4th International Conference Colour in Film

When we digitize or digitally restore a film, our primary aim is to create a new, digital, but nevertheless authentic version, that corresponds to the original look of a film work. Colour grading is an essential part in this attempt. Especially when working with original camera elements this process is of crucial importance, since the photographic parameters that lead to the actual look of a film are not necessarily embedded in the original. Contemporary film prints can give us important guidelines what a film might have looked like at the time of production.That is, if we are lucky to have such a print available, which is not always the case.
The presentation will focus on how we can use good reference prints in our daily work and what we can do in the case of poor references. It will also give the example of the German Technicolor film THE CAT HAS NINE LIVES (NEUN LEBEN HAT DIE KATZE, 1968) that only by the means of digital colour grading could be restored to its original look. Secondary colour correction methods, that we normally only use as an exception in digital restoration projects, were applied quite extensively in this case.