Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Film Restoration pp 71–127Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Technique of Film Restoration

  • Chapter

  • 246 Accesses

Abstract

The restoration of audiovisual records is a relatively young set of practices, compared to those used to restore comparable cultural artefacts, notably archival written documents, works of fine art, sculptures, museological artefacts and buildings. Its proponents also claim that it is a fundamentally unique one. A ‘charter on film restoration’ endorsed by FIAF in 2011 claims that it is

different from all restoration in other fields, where a tradition is already established. Whereas those traditions typically imply work on an original artefact, film restoration implies duplication and/or reconstruction.1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Andrew Oddy (ed.), The Art of the Conservator, Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution Press (1992), pp. 8–9.

    Google Scholar 

  2. For an account by restoration producer James Katz of the use of the stereo session recordings, see Dan Auiler, Vertigo: The Making of a Modern Classic, New York, St. Martin’s Press (2000), pp. 197–198.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Barbara Klinger, Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies and the Home, Berkeley, University of California Press (2006), p. 93 — my emphasis.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Frederick Wasser, Veni, Vidi, Video: The Hollywood Empire and the VCR, Austin, University of Texas Press (2001), pp. 45–46.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Patrick Russell, ‘Truth at 10 Frames per Second? Archiving Mitchell and Kenyon’ in Russell, Simon Popple and Vanessa Toulmin (eds.), The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon: Edwardian Britain on Film, London, British Film Institute (2004), p. 13.

    Google Scholar 

  6. For an account of the film’s rediscovery, see Lord Tenby, ‘Foreword’ in David Berry and Simon Horrocks (eds.), David Lloyd George: The Movie Mystery, Cardiff, University of Wales Press (1998), p. xi–xii.

    Google Scholar 

  7. For an account of the rediscovery of Beyond the Rocks, see Mark-Paul Meyer, ‘Korrels en pixels: innovatieve technologieën in filmconservering’, CR: interdisciplinair vakblad voor conservering en restauratie, vol. 5, no. 4 (2004), pp. 26–31.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Craig Hight, ‘Forgotten Silver’ in Rebecca Beirne and James E. Bennett (eds.), Making Film and Television Histories: Australia and New Zealand, London, I.B. Tauris (2011), pp. 270–273.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Ray Edmondson, ‘The Last Film Search’, in Roger Smither and Catherine Surowiec (eds.), This Film is Dangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film, Brussels, FIAF (2002), p. 397.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Janet Staiger, ‘The Politics of Film Canons’, Cinema Journal, vol. 24, no. 3 (1985), pp. 4–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Penelope Houston, Keepers of the Frame: The Film Archives, London, British Film Institute (1994), p. 131.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Ian Christie, Arrows of Desire: The Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, London, Waterstone & Co. Ltd. (1985), passim.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Christie, Arrows of Desire, 2nd revised edition, London, Faber and Faber (1994), p. 101.

    Google Scholar 

  14. ‘Disney Classic Snow White Undergoes Complete Digital Restoration at Kodak Facility’, PR Newswire, 24 June 1993, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1–13176723.html; John Aldred, ‘Disney’s Snow White: The Story Behind the Picture’, Association of Motion Picture Sound website, undated article, http://www.amps.net/newsletters/issue24/24_snowhite.htm, both retrieved 3 November 2011; Bob Fisher, ‘Off to Work We Go: The Digital Restoration of Snow White’, American Cinematographer, vol. 74, no. 9 (September 1993), pp. 48–54.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Paul Read, ‘Digital Restoration of Archive Film Images’, Image Technology, vol. 78, no. 8 (1996), p. 9.

    Google Scholar 

  16. For more on the VPF, see Leo Enticknap, ‘Electronic Enlightenment or the Digital Dark Age?’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 26, no. 5 (October 2009), pp. 415–6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Majed Chambah, ‘More than Color Constancy: Nonuniform Color Cast Corrections’, Computer Vision and Graphics, vol. 32 (2006), pp. 785–6.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Guy Barefoot, ‘Autobiography and the Autobiographical in the Bill Douglas Trilogy’, Biography, vol. 29, no. 1 (Winter 2006), p. 23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Paul Read and Mark-Paul Meyer, Restoration of Motion Picture Film, Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann (2000), p. 71.

