On the Frontier

Using New Technology on Old Movies

The second restoration of On the Waterfront replaced the tears onthe original negative (top) with a print identical to DP BorisKaufman’s original vision (bottom).

Film restoration is still relatively young as a science and youngerstill as a viable business. It was only a decade ago that Grover Crisp,Sony Pictures' vice president of asset management and filmpreservation, attempted a complete restoration of Elia Kazan's Onthe Waterfront, one of the many cinematic gems then recentlyacquired for Sony's library. This groundbreaking feature, withOscar-winning cinematography by Boris Kaufman, had deteriorated fromits original splendor. Unlike many films, it hadn't turned to dust orentirely disintegrated: There were still elements that could generate amarginally acceptable print. At that time, however, it would not havebeen possible to strike a print identical to the one seen on themovie's opening night in 1954.

Mishandling and overprinting had caused image degradation in Onthe Waterfront's original negatives and the best remaining printingelements. Scratched, torn, and faded sections of original negativefrequently had been replaced with hastily struck footage. For therestoration, Crisp searched out the best possible elements —reel-by-reel, shot-by-shot — and a small film lab in Burbank,Calif., called Cinetech used optical printing and chemical processes tocreate a wholly restored negative. This new negative was designed to beused to strike prints and videotapes or be repurposed in waysunimaginable in 1992.

Since the initial restoration of On the Waterfront, filmrestoration techniques have greatly advanced, and additional companieshave begun to offer restoration services. Restoration of old titles hasbecome common both at Sony and, to varying degrees, other studios. WithDVD and various video-on-demand (VOD) formats available, contentowners, “realize that virtually any title they own is up forgrabs in terms of repurposing,” says Crisp. “There is awhole market out there that people didn't think about when I starteddoing this.”

In 1992, Cinetech's film restoration specialty was a niche business.Since then, the company has progressed into a 40,000-square-foot,full-service color and B&W photochemical motion-picture lab basedin Valencia, Calif., employing 70 people — including 10traditional color timers — who work on an average of 250 titlesper year for studios, museums, and archives. Labs like Cinetech haveincorporated digital tools into their restoration arsenal — toolsCrisp used when he tackled a new restoration of On theWaterfront this fall. Bad tears, printing, and chemical damage thathad been impossible to repair the first time could now be fixed usingdigital technology.

“We're just getting our feet wet with digital technologynow,” says Joseph A. Olivier, Cinetech's vice president in chargeof restoration. Cinetech performs the actual digital manipulation inhouse, as well as the film printing and processing, but outsources thescanning and recording to facilities like Digital FilmWorks (LosAngeles) and Cinesite (Hollywood). “At this point,” Oliviersays, “there really isn't a good reason for us to get into thescanning and recording business. That equipment becomes obsolete sofast we'd rather have somebody else own it.”

According to Crisp, Sony Pictures and Sony corporate are veryenlightened about the value of investing in the restoration of theirlibrary, regardless of whether or not a particular title offers animmediate marketing opportunity. Crisp oversees special restorations,such as Lawrence of Arabia for its special 40th anniversarytheatrical rerelease, but he also has a budget to restore almost everyfilm in the vaults. His budget, however, is not unlimited, so thedigital realm is only a last resort.

Athough most of their restoration work is optical and lab-based,Cinetech used digital tools, such as After Effects, for somealterations including cloning frames.

The resolution of each scan is something that must be carefullythought out. A 4K, rather than 2K scan, is sometimes a necessaryexpense, but most often is a luxury he cannot justify. “When wego into a digital environment, the most important thing is that itshould be imperceptible,” says Crisp. “What matters most ishow the digitally altered frames and shots cut together with everythingelse. There are times when a 2K scan is perfectlyacceptable.”

There are many factors that determine how important it is to scan at4K, according to Daniel Longfellow, lead digital restorer at Cinetech.“The condition of the scenes, the lens they were shot with, thefilm that it was shot with, and the way it was initially processed canall affect the resolution of the image.”

Longellow explains that once the frames are scanned as Cineon files,his digital-restoration department brings these files into Mac G4workstations — running OS X with Jaguar — with LaCieFireWire 80GB hard drives. Most of the actual work is done in AdobeAfter Effects 5.5, which supports work at a color depth of16bits/channel. “These are huge files,” says Longfellow.“They run 46 to 72 megs per frame — depending on whetherthey're 2K or 4K scans.”

When a portion of a frame is torn, scratched, or otherwise damaged,the restoration team compares that frame to those that precede andfollow, and then clone those frames for the damaged area. After Effectshas been very successful for this type of work. “We tried [Adobe]Photoshop,” Longfellow recalls, “and it turned out we weremaking pretty [still] pictures, but when you would look at a wholeshot, it didn't look very good.”

