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For your viewing pleasure, an update of the progress of The Gold Diggers print that I acquired a couple months ago from an eBay seller in Mansfield, England. This film, released by Warner Brothers Studios on the 22 September 1923, was thought lost for nearly a century, until this print was found (consisting of 4 reels, amounting to about 60-70% of the entire picture), which included the beginning and end, as well as a considerable portion of the middle. The nitrate print was on Belgian film stock, either intended as an export print from the United States or copied here in the UK from the original U.S export print. The opening section of the film, including the opening title card, has been scanned and the digital file sent to me, which I have uploaded here. The scan was undertaken by a friend of mine to assess the condition of the nitrate film itself, and if any of the frames showed signs of damage or decay. Suffice to say, that was minimal, and besides the odd scratch and perforation crack the film is near mint, and I can say with pride that the uploaded film section here contains no editing or doctoring on the images themselves, simply the raw footage as scanned. The only digital editing done was cropping the image to exclude the perforations and bits of the preceding and following frames, and editing out a couple bits where the film jumped in the scanner and had to be pulled back to rescan centrally. The opening section of the film, which you can see here, consists of a stage performance introducing some of the characters, such a Hope Hampton and Louise Fazenda. There is also a section inside the theatre's dressing room. This nitrate is tinted in a lovely orange, which was used to create various moods for the viewer. Originally there would have been a musical score, but that is missing, and the video here is completely silent (feel free to play some 1920s music in the background if you're feeling in the mood :D). This upload is intended as a teaser for what will eventually be the entire scanned picture in the future, and to reassure concerned film lovers that the film isn't simply rotting away in my collection, never to see the light of day again, but is being properly taken care of and scanned so that eventually a full production can be viewed for all, or at least as much as the 4 surviving reels allows us. The quality of this upload is pretty amazing, and a lot better than the crude projection of this print on my 1906 cinematograph projector a month ago. I hope you enjoy this small scanned section, and hope to bring you more in the future. Cheers :D As always, massive thanks to my bro Robbie from RM Film for helping with editing, and to everyone who has helped and encouraged me with this project and others.
