The Quatermass Restoration

I just took delivery of Network's meticulously restored Blu-Ray of the 1979 Euston Films production known variously as Quatermass, Quatermass IV, or The Quatermass Conclusion. I'm a long-time Kneale and Quatermass fan, and Network's track record with this kind of material is exemplary. But all the same I'd been dragging my feet until a correspondence with restoration producer Mark Stanborough nudged me over the edge.

No excuses, I know, but I suspect that its hippie-themed 'fear of the young' element put me off at age 24. Some years down the line, it doesn't seem quite so personal. And I should add that my viewing of the original broadcast in 1979 was delayed and then compromised by a nationwide strike across the ITV network (and a bit of mea culpa here; I was an Assistant Controller in Granada's Pres Department at the time, and one of the sans culottes marching out of the gates).

Unusually for 70s British TV the production was shot on 35mm, with a four-part version made for broadcast along with a feature-length theatrical release. The restoration utilises original negative and source elements, and is superb. For the money you get both versions in high definition. Recommended.

For the celluloid geeks among us, Mark has kindly given me permission to post his account of the technical work involved in putting it all together.

Quatermass Revived

Picture Element History

Written by Nigel Kneale with dual purpose in mind (four-part television series and theatrical feature film), the original 35mm cut negative for the four episode ‘Quatermass’ series was photo-chemically duplicated to a 35mm intermediate positive (IP) before being re-cut into the 106 minute feature film: ‘The Quatermass Conclusion’. The trimmed negative cuts from the series have long since disappeared meaning the IP is the earliest generation remaining. When remastering the series, as much of the original negative as possible was utilized from the feature version in the episodic versions but where scenes were missing or re-cut to a shorter length, the IP was used to fill in. Episode three featured very little in the theatrical version so had the least original negative material available. Fortunately, the IP has aged fairly well meaning there isn’t a big difference between the elements.

Version Differences

In condensing the plot, there are a number of changes from the series to the film – most are minor but the sub-plot of the underground elderly commune was completely excised from the feature version. This also meant that alternative scenes were shot for the feature version with both Annie and Quatermass at the hospital (in the series it’s just Annie) but this was the only major editorial change.

Restoration

The film elements were cleaned and then scanned on an ARRI scanner at 2K resolution before being conformed to a picture guide. The restoration involved processing to match the different grain structures of negative and IP, before image stabilizing and fixing any movement at splices, evening out any density fluctuations and despotting the image, removing literally thousands of instances of dirt. The series and feature were both colour graded so that they have the same look, and careful matching of the different picture elements mean the image is consistent throughout. One of the most challenging issues occurs in episode four when the sky turns ‘sick’ (green) – by digitally amending some of the backgrounds, it made it possible to key the hue of the sky to a more even green colour than was possible when the programmes were originally produced.

Main and End Titles

Each episode’s titles and part break colours are different, changing from red in the first episode through purple in the second, blue in the third and finally green in the last installment. Scanning from film elements allowed the true range of the colours to be graded properly so they now look clear and vibrant. For the feature main title, the text is over the opening scenes from episode one and, as the footage was a dupe optical in the feature negative (so further generations away and a softer image), the titles were re-created using the far sharper IP sequence as backgrounds. Both episode four and the feature version end with the shots of the girls playing in the meadow and, again, the titles were faithfully recreated using negative textless backgrounds.

Aspect Ratio

The four-part series has been mastered in the original 1.33:1 TV ratio. As the theatrical version would probably have been projected either 1.75:1 or 1.85:1, the feature has been transferred inbetween at 1.78:1 to fully fill the widescreen frame (with some individual shot adjustment for headroom, something not possible when the feature was produced).

