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audience, looking at the curved screen.
•
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About
5 years ago Randy Gitsch and I brought to the
Widescreen Weekend events at
the National Media Museum in Bradford a few of the 70mm short subjects. The
6-track magnetic prints were certainly faded to the usual Eastman color
magenta, and we realized that at some point we should do a digital makeover
to protect the assets. Tom March and I went to the vaults last January to
pull the titles and examine them for overall condition. We could see that
the fading was even more severe that when the prints were shown a few years
back. Since no negatives were ever located we would have to relay on color
recovery techniques to try to rebuild back as much color as possible.
These three titles were, “Shellarama”, “Bridge To Space” and
“Concorde”. A similar remastering process was done on the Cinerama
version of
"Fortress of Peace" last year.
70mm
cases pulled from the vaults and labels to go to Fotokem for scanning. Image
by Tom March
We shipped the 70mm cases over to Vince Roth at Fotokem for cleaning and
the prep for the scanning work.
During the scanning some color was recovered with a one light adjustment to
several areas but another more extensive session by Fotokem’s colorist
Willie Lawton, on the DaVinci Resolve, would be required to do a full
scene-by-scene correction for the final.
Dave
Strohmaier examines the Shellarama Eastman color print. Image by Tom March
After scanning I would digitally “dust bust” each frame to clean up the
blotches, dirt and minimize any vertical scratches as well as the final
color adjustments. Meanwhile at End Point Audio expert sound technician Nick
Bergh was transferring the 6-track magnetic sound track directly from the
70mm print onto to digital files for a 5.1 mix. The owner of Audio
Mechanics, John Polito personally re mixed the shorts for our new 5.1 print
master.
Faded
Eastman color main title
While not the ideal situation reasonable color can be often achieved.
Some shots come out much better than others but the overall, while not
perfect, is very impressive considering the condition of the print source.
The eventual use for these 70mm shorts might well be as bonus extras for any
future Cinerama feature blu-ray releases such as "Russian Adventure",
"Best Of Cinerama" or perhaps "The Golden Head".
In our earlier research we contacted the archives at NASA to see if they had
any record of the title “Bridge to Space”. The archivist at NASA told
us he did not know this film existed and he was very interested in getting a
digital file for their archives as soon as possible. They now have a digital
file of the film.
Final
color and Smileboxing
The Digital Reconstruction
Reconstructed and Remasterd by
David Strohmaier
Produced by
Tom H. March
Scanned at Fotokem Film and Video
Remixed for 5.1 at
Audio Mechanics in Burbank, Ca.
70mm Print Source
Cinerama Inc.
Credits
Shellarama
Eastman Color section blow up
SHELLARAMA
Cinerama presents a Dimitri de Grunwald production in Super Technirama-70
Written and Directed by: Richard Cawson
Produced by: Dimitri De Grunwald
Photography by: Stanley Sayer
Editing by: Fred Burnley
Music by: Johnny Scott
Production: Roger Good
Sound editing: Norman Savage
Sound mixing: Gordon McCallum
Night photography: Eric Willmott
Technicolor - Technirama
RCA Westrex Recording
UK - 1965 - 16 minutes
Final
color and Smilebox
An
aerial scene from “Bridge To Space” in Smilebox
BRIDGE TO SPACE
Directed by
Robert Gaffney
Produced by
Charles R. Trieschmann
Edited by
Angeleo Ross, A.C.E.
Cinerama Inc. and Seneca Productions
Technicolor
A
scene from “Concorde”
CONCORDE
Written and Directed by
Pierre Jallaud
Produced by
Sylve Jallaud
Photography
Georges Barsky
Editing
Philippe Gosselet
An Objectifs Production
A montage of clips from each production on YouTube