The Production GuideImage
by Martin Willey
The Production GuideSpace: 1999 was filmed on 35mm film. Other TV series were shot on 16mm film (half the size and thus lower quality) or videotape, but the production company ITC marketed the series internationally and 35mm was the highest quality and most portable format.
35mm and 16mm duplicate films were made and distributed to broadcasters. Each broadcaster would repair film damage and sometimes make editorial cuts, and the cut and damaged versions would then be passed on to the next company to broadcast the episode.
The episodes were broadcast in the US in NTSC (525 scanlines, of which 486 are visible, at 29.97 frames per second), and in Europe in PAL (625 lines, of which 576 visible, at 25 frames per second). It should be noted that televisions of the mid-1970s were much smaller and technically inferior to modern TVs- a 19inch screen was large, and black and white represented a large proportion of sets (in the UK a majority).
It was filmed in 4:3 ratio (the full 35mm frame, the same proportions of domestic televsions). A 16:9 "widescreen" ratio version was created in 2004, cropping the top and bottom of the picture (see below).
It was probably filmed at the standard rate of 24 frames per second (special effects shots were filmed at higher ratios of this). On UK and European TV systems (PAL and SECAM) the film was slightly speeded up to the standard 25 frames per second (a 4% speed-up, just detectable in audio). On North American systems, the NTSC system requires 29.97 frames per second, so the film is converted to using a technique called 3:2 pulldown (showing every third frame twice). This can be visible as a stutter in slow camera movements.
In 1980, VHS videotape became popular and the compilation movies were released on tape in the UK and later in the US. The first two movies were based on the 35mm film prints, but the second two compilation movies were made in videotape and the poorer quality was obvious.
In 1991 (US)/ 1992 (UK) individual episodes were first released. These tapes were derived from 16mm film prints. In 1992 in the US, a set of laserdiscs of the episodes were created based on 35mm film prints. The video masters created for this set were used in subsequent DVD releases.
In 2004, new film masters of Year One were made. The original film elements were cleaned, removing dirt and restoring damage and deterioration. Many of the original film "masters" - the interneg prints- had deteriorated over time. In these cases, the original negatives (the edited film from the studio cameras) or interpos prints (the original colour corrected print) are used to create new "protection elements" - so called internegs - from which new film prints (or digital prints) can be made.
The second stage is to create a digital version (telecine), using computer techniques to clean further dirt, bad splices and damage. This digital master is used to create standard definition (for DVD and broadcast) and high definition (for HD TV and Blu-Ray DVD).
Two different high definition masters were created- one using the original 4:3 image ratiom, the other at the 16:9 widescreen format favoured by HD broadcasters. Standard definition TV has an approximate pixel resolution of 720×480 (note that TV has rectangular pixels, so to view on computer the ratio must be altered again). High definition TV images have a pixel resolution of 1280×720 or 1920×1080 (Space 1999 was mastered in the latter). It has thus approximately twice the image information, although as lossy compression is applied there may be compression flaws visible.
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These masters (created by Jonathan Wood of BBC Resources) were used on the UK Network release in 2005. The 16:9 high definition masters were first broadcast in trials by the channel ITV-HD in 2006.
In 2007 the same restoration was performed for Space: 1999 Year Two. These have not yet be released on DVD or broadcast.