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.”
First-Time Feature Directors Make Major Splash At AFI Fest, Generate Oscar Buzz
Two first-time feature directors who are generating Oscar buzz this awards season were front and center this past weekend at AFI Fest in Hollywood. Rachel Morrison, who made history as the first woman nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar---on the strength of Mudbound in 2018--brought her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios), to the festival on Sunday (10/27), and shared insights into the film during a conversation session immediately following the screening. This came a day after William Goldenberg, an Oscar-winning editor for Argo in 2013, had his initial foray into feature directing, Unstoppable (Amazon MGM Studios), showcased at the AFI proceedings. He too spoke after the screening during a panel discussion. The Fire Inside--which made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival--tells the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (portrayed by Ryan Destiny), a Black boxer from Flint, Mich., who trained to become the first woman in U.S. history to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport. She achieved this feat--with the help of coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry)--only to find that her victory at the Summer Games came with relatively little fanfare and no endorsement deals. So much for the hope that the historic accomplishment would be a ticket out of socioeconomic purgatory for Shields and her family. It seemed like yet another setback in a cycle of adversity throughout Shields’ life but she persevered, going on to win her second Gold Medal at the next Olympics and becoming a champion for gender equality and equitable pay for women in sports. Shields has served as a source of inspiration for woman athletes worldwide--as well as to the community of... Read More