Technicolor Question for Steve: WIZARD OF OZ

Question for Steve:

Hey Steve, this morning I looked at my Laserdisk version of The Wizard Of Oz.

The version I have has "Technicolor Restoration" written at the top.

The back says:

MGM/UA
Digital Video Transfer


I have a sinking feeling that I have the "solid state" version that you mentioned. Is this right?

Thanks for any help.

Mikey

 

The story of the "Oz" restoration

Chances are that no film has been seen by more people than The Wizard of Oz. Victor Fleming's 1939 classic has made an indelible imprint on American pop culture, giving us durable metaphors ("the yellow brick road") and memorable lines ("You're not in Kansas anymore").

It's safe to assume that most moviegoers have experienced The Wizard of Oz through the narrow perspective of a television screen. An ambitious restoration project by Warner Bros. has returned the film to its original splendor, with the possible addition of a special effects dance sequence involving the Scarecrow. (At press time, that decision had yet to be made.)

Pacific Title/Mirage was selected by Warner Bros. to restore the black-and-white segments of The Wizard of Oz, plus the additional Scarecrow sequence, which was filmed in Technicolor. Given the possible inclusion of the extra sequence, Pacific Title/Mirage was responsible for scanning some 44,500 frames (of the approximately 85,000 in the original 101-minute movie) for image processing, and then recording them back onto film.

That figure surprises those who only remember the black-and-white footage from the scene in which Dorothy opens the door of her Auntie Em's house to discover that a tornado has transported her to a Technicolor universe. Phil Feiner, president of the optical division of Pacific Title/Mirage, reminds us that the first two reels of Oz, as well as the last, are black-and-white.

Dye fading is not inherent to the Technicolor three-strip process. The images themselves were recorded simultaneously onto three strips of a special black-and-white film custom-made by Kodak: one strip was sensitized to record the density of cyan colors, another was sensitized to yellow and a third to magenta. A patented imbibition process was used to transfer the image information onto release prints for theaters. The vivid colors came from dyes added during this process.

Feiner notes that the original Technicolor imagery can be re-created by making separate passes with each of three strips directly onto an answer print. That's presuming that the original black-and-white separations have not been scratched or damaged in other ways, and that the base on which it is coated has not shrunk. (Cinetech handled this portion of the restoration project.)

The original black-and-white negative photographed by Hal Rosson was lost in a 1970s fire at The George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. The only remaining copies were protection fine-grain intermediates made by MGM Labs in 1960. In 1984, a copy was struck from one of those intermediates. However, in 1960, the fine-grain film stocks and the techniques employed for making optical and contact copies were nowhere near as sophisticated as they are today. "We now use wet-gate technology to protect the film when it is contact-printed or duplicated with an optical printer," Feiner explains. "That eliminates the major source of cell abrasions and emulsion digs, which can occur during the duping or printing process. I would guess that the original negative was probably used to make more than 10 and perhaps as many as 200 release prints. The result was that there were scratches, embedded dirt and other anomalies copied onto the fine-grain master in 1960."

The restoration team at Pacific Title/Mirage tackled the task of restoring Oz with missionary zeal, which Feiner attributes to the company's deep roots in the industry. Pacific Title was founded in Los Angeles in 1919, the very same year that the ASC came into being. Feiner joined the company in 1977 as an optical camera operator on the night shift. "We're proud of our history," Feiner says, "which includes a large amount of the optical restoration work on the Star Wars trilogy. I believe we bring a unique film aesthetic to the use of digital tools for restoration."

 

Part 2

Feiner notes that advances in digital film conversion and image-processing technologies provides a powerful toolkit for restoration projects. This proved to be a key advantage on the Oz undertaking, given the job's aggressive eight-month schedule.

The picture's fine-grain master was stored at the Library of Congress. Pacific Title/Mirage converted it to digital format with a Kodak digital film scanner at full film resolution. According to Feiner, this process requires 4K x 3K of digital data with 10 bits of log space per pixel. "Some people say 3K, or even 2K, and 8-bit log space per pixel is sufficient, but this film is an important part of our heritage and culture," he says. "Countless millions have seen it on TV. Finally, they can now see it in a cinema the way it is meant to be seen. It would be a crime to cut corners and do anything in a sub-standard manner."

