OTHER TECH

What do you do when you restore a film?We start by reducing the amount of grain an d stabilizing the image, getting rid of the jitter, weave, and flicker. Film is a relatively delicate medium, and no matter how carefully you handle it, it will always collect a little more dirt and a few more scratches and even tears. Mildred Pierce had some terrible chemical deterioration. We're able to apply filtering techniques to remove all these problems and fix all kinds of other things that are wrong with the image.

Because you're working digitally?Well, when you use a computer, if you can understand the problem, it's always solvable.

What made you abandon traditional photo chemical restoration methods?With those restorations, you take the original camera negative, clean it up, and make another copy. I'm absolutely against that because it doesn't do the film any favors. When you use an analog process, you lose information with every generation of film. Cleaning and making another copy also makes the image grainier and much softer. In the older films, it also adds a bit of contrast, which blocks up the black and the white areas. That's the toughest thing to fix.

Sometimes you're forced to work with duplicate negatives because that's all there is. That was the case with Sunset Boulevard and Roman Holiday . But I always go back to the earliest possible element - even if it's severely damaged - and make the scan from that because we can fix damage digitally, but if the resolution is gone, you're in trouble. I want to capture everything that's there and make sure it's held for posterity. All of the Bond film restorations were scanned from final-cut camera negatives, and at 4K, the pictures are just stunning.

And from the digital negatives you can output to film or down-res for HDTV, high-def DVD, digital cinema, or standard DVD?Yes.

Presumably, since they contain everything that's on the film negatives, the digital negatives could also be used as a source for any future ultra-high-def formats?Well, in all the measurements I've done, I've yet to see much information on a film right up there at the 4K level - it usually rolls off between 3 and 4K. We've experimented at 6K, but, frankly, it's pointless on a standard 35mm film frame until there are better camera lenses and film stocks.

Were all those classics that you helped restore done at 4K?We started out working at standard-definition on films like North by Northwest, Now Voyager, and Citizen Kane. Then we upgraded the image quality with our first high-def movies, which were Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Giant. Our first 2K movies were Roman Holiday and Sunset Boulevard. Now we do most of our transfers at high-def and 2K, but we also do a whole range of movies in 4K.

Does that include THX 1138, George Lucas's first film, which is just coming out on DVD?No, that was done in high-def.

Because it didn't have enough detail to warrant a 4K scanning?My guess was that it would make a reasonable 2K scan. Since THX 1138 was shot in Techniscope, which is half the height of a 35mm negative, 2K could capture all the resolution. Only the best-looking films have image resolution between 3 and 4K.