The Doors Forum

i Just found this notice on the doors facebook:

The Doors


WANTED:

We are on the hunt for the missing elements from the legendary show at London’s Roundhouse in 1968. On behalf of The Doors, Eagle Rock Entertainment is offering a $10,000 reward for the return of the original 16mm camera negatives filmed on September 6&7, 1968. These elements were used to create the documentary by Granada Films called “The Doors Are Open”, but the original camera rushes have gone missing. The Doors have access to the show The Doors Are Open; this is not what we are trying to locate. Thank you for your help.

I have it they can have it for $2000

anytimecowboy wrote:I have it they can have it for $2000

if you do, you can have a great deal

It might take more than $10k to build a working time machine and recover those missing elements. I suspect they were thrown out years ago. Hope I'm wrong, but stations usually only keep the aired program and not all the outtake footage. Unless someone on the film crew kept the outtakes? Glad Eagle Rock is at least making the effort. Can't hurt to try.

I said it for a couple of times and I'm sure I've been preceded by many other people. This is probably the best they can get for an astounding official release. In these Roundhouse shows the band generated some of its finest live performances. Unfortunately, Len probably is right but I'm glad they they are offering such money carrots. Sometimes the smell of good money can be compatible to intelligence and art. I hope Eagle Rock will be sucessful. I'm sure we all hope so.

Yeah, it is definitely great news after all these decades that some steps are being taken. It was about time.

At least someone is making some efforts on getting the stuff that "might" be out there...

Anything is possible, remember that guy that had 100 tapes from Top Of The Pops that just surfaced.

I wish that was released this show

Almost a year on.... and is there any news?

bump

No dice. It's gone forever. Granada chucked all the edited footage and like so much material of this sort from the same time-frame it's probably buried under the M1 motorway.

steve1234 wrote:No dice. It's gone forever. Granada chucked all the edited footage and like so much material of this sort from the same time-frame it's probably buried under the M1 motorway.

Are you sure? Maybe it's in someone's private collection.

In absence of the complete footage, how about an official release of The Doors are Open on Blu-ray? Current unofficial DVDs have some issues with shading, as pointed out on The Doors Guide, and the audio. As most of you know, the audio runs a little slow making Jim's voice sound a bit deeper than it actually is. In my opinion, this documentary could use a touch up. I doubt that they will bother to officially release it as it may not be marketable to the casual fan.

I have a DVD of "The Doors Are Open" and it is no better quality than a VHS recording I did from terrestrial TV back in the 1980's!

It is a Region 1 US release from 1998 and as far as I'm aware all DVD's, irrespective of region, use the same transfer, presumably taken from a video source and not the master materials?

From The Doors Guide.

"One final note about The Doors Are Open. Several DVD releases of this documentary, or portions of it, have been on the market for several years and every one of them, including material featured in the 2010 documentary When You're Strange, is flawed.

First, they all run too slow due to an improper transfer from a PAL source (25fps) to NTSC (23.976fps). The error results in the film running 4.27% slower than it should. The band members sound like they're suffering from severe head colds when they speak as everything is at a lower pitch, and the songs drag because they're played at the wrong tempo. It's unfortunate that no one has discovered this problem or chosen to address it after so many different releases over the years.

The second issue has to do with the various video transfers this material has received. In an effort to boost contrast levels, the producers of these releases have left us with literally a shadow of the original film. Let's take a look at some comparison screenshots below.

First, on the left, is a DVD from 2002 of The Doors Are Open released by Geneon/Pioneer. Finding a copy of this now out-of-print video is currently the only way to obtain the complete television special on DVD. The screenshot on the right comes from an older VHS copy of The Doors Are Open (that runs at the correct speed) which I acquired and used for all the screenshots on this page.





Two more screenshots. This time, the one on the left comes from Eagle Rock Entertainment's 2004 release of The Doors Live In Europe. This DVD is still in print and is currently the only official way to purchase a bulk of the The Doors Are Open material, although it's missing several songs. Again, on the right, my copy sourced from VHS.





The loss of detail is significant. What's more, there's no way for consumers to correct this by simply adjusting the levels on their televisions. Once the contrast was boosted in this manner, all the information in those dark areas was lost. It's worth noting that the segments used in When You're Strange appear to come from a more recent transfer and look a bit better than either of these DVD releases, but of course the frame is cut to widescreen, effectively losing 25% of the original image and it still runs too slow. Only a new digital transfer done at the proper framerate from an original film reel is likely to correct these problems. Let's hope it can be done someday soon so more Doors fans can enjoy these performances as they were originally meant to be seen and heard."
http://www.thedoorsguide.com/film/doorsopen.html

I wrote to Granada back in the 80's and they confirmed to me then that they had no further material from these shows apart from what was shown in the film!

I still believe them to this day.

Seems we never gonna be closer to the master quality than the original VHS release of the show, which Len pointed out to be the best available. Obviously the masters has been lost or recorded onto. The Doors refused to buy and own it when it was offered to them at the time so it is now a clear cut case I'm afraid. I guess they did a safety copy or whatnot some decades ago, which they used for the VHS release but the chance that the master tapes are outta window is above 80%.

Buda wrote:Seems we never gonna be closer to the master quality than the original VHS release of the show, which Len pointed out to be the best available. Obviously the masters has been lost or recorded onto. The Doors refused to buy and own it when it was offered to them at the time so it is now a clear cut case I'm afraid. I guess they did a safety copy or whatnot some decades ago, which they used for the VHS release but the chance that the master tapes are outta window is above 80%.

There's still a hope for some fans, right Buda?

Please don't misunderstand me, I'd really like to be part of "those" fans, but I'm afraid there's absolutely no chance that any of us will be part of it as this train has gone already. Hope I'm entirely mistaken though but chances are scarce.

Remember, nothing is etched on stone, so still can petition the lord with prayer