How are films from the 1900s-1950s put on the internet? How are black and white films transferred to the internet if the black and white films are not in USBs or Hardrives?
In: Technology
They project a high quality film on to a really good screen and than use the best video cameras to record the movie as it plays.
Before video tape was a thing ‘kinescopes’ were TV shows filmed by a movie camera off the screen.
They run them through a special system that, instead of projecting on the wall, projects into a tiny digital sensor that records what it sees as a digital signal creating a computer file of the film.
Professional film distribution companies use professional-level digital film scanners to convert film images to digital images. There are plenty of consumer-grade scanners available, too (just search for “film scanner”).
Here’s how the Criterion company describes the process that was used to create a Blu-ray version of Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 film *The Kid,* which was originally filmed on highly flammable nitrate-based film:
>”This restoration was created from a 35mm first-generation 1921 element preserved by Cineteca di Bologna. The element was scanned in 4K resolution on an ARRISCAN film scanner and edited to match Charlie Chaplin’s 1972 rerelease; for a severely decayed 370-foot portion of the film, a first-generation 1921 fine-grain from the collection of Roy Export was used instead. The original monaural soundtrack was remastered at 24-bit from the 35mm magnetic tracks. Clicks, thumps, hiss, hum, and crackle were manually removed using Pro Tools HD and iZotope RX4.”
The modern restorations of many old films are based on multiple versions of the film that have been stored, forgotten, and later found again in various libraries, film archives, barns, and basements.
Latest Answers