News
HAGHEFILM AT THE GIORNATE DEL CINEMA MUTO, OCTOBER 2-9, 2010
October 2-9, 2010
As every year, Haghefilm showcased at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival the latest restoration work done for archives and institutions from all over the world. Among the works preserved by Haghefilm and screened in the Teatro Verdi were two Essanay comedies, Mulcahy's Raid and A College Chicken (both 1910), selected by George Eastman House for the 2010 Haghefilm Foundation Fellowship; the medical films of the Vincenzo Neri Collection (1908-1928) from the Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, Bologna and the Università degli Studi di Udine; and the fourth installment of the marvelous Corrick Collection from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. In the course of the festival, the work of Haghefilm was also on display through two initiatives of the Haghefilm Foundation: a highly successful Collegium session held by Daniela Currò and Ulrich Ruedel on "Grains and Pixels" in the preservation process, and the 2010 Haghefilm Foundation / Selznick School Fellowship, featuring two short early comedies preserved at the Haghefilm Laboratories by Selznick School student Karin Carlson in the course of her internship in Amsterdam on September 2010. For more details on "Grains and Pixels" and the Selznick School Fellowship, please visit the Events page in the Haghefilm Foundation website.
RESTORATION OF HERITAGE SOUNDTRACKS
October 2010
A great deal of attention in film restoration is dedicated to parameters that assure the quality of photographic images in film preservation. But what about soundtracks? Producing photographic images of sound and turning them back into acoustic waves was a new challenge mastered with the introduction of the sound-on-film systems in the early talkie days, replacing the earlier, separate soundtrack on discs.
Working with historic soundtrack negatives requires a painstaking trial and error process until the best quality sound positive is achieved. Such testing and printing from a historic sound track negative is necessary even when its purpose is simply to digitize the sound.
Fortunately, digital sound track scanners that employ either image capture or line scanning of soundtrack can now facilitate a direct readout and electronic or digital XMOD cancellation. A couple such instruments are indeed available in facilities or for purchase by labs or studios both in the US and Europe. Since the autumn 2010, such a device - the SoundDirect Laser Soundtrack Scanner from Laser Interface - is also installed at Haghefilm BV, thus allowing state-of-the-art soundtrack restorations.
HagheFilm Foundation
February 2010
Haghefilm Conservation B.V. is the proud sponsor of the Haghefilm Foundation www.haghefilmfoundation.org, a non-profit organization to promote the art and science of film preservation. Drawing upon Haghefilm as a learning laboratory for professionals and scholars, the Foundation supports internships and training activities for students, preservation staff in moving image archives and museums, film curators, and scholars. The Haghefilm Foundation is affiliated to the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), www.fiafnet.org and collaborates with various institutions in the Netherlands ( University of Amsterdam www.uva.nl, eye Film Institute Netherlands www.eyefilm.nl ) and worldwide. For more information and application guidelines, visit the Haghefilm Foundation's website, www.haghefilmfoundation.org
Haghefilm at Pordenone
October 2009
At the October 7, 2009 session of the Collegium – a daily symposium held at the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone (October 3-10), Daniela Currò and Uli Ruedel talked about ‘Restoring Color’. In the well-attended workshop, they introduced the early techniques of tinting, toning, hand- and stencil color to the students and archivists participating in the festival, and elaborated on how color can be preserved at Haghefilm. 35 mm showreels presented exemplary preservations on internegative, camera stock, by means of Desmet, Digital Desmet and experiments using historic tinting and toning techniques in comparison. The photographic differences between Desmet and ‘real’ tinting were identified, and scientific studies to detect toning metals by an X-Ray technique conducted at George Eastman House were discussed.
A comparison between analog and digital preservation of stencil colors was also screened, to highlight both the expertise of Haghefilm Conservation and the increasing research and outreach activities conducted under the auspices of the Haghefilm Foundation. The presentation was enthusiastically received by experts and Collegium students alike. Martin Koerber (Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin) specifically expressed his appreciation for bringing science to film preservation, and both Chris Horak (UCLA) and Nikolaus Wostry (Filmmuseum Austria) contributed questions and suggestions based on their own archives’ experience in preservation routes and actual tinting and toning.
Pandora's Box: modern post-production services help restore 80 year
old film
February 2009
The digital restoration of PANDORA'S BOX is an international cooperative project. Partners in this project are George Eastman House (Rochester, USA), Big Sound LLC (San Francisco, USA) and Haghefilm Conservation B.V. (Amsterdam, NL). The digital restoration of this film sees a digital combination of three different source prints in order to make the most complete version of this film available in the best quality possible. Restoration software packages included Diamant, Fusion and Nucoda Filmmaster suite. Film elements were kindly made available by Cinémathèque Française, Narodni Filmovy Archiv, and Gosfilmofond via Cineteca di Bologna.
Restoration 28mm collection Academy Film Archive
February 2009
We are currently preserving a collection of 28mm films from the Academy Film Archive. First the films are scanned using a wetgate at 2K resolution in the Oxberry scanner. Subsequently they are restored digitally using Diamant software before they are finally recorded back onto 35mm intermediate negative and printed to new 35mm positive prints.