The Digital & Analog Argument in Film Restoration

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DVD

Wrinkle cream for old movies

Modern technology can make classic films look even better than new. But is that really a good idea?

By Bill Desowitz, Special to The Times

When Errol Flynn makes his rousing entrance in Sherwood Forest to exchange slings and arrows with Basil Rathbone in Warner Home Video's DVD of "The Adventures of Robin Hood," it's hard to believe you're looking at the 1938 swashbuckler. The Technicolor image is vibrant, sharp and clean.

Like some other Hollywood classics now out in pristine form on DVD, "Robin Hood" reveals just how far digital image processing has come in making movie classics look as good as new.

But these technological advances have brought on a firestorm of controversy. On one side are those who want to use all the tools the digital revolution provides to make classic movies look sharp and clean. They're opposed by a contingent of preservationists, cinematographers and scholars who believe that digital cleanup has gone too far, replacing the original film look with an overly processed one more in keeping with the video aesthetic.

It's a hard-fought high-stakes debate, one that's accentuated now that DVDs have surpassed video as the top home entertainment format, penetrating 50% of American homes, with 50 million players sold in only six years.

No wonder studios are mining their film libraries aggressively — Warner Bros. alone will release more than 100 titles within the next year — relying on a growing number of vendors to supplement the work of their own technicians.

Anyone who's endured the scratches, audible pops and faded or bleached colors of ragged old celluloid prints — and videos and DVDs made from them — may be excused for asking how it's possible for a movie to look too clean. By removing all or most of the fine grain, critics answer, referring to the particles of silver crystals that are the basic units of a cinematic image.

This grain is often eliminated in converting film stock to digital images for DVDs. Critics argue that eliminating the grain flattens and homogenizes the image, creating an artificial look devoid of dynamic range and photographic richness.

Sound familiar? That's reminiscent of the analog-digital debate that has been going on in the audio community ever since CDs gained ascendancy over LPs in the '80s. Only it's a much more complicated issue in the visual world.

"I don't mind cleaning dirt and scratches, but I hate it when they take away the grain," complains restorer Robert Harris ("Lawrence of Arabia" and "Vertigo"). "It gives you a very pretty video image, but if you look at it closely, it's soft because you can't add information where there is none.... But film grain is not the enemy. It is the very center of matter in the film world. And a DVD does not have to become cleaner than an operating room.

"The question is: Do you have the right to change something that is someone else's work? And if you do, then why not take all of the Seurat works and homogenize them? Take all the dots out and turn them into pretty pictures."

Harris prefers the light digital touch applied to many other vintage classics that still retain their original cinematic integrity on DVD: "Like Fox has done with 'Sunrise' and Warner Bros. has done with 'Once Upon a Time in America' and Paramount has done with 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral' and Sony has done with 'In a Lonely Place.' "

John Lowry, founder of Burbank-based Lowry Digital Images, argues that film grain is the enemy of compression — the process of condensing the visual image into a digital form so it can fit on a DVD — which is an essential part of the digital mastering process.

First, he says, you have the buildup of grain over multiple generations of film duplicating to contend with, which softens the image and adds undesirable contrast. On top of that, compression has difficulty dealing with fine grain, often turning it into distracting digital anomalies that are not part of the original image.

Besides, Lowry adds, viewing a movie at home is very different from seeing it projected in a theater, and certain accommodations have to be made in digital processing and mastering, even in trying to remain faithful to the original look.

"I take on the problem children," Lowry explains, referring to films with the worst elements or extreme difficulties most in need of digital restoration. His goal is not only to clean up these films for DVD, but also to make new negatives and prints from his digital masters, which Paramount did with both Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" and William Wyler's "Roman Holiday," which were released last year.

Aside from the Wilder and Wyler movies, Lowry has worked on more than 60 others, including "North by Northwest," "Dr. Zhivago," "Citizen Kane," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Giant" and the upcoming "Indiana Jones" trilogy and "Casablanca."

Armed with 300 Mac G4 computers that scan images continuously, Lowry Digital is at the forefront of digital processing, using tools originally adopted for the visual effects industry to remove blemishes that detract from the viewing experience. In such a crowded and competitive retail market, no one can afford to be left behind in the digital dust.

Over at Disney, the studio "dust-busts" backgrounds while isolating animated characters to protect them. Then they perform digital painting, bringing out colors "better than original technology permitted," says Jeffrey Miller, Disney's executive vice president for worldwide post production and operations. Even on such newer titles as "The Lion King," which makes its DVD debut on Oct. 7, these tools can better reproduce what the animators envisioned.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros., which is releasing "The Adventures of Robin Hood" on Sept. 30, makes use of "Ultra-Resolution" software that scans original three-strip Technicolor records directly into the computer and electronically combines them. This is followed by precise re-registration, color fixing and thorough cleaning, making evergreens such as "Singin' in the Rain" and "Robin Hood" look as if they were shot last week.

"We're at the point where we can capture the full resolution of the original," boasts Ned Price, Warner Bros.' vice president of mastering and technical operations. "We're pushing to the point where you can see something potentially better than a photochemical film print."

Schawn Belston, Fox's director of preservation, says his job is to restore, not improve. He not only had a hand in restoring (in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Film Institute) "Sunrise," the landmark 1927 silent by F.W. Murnau, he also helped supervise the DVD transfer. "As far as grain and inherent camera damage, those sorts of things we leave in intentionally because they were part of the original artistic achievement of the picture."

A case in point: The title cards in "Sunrise" contain artifacts that look like flecks of dust that could easily have been removed digitally; closer inspection reveals them to be subtle bits of cloudy movement.

As a rule, Sony, Universal and MGM also believe in light digital manipulation, as does Criterion, a prestigious indie specializing in such foreign DVDs as François Truffaut's "Antoine Doinel Collection." These studios would rather not get rid of all of the physical defects at the expense of some of the original character of the films.

But other studios favor using digital technology more aggressively. Paramount's Phil Murphy, senior vice president of TV Group Operations, says, "Given the options available and condition of the film elements [on 'Sunset Boulevard' and 'Roman Holiday'], we thought digital restoration was worth exploring on these two titles." Murphy points to positive reviews and brisk DVD sales as validation that he made the right choice.

Certainly there is no love lost between Lowry and the preservationists.

"We are trying to remove a couple of generations of degradation that happens because of the [aging process]," Lowry notes. "And if the preservationists don't like it, they have a problem. They are preserving something, but they are not improving the result. Every time they make yet another generation copy, they soften the image and add more grain. It destroys the film over time."

Critic and historian Leonard Maltin, who believes all of this is done with the best of intentions, nonetheless singles out "Citizen Kane" as a case in which the film grain assisted the visual effect. " 'Kane' is so full of set shots, most of them generated on an optical printer, that they counted on a certain amount of graininess to help camouflage the illusion. You remove all of the grain, as they can do miraculously well, and you also expose some of the illusion."

Cinematographer John Bailey, who provides audio commentary on the "Sunrise" DVD, says, "It's a very thorny issue. The problem is, it's an intersection of aesthetics and technology. It seems to me that the impetus on the part of people that are controlling it is technology rather than aesthetics. And the ambivalence that everyone seems to have is key here."

Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch ("The English Patient") says you can go too far with grain manipulation, but he still believes, "If we were able to bring the original filmmakers back and gave them the option, I'm sure they would choose the cleaner, less jittery, less dirty, less grainy option."

On "Giant," George Stevens' 1956 Texas saga, which Lowry admits was his toughest job, the next best thing was bringing in the director's son, George Stevens Jr. "We spent over a year on it," Stevens says.

"The first pass came out and it looked like a different movie. Most of the shadows had been bleached out, and we had to go back and recapture the mood that was in the lighting.

"If I hadn't been around, nobody would've known what 'Giant' was supposed to look like.

"That's the dangerous thing of using technology without a clear point of reference.

Who was to know that the director intended to have those deep shadows?

"Technicians aren't always well versed in the subtleties of lighting and sound, which are so important in my father's films."

Edited July 4, 2003 by Mnytime