One reason for this “is older films generally have grainthat's much larger than it is on modern films,” says Longfellow.“When you hold an image static — say you cut an area of thebackground from four frames back and paste that in to replace a damagedportion of the frame — you'll see the grain become static. So,although I could make these pictures that looked great in Photoshop, itwouldn't work in relationship to the next frame. After Effects is linedup to let you flash back and forth between frames. It allows the userto have a better interface for doing exactly this type ofwork.”

Longfellow uses Photoshop in conjunction with After Effects if hehas to create a master digital matte to cover the background of a largearea. “In that situation,” Longfellow explains, “Iwould create the matte in Photoshop and import that into After Effectsto fine-tune everything.”

In the production room at Cinetech, technicians inspect the originalstudio elements of the films to assess film base, shrinkage, and lengthof the film.

The appearance of grain can be reduced digitally, but involvesalteration rather than restoration. In order to smooth the grainpattern, Longfellow makes use of software from Digital Film Tools(DFT), a subsidiary company of Digital FilmWorks. “DFT [software]lets you apply a grain layer to the whole piece,” Longfellowsays. “If you try to apply a grain pattern to a small area, itwouldn't look right.”

Crisp recently finished the second restoration of On theWaterfront. The new elements can be used to strike prints, an HDversion, a DVD version, or any other format. But the task of restoringSony's library is far from complete. “We're dealing with decadesworth of material where people had no idea that that films had anafterlife, where nobody had any long-range plan.”

Crisp is optimistic that today's studio films will not end up insimilar condition. “I'm not aware of anyone not taking care offilm elements,” Crisp says. “People understand the need tostore them in conditions with the right temperature and humidity. Sonyhas three cold-storage units spread out over the country, and I knowthe studio makes every effort to make proper elements. I thinkeverybody today knows how important it is to make YCM B&Wseparation masters and store them correctly.”

Crisp's meticulous attitude is typical of people involved in filmrestoration, where the work is more than a business. With the growingdemand for films in various digital formats such as DVD and HD, thislabor of love is becoming increasingly viable from both a business andtechnical standpoint. Improved lab processing techniques and powerfuldigital tools will give new life to films that might otherwise be lost,a benefit that is clear to Longfellow. “We're working on a pieceof history,” he says. “It's a tremendous kick for me to bepart of that, to be able to say ‘I worked on On theWaterfront.’”

When the makers of the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys saw atheatrical release in the movie's future, they found themselves upagainst an increasingly common challenge. The film's material wasoriginated in a variety of formats — 16mm and Super 8 film, andvarious standard-def flavors of video — mastered using Avid,complete with composites, speed-ups, and slow-downs, then output tostandard 30 frame/60 field-per-second Digital Beta video. The team hada finished product for which the creative decisions had all been made,but getting it out to film would be a complex procedure.

Restored film is developed in Cinetech’s processingdepartment. Two B&W, two color negative, and two color positivemachines are used to process the film.

The project would have to be converted into a 24fps format so itcould be transferred to motion-picture film and projected to theatricalaudiences. The editor, Paul Crowder, along with producer Agi Orsi anddirector Stacy Peralta, considered a number of approaches, hoping toget a result that could be projected on film at 24fps, yet look likethe Digital Betacam version. Because their original source material hadbeen captured at different frame rates, transferred to video (filmmaterial using a 3:2 pull-down), and then subjected to speedmanipulation in Avid, traditional tape-to-film transfer could yieldblurry, streaky artifacts. The filmmakers turned to Sonic Foundry(Santa Monica, Calif.).

Founded in 1991 by Monty Schmidt and Curt Palmer, Sonic Foundryestablished itself as a media software company offering prosumerediting packages, such as an audio mixer called ACID and non-linearvideo editing system Vegas Video. The company also developed aproprietary technology ToonFIT, which has been used for TheSimpsons and King of the Hill. ToonFIT smoothes out some ofthe motion artifacts that can be introduced when animation isoriginally shot on twos and then subjected to a 3:2 pull-down. By usingthis technology to reconstruct frames out of fields, ToonFIT allows themovement on the final video output to appear smoother than it wouldotherwise.

Sonic Foundry advanced this frame interpolation technology anddeveloped C2 and 60/24, proprietary algorithms that construct a 24fpsimages out of 60fps video. “We remove redundant frames, repairthe 3:2 pull-down and build new frames out of the fields,” saysCaranza. In the case of Dogtown, the company output the newframes to D5 tape in the 1080 24p format. Finally, the D5 was sent toanother facility for a frame-to-frame, tape-to-film transfer.

Richard Greenberg, Sonic Foundry Media Services' vice president ofbusiness development, believes that Sonic Foundry's services andsoftware are important for preservation of video content. “Rightnow film is the only archival medium,” Greenberg says.“People talk about the shelf life of video as being ten yearsmore or less. We learned a lot with 2” with oxide coming off thetape. There have been improvements since then, but film negative isstill the only truly archival medium. Quality loss is a big problem inconverting some of that material. Sonic Foundry can help solve thoseproblems.”