The Hunting Of The Snark Royal Albert Hall 1987 - Upscaled to 1080p / Restored

The wonderful 1987 production of Hunting of the Snark, by Mike Batt based on the Lewis Carroll tale. Much loved by myself, sadly the highest quality versions available are starting to show their
age, even though clearly well restored from tape to DVD originally.

This has been upscaled from the DVD version of the original release, initially using some machine-learning for noise reduction and antialiasing. The close-up shots are massively improved in places; the full face sections with Billy, Deniece and Roger look particually good in my opinion, some shots of John really show the deep-fake tech... however the wide shots suffer due to lighting and resolution restrictions, and would benefit from a lot of softening/defocus (especially noticable in the moire patterns produced by the stripey-shirts in the first 3 minutes.)
There are artifacts, and occasionally cartoony looking parts which I quite like.
One of the main 50hz theatre spots/banks is perfectly out of phase with the 25fps video recording, so you do get a flickering red/white-cast on alternate frames in brightly lit scenes, havent found an easy way to resolve this and they are amplified by the other improvements.


The colours/whitebalance/contrast etc has all been tweaked, but I've attempted to keep the rich technicolor look while making some of the skin tones slightly more natural, a three-strip colour correction was used to keep the traditional look (but made it a bit too red). Additionally giving the whole video a slight film-grain and a bit of glow/ to give more of a cinematic look (and cover some of the artifacts produced by the upscaling and sharpening processes.)
I've also given the audio a little boost and kick in the 4ks and other places to get a little more life out of it, but remains mostly unchanged.

All rights etc belong to Mike Batt/Dramatico (SOLAR Music Rights Management, Sony ATV Publishing) - If Mike wants it removed, it will softly and suddenly vanish away...




0:23 - Start.
2:41 - Beginning of John Hurt's narration.
4:17 - Children of the Sky (Mike Batt).
5:26 - Midge Ure's solo.
7:52 - The Bellman's Speech (Billy Connolly).
8:58 - The Bellman's Speech - Friends, Romans and countrymen (Billy Connolly).
12:29 - The Escapade - Instrumental Section (I don't know who's playing first-violin here, it's great!).
13:18 - The Escapade (Deniece Williams).
16:55 - The Escapade - The Baker (Julian Lennon).
17:32 - The Escapade - The Butcher (Justin Hayward).
18:44 - The Escapade - The Beaver (Deniece Williams).
20:19 - Midnight Smoke - Narration.
22:30 - Midnight Smoke (Julian Lennon).
25:04 - Midnight Smoke (Nice solo by Midge Ure).
27:28 - The Snooker Song - Narration (John Hurt).
27:56 - The Snooker Song (Captain Sensible).
31:06 - The Pig Must Die - Narration.
31:21 - The Pig Must Die (Roger Daultry).
34:29 - The Pig Must Die - Narration.
36:17 - The Beaver's Lesson - Narration.
36:51 - The Beaver's Lesson (Justin Hayward/Deniece Williams).
37:47 - The Beaver's lesson - Dance (Janet Smith/Robert North).
40:23 - A Delicate Combination (Deniece Williams/Justin Hayward).
41:30 - As Long As The Moon Can Shine (Justin Hayward).
46:15 - As Long As The Moon Can Shine - narration.
46:41 - Dancing Towards Disaster (Deniece William).
48:36 - Dancing Towards Disaster - Tapdance.
50:36 - The Vanishing - Instrumental section.
52:44 - The Vanishing (Julian Lennon).
53:38 - The Snark!
55:07 - The Twist!
55:55 - The Vanishing - Hope (Deniece Williams NOT as the beaver)
59:15 - Applause and credits
1:01:07 - Like and subscribe!