Audio Salvage

The master sound material was triple 35mm magnetics comprising separate dialogue, music and effects tracks. Unfortunately, either due to storage conditions, temperature or stock, these audio tracks had badly deteriorated, shedding so that each reel was covered in magnetic dust. By careful hand cleaning, transfer and re-transfer (when inevitably the heads clogged), the triple audio was fortunately rescued. Once onto a digital format, the three streams of audio were individually restored and then combined to create a new mono final mix. This also means that each of the separate triple tracks can be mixed to a 5.1 surround for the release.

Restoration Commissioned By Network Distributing Limited

Restoration Producer: Mark Stanborough
Transfer Facility: RR Media, Acton
Colourist: Ray King
Picture Restoration: Anthony Badger
Audio Restoration: Nitin Negandhi

The Atticus Syndrome

The village of Haworth, Yorkshire home of the Bronte sisters, has pretty much turned itself into a living museum. In fact the parsonage where they grew up is an actual museum, preserved in period, looking across headstones to the church at the top of the town. If you squint and ignore the tourists you can picture the steep cobbled main street as it once must have been. The pharmacy where Branwell bought his laudanum will sell you fancy soap.

It's buzzing now, but it must have been pretty grim back in the day. The drinking water supply ran through the graveyard, I'm told.

About three miles out and across the moor stands the ruin of Top Withens, a farmhouse said, with little in the way of any hard evidence, to have been Emily Bronte's inspiration for the Earnshaw farm named Wuthering Heights.

Last weekend we set out for the museum, but with better-than-expected weather we changed plans and struck out from Cemetery Lane and across the moors instead (see picture above for what 'better than expected weather' means for Yorkshire). In the footsteps of Heathcliff, here was our approach:

And once there, you find this:

I'm a sucker for a real-world place that's tied to an act of the imagination, whether it's a literary association or a movie location. I've stood in the cellar of the house in which Poe wrote The Black Cat. Sought out the Batcave in Bronson Canyon. Ordered buffalo steak in the Wyoming hotel where Owen Wister worked on The Virginian. Visited the castle at Elsinore, which is more than Shakespeare ever did.

"The buildings, even when complete, bore no resemblance to the house she described."  And you know what? I hardly care. Actually, no, I don't care at all, because I know the difference between inspiration and reportage. What a locale gives you is an insight into the experience of the author, whose purpose is that of the tale. Who is free to pick out this element from here, and that from there, and add a memory or a fantasy or two, and resite the whole shebang on the moon if it suits her driving purpose.

I found myself thinking of the responses to Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman in which readers declared themselves shocked and upset to find that their beloved Atticus Finch was 'exposed' as a racist. As if Lee were a biographer; as if the novel were not a shelved tryout for a radically different version of the final character.

It shouldn't be breaking news that writers make this stuff up, organising the steps to move toward some distant goal that exists only as a vague sense of certainty. If we're lucky the finished product will contain at least a grain of the truth we were trying to define. In a perfect world we'd nail it completely and then have nothing further to say, ever. That never happens, by the way - unless, perhaps, you're Harper Lee.

For my part, I'm looking forward to the next novel in the Atticus Finch trilogy. I guess Lee's lawyer hasn't quite finished finding it yet.

An Award

OK, so you can't read it in the picture, but that's definitely my name on the shiny plate at the bottom. Just take my word for it, okay?

The SOFFIA represents the recognition given by the Society of Fantastic Films to creators and performers with a body of work in the genre. They've been presented over the past twenty-something years at the annual Festival of Fantastic Films in Manchester.

Both the Society and the Festival grew out of the activities and enthusiasm of the Salford-based Delta SF Group. In addition to screening old favourites and lost classics, the Festivals offered an astonishing range of appearances and onstage interviews from personalities whose work we all grew up with, many of whom believed themselves forgotten.

In an obituary for the society's 'binding force and dynamo' Harry Nadler I wrote:

The ethos of the Festival of Fantastic Films is rooted in the Universal and Hammer horrors, the Republic Serials, Ray Harryhausen movies, anything you might ever have seen in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, the Standard 8 one-reelers from Castle Films, B-movies of all kinds and from all nations, all coupled with a love of celluloid showmanship and the will to salute the surviving artists. 

