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June 25, 2010

A Star Is Born

1983 RECONSTRUCTION

A Star Is Born opened in 1954 with a run time of 182 minutes.  This is the version that was approved by the director and creative team.  However, soon after, the film was trimmed by 28 minutes, presumably so exhibitors could squeeze in an extra show daily.  At that point, director George Cukor disowned this “final” 154-minute version, claiming the film had been completely compromised.

 In 1982, with the support of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Warner Bros., , film historian and author Ronald Haver, who also ran the LACMA film program at the time, started his restoration efforts by spending several months rummaging though the studio vaults to reclaim George Cukor’s original edit. Haver located the entire soundtrack for the 182 -minute version, along with footage for three missing musical numbers and portions of the deleted dialogue scenes. Where no film existed, Haver used stills over the soundtrack for transition and only slightly trimmed the dialogue when photographic coverage was deemed inadequate. At 176 minutes, Haver’s restoration premiered at Radio City Music Hall July 7, 1983 to wildly enthusiastic audiences and continued the run to sold-out houses around the country. 

While the 154-minute cut was the first version to be available on video, Warner Home Video released the new Haver restoration on VHS, Beta and Laserdisc in 1984, then remastered it in 1997 for letterbox release on DVD and laserdisc. This new BD and DVD release marks the fourth time the film has been mastered for home video release in the since the first issue nearly 30 years ago. 

2010 RESTORATION AND REMASTERING FOR BLU-RAY

Cut to the present as Warner Home Video prepared to restore and remaster the film for its highly anticipated June 22 debut on Blu-ray Disc.

Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging (MPI), the studio’s digital state-of-the-art post-production facility and a leader in film preservation and restoration, used cutting edge tools not available a quarter century ago to meticulously bring back to Haver’s 176-minute version the brilliant saturated colors, the crisp picture and all the luster that existed in Cukor’s original.

The original A Star Is Born negative is faded to the point where traditional photochemical restoration processes were unsuccessful in restoring the full color and richness of the image.  But fortunately, today’s digital restoration capabilities are far superior to the chemical restoration. With the photo chemical process if you fix one color, it affects all the others. The new digital color correction process makes it possible to correct each layer of color, pixel by pixel, without affecting other areas of the film. Additionally in the photo-chemical process when dye levels are damaged, the entire color range collapses, producing color images that are both limited and inaccurate.

8K Scan

Scanning the negative at 8K allowed Warner to retrieve the full color from the information remaining on the faded camera negative which enabled Janet Wilson, MPI’s colorist, to utilize all the color information (full range, diversity and balance of hues) still available in the negative without compromising any of the surrounding color.  Janet was able to use an early Technicolor dye matricy print obtained by Warner from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a reference.

Wilson, who spent almost five months on A Star Is Born, says, “The majority of the film was scanned from the original negative, but there was added material from different sources. The original material was very early Eastmancolor, and there was dye fading, especially in the optical dupe sections, which looked entirely different from the surrounding camera neg. Often when I work on older films, the original scan does not bear any relation to how the film is actually supposed to look. In retiming and correcting the color, it was also important to stay as close as possible to the filmmakers’ intent.”

The Sound

 Sound was also an important part of the restoration. As with the picture material, Warner worked with multiple sources. Most of the track was pieced together from the surviving stereo release prints. Jim Young at Chace Audio did that work.

The original four-track stereo mag master had been erased in order to re-use the 35mm magnetic stock back in the 1950s, a common practice in the early 50’s as good stock was scarce. There was a monophonic mag track for the 182-minute version, but three original mag-striped release prints were located and used for most of the sound track. Warners had one such print, and the Library of Congress provided the other two.

Warners also found a 35mm 4-track stereo music and effects track in France.  The track was incomplete, but did contain the majority of Garland’s vocal performances (in English). They also located isolated vocal units for Garland and chorus as well as the complete orchestral scoring sessions.

FAQ’s:

Why do 8K scanning, when many feel that 2 or 4 K is good enough?

According to Ned Price, VP mastering, Warner Bros. Technical Operations, the reason to go to higher resolution is because we anticipate higher display resolution in the future. So we are attempting to preserve the best possible source asset, rather than just create an element for exhibition.

How does Warner decide what elements to use in a restoration?

In preparing for the new digital restoration, all the surviving elements for A Star Is Born were taken out of storage and evaluated. The search was meticulous, and although it turned up several thousand feet of alternate takes, it didn’t unearth any new footage from the finished film. •

Does Warner have more footage?

No.

 The team did uncover original separation materials for the number “Here’s What I’m Here For” and the scene in which Norman Maine (James Mason) proposes to Esther/Vicky (Garland). Both of these had been cut for the general-release version, and they were able to improve on the material Haver had used for these scenes. The separations actually survived by chance. An editor made deletions to the separation masters, but did not realize the camera negative had been rebalanced to accommodate the new shortened running time, so the scene survives in the masters due to this oversight.