Page 13 - FILM STUDIOS CROPPED

company news
CRS is at 2 Golden Square,
London W1R 3AD. Tel: 020 7439 7138.
The Liberty Livewire group includes these companies:
Laboratory services: Todd-AO and Soho Images
Titles/idents/graphics: XTV Post-production: Todd-AO, St Anne’s, 4MC, Rushes, Soho 601, SVC Negative cutting: Computermatch Duplication: 4MC, Golden Square, Todd-AO
DVD authoring: Stream
DVD titling: Vision Text
Satellite transmission: Todd-AO
and Telecine
Restoration services: CRS
John Sears, had received what he believed to be the B&W pro masters of The Ladykillers, the Ealing classic recently re- released theatrically by Optimum Releasing.
When he opened the cans, he dis- covered to his amazement, not the pro masters but the original separation negatives in excellent condition.
After a full inspection of the nega- tives and a discussion with Martin Bigham of Cineserve Technical Services, they decided to recombine the separation negatives at Soho Images to make a new interpositive.
From this master the highest quali- ty telecine transfers could be made to High Definition and Standard Definition digital tape masters for TV and DVD distribution.
To make a new film print, the new interpositive was printed to an interneg- ative, which was pre flashed to match the contrast of a reference original Technicolor print. From the internega- tive combined prints were then struck, using the supplied optical track.
“In cases like this,” says Matt Bowman, “we map a course through the entire film, compiling the final end product out of whatever elements we can find.” The result, it has to be said, is flawless.
Much of that is due to the state- of-the-art technology which CRS has at its disposal, such as Archangel, DVNR and Edifis/Scratchbox for the image and SonicStudio HD and Cedar for the sound...
Archangel, Snell & Wilcox’s cutting edge restoration tool, can differentiate between noise and motion in the
footage so that noise reduction can be carried out in areas of high movement where previous systems would fail.
It consists of two elements: Steadfast, which eliminates instabili- ty problems, film weave, camera shake and flicker, and Puritan, which removes noise, dirt, scratch- es and dropouts.
“We can take scratched, dirty, wob- bly film and make it a sparkling clean image in around twice the running time of the footage, compared to two or three days using previous systems,” says Richard Fish.
SonicSolutions is a multi-format system for advanced audio editing and DVD pre-mastering which can process up to eight channels of audio simulta- neously. Cedar is a real-time device that can apply three processes to a stereo signal simultaneously or one process to a 5.1 mix.
Both systems can de-click (remove ticks, glitches and clicks), de-crackle (remove distortion like crackles which are often associated with analogue recordings) and de-hiss (which removes background hiss without affecting the dynamics or frequency response of the original material.)
But despite all the high technology, the most important thing about CRS is that it’s a team effort, stresses Matt Bowman – and part of that team is Fuji.
“They’re just like us in a way. Some companies can supply film stock, others print stock and others audio tape. But Fuji is the only one who can provide us with everything we need,” he says. “And that is exact- ly what CRS is dedicated to doing for our own clients.” ■
RESTORING THE LADYKILLERS