American Cinematographer - April 2009 - 55

ment of new software for both picture and sound restoration. “We couldn’t have done this work as recently as two years ago,” says Mike Inchalik, chief operating officer at Lowry Digital. “It’s the most complex and challenging restoration we’ve done to date.” Directed by Henry Koster, and filmed in Technicolor by Leon Shamroy, ASC, The Robe earned five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Color Cinematography; it took home the statuettes for art direction and costume design. The film tells the story of a Roman soldier (played by Richard Burton) who supervises the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and gains possession of the garment Jesus wore on the cross. Increasingly tormented by guilt over his actions, the soldier becomes obsessed with the garment. Given its significance in the history of cinema, The Robe had been on 20th Century Fox’s restoration “wish list” for some time, and the studio had been making tests on the title at various facilities for years, according to Schawn Belston, Fox’s vice president of asset management and film preservation. “We’d been making tests at Lowry alone for two years,” he notes. “Finally, the technology reached the point where we all agreed the results were good.” Michael Pogorzelski, director of the Academy Film Archive, adds, “We knew that if our goal was to really say that The Robe had been properly restored to how it looked and sounded when it had its premiere, the job would be quite a challenge.” The team at Lowry Digital, led by project manager Ryan Gomez, worked with elements that included original negative and original black-and-white separation masters; however, many sections of the O-neg had been replaced over the years with dupe negative that had been struck at different labs in different years. “For example, Reel 4AB had dupe sections from 1967, 1972 and 1974, and all of the dupes had been made at different labs,” says Gomez. “The diversity of the image structure was extraordinary and quite daunting.” The project followed a 4K2K-4K workflow: scanning at 4K, image-processing at 2K, and filmout at 4K. “We found that none of these elements had more than 2K resolution, so we scanned them all at 4K and down-sampled to 2K for the work,” says Inchalik. “We modified the Imagica Imager XE scanners, which are designed to handle delicate materials, to be even safer with the film. We’ve also customized the Frame grabs courtesy of Lowry Digital. All photos and frame grabs ©20th Century Fox. All rights reserved. scanning to get as broad a dynamic range as possible off the film; we concentrated the bit allocation where the picture information was tightly compacted in a narrow range of densities.” In addition to applying tools to address dirt, flicker and image stabilization, the Lowry team used proprietary tools to ensure tight registration of the separation masters, which wouldn’t align properly at Among the picture flaws in The Robe that the restoration team had to tackle were tears and roller scratches, some examples of which are visible in the frame at left, which features Jean Simmons (wearing white), Jay Robinson (standing at center) and Richard Burton (far right) in their starring roles. The restored frame is on the opposite page. Below: Director Henry Koster (left) and producer Frank Ross (second from right, with camera around his neck) pose with other executives and crew on the set. American Cinematographer 55

American Cinematographer - April 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2009