Stephen Laws and I were regulars for many of those years, handling interviews and MC duties, filling in when necessary, and sometimes having to give reassurance to nervous talent convinced that they had nothing of interest to offer the waiting audience. After their reception, of course, it was always a different matter.

Amazing times. Ray Harryhausen. Brian Clemens. Val Guest. Jimmy Sangster. Janina Faye. Martine Beswick. Barbara Shelley. Francis Matthews. Mel Welles. Forry Ackerman. Richard Gordon. Andrew Keir. John Landis. Tony Tenser. Freddie Francis. Hazel Court. The list goes on.

The award was revamped at least three times, as moulds wore out and new maquettes had to be sculpted. But each version was based on the same design, the classic Maria robot from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (Lang would surely have been a star guest, had he not been so inconveniently deceased).

Laws and I would watch with wistful envy as the statuettes left our hands, time after time. Little did we know that, just prior to his sudden and fatal heart attack, Harry had begun arrangements to acknowledge our own contribution. It's taken a while for everyone to catch up but a few weeks ago I got a phone call, and now I have this.

I couldn't post about it sooner because I was also given the job of presenting Laws with his own award, and to ensure it would be a surprise. Which I was able to manage last weekend, when we met up in Scarborough to look over the location of this year's British Fantasycon.

Steve continued to attend the Manchester Festivals while I relocated to the US for a while. He worked harder, fielded the tougher interviews, and is far more deserving of this than I.

But I've got one too, and I'm not giving it back.

Stan Lee's Lucky Man, Episode 7

This week's Radio Times entry for my episode of Stan Lee's Lucky Man, airing tonight:

Nobody would argue this series was out of the top drama drawer, but when it gets a head of steam up it’s got something. For whatever reason, the plot about a London detective (James Nesbitt) and his pursuit of shadowy high-level criminals has started to liven up and this episode is the best so far.

Harry is on the trail of the mysterious Golding, a man whose name has cropped up in about four different subplots, but we still don’t know who he is… Harry and his excellent DS draw closer as they look into young conmen who target rich foreign students with a sort of reverse honey-trap. But be warned: the opening scene with a tasering-gone-wrong is quite nasty.

Working on this series was a tricky back-and-forth tennis job, servicing the running subplots while maintaining the spine of an original story. But I'm happy with the way it all locked together in the end.

The opening stunt was based on a theoretical possibility explored in a published science paper. I've since learned that despite this warning it's happened for real, and more than once. So... apologies in advance for any distress that may be caused.

That apart, enjoy the show.

Every Day, It's a-Gettin Closer

We now have a publication date of September 30th, 2016

Ghost Train News

From Kim Newman:

Just a friendly heads-up that, following the sold-out run of The Hallowe’en Sessions in 2012, we’ve put together a new horror anthology play which will run for two weeks in March. We hope you’ll come along and be terrified.

The Ghost Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore will run at the Tristan Bates Theatre from the 7th to the 19th of March.  Our hostess is Jenny Runacre (Jubilee, The Final Programme, The Passenger, The Canterbury Tales, The Duellists, Husbands, The Creeping Flesh, Brideshead Revisited, etc) and our monsters are Claire Louise Amias as the Vampire, Jamie Birkett as the Broken Doll, Billy Clarke as the Frankenstein Monster, Jonathan Rigby as the Devil and James Swanton as the Ghost, with Grace Ker as the Ticket Inspector.

The play is written by Christopher Fowler (the Bryant and May books, Hell Train), Stephen Gallagher (Valley of Lights, The Bedlam Detective), Sean Hogan (The Devil’s Business), Kim Newman (Anno Dracula, The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School), Lynda E. Rucker (The Moon Will Look Strange), Robert Shearman (Doctor Who, Remember Why You Fear Me), and Lisa Tuttle (The Silver Bough, The Mysteries).  It’s a Bad Bat Production, produced by Ellen Gallagher and Steve Jordan.

