Tweet THE LOST WORLD (1925) - new restoration?

I see that THE LOST WORLD is playing at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and being touted as a new restoration that's more complete than ever before, with the Alloy Orchestra accompanying. Anyone have any details on this? Do we finally have a complete-as-possible unbowdlerized version of THE LOST WORLD? And if so, does anyone know of DVD/Blu-ray release plans?

[silentfilm]

I don't know a lot of details, but I believe that this was one of David Shepard's final projects. It will eventually be released by Flicker Alley.

I don't know a lot of details, but I believe that this was one of David Shepard's final projects. It will eventually be released by Flicker Alley.

A definitive version of this classic is excellent news indeed! David's restoration mastered from elements justifying BD release with the Mont Alto orchestra score would be icing on the cake. Speaking of which, that's another check in the plus column for making the trek to SFSFF this year (it coincidentally falls on my B-day).

Around the turn of the century I was contacted through the Sabucat board by a fellow whose last name as Adamitis. He told me he had a nitrate print of Monty Banks' FLYING LUCK of which Ben Model produced a DVD. Adamitis also told me he had six original nitrate reels of THE LOST WORLD. Mr. Adamitis passed away not long after. Are these reels being used for the new TLW restoration?

Around the turn of the century I was contacted through the Sabucat board by a fellow whose last name as Adamitis. He told me he had a nitrate print of Monty Banks' FLYING LUCK of which Ben Model produced a DVD. Adamitis also told me he had six original nitrate reels of THE LOST WORLD. Mr. Adamitis passed away not long after. Are these reels being used for the new TLW restoration?

I second that question. Thanks for the info, guys; sounds promising!

This restoration was released on DVD only in France, back in October. I had no idea about it until a few weeks ago. It took a bit of automatic translation and sifting through different French websites to figure out that this DVD does, in fact, have a new restoration, since I couldn't find any English coverage of it anywhere until a bit later when I found a tiny blurb about it on Robert Israel's website (he did the score). The Amazon.fr listing describes all of the bonus features from the decade old copy.

Anyway, my copy came in two days ago so here are my thoughts. The tinting is all digitally recreated and looks decent, but sometimes the brightest highlights are pure white on my screen. The speed randomly and dramatically changes, which isn't something I'm used to, and all of the titles were digitally redone without being noted as such (I guess for consistency purposes), but in general I was pretty satisfied with it. No revisionism either. There is a Lobster Films copyright claim on the opening title, but they redid that title anyway.

It appears that they would default to the American nitrate whenever possible, with the Czech 35mm copy being the primary backup and 16mm Kodascopes being secondary backups. Once again we have the newsreel footage of Conan Doyle at the beginning, the map animation from the trailer, and apparently the dino outtakes (which I'm not as familiar with).

The booklet that comes with it said the American nitrate fragment was composed of reels 3, 5, 6 and 9 from Adamitis. The coverage begins during the scene of Ed finally being welcomed into Challenger's home and ends during Challenger's final presentation at Zoological Hall. The new footage appears throughout this long span of the film in large chunks and it all looks great. There's more wildlife footage, A-takes/angles of scenes formerly present only in the Czech copy, a lot of extensions of various scenes (including extensions of previously Czech only fragments of scenes that now make more sense), and a good bit of comedy relief. The new material gives the human scenes a more lighthearted feel, in general, which doesn't surprise me since some of the Czech only footage, too, was pretty lighthearted.

The tinting is, I assume, derived from the Adamitis reels, and there are some nice combinations of tinting and toning in a few scenes. The burning log in the dinosaur's mouth is in glorious Handschiegl color.

DVD cover of the French release : https://www.amazon.fr/monde-perdu-Walla ... onde+perdu" target="_blank

Of course there's a new restoration, I just bought the Flicker Alley MOD version a few days before this post began. Never fails...

All right, I will assume Flicker Alley will follow up and actually release this, even though I hear the French release calling my name.

I'm not waiting... ordered!

I am going to wait for the Flicker version.

Matthew

Thanks for the info, Allen! Unfortunately, the Amazon.fr listing says it will ship in 1-2 months...?

Lobster is very slow about getting their titles to Amazon.fr. I had to wait months and months for a couple of their titles. But it's always worth it in the end.

I have the Image DVD, but hoping for a Flicker Alley new restoration.

This is a new restoration, but it's only available through Lobster Films in France.

Flicker Alley is working to release the restoration as well.

Matthew

As DVD or blu-ray?

So just to clarify, this is different than either the previous David Shepard restoration and the GEH restoration? What year was David S. previous restoration? The earliest release i can find of it is 2001. I'm asking because i've got the Flicker Alley MOD on my desk right now to catalog, and i'm trying to describe it in a way that it will be distinguishable when we get the Flicker Alley release of the new restoration.

thanks
greta

The Flicker Alley MOD is a reissue of the previous David Shepard restoration.

Having purchased the Lumivision LD and DVD of the Kodascope cutdown as well as the GEH and David Shepard
restorations, the upcoming Lobster Films version had better be really unique before I go the the well for this one again.

My post probably wasn't clear enough... this restoration does, indeed, have a ton of new material, mostly at the plateau. There is a shot from the Allosaurus vs. Edmontosaurus scene I'd never seen before, showing the latter's flesh in the former's mouth with blood dripping out. I guess that was too graphic for the Kodascope.

We are currently working on the release of Lobster Films' restoration on Blu-ray.

We are currently working on the release of Lobster Films' restoration on Blu-ray.

Excellent news! Might I plead that, if this is going to be running at a speed other than 24fps, you do 1080i instead of 1080p, in order to ward off any undesirable motion artifacting?

We are currently working on the release of Lobster Films' restoration on Blu-ray.

Excellent news! Might I plead that, if this is going to be running at a speed other than 24fps, you do 1080i instead of 1080p, in order to ward off any undesirable motion artifacting?

Thank you. We always do our best to provide the highest quality materials, even when converting frame rates. We'll keep your suggestion in mind.

We are currently working on the release of Lobster Films' restoration on Blu-ray.

That's enough for me. I won't import if you guys are going to release it.

Blu-ray trumps DVD. I'll wait too.

I have seen the new restoration (we have a copy to compose and rehearse to). It is significantly better than the previous David S. restoration. As advertised there is more of the original footage (about 10 minutes I believe). The new footage is bits and pieces of various scenes - helping to flesh out the story. To me the biggest advantage is that Shepard worked from some much better elements. The quality changes throughout the film, but much of it is enormously sharper, better contrast and far less wear and tear.

Alloy's score will not be included in the new release. We did rewrite and majorly improve our old score, so I'm confident that our show at the SF Silent FF will be our best effort to date.

Lost World was the first movie I saw Alloy play for, quite some time ago. My son was inspired to be a dinosaur for Halloween that year, and made "cities" of building blocks to destruct. I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing the improved version.

I stopped watching soon after he said "The Lost World is a Public Domain film, there's no copyright laws attached to it, which is perfect so I can have it on my channel." I despise such arrogant prigs who assume that everything connected with a silent film is in the public domain. I'm also not fond of off the cuff, extemporaneous commentaries on films in general.

May I suggest a special dedicatory to David Shepard in this edition?

We are currently working on the release of Lobster Films' restoration on Blu-ray.