How Criterion Hones Its Restoration Magic for HD

Posted on September 29, 2008 in Filmmaking 360 | No Comments

Gizmodo’s feature article titled The Criterion Collection — How Criterion Hones Its Restoration Magic for HD takes you inside Criterion’s effort get some of their titles out on Blu-ray. In a another Gizmodo article you may be surprised to know The Criterion Collection’s Reference Blu-ray Player is the The PlayStation 3.

…Lee Kline, the Technical Director at The Criterion Collection, was in Italy. He had tracked down an original print of Il Posto, the classic 1961 Ermanno Olmi film, and he needed a digital master of it. The problem? It was far too valuable and delicate to ship to the States, so he had find a local studio to handle the transfer for him.

Sitting down in the lab, the local technician started the process of loading the film up, running it through the incredibly expensive machine to create a 2K super-high-def digital copy for Lee to take back to the States with him. The technician was deftly handling the irreplaceable film and the machine with both hands. All the while, a cigarette dangled from his lips. Lee, neither the owner of the print nor an employee of the lab, could only sit back and bite his tongue, hoping no wayward chunk of smoldering ash would find its way onto the decades-old piece of film. You could call it one tense moment in a film nerd’s life.

— Gizmodo | Read The Full Article