The lovely poster is by Graham Humphreys*.

Most importantly, if you haven’t done so already, Book your tickets here.

*I believe that a limited number of the posters may be on sale at the venue, but don't quote me on that just yet. SG

Oktober Unseen

Back in '97 I blagged my way into directing an ITV miniseries based on my novel Oktober. I say blagged, because that's pretty much how it happened; at an opportune point I inserted myself into the process in such a way that everyone assumed everyone else had signed off on it. To quote producer Lynda Obst, if you make it a game of "Mother, May I?" the answer is always going to be no.

By then I'd written a certain amount of TV but I'd never been to film school, no BBC training course, didn't have a showreel that would stand professional scrutiny. In one big step I was at the helm of a three-country shoot with a budget over two and a half million. It was challenging, terrifying, exhilarating. Fortunately I was surrounded by some terrific professionals, and even those who'd formed a low opinion of my abilities gave 110% to the work.

For my part, I learned as I went. I overthought my shot lists and gave too little attention to the actors. Some stuff worked out better than I'd dared hope. Other stuff, I really wish I could go back and do right over. But there it is.

Our cinematographer was the late Bruce McGowan. Liverpool-born, his previous credits included Letter to Brezhnev and female boxing movie Blonde Fist. Bruce had a gentle, subtle touch with lighting and, I'll be honest, he sometimes drove everyone up the wall with the time he took to get it just right. Every day he showed up convinced that he was going to be fired. All through the day, the 'sparks' would grumble. Every night he sent magic off to the lab.

Oktober was filmed in 16x9 widescreen on Super-16 negative stock, from which two versions were transferred. The show was broadcast in the old 'fullscreen' format - then already well on its way out, but that's ITV for you - while the widescreen master tapes went into storage, never to be seen until now. The distributor wouldn't wear the expense of technical checks for foreign sales or DVD licensing.



But my involvement with Stan Lee's Lucky Man has meant working with Carnival again, and it's been an opportunity to pursue this old obsession. Here, for the first time - albeit at YouTube quality - is a short sample of Bruce's work as it was meant to be seen.

Flowers for Algernon, Japanese Style

Book cover art by Chris Moore

Before Christmas I bought a new Smart TV and only then discovered, as you do, that while the internet sees agreement on almost nothing, it's united in the opinion that the wifi on Samsung Smart TVs is pants.

So I finally got around to creating a wired network using the house mains. Last night I investigated some of the free programming out there, most of which is terrible but wow, there's so much of it... YouTube alone is an indiscriminate and infinite warehouse of curiosities, not just the usual clips and memes but entire shows and movies from yesteryear, some legit, some questionable. Among them was, uploaded in its entirety, the 1969 Chicago-shot movie based on Keith Laumer's novel The Monitors. I'll venture to say it was not great. I didn't watch it all, but I find that a meal rarely gets better after a first bad mouthful.

The evening's unexpected discovery was Algernon ni Hanataba wo, a 10-part Japanese serial based on Flowers for Algernon. It felt like a challenge but I did watch the entire first episode, more out of curiosity than anything else, and found myself being won over by its eccentric charm (I'd had wine).

If you don't know the short story by Daniel Keyes, seek it out. You won't be sorry.

The Charlie Gordon figure is called Sakuto and is played by former boy band star Tomohisa Yamashita. The character set and situations have been massively expanded, obviously, but allowing for cultural shift and different approaches to style it seems to be honouring the spirit of the original. Simpleminded Sakuto works for a floral delivery company which employs young ex-offenders. For him they're a surrogate family, their banter more that of brothers than the edgier mockery of the source story. The first hour is spent mostly in his world, counterpointed with the lives of the staff at the lab whose director is angling to seek a human subject to take the Algernon experiment to the next level. There's knockabout comedy, romantic misunderstandings, flashbacks to Sakuto's childhood rejection by his disappointed mother. It's beautifully shot and is often overwhelmed by excessively sentimental music.

