HPA Tech Retreat: Panel Discussion Focuses on Film Restoration

  • “Libraries age; we have to become advocates for the library,” urged Sara Duran-Singer, VP studio operations at Disney during an HPA Tech Retreat panel on remastering and restoration.
  • “In a perfect world we would be scanning everything at 4K,” she said. “The reality is there are budget constraints.”
  • Duran-Singer noted that Disney has three levels of remastering processes for its library titles, and the highest category of films will be restored and remastered in 4K. She noted that in addition to uses such as Blu-ray and broadcast, Disney has also converted some of these titles to 3D. She cited as examples the 3D conversions of “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King” and “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
  • Before-and-after clips of 4K restorations of “Lawrence of Arabia” (from Sony Pictures Entertainment) and “Pollyanna” (from Disney) were screened as part of the session.
  • “There are tools that make the sum of the storytelling process potentially better,” said Garrett Smith, commenting on the protection of the vision of the filmmakers.
  • He proposed an API that would “track the filmmakers vision and plug it into the database of the future.”
  • Ron Burdett, GM, DI restoration and mastering at Technicolor Cahuenga, moderated the session. Lou Levinson and Josh Pines additionally made presentations.
  • During the wrap-up of the day — dedicated to the topic of “snowflake” workflows — members noted that take-aways include the fact that moving data is a key technical challenge and the iPad is becoming an increasingly important tool in production, perhaps “more popular than the craft service truck.”

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