La subetapa de conceptualización

First of all it is important to define what it is meant here by film restoration.

Paolo Cherchi Usai gives the following definition in his seminal book, Silent Cinema. An Introduction:

RESTORATION is the set of technical, editorial and intellectual proce-dures aimed at compensating for the loss or degradation of the moving image artifact, thus bringing it back to a state as close as possible to its original condition. (2000: 66)

The definition can be further specified, as in the Restoration of Motion Picture Film, edited by Paul Read and Mark-Paul Meyer:

When we speak […] about restoration we mean the whole spectrum of film duplication, from the most simple duplication with a minimum of interventions up to the most complex ones with a maximum of

manipu-| 71 lations. Since every duplication procedure has some decision moments

which may influence the quality of the final product, it is important that certain principles are respected. For instance, restoration implies that it is not sufficient simply to transfer the information on a film to another carrier, which could involve video transfer as well, but to maintain as much as possible the original format of the film, in particular 35mm and 16mm cinematographic film. (Read, Meyer, 2000: 1)

In line with the above, film restoration in this book defines all kind of actions that are undertaken with the objective of bringing an archival film back to a form that is as close as possible to the original. To this I would like to add that a necessary requirement for a restoration to be complete is also to be in a form that can be shown to an audience. A restored film that cannot be seen, because, for instance, the restored preservation element (e.g. a new negative) has not been copied into a projection format, would rather fall in the category of long-term preservation than in that of restoration.

Note that I consider restoration all those cases in which a new copy is made from the original. Indeed, with film, differently than with art restora-tion, a copy needs to be made in the restoration process since original arti-facts are too fragile to be projected without the risk of further damage.⁷⁴

But what should be considered “the original” of a film? Several answers are possible, depending, for example, if one considers the philological or textual level (e.g. the editing of the film, the title cards, or the credits), or the material level (e.g. the 35mm celluloid film negative the film has been shot on, or the only surviving 9.5mm reduction of a film originally shot on 35mm, or the original tints). To restore a film being true to the original can mean a whole spectrum of different things. On the textual level, for example, the film as it was shown at its premiere can be considered as original as the film the director originally wanted before it was altered by the production company or cut by the censorship before the premiere. When considering film as a mate-rial artifact, the original black and white camera negative of a silent film can be considered as original as the derived film print in which colors were added, by stencil, tinting or toning. The discussion on the original in restoration is central to film archival practice and needs a broader reflection. In Chapter Two, the framework “film as original“ will be proposed, indeed, as one of the theoretical approaches to film archival practice.

From my position as an archivist, I look at the question of formats from a different perspective than Read and Meyer. Whereas in their opinion a restoration should “maintain as much as possible the original format of the film”, I argue that maintaining the original film’s look is more important than remaining true to the original format. For instance, if a digital copy of a film

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could reproduce (simulate) the original characteristics of an obsolete 35mm color system better than a copy on contemporary 35mm color film stock, I would opt for the digital copy. Indeed, if digital means can help restorers to better simulate the original film look, in my view they should be considered as suitable as photochemical ones, not only for restoration but also for showing the restored image on a screen. The simulation potential of digital means will be thoroughly discussed in Chapter Two as one of the concepts at work in film archival practices.

In the last decade, digital technology has proven to be an effective new tool for film restoration. In case of damage to a film that involves the loss of part of the image, for example scratches in the emulsion, while photochemi-cal restoration is not effective, digital techniques can be used to replace the missing part. In such cases, digital technology enables restorers to do things that were impossible before.

“With great power comes great responsibility”, as the uncle of Peter Park-er says in Sam Raimi’s SpidPark-er-Man (USA, 2002). This is the point when using digital software for film restoration. The restorer is charged with a greater responsibility as new digital tools offer more choices with respect to the extent of intervention, for example, they allow the easy addition or removal of image elements, e.g. a shadow that, due to “wrong” scene lighting, was there, or a director of photography that by mistake briefly invaded the background of the shot. However, with traditional analog restoration also, film restorers could interfere with the original artifact to a point beyond recognition. The digital simply provides the restorer with more effective tools, some of which could bring film restoration closer to art restoration practice. While in fine art restorers intervene directly on the artifact, in film restoration the intervention on the original artifact is limited traditionally to the so-called technical repair of the film. This includes cleaning, repairing of tears and broken or missing perforations. The intervention on the film artifact is in fact supposed to be reduced to a minimum, and only aimed at making the mechanical duplication of the film possible. It is limited to repairing tears and broken perforations to obtain a continuous piece of film that can be threaded in a film printer. With the exception of the wet gate printing process, that dramatically changes the appearance of the restored image by providing a remedy for superficial scratches, photochemical interventions are restricted to the duplication of existing information on the film: nothing is added to what has survived of the original image. With digital restoration, on the contrary, everything is about intervening directly inside the image, and, in particular, replacing missing information.

For the reasons mentioned above, digital technology introduces new aspects in the debate on film restoration guidelines. Ethical issues have

| 73 become more urgent since film restorers can alter the aspect of the film more easily and more profoundly. In this respect, certain questions gain new relevancy, such as “what is an original?”, “where is the borderline between inherent (audio)visual characteristics (to be preserved) and defects (to be cor-rected)?”, “is a film restorer allowed to improve the original aspect of a film and, if so, where lies the limit between improving and distorting?”

These issues are related to two theoretical frameworks that will be pro-posed and discussed in the next chapter, the earlier mentioned “film as original” framework, where the artifact is central, and the “film as dispositif”

framework, where, on the contrary, it is the reenactment that is central. In Chapter Two, these and other relevant frameworks will be derived from the theoretical discourse and proposed as a functional instrument to theorize archival practice.

Finally, as will become evident in the discussion of contemporary restora-tion techniques that follows, film restorarestora-tion today is as much a hybrid prac-tice as it is current film production, where the best of both analog and digital technologies is combined to obtain the desired results.⁷⁵ In the following sec-tions I will describe hardware and software available today for film restoration and how they can best be used in the practice.