The Avengers DVD Set 5 (Series 6) from Optimum

[robmyers]

My copy of Series 6 *finally* made it through the post yesterday.

The picture and sound are great (I don't know about grain, but if you can see individual hairs out of place in people's haircuts then the image quality can't be bad) and I'm really enjoying watching the Tara episodes that I haven't seen before.

The only problem is that there aren't any more episodes of the original run after these...

[supersimon]

Thanks for this Rob, mine is on on order from play.com and I am hopeful it will be here before next weekend

[pauljwyatt]

Paul- how is it that the footage of Linda you've used from "introducing Linda Thorson" is of much higher quality than the print used on the DVD?

I'm not sure if Paul is around but i'd very much like to know about that print. I'm rather intrigued!

Hi Shanet,
sorry for the delay i've been away this weekend. It looks like we're both ex Granada boys!

As for the footage. Is it better quality? i got that reel years ago. I was very cheeky as a kid in the 80s. I was forever writing off to tv companies asking for promotional material. I used to bug Mat Irvine at BBC visual effects. He was such a nice bloke and sent me a blueprint of a teleport bracelet from Blake's 7 and scoured the whole of the department to try and find me one. Gerry Anderson sent me very nice letters in answer to my Terrahawks obsession and he once sent me toys and promo items - it pays to write letters as a kid

So i did the same for The Avengers and ended up with a few things and that promo reel - which i never watched - apart from spooling it free - until quite recently. So that's where it comes from.

[MRotten]

My copy of Series 6 *finally* made it through the post yesterday.

The picture and sound are great (I don't know about grain, but if you can see individual hairs out of place in people's haircuts then the image quality can't be bad) and I'm really enjoying watching the Tara episodes that I haven't seen before.

The only problem is that there aren't any more episodes of the original run after these...

All good things must come to an end. I am also waiting for mine to arrive, and preparing myself for another send-back to Optimum, as disc 1 has the helium-voiced actors in "The Forget Me Knot".

[Shanet]

Paul - yes I recognised the name. You've trodden the same "Street" I did but a few decades difference! Thanks for the details. Cheeky is good! I'm glad Gerry sent you toys!
All the best!

[robmyers]

Yes, next day delivery ended up as next week delivery for me.

It's worth waiting for.

I'll be returning "The Forget Me Knot", but I've now watched up to "Noon Doomsday" and the quality of these episodes is so much higher than I've seen them before.

[pauljwyatt]

I watched "Super secret cypher snatch" last night. I find the location filming on this series to be quite stunning. The summer of 68 must have been a very good one as the light is perfect and i really do think for the first time in the whole series we really get a chance to really explore Avengerland.

I find series 5's early pastel colour palette to be a little too fantastical and strangely claustrophobic whereas series 6 is bolder in colour and sharper in script and action.

[darren]

I find series 5's early pastel colour palette to be a little too fantastical and strangely claustrophobic whereas series 6 is bolder in colour and sharper in script and action.

Totally, it may be a superficial thing but I really find the pastel look of the early series 5 episodes off putting. I love the look of series 6, the bolder colours are much more to my liking.

[Shanet]

This goes beyond just art direction though – although of course that adds to the overall style of the piece. The lighting set ups for this series 6 are very different to the previous one. You’ll notice that an awful lot of the sets in series 6 have ceilings? This means that the studio could be “flood lit” and fill, key and back lights are used at quite a low level to light the performers and sets.

Doing this allows the camera operator (under the instruction of say the producer) to use a film stock which would have a higher ISO value and is thus more sensitive to light and gives a more vivid image. There’s a lot of this going on in most of the Thorson era (apart from the clips used in Homicide and old lace from the abandoned episodes) It’s definitely a stylistic change in lighting and film stock which impacts colour and vividness of image.

[pauljwyatt]

That's very interesting. I noticed many of the sets had ceilings or were often shot from below. It makes sense if the studio was "flood lit" so the set ups wouldn't be too bright with light pouring in from above because of the ceilings. Doing this makes the colours "hot". It's also easier to position lights on the studio floor than to do it on a lighting rig which can also take an enormous amount of time.

I remember watching Bewitched on it's first repeat run on Channel 4 and for each series they used different film stock - maybe because they had a different producer nearly every year. One series does not look like another in terms of sharpness of image and colour palette.

With The Avengers restoration the prints are no longer washed and worn out so these little (?)details really come to light (pun intended