Will it sustain for an entire series? I doubt that I'll go the full course but the core of Keyes' idea, the innocent who grows into awareness only to foresee his own decline, is a robust one. I can imagine it developing along the lines of Limitless, perhaps. But if you'd asked me which well-known short story might generate 10 hours of Japanese TV, this wouldn't have been the first to spring to mind.

European TV Drama Lab interview

Here's an interview I did in Berlin in 2012. At the time I was about to head over to the US for the pitching season with a pilot based on my novel White Bizango. That script's currently in turnaround from NBC.

Since working on US series I've sold half a dozen network pilots, most of it being work off the IMDB radar. Such is the job.



Incidentally, most of the cutaway clips they put in aren't from my stuff. I think the appropriate phrase here is, "for illustration only".

An Award Winning Author Writes:

  To those who scoff at my lack of official recognition, here is my riposte.

"The Effect of Alcohol upon The Human Body". Foreshadowing a lifetime of serious study.

Stan Lee's Lucky Man

There's a trailer now:



And these mega-sized billboards - I drove into Liverpool over the weekend and counted six of them along the way.

New for 2016 from @Sky1, from January 22nd. Created by Stan Lee, developed by Neil Biswas. Episode Seven by me.

more here

Females in Fiction and The Free Books Weekender

The backlist has been selling surprisingly well this past year, with no particular effort on my part. You'd think that would be enough of a reason just to let things be. But it's New Year's Day and in this idle, slightly worse-for-wear moment I've been inspired to risk rocking the boat with a gratuitous ebook promotion.

It's that, or do some work. And I fear that this is the only inspiration I'm likely to get today.

So if you gave or received an e-reader or a tablet for Christmas, or just happen to own one, for this coming weekend only you can download Red, Red Robin and The Painted Bride for free. Free. Zilch. Nada.

And then from Monday to Friday of the following week you can pick up Nightmare, with Angel at a heavily discounted price.

Red, Red Robin is set in Philadelphia and Lousiana. It's a big manhunt/revenge novel, featuring British expat Ruth Lasseter and her need to end the campaign of the young man who once came close to taking her life.

The Painted Bride is a lower-key piece, set in the English marshlands and concerning ex-junkie Molly Gideon's fears for the safety of her dead sister's children at the hands of their father.  

Nightmare, with Angel plays out against the fall of the Berlin wall as German-born Marianne Cadogan enlists the help of an inappropriate outsider to search for the mother who abandoned her.

Only now does it strike me that all three novels feature female protagonists. That's not by design. These were just the stories that I wanted to tell, in the best form I could think of to give them. My 2015 Twitter feed has been a lively one, from Mad Max: Fury Road to The Force Awakens, with calls for affirmative action to promote strong female characters opposed by cries from those unwilling to share their clubhouse with a bunch of girls.

But for my part, I've no agenda. With me it's just logic. The thrillers I grew up reading came almost exclusively from Men Who Couldn't Write Women. Their default female characters were the grateful virgin or the hardbitten femme fatale, each required to melt into the hero's arms at the end. There was even a name for them, the 'love interest'.

(It was true of even the best of the bunch. I'm sure that a study of John D MacDonald's maternal libertines -  women of experience to be bedded, repaired, and waved goodbye to - would give any psychotherapist a shot at a Plumsock Prize.)

How best to put this? The dodgy sexual politics of earlier decades have left us with an opportunity. There are entire areas of previously male-dominated fiction where the complex female lead has been underused. You can talk about gender balance or social engineering, and that's fine. I empathise. But, professionally, what I see to fire me up is a source of fresh material. I am, above all else, a self-interested opportunist.

So am I right, or am I wrong? For this weekend only, you can find out for nothing.

UK links

Red, Red Robin

The Painted Bride

Nightmare, with Angel

US links

Red, Red Robin

The Painted Bride

Nightmare, with Angel