Blu-ray Set Blues – and a Lou Bunin “Mystery Clip”

Today’s article is just a little snapshot into where things are right now in the projects we’re working on. There’s even more stuff than this — but I’ll shuddap about that stuff for now.

I woke up this morning and thought for a little while about what a great week it’s been in working on the Thunderbean stuff. New materials just got scanned, the freelancers are really cranking through things for several sets, and I managed to get much, much closer to finishing out the long-in-progress Rainbow Parades 2 set. A big piece of that process has been re-cleaning up (with film restoration software) the films we had already finished that were lost in the Ex-Fat drive crash. It’s been hard getting them done again, but we’ve been able to accomplish a lot over the last few weeks- and we’re turning the corner now to finishing all of them again. They’re looking lovely- with the highlight being Bold King Cole from the original camera negative. I wish we could make them all look that good— but the others (all from the Technicolor ‘master prints’) look great.

The Mid Century Modern 3 set is finally back from replication, and we’ll be working on putting together all the pre-orders and have the shipped before putting it up on Amazon. We’ll do a little review of what’s on the set next week here.

We’ll continue to do some special sets, with a few new ones up now. [LINK TO THUNDERBEAN SHOP]. I can see a point, sooner than later, where the special sets will be a thing of the past — but so glad we’ve been able to get so many things scanned and available that otherwise would not be.

The Lou Bunin set has been in progress the longest at this point, and nearly every day I’m trying to get another piece put together for it. Our big goals for the year are to get as many of the sets done as possible, and with Rainbow Parades nearly out the door- with the Lou Bunin set following. That opens things up to finish the Comi-Color, Cultoons and Cartoons for Victory sets. I’m hoping these two projects will be wrapped within a month or so, and then all our resources can be on the other projects.

Putting together these things isn’t without its share of issues of course. In the end, all of the work that goes into them really shouldn’t show too much— rather, the films themselves should be enjoyed for their qualities. And, of course, that’s the whole point of trying to out together a good presentation of them.

This must be a caricature of somebody – and a possible other clue is the tune “Am I Blue” on the soundtrack… Any ideas?

The biggest challenge always ends up being the things that are missing that you know you need to find. A missing title card, fixing a splice, finding a little piece of music missing from the material you’re working with. What is really unusual is to find a small piece of what seems to be a completed film, but you can’t find a record of *what* film it is!

This small piece of 16mm sound film was attached to a series of 16mm Kodachrome footage from the Lou Bunin short Bury the Axis (1943). It’s clearly a fully animated production by Bunin, but from what? It looks really similar to the footage Bunin did for Ziegfeld Follies (1945). My immediate thought is that it’s perhaps a piece that was made as part of that feature, or another thing for MGM. It’s short, and it’s clearly a completed production with sound.

I’m hoping to, before too long, be able to look through the other materials to see if somehow I can identify this particular clip. I’m honestly not sure if *anyone* has seen this particular footage. If you recognize it, please let us know!

Ok— here’s the clip. Have a good week everyone!