Archival Restoration
We learned many processes of upgrade and restoration from our considerable depth in film post production - digital and otherwise - and our love of great Cinema. In time these areas of experiences lead us add restoration of film and TV classics in addition to our ongoing new productions. From our inception we were always evolving our knowledge of and experimentation in, new capacities in post production. Our first restoration work proper started on our own works, about 30 films and scripted TV drama going as far back as to the late 1970s in super-16, 35MM and diverse formats. A chance meeting with John Frizzel a co-writer and co-director of the 1983 classic, challenging Winter Tan (staring the inestimable Jackie Burroughs). https://starfieldcreatorco.com/portfolio_page/a-winter-tan/ That casual conversation soon lead to a decision to re-introducing the film turned into a discussion of - where can we find a good print? That wasn't so easy. Eventually with the help of National Archives Canada we got our hands on two old faded, scratched super-16mm theatrical prints, but no trace of the original negatives. Hence our first shot a restoring a third party classic. Working closely with Eggplant Pictures and Sound we ultimately restored two new digital masters, one for theatrical projection, the other for streaming services. The carefully restored soundtrack, from scratched, mono optical release prints is truly brought back to great quality (hat's off to Bruce Fleming at Eggplant Sound). The restored Premier was held by TIFF in a special event at the Bell Lightbox in Toronto. In Europe the restored film was projected at the Edinburg Fringe and gone into North American Streaming. It was an encouraging start. Restoration and Archival work also meant one had to track the rights and often re-build long-lost chain of title documentation of works we were restoring. After all, a show needs a legal and exploitable...
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