    Google Scholar 

  20. For more on the early development of ultrasonic cleaning, see Sidney B. Solow, ‘Milestones in the History of the Motion Picture Film Laboratory’, Journal of the SMPTE, vol. 85, no. 1 (1 July 1976), pp. 505–514.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. For a description of laboratory film cleaning techniques, see Dominic Case, Film Technology in Post-Production, 2nd ed., Focal Press (2001), pp. 84–87.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Mike Ruffolo, ‘Film Cleaning, Past, Present and Future’ — transcript of a presentation to the annual conference of the Association of Film and Video Laboratories, 29 May 2008, p. 2 — www.acvl.org/pdf/mruffalo.pdf, retrieved 2 August 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  23. For a history of the use of fluorocarbons in industry more generally, see Karen T. Lifkin, Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation, New York, Columbia University Press (1994), pp. 58–61.

    Google Scholar 

  24. John P. Pytlak and Dale R. Morrison, ‘Particle Transfer Roller Film Cleaning Experience’, Image Technology, vol. 75, no. 5 (June 1993), pp. 124–126.

    Google Scholar 

  25. For a full account of the duplication stages in a traditional, photochemical post-production workflow, see L. Bernard Happé, Basic Motion Picture Technology (3rd ed., London, Focal Press, 1975), pp. 280–288.

    Google Scholar 

  26. MoMA’s senior curator, Eileen Bowser, stated in 1977 that ‘We acquired a 35 mm nitrate print from Pathé News Inc. in 1944 and have no knowledge of its previous history’ — see André Gaudreault, ‘Detours in Film Narrative: The Development of Cross-Cutting’, Cinema Journal, vol. 19, no. 1 (Autumn 1979), p 56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company, Berkeley, University of California Press (1991), p. 232.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Charles Musser, ‘Historiographic Method and the Study of Early Cinema’, Cinema Journal, vol. 44, no. 1 (Autumn 2004), p.102.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. However, there have been instances of archivists designing individual, bespoke printers from scratch for specific restoration applications. During the 1950s, Harold Brown of the UK’s National Film Archive built what was claimed to be the first bespoke step printer for the archival duplication of Lumière elements with non-standard perforations, using parts cannibalised from a projector and a children’s construction set — see Clyde Jeavons’s obituary of Brown in the Journal of Film Preservation, vol. 79/80 (April 2009), p. 107. In 1952, Kemp Niver developed and built an optical printer to duplicate elements from the Library of Congress paper print collection — see Anthony Slide, Nitrate Won’t Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United States Jefferson, MD, McFarland (2001), p. 66.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Charles R. Fordyce et al., ‘Shrinkage Behaviour of Motion Picture Film’, Journal of the SMPTE, vol. 64, no. 2 (1 February 1955), pp. 62–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. H. Mario Raimondo Souto, Motion Picture Photography: A History, Jefferson, MD, McFarland (2007), p. 124.

    Google Scholar 

  32. For example, the technique is described in Hurter and Driffield, ‘Measuring the Density of Negatives’, Photography, 18 August 1890, reprinted in W.B. Ferguson (ed.), The Photographic Researches of Ferdinand Hurter and Vero C. Driffield, London, Royal Photographic Society (1920), pp. 133–138.

    Google Scholar 

  33. J.L. Crabtree, ‘The Motion Picture Film Laboratory’, originally published in Journal of the SMPE, vol. 64 (January 1955); reprinted in Raymond Fielding (ed.), A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television, Berkeley, University of California Press (1968), p. 158.

    Google Scholar 

  34. For a description of 1990s laboratory quality control, see Dave Rogers, ‘Chemical Control of High Speed Developers’, Image Technology, vol. 79, no. 6 (June 1997), pp. 5–8.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Baynham Honri, ‘British Film Studios, 1900–1920: A Technical Survey’ in Rachael Low, The History of the British Film, 1914–1918, London, George Allen and Unwin (1950), p. 245.

