I watched Robert Harris working on the BluRay/70mm restoration of The Godfather trilogy. After the
film was frame-by-frame touched up (by hand, I think in Korea), Harris and his assistant looked at
EVERY FRAME. Harris made comments, his assistant wrote them down, the comments went to the best of
the best touchup guys (I think in the US but maybe also in Korea), and the final corrections were
made. Bob's time wasn't cheap and neither was frame-by-frame restoration. But, get the BluRay and
look at the results.
Does any typical film restoration project have this kind of budget? I highly doubt it. I know in the
case of the 16mm films I had done via Telecine projector and DVD recorder, that was the absolute
outer limits of my budget. There was no way we were going to pay anything more for anything
labor-intensive or elaborate. I suspect this is the case with most film-to-digital projects, and I
would strongly recommend not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Get stuff transferred to
a usable format, especially if mass access is the goal. Work within your budget, don't worry if you
can't do the Ultimate Perfect Transfer.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 6:40 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Question re transferring 16 mm film
> On 02/04/2013, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>> Once such a film is transferred, what software is there for removing
>> scratches and such flaws? Last time I looked I could find nothing.
>>
> You can see the process in action in the mini-feature on restoration
> that comes with "Gone With the Wind" (and other movies) on Blu-Ray.
>
> Basically, each frame is treated with the same clone or healing tools
> that are used in Photoshop. So any software that can split the movie
> into single frames which can be imported into Photoshop would do.
>
> It is very labour intensive, which is why for instance most of the films
> restored and released by the British Film Institute do not have the
> marks removed.
>
> Regards
> --
> Don Cox
> [log in to unmask]
>
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