Revisiting SINISTRE again
"Art is never finished, merely abandoned." - Leonardo da Vinci
A few years ago, I was talking with Leif Jonker about all the work he did to remaster DARKNESS: THE VAMPIRE VERSION for the Barrel Entertainment DVD.
That remarkable film was shot on super-8, the raw footage converted digitally and he re-edited the entire thing from scratch for it's double-disc special edition release. Much improved audio-visual quality results were quite impressive! The subject of conversation segued into my first movie, SINISTRE when Leif asked if I still possessed the raw camera footage. Yes, I did and still do. "Could you transfer it all to digital files and re-edit the movie?" At the time, no I couldn't. All of our editing gear had been sold off and I didn't really have the desire to revisit the movie again anyway. I had edited SINISTRE three times. The first was essentially a rough-cut that was submitted to Todd Sheets in 1994 for distribution. Todd liked the movie and asked us to clean up some technical issues. This led to edit #2. That version never got wide distribution. After Sub Rosa (then Salt City Home Video) released our subsequent movies, we wanted SINISTRE out there as well so I cut the movie together yet again, using the better equipment that Todd Reynolds had bought for post-production. It was also re-scored & remixed. Since this resulted in a totally different version, it was decided to also alter the title to "SINYSTER." I've regretted that decision ever since but at least it got a decent release on VHS in 1997, three years after we shot the movie. The 2005 SINISTRE DVD used the same master that Sub Rosa had for VHS duplication. It had the correct spelling and logo for the box but the onscreen title was still SINYSTER.
Lately, there have been countless retro remastered re-releases of old micro-budget B-movies on Blu-ray and revival big-box VHS collector sets. Last year, SINISTRE got one of these big-box treatments which I painted a new cover for.
Sub Rosa decided to go with this more exploitative design for that release
but my art was included in a clamshell insert limited edition. Again, the movie itself was still the third SINYSTER edit using the old 1997 master. Enough water has flowed under the bridge for me to finally consider remastering my first feature. I realize that the market for another edition would be quite limited, but I have the tools now and would personally like to make the movie more presentable. After I finished FLOWERS in January, I bought an analog-to-digital converter to transfer some of my old stuff. Let's see if turds can indeed be polished.. But before that, the supplements for the deluxe FLOWERS special edition had to be done. For FLORAVISION, the behind-the-scenes documentary I made last month, part of the footage was shot on a Hi8 camcorder.
Phil Stevens sent me that analog tape which I converted to digital for editing. This proved that my new gadget worked, so a couple of days ago, I dug out the old SVHS deck, the masters, some raw tapes and started experimenting with SINISTRE. First thing I did was change the title back to its original logo. Since it dissolves into the opening shot, I used the raw camera tape. Juxtaposed with the edit master, this opened a can of worms because the quality is noticably better than everything else that had just one generation of video degraded. I was thinking of simply transferring the edit master of the feature with some of the darkest, most troublesome shots sharpened, improved as much as possible and inserted from the raw tapes. It ain't gonna be that simple. There are a couple of other editing gigs on the horizon, but a cleaner, clearer remastered version of SINISTRE is on the agenda. Am I gonna go all George Lucas on it? Probably not, but it'll certainly be more watchable than the free YouTube version. I'll keep y'all posted...
