digitally remastered Coronation

[mercia]

if you're feeling particularly nostalgic or royalist tomorrow [sunday], the BBC Parliament channel is showing the full seven hours of 1953 Coronation coverage in a new digitally-remastered format - black & white of course, but scratches, dust etc. removed

starting at 10:10am, the coronation service itself starting at 11:00
I think it will end up on the iPlayer in digestible chunks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p019rmk2

and this evening 8pm, BBC Parliament is repeating the 90-minute "building up to the great day" documentary

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jcf5h/The_Coronation_of_Queen_Elizabeth_II/

[Nick Armstrong]

Thank you for that Will take a squint; and it's the sort of thing my dad will love so a telephonic "heads-up" is called for I think

Complemented later in the day more colourfully by ITV's archivefest, "Coronation Year in Colour" at 5.30pm

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/ep1we...on-year-colour

[Mary Chambers]

What worries me is that media people keep on going on as if it was a long time ago, an historical event I remember it perfectly well.

[BBMmk2]

How good is that!! Will the BBC make a DVD?

[salymap]

What worries me is that media people keep on going on as if it was a long time ago, an historical event I remember it perfectly well.

I agree Mary . My mother and I watched on a friend's TV [B/W] Wobbly picture that needed lots of adjustment.

Later I travelled to London, met four or five friends and joined the crowds.

[Stanley Stewart]

Seconded. And I recall the broadcast - wireless, of course - of German's "Merrie England" in the evening:

"Long live Elizabeth, loyal and true till death,
Unto our English Queen shall England be..."

Daft but delightful lyrics of the "derry- derry down" variety!!

[salymap]

Seconded. And I recall the broadcast - wireless, of course - of German's "Merrie England" in the evening:

"Long live Elizabeth, loyal and true till death,
Unto our English Queen shall England be..."



Daft but delightful lyrics of the "derry- derry down" variety!!

Stanley,you've revived memories of the hundreds of Chappell vocal scores the hire library bought for the occasion. They were all hired out to nearly every amateur choral/operatic society in the country. Then they just sat there, taking up a great deal of space. Happy days though

[Nick Armstrong]

Only this week seen the arches they put over the Mall on Coronation Day - not keen!

[Petrushka]

Thanks for the alert, would have completely missed it otherwise.

My parents watched the Coronation on a 9 inch screen TV, the first time they'd watched television. I'll record to hard drive.

[mercia]

Will the BBC make a DVD?

I somehow doubt it, but the (much much) shorter colour film version is available

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Queen-Crowned-DVD-Castleton-Knight/dp/B007ON30O4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370251304&sr=8-1&keywords=a+queen+is+crowned+dvd

[BBMmk2]

They played an anthem bvy Byrd called I will not leave you comfortless, and not a single cd on amazon with it on. Went on Youtube and there are some there butr not what i would call good performances?

[Pabmusic]

They played an anthem bvy Byrd called I will not leave you comfortless, and not a single cd on amazon with it on. Went on Youtube and there are some there butr not what i would call good performances?

There is this (it is the Byrd, according to other websites): http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...=dm_mu_dp_trk3

[mercia]

the choir thread people will know better than me but I think the Latin title is Non vos relinquam orphanos and is on the Cambridge Singers Byrd motets CD [I think]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Byrd-Sacred-The-Cambridge-Singers/dp/B00006O0OD/ref=pd_sim_sbs_m_h__2

[Dave2002]

I somehow doubt it, but the (much much) shorter colour film version is available
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Queen-Crowne...is+crowned+dvd

I didn't bother to watch - after all I saw it the first time on a very small screen - was it 12 inch? - might have been 9 inch, though I thought it was around 12 inches.

However, I caught a bit of it last night around news time. The B and W versions were more or less as I remembered, but I was very surprised by the colour. OK - I think the colour versions show some of the effects of film renditions, but I had no idea that the event was really that colourful. I think this effect goes for lots of other events which were filmed in B and W, so that we think that everywhere was colourless at the time. This is obviously true of lots of films shot during the wars, and there were certainly grim scenes, but I suspect that the grass, where it hadn't been ploughed up to grow crops, was about as green as today. However I'm not sure whether pillar boxes were still red during the war, in case they were too obvious.

The coronation was clearly a very lavish event, and the gold carriage looked splendid, though not necessarily comfortable.

[Ferretfancy]

I didn't bother to watch - after all I saw it the first time on a very small screen - was it 12 inch? - might have been 9 inch, though I thought it was around 12 inches.

However, I caught a bit of it last night around news time. The B and W versions were more or less as I remembered, but I was very surprised by the colour. OK - I think the colour versions show some of the effects of film renditions, but I had no idea that the event was really that colourful. I think this effect goes for lots of other events which were filmed in B and W, so that we think that everywhere was colourless at the time. This is obviously true of lots of films shot during the wars, and there were certainly grim scenes, but I suspect that the grass, where it hadn't been ploughed up to grow crops, was about as green as today. However I'm not sure whether pillar boxes were still red during the war, in case they were too obvious.

The coronation was clearly a very lavish event, and the gold carriage looked splendid, though not necessarily comfortable.

There were two films of the Coronation for cinema release. The first, A Queen is Crowned was made in Technicolour by the Rank Organisation, and had Laurence Olivier for the narration. The other film was shot in Eastmancolour by Pathe. Of the two, the technicolour version has survived better, it is still just about possible to make dye transfer prints from the original black and white separations, although I think the only surviving lab for processing is now in China,. In any case, the Technicolour version has been digitally reprocessed for DVD etc.

Eastmancolour prints have not survived so well, because the chemical processing used leads to slow deterioration in the negative, rather in the way that very old colour transparencies can turn pink. During the 1950s and onwards, film companies increased the amount of location filming, and took to Eastmancolour because the cameras could be less bulky, and the stock needed less light to give good results. Technicolour cameras were pretty massive objects.

Some years ago, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and others became so alarmed at the damage to some classic films shot in Eastmancolour that at one point they threatened to go back to shooting in black and white in an effort to force manufacturers to improve their product and help to finance restoration projects. I'm not sure if they were successful.
The washed out quality on old films that turn up on TV is often due to the fact that release prints have been used to make new negatives, and you can sometimes spot colour differences on reel changes where they had to sample several prints to get the best results. Of course, modern digital restoration can do a great deal, but it still requires the best available original sources.