This fall, film enthusiasts will have the opportunity to watch an American classic like they've never seen it before. The Godfather trilogy has recently been digitally remastered to look cleaner, brighter, and as as fresh as its original release in 1972.
In Friday's Daily Debrief, I chat with CNET News.com's executive editor, Jim Kerstetter, who also happens to be the office film buff. He explains the painstaking process of the digital facelift and why the preservation of such classics is important for posterity. Also, hear what kind of directives director Francis Ford Coppola gave the technicians cleaning up pivotal moments in his masterpiece.
How's this for pressure? In the care of Daphne Dentz and her colleagues was a masterpiece of American filmmaking: The Godfather.
A year ago, Dentz was sitting in an editing bay with other members of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging (MPI). Also in the room was none other than the movie's director, Francis Ford Coppola. He was there to observe as they set about digitally restoring his 35-year-old classic.
On a bank of computer monitors, The Godfather's opening scene began to play; the melancholy trumpet; the now famous line: "I believe in America...," and slowly forming out of the blackness is the face of a man seeking vengeance.
Stop everything. Coppola, a famous perfectionist, told the technicians: "I want his head to look like it's floating in purgatory."
An instruction like that from Coppola might have intimidated Dentz, MPI's vice president of digital services, if she didn't know MPI had the tools to give him what he wanted. Six years ago, Warner Bros. developed digital technologies designed to make copies of damaged or decaying film negatives and return the movies to their original viewing quality. The studio wouldn't discuss how much they spent. (You can be sure it wasn't cheap).
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A scene from Gone With The Wind before restoration.
(Credit: Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging)
The same scene but after restoration.
(Credit: Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging)For decades, film reels languished on studio lots without any attempt made to preserve them. But technology has rushed to the rescue once again. The digital age has handed Hollywood the tools to correct faded colors, blurred images, and garbled sound.
Warner Bros. wants to rescue some of America's greatest film treasures, while at the same time cash in on a valuable film library. Execs from all the studios have learned that they can release restored versions of classic films on disc and extend their economic lifespan. This is what Paramount intends to do when it re-releases the The Godfather in September, according to a story in American Cinematographer.
Another reason to give the pictures a facelift is that many of them can't stand up to the magnified scrutiny of the digital age. Imperfections are more exposed than ever on high-definition TVs, according to Ned Price, vice president of mastering for Warner Bros. technical operations.
"Consumer expectations are rising," Price said. "You now have Blu-ray and the quality level that the consumer has access to is higher than it was before. What was acceptable 10 years ago is no longer acceptable today."
To do the restoring, Warner Bros. built proprietary software, custom-designed monitors and editing tools. On the studio's lot is a storage system that can handle 600 terabytes of data. This is a lot of information.
Two terabytes can hold an academic library. The U.S. Library of Congress said a year ago that it stores less than 100 terabytes of information.
MPI always works in the same resolution as the original negative, typically 4096 x 3112 pixels or, in industry lingo, "4K." By digital camera standards, that's not much: only 8 megapixels. But by video standards, that's a whopping amount: A single frame on 4k can be 50 megabytes, said Bill Baggelaar, MPI's vice president of engineering. At a rate of 24-frames per second, the numbers add up fast.
For example, The Godfather trilogy required 160 terabytes of storage, Baggelaar said.
Of course, the real challenge isn't storing the data. The trick is moving it around. "Minimally, a 4k movie is 12 terabytes," Baggelaar said. Even at "fibre-channel speed, it still takes a while to move 12 terabytes."
MPI's system is fast, primarily because of Hewlett-Packard, Baggelaar said. HP powers the Warner Bros. storage area network, a "massive" fibre channel. Most of the SAN runs on Linux.
"One of the reasons the HP storage works so well for us is we have to be up 100 percent of the time," Baggelaar said. "We don't have downtime. We don't have the ability to lose data while we're in the middle of production and their storage is extremely reliable.
"If you're taking one version of the movie and you have 12 terabytes of data and every day you're changing some component, during a one-month project you're going to generate a couple hundred terabytes of data," he said. "That amount is just not cost effective to back up."
A restoration starts with the creation of a digital copy made from a film's negative. This is not easy. Some negatives may be physically damaged; torn and spliced together with tape and can easily come apart during the scanning if they aren't cared for properly.
Once the copy is made, the negative is sent to be preserved in specially built vaults while the digital copy is sent to MPI, which then "starts picking it apart," Price said.
One group of technicians goes to work on color correction and another on removing dirt and scratches. A third group--called data conform--makes sure the negative has all the right pieces. If it doesn't, they find them. Sometimes MPI must work with duplications of the negative and it's not uncommon to find that someone years earlier edited scenes into them. MPI removes them.
