The Blu-Rays use of stock footage

If we're doing a mini-AMA, I have a question. You said as far as you know, there was "no involvement at all" in the decisions from any members of the original creative or technical crew from The X-Files, and your team only interacted with Fox directly, and every decision was approved (or not) by Fox, not by (say) Chris Carter, or original VFX dude Mat Beck, or director David Nutter, or producer Glen Morgan and James Wong, or sound designer Thierry Couturier, or people like that. Is that correct? And if that's a correct reading of what you said, then my question is, was it seen as the standard operating procedure for your team, on these restorations of various media, to have no involvement or input from the original creators at all, even on really major decisions? And in particular for The X-Files, given its extremely influential and award winning cultural position which is slightly different from say, a Leprechaun sequel, and given the extreme difficulty of this restoration (and the sheer amount of very important decisions your team had to make, in essentially re-making each episode from scratch, from the available footage, changing aspect ratio, changing colors, changing fonts, locating stock footage, HD upgrade for NINE seasons of 20-25 eps, etc etc) did your team ever get to talking and remark that it was at all notable or strange that Fox seemed to be proceeding without involving the original team in any of these HUGE decisions? was your team ever made aware of any reason why that might be- were there said to be tensions between Fox and Carter, or perhaps between Carter and the original team? Was Carter asked to help but didn't want to? Was Carter initially involved in the original 4:3 HD restoration? and sub-question: was the 4:3 restoration also only begun in late 2012, or was the 4:3 done before that, and the 16:9 began in late 2012? was Carter not interested in being involved once Fox made clear they wanted to scrap the 4:3 and instructed your team to start over again? and what was your team's reaction to that, aside from having more work- did you guys wonder why Fox had asked you to make two versions? were you under the impression both would be released? or was it more like, someone at Fox had made the decision the 4:3 wouldn't be used, so that's why you were told to start over again in 16:9? do you remember the timing of wheh the team finished the 4:3, when Fox first received it from you guys, and when Fox announced that now you'd be doing the 16:9 as well? at that time, was there any gossip about why that directive went down (you don't have to repeat any specific gossip- I can read between the lines if you heard there was like "tension" between Carter and Fox- Carter has actually stated right here on reddit that he didn't want seasons 1-4 in 16:9, he wanted then in 4:3). THANK YOU if you can answer any of this. I have a big problem with the idea of huge companies like Fox not even bothering to get the input of the original creative people on huge decisions, which may also have made things easier for your team, if they could've given some guidance on certain areas of how they originally did things and what kind of look they were going for. I obviously do not blame your team's excellent work if indeed, their desires were overruled, because that was all up to Fox, not your team, but I'm just very interested in how this process went down. This is actually very important for the practice of film restoration in general, to know what kind of practices are being employed by Fox on perhaps the most cinematic TV show of the pre-digital era. If Fox is even disrespecting the wishes of the original technicians and artists behind a show as prestigious and visually complex as The X-Files, there is probably no way Fox and other large companies are respecting creators' desires on other lesser known restoration projects, and that's really, really sad.

/r/XFiles Thread Parent