à‰clair Makes 4K Fixes to Children of Paradise

à‰clair (Paris, France) finished a 4K digital restoration of the French film classic Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis) on the Phoenix Refine system from Image Systems. The project was completed earlier this year, in time for screenings at the Cannes Film Festival and Il Cinema Ritrovato, a festival dedicated to rare, forgotten, and restored films held in Bologna, Italy.

Mouseover digitally restored still above to compare to original film frame.

Pathà© sent the original, worn-out 2,000-foot negative of the three-hour film to à‰clair in 11 film cans. Combining that negative – which was missing frames and suffered from the ravages of time, moisture, and mold – with two dupe negatives, à‰clair pieced together a complete version of the film and had it scanned at 4K.

Mouseover digitally restored still above to compare to original film frame.

It was the first time à‰clair had attempted a 4K restoration project. One pass with Phoenix Refine removed dust and dirt from the digitized frames; a second pass removed scratches. Refine’s auto fix and paint tools were used to do automated and manual work on problem frames. “Problems that we couldn’t repair with the paint tool we repaired with the auto fix tool, which is very powerful as it allows us to accurately rebuild parts of the image,” said à‰clair’s digital restoration head, Charlotte Quemy, in a prepared statement. “Being able to set several defaults on the same image, such as stabilise and scratch, is extremely efficient and significantly speeded up the workflow.”

There was no time to lose – à‰clair started work in January and delivered the film in May.