The goal is not to improve the filmmaker's work but to re-create it.
In the case of The Godfather, the negative was in rough shape. The images looked mottled. There were no details in the film's black tones. It was dirty, scratched, and torn in places.
To illustrate how the film looked when MPI started, Kathleen Largay, a colorist, showed me a clip of the restaurant scene, where Michael Corleone guns down Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo and the police captain. The color is washed out. A scratch runs along the bottom of the picture. There are few shadows visible.
Then she showed me what it looked like after the team used its computers to remove scratches, hairs, dust, and stains. Suddenly, rich earth tones are present. The gold color of the olive oil sitting on the table twinkles in the light. There's more contrast between white and black, enough for me to see all the tension in Al Pacino's face just before he opens fire.
The MPI team worked closely with Paramount executives, who knew exactly how the picture should look.
One area where the team came up short was in reproducing the same kind of blacks. The sad truth is that digital technology doesn't block out light as well as film, so it doesn't produce the blackest black. This was important for The Godfather, as the movie was one of the darkest ever made.
"With film you have light shining through a piece of acetate or some base that has some property blocking light," Baggelaar said. "The light is actually being blocked to create black. But in a digital projection scenario, there is always light being thrown out by a projector. Just like an LCD monitor, unless you turn it off it's not really black. One of the technical challenges was giving them the blackness that they wanted with the limitations of the equipment. I think we did a nice job by the end. "
It took seven months to finish the entire trilogy. How long would it have taken without digital tools? Well, it would have never been attempted, Price said.
"You would have to go through frame by frame to correct this," Price said.
There was a lot of back-patting at MPI after Coppola saw the results. According to members of the group, the auteur told them that he hadn't seen the film look that good since 1972, the year it was first screened.
Although it's a utility van, we were charmed by the funky look of the Ford Transit Connect at the 2008 New York auto show. The Transit Connect is another example of a European success that Ford intends to try out in the U.S. Ford shows off three potential uses at the New York auto show, a New York taxi, a band wagon, and an audio/video installer van. By summer of next year, you might be seeing Transit Connects in U.S. cities.
Automakers used this year's Detroit auto show to launch a number of significant new cars and model upgrades, featuring the latest in cabin and powertrain tech. Ford and Dodge went head to head with new pickups, and we saw many exciting new sports cars.
Toyota shows its plug-in Prius on the show floor.
(Credit: CNET Networks/Sarah Tew)Toyota surprised us with a plug-in hybrid Prius on the floor at the 2008 Detroit auto show. The company has resisted the plug-in hybrid movement previously, citing the fact that you don't need to plug in the Prius as a virtue. But there has been quite a bit of interest in plug-in hybrids from individuals and even power companies. Plug-in proponents claim to get 100 mpg by modifying Priuses and recharging the batteries when the cars aren't being used. Toyota seems to have finally given into the plug-in pressure, starting up its own plug-in program and handing over a couple of prototype plug-in Priuses to the University of California. At the Detroit auto show, Toyota not only had a plug-in Prius on the floor, along with an informational display, but it also had two running around the city as VIP transportation. The plug-in Priuses still use Toyota's hybrid system, but have been modified with an additional nickel-metal-hydride battery pack, increasing electric range and speeds.
Ford also has a plug-in hybrid.
(Credit: CNET Networks/Sarah Tew)Ford also got into the game, showing off a plug-in Escape Hybrid in its display area. Ford is working on the plug-in technology in conjunction with Southern California Edison. The plug-in Ford Escape Hybrid uses lithium-ion batteries, giving it fuel economy of 120 mpg, according to Ford.
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We previously blogged about Ford's partnership with Gracenote to get album cover art for its in-dash music server, but that's just part of this new navigation and entertainment center. Sirius Travel Link provides a range of data services integrated with the navigation system for traffic, weather, and other useful information. Ford will roll out this new navigation system initially on the Ford F-150 and the Lincoln MKS. We got to try the system out at the 2008 Detroit auto show.
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Ford's new Explorer concept, unveiled at the 2008 Detroit auto show, is designed less to show the future direction of the Explorer model and more to showcase Ford's new fuel-saving technologies. But most of these technologies are merely new to Ford and have already been used by other automakers.
Ford confirmed Thursday that the company is considering an offer to sell its Jaguar and Land Rover subsidiaries to Tata Motors of India.
"Ford is committed to focused negotiations at a more detailed level with Tata Motors concerning the potential sale of the combined Jaguar-Land Rover business," Lewis Booth, an executive vice president at Ford, said in a statement.
