China News Service, Beijing, December 14 (Ren Siyu) "A big river is wide and the wind blows the fragrance of rice and flowers on both sides..." In 1956, the black and white feature film "Shangganling" shot by Changchun Film Studio was released with the episode "My Motherland" Become a golden song in the hearts of generations.
Recently, viewers are expected to enjoy this classic film again in theaters.
From December 10th to 30th, the National Art Film Exhibition Union held "Collection: Chinese Classic Film Exhibition" in 11 cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing. The "Dead Trees in Spring" and "Five Golden Flowers" collected and restored by the China Film Archive "Li Shuangshuang", "Icing on the Cake", "Shangganling", "Heroic Sons and Daughters", "Blessings", "Longxugou", "Crows and Sparrows" and "Early Spring February" 10 domestic films returned to the screen.
"It is the first time to watch a restored version of an old movie on the big screen. The classics will never go out of style!" Someone commented.
How are old movies repaired?
What are the criteria for film restoration?
Hu Xiaobin, film restorer at the China Film Archive, answered these questions.
Source: China Film Archive Public Account.
How to repair old movies?
In the movie "Paradise Cinema", there was a scene that made countless viewers heartache: the film in the projection room suddenly caught fire, and the little boy Duoduo rushed into the fire and rescued the old projectionist Efido who fell on the ground, but Efido never watched it again. Gone.
In the film age, the storage of many old movies is just that fragile.
The early film material was nitric acid film base, which is very easy to ignite spontaneously. As long as the temperature exceeds 40 degrees, there will be a risk of spontaneous combustion. Later, the nitric acid film base was replaced by acetic acid film base and polyester film base, but the danger of acidification and deterioration still exists .
Time has left its mark on the film, and what is even more frightening is that some classic films may "disappear forever".
As a result, a group of film restorers who love movies are rushing to rescue them before they disappear, preserving the precious memories of light and shadow.
According to Hu Xiaobin, the film restoration process is usually divided into three steps: physical restoration, digital restoration and artistic restoration.
Physical repair mainly refers to the repair and cleaning of the film.
The China Film Archive has two film databases located in Beijing and Xi’an, which store film copies and film negatives respectively. At the foot of Lintongli Mountain in Xi’an, a team has been engaged in film restoration work since 1972. Inherited to this day.
Source: Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
After the physical restoration is completed, the film restoration engineer starts digital restoration, first converting the image on the film into a digital file by scanning, and then step by step to deal with the problems of color loss, scratches, mildew, jitter, flicker, noise and so on.
Some people may ask, can the sound be repaired?
In fact, as an audiovisual art, sound restoration is also a particularly critical part of film.
The better the picture is restored, the thinner the mono sound on the original old movie film will appear. In order to give the audience a better audio-visual effect, the restorers will specially produce 5.1-channel surround sound for individual films, and will Some movies add sound effects, such as footsteps, door sounds, and water sounds.
In addition, some films may appear to be broken and missing. The picture can be compensated by calculating the motion trajectory between the previous and subsequent frames, but the loss of the audio track is irreversible.
Hu Xiaobin said that in recent years, the Film Archive has combined with Communication University of China and Dongguan Institute of Technology to use artificial intelligence to carry out special research on sound restoration, and is trying to combine new technologies to overcome problems that could not be solved before.
Source: Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
The art of "repair the old as the old"
When the physical restoration and digital restoration are over, film restoration will reach a higher level: artistic restoration.
The brighter the picture, the more vivid it is, even if it is well-fixed?
In fact, film restoration, like the restoration of cultural relics, has an important artistic criterion-"Repair the old as the old", and try to restore the film to the greatest extent possible.
Therefore, the film restorer will invite the main creators of the film to guide the scene as much as possible, "Only they know what the film was like at the time. Some films are limited by conditions. We can make up for the regrets of the year at this stage."
When restoring "Ben Ming Year", the archive invited director Xie Fei to restore the film's style according to the original creative ideas.
If there is no way to invite the main creator of the year, the restoration engineer will have to look through a lot of graphic materials, find the director's explanation and photography explanation at the time, and follow their ideas to restore.
