How a 100-Year-Old Animated Film Is Restored!

In a century of animated cinema, the importance of animator Max Fleischer cannot be overstated. Fleischer created Betty Boop, produced the original Popeye and Superman cartoons, and also invented the Rotoscope. Fabulous Fleischer Cartoons Restored is on a mission to restore the films of Max Fleischer from original prints and negatives. We visited the team and restoration expert Steve Stanchfield at Blackhawk Films, a film scanning facility in Southern California to learn about the restoration process and watch a classic Koko the Clown short brought back to life.

Shot and edited by Josh Self
Music by Jinglepunks
Additional video courtesy Fabulous Fleischer Cartoons Restored and in public domain

Films seen here

Join this channel to support Tested and get access to perks:

Intro bumper by Abe Dieckman

Thanks for watching!

#animation #cartoon #restoration

[bobbyk]

I love how, while discussing how rare and fragile the film is, he's just casually unraveling it into a pile.

[jonathanlyons]

Thank you for sharing this. My grandmother was one of the ink girls at Fliescher animation in Miami Beach in the 1930s. I’ve been a fan since I was a kid. These restorations are amazing. I love sharing this stuff with my own son. My grandmother passed away at 101 a 2 years ago.

[LaDon]

If you can smile while talking about the monotony of your job, in describing the pain-staking process and minute time-consuming details then this is a job you love!

[paulkinzer]

I'm old enough to remember watching these cartoons on local TV stations, in black and white, back in the 1960s. Then, they were 'only' 40 years old. Even to a little kid, the flow and variety of animation techniques in Fleischer cartoons was mesmerizing to my siblings and I. Even then, the copies that got shown were in rough shape when compared to Warner Brothers and others, but they were somehow more alive. I'm really glad to know they're bring restored, and restored with love.

[diazbrothersyoutube]

Perhaps the most interesting thing about film collecting is finding any lost material not found in other archives. (Could be original titles, lost scenes, or full lost cartoons even)

[senior_sakuga]

Steve was one of my animation professors, great guy, loves animation and his passion and energy is infectious haha!

[brandonlink]

Wow I never knew old cartoons were supposed to look that good, I always just thought the quality we saw was how they were originally drawn. That perspective change of the orphanage at 0:53 is just stunning.

[rade-blunner]

Years back I wrote a dissertation about remastering animated films to HD, with a particular focus on how Disney were approaching it. Researching about all their colour correction and digital noise reduction and seeing how much they reselling films where they'd just _butchered_ the picture quality... it was pretty depressing.

[thadkomorowski]

Thanks for making the efforts of Steve Stanchfield go viral. He is one of the true heroes of animation history, the guy who’s in the trenches and doing the actual work that should’ve been done years ago. Ditto for Mark Kausler.

[SyntheticFuture]

The clarity and detail difference between the original and the restoration is insane. Looks like new =o

[xxnikexx]

It's amazing seeing old films being restored and then being made available for people to watch again.

[CKwolf]

"Accessibility is everything." Really some words to live by.

[spasticmuse]

You couldn't know how good the timing of this video is!!!! Some weeks ago, I watched a about early animation my mom had saved on her DVR for me at her house, much of which was about Max Fleischer's early work (Folks, regardless of resolution, some of the work is STUNNING!). Any day now I'll be setting up her new cable box which {fingers crossed} is supposed to enable streaming content, and this will be one of the first videos I'll go to in her training of how to navigate YouTube.

Blessed be and Happy Yule!

[Retrogamer]

These animators ought to be preserved in the highest regard. They brought entertainment through a painstaking art.

[westonlane]

It's insane how detailed each frame was after being cleaned

[LaskyLabs]

I've only ever done audio restoration (lot of fun), so seeing the tools and techniques used to restore video is just incredible. Archivists are the best, I love every second of everything you do guys.

[Gloops]

Around 25 years ago (or maybe longer) a TV station here in the UK showed a lot of the black and white Fleischer Popeye cartoons, and I remember being amazed at the quality of the animation - no shooting on twos like the made for TV stuff. They were also really funny, made before animation became synonymous with children's entertainment, they were aimed at a general audience. I'd like to see them again.

[provincialfish]

I love the fleischer stuff. I stumbled upon a superman dvd on a discount bin in my early 20s while working at an hmv and was instantly hooked. I grew up seeing Popeye and Betty book but had no idea of the history and the other things they did. The youtube channel has great stuff including educational stuff on physics and relativity as it was understood at the time. Amazing to watch.

[jordanfromthewaikato]

My grandad was a cinema projectionist when he was young. He said that he had to quickly repair film by gluing it back together and keep the film running.

[ender]

Very interesting video! I'd love to see more of these sorts of "industry visits" type videos on the channel.