!