The fine-grain intermediate provided by The Library of Congress showed no visible signs of vinegar syndrome or shrinkage, and it had a stable base. Feiner opted to make a contact liquid-gate dupe negative of the fine-grain IP, which eliminated the worst of the abrasions and emulsion digs. "We test scanned the original fine-grain and the dupe to see if there were discernible differences in resolution, sharpness and overall image quality," he says. "When we scanned our dupe at full film resolution, there was no loss in image quality. If we had scanned from the original fine-grain, we would have copied the abrasion and emulsion digs and that would have required extensive digital paint work.c

If one scans a full-aperture anamorphic frame in full color, the file size would run about 45 megabytes. However, scanning from a black-and-white element at full film resolution yields about 13 megabytes per frame — a rate that allows for more efficient data management at faster speeds.

The digital restoration work was executed on Silicon Graphics 02 platforms and several dual-processor Octanes running Matador Paint and Cineon applications software. The workstations were networked to an SGI Origin 2000 file server that provided high-density image storage and rapid transfer rates. "We elected to use Cineon software for automated dust-busting, with one important provision," says Feiner. "You have to be very careful that you don't lose fine details like highlights in people's eyes. The only way to do that is to compare the processed images on the computer screen to a matching frame of the source material."

The images were stored on the high-speed disk array for display at 2K resolution. The digital artists were then able to flip the display between the source material and the processed images. "We assembled and trained a staff with the appropriate skills and film sensibilities, plus the dedication needed to do the job properly," Feiner says. "The supervisor, Mark Freund, has been a great optical camera operator for us for years."

The dancing Scarecrow sequence was an outtake stored on 250 feet of film — less than three minutes of screen time — in the CRI (Color Reversal Intermediate) format. All of the original three-strip Technicolor film from that period was recorded on a potentially flammable nitrate-based emulsion. Feiner speculates that MGM decided to rid its lot of nitrate-based film sometime in the late Sixties or early Seventies.

When Feiner inspected the Scarecrow scene, the image seemed slightly off. "I noticed that there were two frames, right before the pictures started, with clear lines outside the perforations," he says. "Most people wouldn't have noticed that, but I've worked on a lot of trailers for TV in CRI format. Still, it took me about a day to discover what had happened. One of our people [Vince Roth] had worked in the MGM Labs optical department for 27 years, and he remembered an optical camera operator who had worked on those conversions."

MGM Labs had set up a production line to copy the nitrate film onto CRIs, recording from the emulsion side rather than the base side. That was then considered to be the archival master. When requests were made for duplicate negatives, MGM Labs fashioned a copy from this source. "I realized I had one of the dupes," Feiner says. "Warner Bros. did a diligent search and found the original CRI. That was important, because we wanted to be as close as possible to the original image quality. There's no magic bullet with digital technology — you can only scan in the image quality on the source material."

After scanning, the image quality was cleaned up by the digital artists, who removed dust and dirt spots and painted out the wires used to help actor Ray Bolger to fly in the Scarecrow dance number. The artisans also compensated for yellow dye fading. "It took an aesthetic eye," he explains. "Dorothy is in the scene in question, and we needed to match her skin tones to scenes on either side of the cutting done by the editor."

The digital files for both the Technicolor and black-and-white sequences were converted to intermediate film with a Kodak laser film recorder. "Our goal was simple," Feiner says. "We wanted to provide a pristine internegative which accurately emulates the original Wizard of Oz, and provide an enduring film record for future generations to enjoy

 

I like the Wizard of Oz, but the only way I'm willing to watch it on DVD will be the Technicolor print transferred version from Criterion or an older MGM LD. I have the solid state version on "Restored" VHS tape.

 

Thank you Steve!!! I knew you would know.

 

Mikey,
was the restoration above created for the most recent DVD presentation of Wizard?

 

Yes, the Earlier restoration was used on the ":Ultimate"Oz laserdisk and the single disk " Technicolor Restoration" version.

 

I was lucky enough to have bought this version. It looks and sounds great. I also have the WB DVD. Nice, especailly for the extras, but a much different planet.

 

I'll have to look for the MGM DVD if that uses the tube-like restoration from 1956.