Here's an interesting review of the DVD issue of DS 91, written by retired film editor David Ice and posted on Amazon.
G.
After reading all the comments about this DVD set, I was very curious to see for myself. I am a retired sound editor (I worked for years on M*A*S*H and over 65 feature films) and was intimately involved in post production for television for many years. I would like to add my own comments.
First of all, the letterbox anamorphic 16x9 transfer is a construct for this DVD release. The series was shot, in 1990-91, in the 4x3 aspect ratio. However, all framing was composed for "TV Safe" which is the safe title area. If you crop a TV Safe picture vertically, you get 16x9 almost exactly. What you get on this transfer is what was considered essential during prime photography. Uncropped vertical picture area is just icing on the cake. What you see is what Dan Curtis and MGM deemed absolutely essential. Credits are presented in the 4x3 aspect ration, but if you watch closely there are title and credit elements that push the far boundries of TV Safe, which is why they are presented that way rather can cut off any copyright notices, studio ownership warnings, etc.
In terms of the day for night photography, I double checked the DVD off of my off-the-air SVHS recordings, which I recorded during the original broadcast. They are very, very close.
One must bear in mind that the broadcast technology of the time requred the studios to turn over a 35mm low contrast positive composite print of the show, which was transferred to NTSC video standard. The dynamic range of the telecine and broadcast bandwidth was much more limited than they are now. Simply compare, say, current episodes of CSI and Dark Shadows....and Dark Shadows almost looks like high-key sitcom lighting! For example, the scene where Daphne Collins walks through Collinsport just before Barnabas' first attack is so brightly lit it's comical--but this was the norm for TELEVISION filming at the time, not theatrical. The excellent day-for-night filming on House of Dark Shadows would not transfer over to a broadcast without significant print re-timing for broadcast standards. Nowdays, with HDTV and digital broadcasting, the dynamic range is much larger and almost feature film latitude. But in the 90's the broadcast spectrum was limited and both sound and color dynamics had to be intensely limited. (If you want another comparison, look at an original episode of Bonanza...the colors are almost exclusively pastel (no bright reds, greens, blues) because color broadcast simply could not handle intense primary colors.)
Another thing to remember about the film grain, etc., is that the series was shot and designed for the average 25 to 30" television of the time period. Higher speed film (and dubious Metrocolor processing!) was used to speed production and cut costs. Day for night filming was used because 1) it was cheaper and 2) far less time consuming than filming endless "magic hour" shots at dusk. With a vampire series, it would be utterly impractical to do endless night shoots plus daytime soundstage work (when do the actors and crew sleep?) so shooting day-for-night and timing the print slightly dark blue was a necessary cheat.
Yes, MGM could have timed the print darker for the DVD...but that would have necessitated reprinting/retiming nearly 50,000 feet of 35mm film, probably off a faded, scratched negative that had not been archivally preserved. (Few TV shows ever are!)
And we must realize that Dark Shadows is a niche market...we're not talking Desperate Housewives here...in terms of thousands of DVD units sold.
So all things considered, I'm glad we've got a reasonably timed/fairly accurate color/fairly scratch-free answer print to watch--in all probability, the same physical film that was originally broadcast on NBC. I'm encouraged that any elements were preserved at all--especially the stereo soundtrack. You would be appalled at how many "classic" television shows exist now only in 16mm versions, their original 35mm elements long gone.
I will agree that some DVD extras would have been worthwhile, and perhaps that will come in time. But considering that this transfer is clear enough to see the dirt on the opticals I'm convinced that this is the best transfer we could hope for, barring a full-blown digital restoration.
David Ice