    Google Scholar 

  36. For a full account of the discovery of this problem and the campaign by prominent filmmakers for the development of fade-resistant colour film stocks, see Henry Wilhelm and Carol Brower, The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures, New York, Preservation Publishing Company (1993), pp. 305–307.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Ulrich Ruedel, ‘The Technicolor Notebooks at the George Eastman House’, Film History, vol. 21, no. 1 (2009), p. 50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. This technique is described in C. Bradley Hunt, ‘Corrective Reproduction of Faded Color Motion Picture Prints’, SMPTE Journal, vol. 90, no. 7 (1981), pp. 591–596.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Sean McKee and Victor Panov, ‘Archiving Color Images to Single Strip Black-and-White 35 mm Film — The Visionary Archive Process’, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, vol. 120, no. 1 (2011), pp. 24–28.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Steven Ascher and Edward Pincus, The Filmmaker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for the Digital Age, Harmondsworth, Penguin (1999), p. 481.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Gordon E. Moore, ‘Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits’, Electronics, vol. 38, no. 8 (19 April 1965), pp. 4–7.

    Google Scholar 

  42. John Belton, ‘Painting by the Numbers: The Digital Intermediate’, Film Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 3 (Spring 2008), p. 58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. For a history of the emergence and use of personal computing technology in moving image post-production, see Brian McKernan, Digital Cinema: The Revolution in Cinematography, Postproduction and Distribution, New York, McGraw Hill (2005), pp. 91–92.

    Google Scholar 

  44. For more on DPX, see Glenn Kennel, Color and Mastering for Digital Cinema, Oxford, Focal Press (2007), pp. 95–96.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Giovanna Fossati, From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press (2007), pp. 239–240.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Peter Schallauer, Axel Pinz and Werner Haas, ‘Automatic Restoration Algorithms for 35 mm Film’, Videre: Journal of Computer Vision Research, vol. 1, no. 3 (Summer 1999), pp. 64–66.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Lindsay Kistler Mattock, ‘From Film Restoration to Digital Emulation: The Archival Code of Ethics in the Age of Digital Reproduction’, Journal of Information Ethics, vol. 19, no. 1 (Spring 2010), pp. 74–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. For a description of a typical audio post-production workflow in a typical feature film production from the 1950s to the 1990s, see Case, op. cit., pp. 142–153. For more detail on the sound editing and mixing in an analogue workflow using magnetic film, see John Burder, The Technique of Editing 16 mm Films, 5th ed., London, Focal Press (1988), pp. 72–100.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Halsey A. Frederick, ‘Recent Advances in Wax Recording’, Transactions of the SMPE, vol. 12, no. 35 (1928), p. 722.

    Google Scholar 

  50. For a detailed account of the origins and development of optical sound recording technologies, see John G. Frayne et al., ‘A Short History of Motion Picture Sound Recording in the United States’, SMPTE Journal, vol. 85, no. 7 (1976), pp. 515–528.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Peter Copeland, Manual of Analogue Sound Restoration Techniques, London, The British Library (2008), pp.14–15.

    Google Scholar 

  52. For example, see Bernard Brown, Talking Pictures, London, Pitman (1932), pp. 194–254

    Google Scholar 

  53. and Pierre Hérmardinquer, Pierre, Le cinématographe sonore, Paris, Librairie de L’Enseignement Technique (1934), pp. 56–74.

    Google Scholar 

  54. Robert Gitt and John Belton, ‘Bringing Vitaphone Back to Life’, Film History, vol. 5, no. 3 (1993), p.270.

    Google Scholar 

  55. An account of the growth of consumer ‘home cinema’ hardware can be found in Barbara Klinger, Beyond the Multiplex (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2006), pp. 75–85; though it should be noted that it is somewhat prejudiced against what the author regards as the stereotypically ‘technophile’, usually male enthusiast, who prefers intellectually shallow ‘special effects-laden’ action and adventure films, and dismisses arthouse titles (she cites Annie Hall as an example) as failing to exploit the owner’s audio-visual hardware to sufficient effect (pp. 76–78).

    Google Scholar 

  56. Steven Ricci, ‘Saving, Rebuilding or Making: Archival (Re) Constructions in Moving Image Archives’, The American Archivist, vol. 71, no. 2 (2008), p. 442.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, UK

    Leo Enticknap

Authors
  1. Leo Enticknap
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2013 Leo Enticknap

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Enticknap, L. (2013). The Technique of Film Restoration. In: Film Restoration. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137328724_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation