Blackmagic Design has announced that Goldcrest Post has utilized a Blackmagic Cintel Film Scanner for a major restoration project to upgrade asset formatting for all of Goldcrest Film’s prestigious library titles, which were scanned to Ultra HD 4K and remastered in 2K.
Led by Goldcrest’s CTO Laurent Treherne, the project involved remastering 16 of Goldcrest Film’s titles, including “Dance with a Stranger” (1985 ), “Absolute Beginners” (1986 ) and “White Mischief” (1987). “With an increase in the number of OTT services there is a growing demand for high quality film originated content,” Laurent begins.
Treherne goes on to explain that as well as meeting the clients’ demand for 4K quality content, the Cintel Film Scanner allowed Goldcrest Film to keep the restoration workflow within the group. “As with any restoration, we knew the project would entail numerous challenges. They included locating suitable source elements, repairing damage, identifying reference images for color grading and re-versioning picture and sound files into formats suitable for the modern consumer. The versatility and speed of the Blackmagic infrastructure helped us to address those challenges.”
A dedicated DaVinci Resolve workstation was set up alongside the Blackmagic Cintel Film Scanner in order to create a standalone, single workstation pipeline that would not impact on Goldcrest’s DI work. The film elements were inspected and cleaned in laboratory conditions, then each reel was scanned in 4K onto a dedicated high speed storage volume and conformed and reframed to 2K.
The files were dustbusted and then graded in DaVinci Resolve Studio. Finally the Goldcrest team rendered the DSM archive and the HD deliverable. “We deliver in HD ProRes HQ 422, as that’s the delivery requirement for multi title library distribution deals, however Ultra HD 4K is increasingly a consideration for clients, so it’s an important requisite, certainly for future sales strategies,” explains Treherne.
The Cintel’s performance has been incredibly beneficial from the outset of the project, in particular how the scanner was able to work with negative film splices. “What’s impressed us the most from day one has been the scanner’s performance with negative film splices. What would jump in the gate of other scanning devices simply flows through the Cintel without a hitch. This represents a considerable time and cost saving over standard workflows which tend to require numerous shot stabilization fixes to address such artifacts.
The Blackmagic workflow for scanning, conforming and grading is straightforward, flexible and a low cost way of approaching remastering whether used as a standalone scanner with a single operator, or in conjunction with complementary scanners,” concluded Goldcrest Post’s managing director, Patrick Malone. “We’ve been impressed by how much detail we’ve gotten from some of the more challenging 35mm picture elements, and the quality and speed of the Ultra HD scan from both negative and print have been excellent.”
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More