Boris FX Flicker Fixer Helps Cinerama Restorations

Much of the original negative material has not been properly stored, often in warehouses and vaults that were not temperature or humidity controlled. David inspects the reels by hand and often finds that they are faded and damaged. Damaged films are sent to be scanned on a Scanmaster 4000 at Image Trends in Austin, Texas. As the scanning is carried out, a process called Digital Ice is applied to remove surface dirt from each frame.

The scans for each portion of the triptych – the three synchronised images - are composited as one complete widescreen image. As a post production process, the files are converted to a 2K QuickTime for Final Cut Pro. David then reconstructs the film, supervising final clean up and colour work as well as the syncing of the 7 channel 26 fps soundtrack.

David has found that some of the individual panels have a flicker between them - a result of the way old negatives fade over the years. In the past, David manually corrected the flickers which required very time-consuming keyframing. After doing three restorations this way, David learned about Flicker Fixer filter in Boris Continuum Complete. He downloaded the trial version and experimented with it in Adobe After Effects.

David said, “BCC Flicker Fixer was quite fast and did more than just cure the flicker in the scanned negative. By setting the Temporal Smoothing value to 1, the filter removed all of the flicker as well as the emulsion blotching and artefacts that appeared in different panels of the three way scan, due to the age of the film. I could also go back into two productions I had finished and apply BCC Flicker Fixer to some previously un-fixable shots.”