For example, when restoring New China’s first color feature film "Blessing", because the negatives were well preserved, the scanned pictures of the film were very gorgeous, but "Blessing" was a tragic story. The restorers found the photographic explanation of the year and it said " Light colors should be preferred".
There is also a paragraph describing a scene in the movie. There is a light beam on the protagonist Xianglin’s face, which should have a pale feeling, but the scan was illuminated. Therefore, the restoration team followed the opinion of the time. With a little bit of grading, Professor Li Yizhong, the son of director Sang Hu, also recognized it very much.
Before the restoration of "Blessing".
Source: China Film Archive Public Account.
"Blessing" after restoration.
Source: China Film Archive Public Account.
Film restoration not only has a traditional photofinishing team, but also a digital restoration team, which requires the close cooperation of scanners, restorers, colorists, sound and picture synthesizers, and output personnel; it is also a time-consuming and labor-intensive work. A 90-minute movie has about 120,000 to 140,000 frames, and a restorer can restore an average of 5,000-6,000 frames a day, which is 4 minutes of images.
On August 20th, the China Film Archive received the task of repairing "Shangganling", which was completed in the early morning of October 25 under two shifts of 24 hours.
"We used the original material of the "Shangganling" painting to repair. The original painting is the first version of the material after the director finished shooting. The sound is also the original sound, which is also the best quality version." Hu Xiaobin said.
In addition to being comprehensive, film restoration is also a meticulous task. The damage of each film is different, such as the white flocculation of "Lin's Shop", the serious fading of "Liberated China", and the "Blessing" For lenses with defocusing and ghosting, the restoration engineer compared many repair software and found that if the defocus problem is solved, there will be a problem of black face, and if the problem of black face is solved, there will be a problem of large noise. This requires patience one by one. The project is completed.
"Lin's Shop" before restoration.
Source: China Film Archive Public Account.
After restoration of "Lin's Shop".
Source: China Film Archive Public Account.
The 4K repair version that viewers often hear nowadays has higher requirements for image quality and details. The file size of 4K is 4 times that of 2K. The file size of a repaired 4K movie is about 20TB. The transmission output and computer natural calculation It takes more time, which also makes the restoration time of the restorers more compressed.
"A race against time"
Film carries the beautiful memories of many filmmakers and audiences, and its biggest risk is that it will deteriorate over time. Even if it is stored in a standard environment, it can only delay the time of deterioration. Therefore, some people say that the work of film restoration is "with time race".
At the end of 2006, the China Film Archive launched the digital repair project of film archives and is committed to completing the restoration of tens of thousands of existing old films in China. So far, more than 3,100 films have been restored.
"The earliest film restored by the China Film Archive is "Labor's Love" in 1922, and it is also the earliest film in our collection. It is the "Treasure of the Town Hall"." Hu Xiaobin said.
Fortunately, the persistence of film restorers year after year has begun to be seen by more and more people.
In recent years, major international film festivals have opened repair film units. On weekdays, it is often difficult to find a ticket for the exhibition of repair films.
In 2019, the 4K restored version of "The Horse Thief" using high frame rate restoration technology was selected as the classic unit of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival.
With the development of technology, the use of artificial intelligence technology in repair has become more common.
For example, this year, the Film Archive was commissioned by Central Video to use artificial intelligence coloring and repairing technology to complete the coloring of the whole piece of the song "My Motherland" of "Shangganling". "Lin's Shop" also used artificial intelligence to repair a large number of films. White flocculent spots.
"My Motherland" color 4K UHD restoration version.
Source: Video screenshot.
"My Motherland" color 4K UHD restoration version.
Source: Video screenshot.
However, artificial intelligence cannot solve all problems. After the machine calculates naturally, some motion shots will be broken. "There is a snow scene. After the artificial intelligence calculates, the white floccules are gone, and the snow is gone. These are only for us. The restorer repaired it frame by frame".
The film restoration business will still be a somewhat long relay and inheritance process.
Hu Xiaobin said that at present, apart from the graduate students of the China Film Archive who just opened the restoration major, there is no school to teach the related knowledge of film restoration. A lot of knowledge is accumulated and learned in the future work. Design, art, computer, post-production and other fields must be understood. "The most important thing is the craftsmanship, and you must endure loneliness."
(Finish)