I know that recently you helped supervise what you claim is a stunning new Hi-Def widescreen transfer of the original THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE for the Voom satellite service. And IIRC, you did it in the same manner as the original laserdisc, by going directly to the 16mm A/B rolls and using the new technology to fix selected flaws.

In turn, I just recently viewed what has been touted as a new 35mm print of the movie that is being released by Dinsdale Releasing on behalf of MPI Media. Well, it's a clean print, but that's all that can be really said about it. They obviously used a well-worn source negative to strike it, it still carries a New Line Cinema logo up front.

My question is this: who owns the HD master, you, Voom, or Vortex (the copyrighted company behind TCM)? Because with the advancement in technology, I am baffled as to why no one has considered doing a video-to-film transfer of the HD master. It may sound like sacrilege, but hear me out. Nowadays, many films are shot super-16 but edited and transferred from video, and they look rather clean and sharp compared to the traditionally smeary video-to-film blowups we grew up with. PRIMER is a good example. I would think that using the modern technology to transfer the HD copy to film would yield a result at least equal to the old 16mm-to-35mm blowup TCM had years ago.

I know that essentially, until the MPI deal expires, the only place to see the HD version is on Voom's service; after that, Vortex may well make a new deal that would utilize your supervised transfer for DVD. But could Vortex perhaps pressure MPI or Dinsdale to try this for any future print strikings? Or do they give up the right to dictate how the film is handled during the time of the contract?

That print you saw has absolutely NOTHING to do with the new restoration.

That's a print they had struck just to show around in theatres and is not representative, at all, of the new HD version.

We DID do HD to film tests late last year and are still thinking about releasing it that way, but I haven't really visited that in a while with MPI. The end results were pretty good, but HD to film is not exactly as cut and dry as you might think... not to mention ASTRONOMICALLY expensive. An HD to film transfer can cost upwards of $40,000+, just to get one 35mm negative and one 35mm print ONLY.

To be honest, we are still doing some cleanup on the master... even more so than the version that has been playing on VOOM.

The movie, and the new HD masters, are owned by MPI. I went, last Friday, out of town to supervise the fix of about 5 minutes of footage for the HD of TCM that has bothered me for a while. Now, thankfully, these few minutes are fixed to my satisfaction. Tobe Hooper was sent some samples last week. I'm interested in hearing his opinion of the transfer, since it's been 8 years since we did it the last time.

There are plans to release the new HD transfer on DVD... some day... and we discussed, last week, the possibility of releasing it on Microsoft Windows Media 9 HD as well.

You'd hope that the owners of the new HD master would see the logic of putting the new transfer out on regular DVD sometime over the next 14 months, prior to the Christmas 2005 release of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Then they could double-dip the release in Hi-Def for 2006-2007.

Wow, I had no idea it was so costly to go from HD to film. What drives that cost, Don?

The cost is just expensive. You have to run your HD transfer through a machine that "prints" your frames onto a digital printer... AND... because of the nature of negative and film stock, you have to re-time the master to work with the machine (changing contrast ratio, etc.).

Also, you have to digitally tell the printer exactly WHAT part of the frame you want to have printed. Like Adobe Photoshop, you can cut, paste, add mattes, zoom, etc.

It's new... and just expensive. I'm sure the costs will go down as it becomes more commonplace but, since its a fairly new technology, you just pay a lot of money for it.

Only the major studios can really afford to do this right now.

Check out this link:
Cinesite Digital Intermediate