Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Les cas extrêmes d’affadissement des
couleurs peuvent être restaurés avec
succès sur une nouvelle pellicule en
utilisant la séparation chromatique et
la technique des masques. Cependant
les restaurations totalement
photochimiques de l’image décolorée
sont lentes, empiriques et difficiles,
comparées aux techniques
numériques. Suivent des exemples
qui tentent d’évaluer le temps, les
efforts, le coût et les résultats sur
l’image négative dénaturée et sur les
éléments positifs.
Par ailleurs, beaucoup de séparations
des couleurs faites par le passé sont
de mauvaise qualité et peuvent être
restaurées en numérique. Ceci a des
implications importantes pour l’avenir
lorsque les spécialistes de pellicule de
films couleurs ne seront plus
disponibles. Les séparations couleurs
monochromes, même inadéquates
pour la restauration photochimique, à
cause du mauvais réglage du
contraste,sont excellentes pour la
conservation à long terme. Elles
peuvent être restaurées et donner
une nouvelle image visuellement
acceptable en utilisant les techniques
numériques qui permettent de
réajuster l’équilibre des couleurs.
Copenhagen. His immediate thoughts were of the many colour
separations he had made in the past and the possibility that
recombined colour negatives could eventually be made more easily and
to a higher quality using digital instead of photochemical technology.
Digital colour restoration is considered expensive and therefore not
always affordable by archives, but if B&W colour separations, incorrect
or correct, can be kept until better (financial) times arrive they might be
one solution to fading films.
To test this long-term solution, some comparative restorations using
both photochemical and digital techniques were needed, and the 2003
FIAF symposium in Stockholm offered the opportunity. Two different
old shrunken, faded materials were selected by Desmet: an unmasked
Gevacolor negative (early 1950s) which had been restored digitally
some years previously at Digital Film Lab, Copenhagen, and an Ansco
Color Print (1946-47).
The B&W colour separations and the photographic re-combining to a
new colour negative were made in the Cinémathèque’s own laboratory
in Brussels, and Paul Read arranged for the digital work to be done at
Digital Film Lab, London, and the colour prints at Soho Images in
London.
Photochemical Restoration
Gevacolor negative2 These negatives are out-takes or rushes negatives of a 1952 feature, La
Maison Du Printemps. The two negative sections used for the tests fell
into a yellow fade category and a cyan fade category respectively.
Shrinkage is 1.7% on average, and all the printing was carried out on a
BHP Modular continuous contact wet printer.
Eastman Colour Vision Print Film was used to make a print from the
original negative and from the new combined negative.
ORIGINAL
GEVAERT
COLOUR
NEGATIVE FILM
The separations were made on Eastman Pan Separation Film 2238,
using R G B gelatin tricolor filters, and the new colour negative made
on 35mm Eastman Colour Intermediate Film using single colour R, G, B
light valve exposures. The technique has been used, although today
quite infrequently, to make protection masters for modern feature
films, especially high-budget major features, to make new negatives
when the original is damaged. Correction for faded dyes is by adjusting
the contrast of the separations so that they match 3 .
26 Journal of Film Preservation / 66 / 2003
R Positive
colour separation
G Positive
colour separation
B Positive
colour separation
New combined
colour negative
Colour print
Colour print