"There is still a considerable amount of work to do, and while no final decision has been made, we will proceed with further substantive discussions with Tata Motors over the forthcoming weeks with a view to securing an agreement that is in the best interests of all parties concerned," said Booth, who oversees Ford's Premier Automotive Group businesses and is also the chairman of Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo, and Ford of Europe.
"We can confirm that we have had positive discussions so far with Ford, concerning the possible purchase of Jaguar (and) Land Rover, and we are now entering a period of more focused and detailed negotiations with Ford," a Tata Motors representative said in an e-mailed statement. "We hope both parties can reach an agreement in the forthcoming weeks, though these are complex discussions, and there is still much work that needs to be done before that position is reached."
"We are pleased by the progress in the discussions to date and very positive about the prospects of this business, going forward," the Tata representative said.
Reports have put the deal at between $1.5 billion and $2 billion dollars, though neither Ford nor Tata has not confirmed any number.
Land Rover's Range Rover Sport
(Credit: Land Rover USA)Tata, which claims to be the largest automaker in India, posted revenue of $7.2 billion in its 2006-2007 financial report.
The company is part of the Tata Group, one of India's largest conglomerates. Founded by Jamsetji Tata in the mid-1800s, the Tata Group companies, which include Tata Steel, Tata Tea, and Indian Hotels, among others, employ about 290,000 people worldwide.
The Tata Group stated 2006-2007 revenue to be $28.8 billion, roughly 3.2 percent of India's GDP, according to company statistics.
The Ford Focus C-MAX will soon get the voice-activated system.
(Credit: Ford U.K.)More good news for those of us who have been forced to divide our attention between the road and what seems like an ever-increasing number of gadgets and other in-car distractions: automotive voice-activation technology is becoming more widespread.
On Thursday, U.S.-based company Nuance announced that it will be putting its text-to-speech technology in select new Ford models in Europe. The system powers Ford's "Human Machine Interface" (HMI), which allows drivers to make calls, enter destinations into the navigation system, control the audio system, and change the inside temperature using simple voice commands.
For example, a driver can change the radio station simply by saying the frequency number, or in some cases, saying the call letters. And the climate control system can be adjusted by simply saying "warmer" or "cooler." The HMI system can read and understand English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Ford already uses its voice-activated Sync system, powered by Microsoft, on select models here in the U.S.
The European HMI system will be implemented on the Ford Focus and the Focus C-MAX multipurpose vehicles beginning next month. Other European Ford models, including the Galaxy and S-MAX multipurpose vehicles, along with the Mondeo full-size sedan, will get the technology shortly thereafter.
Will 'green talk' save the Blue Oval?
(Credit: CNET Networks)It has become de rigeur for automakers to pay lip service to a future of alternative fuels and increased efficiency, and Ford's CEO Alan Mulally chipped in his two cents here on the first day of the 2007 Los Angeles Auto Show. Aside from his commitment to deliver a line of vehicles that "people do want and people do value", Mulally said that he wanted to "start a discussion" about sustainability, fuel economy, and energy security. In the near term, Mulally said Ford plans to offers more turbo-charged gasoline direct-injection engines, lighter-weight cars, and new fuel-saving transmissions to increase fuel economy.
Among the changes consumers can expect to see will be a 10 percent more-fuel-efficient Ford Taurus due to a transmission changes, an 8 percent more-fuel-efficient 2008 Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner, a 3 percent more-fuel-efficient Ford Focus, and a Ford F-150 pick-up that gets 1 mpg more than usual, according to Ford. Mulally, a former Boeing executive, said that weight-saving was also a key part of Ford's strategy for improving its models' gas mileage, and he highlighted the company's increased use of steel-, aluminum-, and titanium alloys and composites materials.
On the subject of alternative fuels, Mulally was more vague. Aside from a commitment to make half of its fleet flex-fuel compatible by 2012, Mulally suggested Ford was looking at a range of series- and parallel-hybrid technologies, including diesel-electric models. He neglected, however, to offer details of new initiatives beyond those already announced for the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids, scheduled for production in 2008.
On plug-in hybrids, he highlighted Ford's upcoming partnership with Southern California Edison. Ford will supply the electric utility with a Ford Escape Hybrid Plug-in, but Mulally said it would be a mistake to put a time commitment on the production of such advanced technology.
On Ford's plans for hydrogen-fuel cell development, details were even more scarce. Despite stating that Ford was working to accelerate hydrogen technology "as fast as possible," Mulally trotted out the familiar view that infrastructure is the main challenge to hydrogen adoption.
While Ford may talk the green talk, it's important to note that the company is among the automakers opposed to CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy ) standards that would require a company's consumer line of cars, when combined, to offer average gas mileage of 35 mpg by 2020.
CNET News.com's Candace Lombardi contributed to this article
