American Cinematographer - May 2010 - 73

be a wonderful thing to do.” In preparing for the new digital restoration, all of the film’s surviving elements were taken out of storage and evaluated. The search was meticulous, and although it turned up several thousand feet of alternate takes, it didn’t unearth any new footage from the finished film. Price did uncover original separation materials for the number “Here’s What I’m Here For,” and the scene in which Norman Maine (James Mason) proposes to Esther/Vicky (Garland), both of which had been cut for the generalrelease version, and he was able to improve on the material Haver had used for these scenes. Price explains, “The separations survived by chance — an editor made deletions to the separation masters but did not realize the camera negative had been rebalanced to accommodate the new shortened running time. Because of this oversight, the scene survives in the masters.” The original four-track stereo mag master had been erased in order to re-use the 35mm magnetic stock back in the 1950s. “That was a common practice in the early ’50s, as good stock was scarce,” says Price. There was a monophonic mag track for the 182-minute version, but three original mag-striped release prints were used for most of the sound track. Warners had one such print, and the Library of Congress provided the other two. “We also found a 35mm four-track stereo music and effects track in France,” says Price. “The track was incomplete, but it contained the majority of Garland’s vocal performances in English. We also located isolated vocal units for Garland and chorus, as well as the complete orchestral scoring sessions.” It was decided to scan A Star is Born at 8K resolution; this was done at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging on a Northlight scanner. “Some might argue that an 8K scan is overkill for this feature, given that the film stock and the early ’Scope lenses limited the picture resolution on the negative,” says Price, “but I’m unable to address that at this moment because our ability to see what the scans can yield is limited by current monitoring devices. With the viewing equipment we have today, I can’t really tell the difference between a 4K scan and an 8K scan. We decided to scan at 8K and complete the color correction and digital-

Central to the story is Esther’s troubled relationship with alcoholic actor Norman Maine (James Mason). These images were both cropped from the restored CinemaScope frames.

restoration work at 4K.” Color timing was done by MPI colorist Janet Wilson, who spent almost five months on the project over the course of a year. “It was one of the more difficult projects I’ve worked on,” she says. “The majority of the film was scanned from the original negative, but there was added material from different sources. The original material was very early Eastmancolor, and there was dye fading, especially in the optical dupe sections, which looked entirely different from the surrounding camera neg. Oftentimes when working on older films, the original scan does not bear any relation to how the film is actually supposed to look. In retiming and correcting the color, it was also important to stay as close as possible to the filmmakers’ intent.” “The overall work took about nine months,” says Price. “Janet is as meticulous as she is patient, and she really brought the picture back to life. Sound was also an
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important part of the restoration, and, just as with the picture material, we were working with multiple sources. Most of the track was re-recorded and pieced together from the surviving stereo release prints; Jim Young did that work at Chace Audio.” The digital restoration had its world premiere last month at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre as part of the inaugural TCM Classic Film Festival. According to Feltenstein, the supplements on the Blu-ray, set for release June 22, will include some material that hasn’t been seen before, including alternate takes of the numbers “Gotta Have a Go” and “Lose That Long Face.” ●

May 2010

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American Cinematographer - May 2010

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