Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/47109
set to address that particular hue of green and clean up the picture scene by scene." Goldcrest also restored director Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields (1984), which por- trayed the horrors of Pol Pot's Cambodia, and his historical South American epic, The Mission (1986), as well as Bill Forsyth's little gem of a Scottish film, Local Hero (1983) to generate new broadcast video masters and futureproof them for archiving. "The existing masters were not up to today's standards of HDCAM SR 4:4:4," Spitzer notes. For The Killing Fields the original 35mm cut negative A and B rolls were scanned to pre- serve first-generation transitions. For Local Hero the 35mm original single-strand nega- tive was scanned. "We typically scan to SAN so material can be pulled into multiple iQs for basic conforming, image stabilization and dust busting, then move to the theater for color correction," he explains. In the theater, award-winning colorist John Dowdell manned the Quantel Story, with lyrics and music by Stephen Sond- heim and Leonard Bernstein. "The original elements had been lost for 30 years," says Bob Heiber, VP of audio at Burbank-based Chace Audio (www.chace. com), a Deluxe company, which handled the West Side Story restoration. "According to information written on the film cans, in 1978 a 4-track LCRS mag was made from the original 1961 6-track master." The original mix for the film, which won the Academy Award for sound, helped to establish 6-track stereo sound for the 70mm format in 1961. "But when [director] Robert Wise wanted to make a new 6-track for the 20th anniver- sary of the movie in 1981, the 1961 6-track was nowhere to be found. So a new 6-track was created from the 1978 4-track master." Fast forward to the early 1990s when iQ/Pablo, which Spitzer calls "an integrated solution — a powerful color corrector built into a strong editing system with phenomenal dust busting, scratch repair, image stabilization and tracking tools. It enables us to move from one operator to another seamlessly without hopping data around the facility." Dark Energy was deployed to remedy grain issues in the Aurora Borealis sequence in Local Hero. "It was so grainy that it didn't look good," says Spitzer. "We were able to quiet that grain and bring it to a point where it now looks visually stunning." AUDIO WEST SIDE STORY The key to any restoration — picture or sound — is locating the most original ele- ments to work with, something that proved especially challenging for the 50th anniversa- ry Blu-ray release this month of West Side MGM began an active search for the original sound materials for an initial release on laser- disc. During that research Chace found mul- tiple 6-track orchestral and M&E stems, which confirmed the 6-track origins of the film, but no feature mix. For the upcoming 50th anniversary release of West Side Story, a trio from MGM Technical Services — Chris Lane, DeeDee Dryer and Leah Tuttle — began extensive detective work in 2009 to find original ele- ments. They eventually uncovered 15 cartons in the West Side Story inventory that hadn't been moved since 1981. "There were about 100 reels of audio material inside," says Heiber. "The cans were labeled '1978 composite mix' but when we checked the leader it said '6-track mix, June- July-August 1961' so there was the original! And they found the original 4-track mix made in March 1962. All the hunting paid off." The acetate cellulose mags were suffering from vinegar syndrome, however, and showed signs of shrinkage and edge curl. Chris Lane ordered a test with Clarity Audio Restoration by Plangent Processes to see if its digital non- uniform sampling algorithm that re-times and stabilizes audio would help the material. After garnering positive reviews, senior preservation engineer Brian Geer made Clarity transfers for all the mag elements to "bring the recording back to what it sounded like when it was originally going to the mag recorder," Heiber explains. "Clarity stabilized the track so perfectly that it allowed us to use fewer tools in the restoration process. We got a stereo sound field that was gor- geous and rock solid." The material also had the usual hisses, hums, ticks, distortions and micro dropouts expected with age. Senior digital audio resto- ration engineer Brian San Marco used Cube- Tec's Audio Cube AC-5 to correct these technical anomalies. "No attempt" was made to undo the live dialogue miking techniques representative of 1961, however. "There are so many powerful tools, but you have to be careful how you apply them," says Heiber. "You can always make things different, but you don't necessarily know if you're making them better." Restoration mix engineer Chris Reynolds did the final print mastering for the 6-track in the company's Rick Chace Theater. "We set up five Dynaudio BM15A powered speakers across the front of the theater to properly monitor the 6-track and to audition specific tracks," says Heiber. The 6-track accompanied 70mm prints of West Side Story for a one-night screening nationwide this month. Chace also restored the 4-track and performed a 7.1 mix for the Blu-ray release. Senior mixer Jim Young built the latter from the 5.1 and 6-track mixes using the LCR from the 6-track for the musical performances and DTS Neural Sound with the surrounds from the 5.1 to create the left side, left rear, right side and right rear for the 7.1 mix. I LOVE YOU TO DEATH, HART TO HART In the sound department of Sony Pictures (www.sonypictures.com) in Culver City, DVD conformist/sound mixer Ethan Chase has been working on features and foreign-language assets from the Columbia Pictures catalogue, which are being evaluated and prepared for HD DVD and Blu-ray release and for online streaming. Chase recently was tasked with restoring the Brazilian Portuguese audio track to per- mit online streaming of the 1990 black com- edy, I Love You To Death, starring Kevin Kline and Tracey Ullman. Since the track was in good condition Chase chiefly performed Bob Heiber says Chace Audio worked with long-lost tracks for the restoration of West Side Story. hum reduction. Armed with a lot of different continued on page 46 www.postmagazine.com Post • November 2011 39 12 O'Clock High is just one of the many classic titles that MTI Film has worked on recently.