Most of the 16mm prints I see for sale on eBay are from Excel and Exclusive, and most are as short as barely a minute to 5 minutes, unless they're Blackhawk prints. Most of the Blackhawk prints were from the M-G-M era, not Pathe. Occasionally a MISCHIEF MAKERS print will show up, but those are edited, too.
I say that since the video says that most of the silents do not exist on 35mm any more. I'm wondering if the source prints were cobbled together from the sources I just mentioned.
I've built up a decent collection of the Our Gang silents on 8mm/Super 8, from both Niles and Blackhawk. Often the main titles from Niles will have Exclusive titles, though one I have is from a SCALAWAGS print. Excel also released short silent clips of Stooges shorts in 16mm. I think Excel and Exclusive might be the same company.
Blackhawks are always excellent quality, and I would guess they used 35mm sources. Blackhawk only released a small fraction of the silents, which would be in line with the intro text on the video.
Niles usually gets a bad rap from film collectors, especially for their Our Gang silents. I've found them to be more than adequate, looking very much like what you see in the video -- even the right "restored" side of the screen. I assume the left side was the same source before they were cleaned up, as opposed to some old public-domain VHS tape they dug up.
The Our Gang silents have never been given a proper release in toto in any format, so this is good news. That doesn't mean I will be buying it however, since I've abandoned physical disc collecting. Plus, I'm still working on completing my Our Gang talkies collection on film, and I think I'm down to needing only about 10. I still need a few more of the Blackhawk and Niles prints of the silents, too.
