"Fortress of Peace"
70mm Remastering In 2K Digital |
Read more at in70mm.com The 70mm Newsletter
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Written by: Dave Strohmaier |
Date:
22.10.2013 |
70mm Title card from the film
One of the titles I was always interested in remastering was the Cinerama 20
minute short called "Fortress of Peace". I remembered it has some
wonderful aerials and a lot of action footage of the
Swiss Army training
exercises in the Alps.
A few weeks ago I had asked Andrew Oren at Fotokem’s large format department
if he could get me a good price on an HD telecine of the 70mm print. We had
no original negatives for this title in the vaults so the only option was a
faded print source.
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More in 70mm reading:
"Vigilant Switzerland" found in
Archives of the Swiss Army
Cinerama
Remaster
Credits for "Fortress of Peace"
Robert Gaffney, cinematographer
The M.C.S.-70 Process and
European Cinema of the 1960s
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Image from faded print
Andrew helped us out with the 70mm rate and we decided to proceed. There was
little funding left in the
Cinerama restoration grant budget so
Tom March and I
decided make up the difference on the more than reasonable quote to get the
job done. I took both existing 70mm prints from the vaults down to Todd-AO in Hollywood for a digital transfer from the
original 6 channel magnetic striped print. We brought both 70mm prints to
make sure to check that at least one of them would have a usable track. A
few days later I got a call from the guys at Todd AO transfer room and they
said the sound on the prints was fine and the new digital track was ready
for pick up.
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Internet link:
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dispokino.blogspot.dk
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Video
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L'armée à l'Expo 64
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Film
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Image of telecine color recovery from print
Now that I knew we had a good sound track I then dropped off both prints at
Fotokem where each print was inspected and hand cleaned. The determination
was that that print #2 was in the best shape as far as dirt and scratches
were concerned so it was to be our “hero” print source. Both prints had
faded at the same rate and were extremely pink, but no vinegar smell or warp
age was detected. The day was set for the telecine session and Robert
Tomaszewski was to be our colorist. We sampled multiple shots and were able
to get some very general preliminary color out of the pink pint images.
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Color recovery enhancement session final results
After the session Robert was going to work on the digital files further to
extract even better color with another session a few days later. Then
Fotokem called me in to see the results with Robert and I would say he got
at least 80 percent of the color back in most all shots. Robert and I both
noticed that much of the original photography was done on somewhat dull
cloudy days, which did add a lot of difficulty to the color recovery work
and digging out details in the shadows. I went into another session with him
a few days later and we tweaked further about 30 or more shots.
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Actual 70mm faded print color
The next part of the process was for me to take the files to my workstation,
where we are doing all the final finishing work on the
3-panel films, and
sync up the new picture to the track. This is where I do the final clean up
work such as “dust busting” flicker removal fixes, splice repair and any
further tweaks needed on the soundtrack. I think the results came out fine
considering what we had to work with.
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Color recovered in telecine session
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Color session Final results
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Credits at telecine
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Final results
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